My daughter Freja, who is 6, is embarrassed that pink is not her favourite colour😲 One evening she leaned over and whispered in my ear “I don’t like pink very much”. I asked why she was whispering, and she said that NORMALLY girls like pink. 👚
This got me wondering, what was the history of the colour pink?
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A long time ago both boys and girls used to wear white⚪️. It was mainly for practical reasons - before chemical dyes were invented, white cotton could be washed and boiled lots of times and wouldn’t fade.
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Throughout history there have been times when pink - a lighter version of red - was a boys colour. In a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” 💙
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Things shifted in the 1940s, after one study showed that even though both male and female participants preferred blue to other colours, women favoured more purplish range and men - greenish side of the spectrum. Despite the fact that the study used adults, and both groups preferred blues, and responses to the colour pink were never even tested, the popular press represented the research as an indication of an innate preference by girls for pink.
Finally, the last straw was prenatal testing around 1985. Expectant parents learned the sex of their unborn baby and then went shopping for “girl” 👧🏽or “boy” 👦🏻merchandise - The more you individualise clothing, the more you can sell.
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If you’d like to dive into this deeper, this book has it all: “Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America” by Jo. B. Paoletti.
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As someone working in fashion, it is refreshing to see that recently there have been more and more brands producing clothes which are not attached to the specific gender for kids. John Lewis doesn’t put labels which say “girls” or “boys” on their kids range anymore. Another one of my favourites is Tootsa MacGinty.
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Do you know any other kids’ brands which don’t put gender labels on their clothes? Please share in the comments, I’d love to know! 🌈 the amazing pics📸 are by Hans Eijkelboom from the book “People of the twenty-first century”.