Yellow is pure contradiction. A dual colour that glows as the lightest of all vivid colors and symbolizes optimism, happiness and abundance. On its dark reverse side, yellow is also the shade that has traditionally been associated with anger, jealousy, and envy. A tone that is loved and hated in equal measure, adored by young people and precisely represents the new generation of consumers: GenZ Yellow. Yellow is in turn one of the colours that is marking this 2021, according to Pantone. We analyze some anecdotes and curiosities of this rabidly trending colour.
The colour of fun, kindness and joy
Yellow is traditionally associated with the sun and as it is linked to the main astro, it is an encouraging and serene color. Optimists have a bright mood and yellow represents their state. Yellow in itself is fun in, it’s radiant like a broad smile. Not surprisingly, smileys or smiley emojis are naturally yellow. Could you imagine them in another colour?
This colour radiates light and is the main color of kindness. “For yellow to be friendly, it needs to always have orange and red at its side, which instill and represent ideas of joy and wealth,” wrote the painter Eugène Delacroix. This is also the chromatic chord that is linked to the joy of living, of activity and of energy.
Illumination is yellow
Sunlight is also perceived as yellow, although it does not actually have any colour. That is why colour is linked to light and illumination. As a light and luminous color that it is, yellow is related to white. Bright and light are qualities of the same character, and yellow is the lightest and lightest of vivid colours. It has a light effect that because it seems to come from above. Therefore, the colour of light is, figuratively speaking, the colour of mental enlightenment. In the Islamic world, golden yellow is the symbolic colour of wisdom and in ancient European symbolism it was linked to the tone of understanding, belonging to the world of reason and ideas. Spiritually, God has been represented symbolically as a yellow triangle, often with an eye within that geometry. A symbol of the omniscience and omnipresence of the all-seeing Being that leads to clarity and enlightenment.
Psychologically, yellow is also linked to spontaneity and creativity as it is a colour that sharpens perception and invites reflection. Yellow are also Van Gogh‘s paintings that he painted with corm yellow, a very poisonous pigment that contains lead and sulfur, some of his most famous paintings such as ‘The sunflowers”
The colour of beautiful men and women
Since ancient times, yellow hair was related to the Sun with its brilliant reflections that seemed to be bathed in gold. Hence, the word blonde or blonde came out to designate a person with golden hair as the star king. The ancient Greeks represented their solar gods as Helios or Apollo of yellow color with statuesque bodies and blond hair, abundant and wavy. Faced with such beauty, all mortals wanted to be blonde. For this reason, they soaked their hair with a bleaching ointment that was manufactured in Athens, they sat for hours in the sun and waited until the hair turned blonde. The blonde symbolized the beautiful and the divine.
Yellow also represent fertility and maturity, idealized in summer fields with golden tones, and sensual love as it is the most frequent colour in flowers. Precisely, most of the flowers are of this colour: mimosa, sunflowers, forsythias, crocuses, primroses, physalis …
The dark side of yellow
Not all that glisters is gold, and yellow, as the most dual tonality of the colour palette, also hides its own contradictions. The warning of a hazard is yellow. This has a simple explanation: it is the lightest color and due to its optimal effect seen from afar and irritating seen from close up, it is the internationally adopted tone for signs indicating the presence of toxic, explosive or radioactive substances that show black signs on a background yellow. In fact, black writing on a yellow background is best read from afar.
Yellow is also the colour of everything you dislike: from envy (dislike for the posessions of others) to jealousy (dislike for the existence of others). Greed is also yellow, which, like envy, are capital sins, and are related to facets of selfishness. According to ancient belief, irritability and anger are linked to bile (yellow with greenish flecks), and when someone got angry they said that their skin turned yellow.
One more curiosity. In English, yellow means coward. The French call false laughter “yellow laughter”, and in France and Russia, “a yellow house” is a madhouse. What a dark reverse!
The colour of Generation Z
Pantone decided in 2021 that one of the colours that would mark the year would be Illuminating yellow. A bright and cheerful topne that generates liveliness and effervescence, and that, according to the authority of colour, symbolizes hope and positivity, values that connect with the future. And the future is marked by the new generation of young people: the effervescent Gen-Z, born between 1994 and 2008. Celebrities such as Zendaya, Gigi Hadid, Kaia Gerber, Kylie Jenner, Millie Bobby Brown, amongst many others, have taken yellow as their flag of style, and the fashion industry continues to use these tones to attract the attention of young, new consumers.
On the catwalks, yellow also does not go unnoticed this summer. From its most candy to the most acidic side, this colour has become one of the season’s stars in collections from firms such as Prada, Versace, Balmain or Etro that have not hesitated to combine it with golds, earth tones and the unbeatable neutrals. : black and white.
Therefore, yellow right now is the colour of the moment: of what flourishes in the fashion industry and is linked to the joy and dynamism of the carefree generation of young people. In less than a decade we have gone from millennial pink to GenZ Yellow.
