You got me tied down with battleship gray.

A couple of weeks ago I read this item from Smith House Design, posted in 2019, via Instapundit. Smith House is a creative design agency, so a post about color trends is right up their street. And the trend in question is: Battleship.

What is Battleship?

These are the super-dull colors that you’ve seen on cars and trucks in the last couple of years. These are “impossibly dull” versions of blue, gray, and tan. 

 

I guess wherever the author lives they had more new cars than we have around here, because I didn't start notice this until the last six months. And now I see that the "impossibly dull" versions extend to other colors as well. 

It's everywhere. The author predicted that Battleship would remain popular for a while:

Young guys in lifted Toyota Tacomas and Jeeps love the tough look. But don’t expect to see battleship colors in many other places other than automobiles. These super-dull colors are the default choices for common, unexciting products like plastic storage containers, generic PCs, and those big office printers.
     It’s only cool when it is a surprise.

I suppose he's right, but we shall see. He knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. 

However, popular colors reflect the cultural mood. Elevated, dreamlike pastels are popular in periods of optimism; stark colors in periods of conflict. Earth tones seem harmless but reflect a sense of civilizational doom, "back to the farm." Vibrant, blazing colors reflect a sense of excitement and risk. And now we see battleship dullness in a period where people sense that things will be tough, so they want to be tough.

If I'm right, this color trend will extend to house colors, housewares, clothing, and other goods. But the writer may be right, that there is a self-limiting side to dullness because dull things already look dull, and who finds that appealing? 

Still, we can't escape the sense that the national mood is angry -- not a blazing anger, but a kind that is expecting and preparing for the worst, and does not intend to surrender when it comes. Why would they feel this way? Gee, I can't imagine.