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As Freud and other psychologists’ theories of childhood development gained momentum, so parents began to differentiate their offspring’s sex at an earlier age.
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Rose Quartz 13-1520, Pantone of the year, 2016
Pink adopted an altogether brasher attitude in the 20th century thanks to further innovation in the field of textile dying. Shocking pink was the brainchild of Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli, a contemporary of Jean Cocteau and other artists who collectively made up the Surrealism movement. By mixing magenta with a small amount of white, she created a new variety of colour, which immediately attracted attention for its boldness and vibrancy. A perfume called ‘Shocking’, sold in a bottle in the shape of a woman’s torso, further embedded pink as a chameleon colour, offering something for everyone. By the 1940s and 1950s, consumer preferences were superseding previous assertions that pink was a masculine colour. Blue was the usual colour of school uniforms for both boys and girls and therefore associated with seriousness and study. In contrast, pink had become strongly associated with femininity, with toys aimed at girls often displaying pink prominently on packaging and the toys themselves. In its 1957 catalogue, Lionel Trains featured a pink model freight train for girls. Understandably, this was something of marketing disaster as any right-thinking girl would want a realistically coloured train while boys simply didn’t do pink. In her 1985 book, Fashion and Eroticism, Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New
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