The new black

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"_____ is the new black" is a catch phrase used to indicate the sudden popularity or versatility of an idea at the expense of the popularity of a second idea. It is a form of the snowclone "X is the new Y".

[edit] History

An early pop culture example of popularizing a particular color as the new "in" thing appears in the 1957 film Funny Face, in which editor Maggie Prescott (inspired by the Vogue editor Diana Vreeland and played by Kay Thompson) extols the color pink.^{[citation needed]}

A closer early approximation of the phrase is Vreeland's pronouncement, quoted in 1962, that "I ADORE that pink ... it's the navy blue of India." Vreeland meant that in India the color pink was the functional equivalent to blue in the USA, that is a common foundation or basic, much like navy blue was the base color of most ensembles in New York City.^[1]

In the late 1970s, the phrase "X is the new neutral" was widely used (culminating in the humorous observation that "It looks like red is the new neutral").^{[citation needed]}

The earliest use of "the new black" seems to be in a March 1983 Los Angeles Times article, and apparently attributed to Gianfranco Ferré: "Colors are slated to be somber and muted, say most of the designers who previewed their collections for Fashion83. For example, Ferre says gray is the new black."^[1]

It was used repeatedly in the 1980s to indicate that other colors (frequently brown, navy blue, or grey) were temporarily displacing black's position in fashion or industrial design as a versatile staple that complemented all other aspects and was generally unobjectionable.

The phrase quickly became a cliché, lampooned for its simplistic nature. Because the phrase is so familiar, it is now sometimes used in absurd contexts as a signifier instead of as a metaphor.^{[citation needed]}

The phrase is an example of the snowclone "X is the new Y", where the standard may be almost anything ("the new rock and roll" is a common variant). It is so widespread that the British satirical magazine Private Eye chronicles the over-use of the phrase in its column "Neophiliacs". In 2008, Lake Superior State University included "X is the new Y" on their annual "Banished Words List", stating, "The idea behind such comparisons was originally good, but we've all watched them spiral out of reasonable uses into ludicrous ones and it's now time to banish them from use."^[2]

[edit] Contemporary examples

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (August 2008)

• (2001) The phrasing was used to humorous effect in the movie Josie and the Pussycats, with increasingly referential claims that, "Pink is the new red", "Orange is the new pink" and "Heath Ledger is the new Matt Damon."
• (2001) "Big is the new small," referring to the supposed cool factor of a gigantic cell phone, as used in a 2001 episode of Saturday Night Live. It played off the phrase "small is the new big", indicating that small electronics were more expensive and modern than larger electronics, and therefore the smaller your cell phone the better. However, that phrase was cast in opposition to the still-earlier concept that "bigger is better".^[3]
• (2001) Norwegian folk-pop duo Kings of Convenience named their debut album Quiet Is the New Loud.
• (2002) During an episode of Gilmore Girls, Lorelai and Rory attend a baby shower where all the gifts are green because "green is the new pink." Later, Lorelai mocks this idea, saying, "Oh, and lots of cars stopped at a blue light on Garvey Avenue. Why a blue light? Well, ‘cause blue’s the new red."
• (2003) Carson Kressley from Queer Eye once declared, "Gay is the new black." It is unclear whether he intended to mean that gay fashion was now extremely hip and versatile, or if being gay was trendy (implying the exploitation of gay culture along the same lines as blaxploitation in the 1970s), or both. The phrase has also been used by other authors around the same time as the launch of Kressley's show, and it is unclear who was the originator of the phrase.
• (2003) In the musical Wicked, Galinda sings to Elphaba that "black is this year's pink".
• (2003) Funeral for a Friend's song "Red is the New Black" from the album Casually Dressed & Deep in Conversation
• (2004) The tagline for the 2004 film Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to Ocean's Eleven, was "Twelve is the new eleven."
• (2005) "The New Black" is a single from Every Time I Die's third album, Gutter Phenomenon.
• (2005) One of the catch phrases for Apple's iPod shuffle is "Random is the new order", which may be a double play on words.
• (2005) In The New York Times of May 23, Stuart Eliott stated that "So in a trend-conscious industry, economizing is the new black." The phrase was not used in quotation marks or in an ironic context, and the metaphor is incomprehensible without a familiarity of the history of the phrase. ^[4] Black has a meaning in accounting: "in the black", financially sound.
• (2005) Australian musician Ben Lee's album Awake Is the New Sleep.
• (2006) A movie review of Brokeback Mountain opined that "Gay cowboys are now the new penguins"^[5] – a double reference to the surprise success of the love story (which supplanted the previous year's dark horse, the documentary March of the Penguins) and to the publicity given to gay penguin couples in zoos, which had recently been in the news.
• (2006) Strapping Young Lad's album The New Black.
• (2006) Janis Ian's album Folk Is the New Black.
• (2006) Chris Stephenson of Microsoft, on the color of the Zune packaging: "Brown is the new black is the new white."
• (2007) An episode of The Apprentice 6 was entitled "Pink is the New Black", in reference to the color of men's swimsuits.
• (2007-8) "Black is the new white" was said by a number of commentators refering to the election of Barack Obama.^[6][7][8]
• (2007) Jonathan Byrd's album This Is the New That.
• (2007) The bonus disc of Radiohead's album In Rainbows contains a track called "Down Is the New Up".
• (2008) On the Weekend Update portion of Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey (in a monologue about Hillary Clinton) stated that "Bitch is the new black". Tracy Morgan later retorted, "Bitch may be the new black, but black is the new president, bitch."
• (2008) The movie WALL-E features a disembodied female voice telling humanity, who are all dressed in a similar red outfit, "Try blue. It's the new red!"
• (2009) “Bicycles are the new Lexus” (San Francisco Chronicle, June 21, 2009) article by Zabid Sardar quoting architect, Joseph Belomo of Palo Alto Bicycles and designer and inventor of semi-circular bicycle racks and shelters (www.bikearc.com) ^[9]
• (2009) "Level is the new ahead" Carol Bartz (CEO, Yahoo)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The New Black – A South African Design & Branding Consultancy
• Comprehensive chart of "is the new" for 2005
• X is the new Y charts for colors and web companies and programming languages and sports, as mined from the web
• List of things that are the new black
• Blog that tracks occurrences of the X is the new Y formula
• Neu Black - A popular site covering Design, Culture, and Style
• The Boston Globe investigated what had been described as the new black in 2007