The green color

tbm3fan

tbm3fan

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After looking at the 74 Plymouth for sale in triple green I just had to do some research as to why green was so popular in the 70's. Ran across and interesting explanation of a possible reason which is below.
Fashion often changes in broad, pendulum-like swings, and this is a good example of the phenomenon. But while the question is deceptively simple, the answer is complex, because it involves explaining several social and historical convergences. Bear with me, if you will, and I hope all will become clear:

In the early 70's, there came about, pretty abruptly, a strong visual backlash against the electric, high-chroma,"psychedelic" colour palette that was such an iconic feature of the late 60's hippie culture; in short, the style got old very fast. The reasons were multiple: America was now deep in a quagmire of war; thousand were being drafted and returning home in coffins, mere weeks after their induction; protesters were being beaten and jailed; every day, the newspapers (!) revealed our leaders to be ever more egregiously stupid crooks, liars and fools. Madness and anarchy seemed to lie around every corner. Somehow all that celebratory, fun, acid-saturated colour now seemed ... silly and self-indulgent. It became as inappropriate as wearing a "Smile" t-shirt to a schoolbus rollover. And all the gentle social upheaval and genial questioning of institutional values that those bright colours once cheekily promised? Well, they no longer carried much appeal. In fact, they seemed frightening - just more uncertainty and conflict, in already uncertain and conflicted times.

People were suddenly in the visual mood for something more muted, contemplative and restrained. The faintly mournful "autumn" colour palette - dark orange, oxblood, copper, brown, harvest gold, avocado green - filled that need so well that, as you point out, it literally became symbolic of the decade. Perhaps simply because it reminded folks of a less complex time, when subtle, visually digestible, vegetable-based dyes coloured our surroundings, rather than incomprehensible, knock-your-eyes-out chemical pigments (whose colours were actually meant to approximate the livelier visual effects of a hallucinogenic experience!).

Concurrently with the shift in colour preferences, smaller, meticulously repeated patterns once again began to appear on fabrics and wallpapers, as sharp stylistic counterpoint to the free-form, Yellow Submarine-esque, "supergraphic rainbow" visuals that had overwhelmed every available wall surface during the previous decade.
Those autumn colours also thematically supported, and were cross-fertilized by, the decade's nascent "natural" movement. Still inspired by the lofty ideals of their older siblings' recently failed hippie paradigm, and boosted by the first vague stirrings of the modern ecology movement, '70s boomers forsook (at least temporarily) their parents' blatant consumerim, and instead embraced the generationally dormant, homespun handicrafts of their grandparents: macramé, crochet, bargello, weaving, leatherworking, cutting down old beer bottles into drinking glasses. The handicrafts they created and proudly decorated their homes with were mostly made from organic materials, so they just looked better when surrounded with earth-tone colours. Chromatic colour was out, because it detracted from the workmanship - which was, after all, what differentiated handmade-and-unique from factory-extruded and common.

This attitudinal shift towards muted, "homemade" colour and texture, and away from slick, obviously industrial colours and finishes was, at least in part, probably a subconscious side-effect of the 70's generation's fast-growing resentment of both the politician-buying industrial complex, and its ongoing material support for a war they despised. (Yes, the war ended in '75, but resentments lingered.) It was, if you will, a form of protest, or boycott: a generation's tentative, somewhat pathetic attempt to re-exert control over their own visual destiny, and to wrest whatever tiny part of their environment they still could, away from the overbearing and apparently malignant industrial and commercial forces that were threatening to overwhelm them socially, financially and politically.

At the same time as these colour and design changes took hold in home decor, people began gradually shifting their wardrobes back to natural wools and cottons. After a decade and a half of collecting increasingly slinky, shiny, uncomfortable, odiferous and obviously synthetic garments - which were themselves a pendulum-swing away from the ossified white-cotton-shirt, gray-flannel-suit ethos of the two decades following WWII, the fabric-choice pendulum was again swinging back. And in clothing, as in interior design, autumnal, natural colours were generally seen to be more complementary to natural materials than chromatic colours.

