On the Matter of Color

Jul 9

On the Matter of Color

By The Oma Paloma

Color is not a preference. I want to be clear about that before anyone reaches for a swatch like it's a menu. You do not choose a color the way you choose a croissant. A color chooses you, usually in a dressing room, usually at a volume only the two of you can hear, and then you spend the rest of your life either honoring that conversation or lying about it in family photos.

I have been persimmon since before persimmon was a color people were allowed to say out loud. I did not "discover my palette." My palette arrived. It had luggage.

People love to say color is self-expression. Adorable. Self-expression is what you call it when no one has told you no yet. A real color tells you something — usually something you didn't ask for, occasionally something you'll need a decade and a good therapist to fully receive.

So here: six chances to get it right. Sparrows, poison apples, a cauliflower, a toucan, a hat with a dove that has clearly seen things, a haircut that is making decisions on your behalf. Some of you get to make this choice alone. Some of you have to make it in a trio, which is its own kind of pressure — a color that one person carries is a costume, a color three people carry at once is a position. I am not going to tell you which of the six you'll get right. I will simply say that some of you already know, and the rest of you will find out later, in photographs, at an age when it is too late to do anything about it. I am not going to tell you which one is correct. I will simply say that one of them has already won, one of them is about to win, one of them peaked in the car on the way over, and one of them is going to look at these photos again in fifteen years and finally understand what happened to him.

You're welcome. Choose accordingly.