E.O. Schaub

My friend told me the other day she needed a black dress for a funeral she is going to be in this summer.

No wait- wait… wedding, sorry, it’s a wedding she’s in. Right. So of course, she needs a black dress. To be in the wedding party. Of course. Will the bride wear black too, I wonder? How about the flower girls? Will the bouquets be black? How about the cake? Perhaps the guests could all throw black beans instead of rice.

And then at the reception they could all enjoy a nice aperitif of human blood and perform a ritual sacrifice. How festive.

Seriously, are Miss Manners and I the only ones who have a problem with this idea that black works with e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g? That it’s appropriate for every conceivable occasion from christenings to space shuttle launchings? Since when did the color of Darth Vader and Hell’s Angels jackets get to be our collective color of choice? Our default hue? The chicken with broccoli on the fashion menu of life? Heck- black is so devastatingly important to our sense of style that it is now THE COLOR against which all others are measured, as in: “Brown is the new black!” and “Pink is the new black!” And then guess what? That’s right: “Black is back!” And so on.

Personally, I have had it up to HERE with all the supposed truisms: choose black dear, black goes with everything you know! That’s what makes it so economical! And everyone looks good in it… plus it is so very slimming!

You know what black also does? It collects pet hair. It’s hot. It makes regular people look pale and pale people look nauseous. Look black up in the dictionary and you find words like: bleak, dim, dark, sinister, grim, mordant and opprobrious. Do you want to dress opprobriously? I didn’t think so. Continue reading Razzmatazz is the New Black →