That all being said (whew!), the prevalence of the autumnal palette wasn't really as all-encompasing as retro media like That 70's Show would have us believe. (Btw, what was up with the anachronistic, so-90's, industrial loft-tech, cheese-grater kitchen lights? Obvious clanger.) Designers frequently go kind of over-the-top when they try to recreate a period look, a generation or more later. Frankly, even Mad Men, though certainly very well researched, is visually a little overbearing in its representation of the period; after all, not everything in the Sixties was of the Sixties; some of it hailed from the Fifties and Forties, even the Thirties. Just as we still occasionally see an 80's wood panelled Buick land-shark station wagon in the Walmart parking lot, or a suitcase-sized VCR parked under a friend's tube TV, I long to see a cheap postwar suit on some poor agency schlub who supervises the steno pool. Instead, everybody wears Brooks Brothers. All the time.

It is also instructive to realize that within any fashion era "look" you'd care to examine, competing visual ideas constantly jousted with one another for dominance. Visual style is a roiling river, not a still pond. Remember that the "natural, homespun" 70's were also the era that gave birth to platform boots for men, polyester lounge suits, "designer" jeans, disco, the New York Dolls, foil wallpaper, smoked glass coffee tables, naugahyde sofas, spherical stereo speakers, shag carpet, gold-veined mirror tiles, chrome overhead lamps, and pink Christmas trees; and may God forgive my generation for those particular stylistic trespasses. For further proof, take another look at Goodfellas, with an eye to the set decoration and costumes; it is a veritable omnibus of questionable 70's design. (And a showcase for some very clever designers!)

Next instalment: why the theme colours of the late '50s and early '60s were red, pastel green, chrome yellow and teal, and why commercial printers suddenly stopped putting type into straight lines.
Source: Lived through it all. Also, history of design in theatre school.
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Next I find on Jalopnik I see a more current article where they are lamenting all the grayscale colors being used. Your white, silver, gray and black which were 70% of the cars sold last year. So they present a link of what they think are the best car colors ever. Ok, their opinion but not bad and you will even see an iconic Mopar color from the 70's in the top 10. So what do you think. I know he lists brown???

I know I am always on the lookout for color on the roads and it is very hard to find in new cars. Thursday morning I did see a bright yellow earlier Ford Focus and a bright blue Fiat 500 bot within 200 yards of each other on the freeway. That was it for 15 minutes till I got off.

http://jalopnik.com/5951249/the-best-car-colors-ever-offered

 
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Be careful what you pick today or you may live in shame tomorrow. Not many want to drive an Al Bundy Gold Duster today, though 70's purple Chargers are still stylish. I think today's popular colors are even more risky. Burnt orange, muddy yellow, and cow-turd brown look cool today, but maybe not in 10 years, along with the hipster tattoos on arms and neck. Speaking of green, a coworker bought a fairly new (~2006) Lexus that is a very dark green, almost looks black. Might be one of those new nano-tech paints with iridescence like a Japanese Beetle. Looks refined, and I think it will still look nice in 20 years.
 
Good work on the research. They explain the '70s in detail in the first article but is it safe to say that the trends they speak of started in '68 or earlier? Must have been an overlap in trends then because it seems that 60% of the '68 Mopars that remain are green and these predates all the high impact colors they began offering in '69 and '70. I'm just talking cars here, not refrigerators. In the second article there's not one thing wrong with that silver Maverick and in the last article #1 is very upsetting to me on the thankfully rare occasions I've seen it with my own eyes.
 
Okay, maybe that explains the popularity of green in the 70's, but why is it that almost every 1968 Chrysler product is green. I hate green, but both my 68 Barracuda convertible and my 68 Charger RT were originally green. Tell someone over 40 who's not into cars that you have a 68 Dart or a 71 Duster, and chances are you'll hear them say something like, "that's one of those ugly green cars".
Its just that certain colors are popular in certain years. Green was a very common color on Chrysler products at the same time that the high impact colors were available.
Its true that certain colors were popular in certain years. I read somewhere that nearly 80% of all 1961 Chevrolets were painted white, and that the percentage wasn't far off from Fords production of white cars in 1961.
As for Mopars and green? Green was so common that it almost seemed like you had to special order any other color. There was still plenty of choices, At least three shades of metallic green were offered in some years. Maybe they had too much olive drab paint left over from defense contracts so they just added some metallic to it and painted the cars with it.
But today, its the same with the grayscale colors. