Faded Black is NOT the New Black

Thank you Coco Chanel for institutionalizing the Little Black Dress (and the color black for that matter).



Now it’s not like I’m one of those girls who wears all black all the time. In fact, I would much rather don neon or jewel hues. Purple, orange, hot pink, kelly green. I love me some color!

I think it’s borderline obnoxious that some New Yorkers don’t flirt with color. That they wear onyx “uniforms” every.single.day. Live a little, people!

They can be boring, fine. What irks me most about these uptight, unoriginal, indigenous NYCers is the fact that their blacks are always so black.

The only obvious reason for such brilliant blacks (said in the least oxymoronic way possible, as if a non-color could be brilliant), is that these single-color-minded people are wealthy. They’s got the big bucks so they can afford to buy a gazillion blouses and slacks and knits and skirts and LBD’s.

Yes, that must be it. There are just so many clothes in their unilateral wardrobe rotation that each article gets plucked from obscurity once every two or three months. Hence the non-faded-blacks.

Alas, the greater part of the population, we peasants - whose apartments are 1/8 the size of aforementioneds’ walk-in closets - are forced to wash our blacks every other week. And what happens when blacks are washed too often? Anyone? Anyone?

They fade.

Selfish, malicious, malevolent cotton! Frankly I don’t give a damn if it’s the fabric our lives! It ain’t the fabric of my life!



OK that’s a lie...I love cotton. Especially when it’s soft and loose and flowy and stretchy (Thanksgiving countdown, YIKES!)

But what I don’t love about that popularity-contest-winning fabric is that it can never seem to get its shit together.

Quit losing your dye, cotton. Stop fading when I wash your soiled little ass. I don’t appreciate it.
Nothing says frump-de-la-dump more than bleached, blanched, washed out, lackluster black.
Perhaps I’m overly sensitive to faded-out fabric because I suffered through ten months of incessant black wearing at Bloomingdale’s. A lot of retail stores - or maybe just Federated Department Stores - make their employees don monochromatic ebony ensembles. 

(I find this fact fairly funny - wouldn’t it be far more interesting if we modeled the goods on the sales-floor?)

Nevertheless, I bought up lots-o-black. White House Black Market scooped up a ton of my moolah.

I wore and washed and rewore and rewashed. And all the while, I played by the rules - color safe detergent, cold water - hell, it’s not like there were even other colors to mess with my laundry loads, THEY WERE NADA BUT BLACK.

All to no avail. It didn’t make any difference that I Woolite-d because no matter what, black clothes fade like a mofo. There’s no helping it. There’s nothing you can do.

I had an extremely productive day yesterday (shocking, seeing as how we tailgated Ivy-League-style all day Saturday!) - and ended the nonstop madness with a grocery trip to my new fave Whole Foods haunt (Bowery).

Let it be said that I don’t condone sweatpants in public, but yoga pants are permissible. So I was bumming around in my circa 2002 Hard Tails - which have significantly altered from their original onyx state. They’re soft, yes, but they’ve diminished to a fairly embarrassing dark grey.
I contemplated changing. Wrestled with myself back and forth, to and fro, pros and cons - it was a struggle, but in the end I let my faded flag fly! (My anxiety for an overcrowded Whole Foods the longer I waited and debated outweighed my anxiety for strangers seeing me in faded black pants.)

Sadly, methinks last night was their finale. Time for them to retire, to be relegated to apartment-only status.

Sob, sob, sniffle, sob, sob, but ’tis true. There comes a time in the life of a black cotton staple that you just gotta let go.

Preferably you, the owner, will see the time is near, will realize it, and will wrap that shit up before you’re seen schmoozing in a black-cum-charcoal tee. Because faded black anything - well, in the wise words of Liz Lemon, “That’s a dealbreaker!”

They should sell black laundry dye - like hair dye. Wash all your blacks in this special detergent/dye every other month or so and voilà, no more telltale whitish, ashy, seemingly lint covered clothes!
Come on Garnier Fructis and L'Oréal Paris - think of all the money you and Tide could make if you tag teamed!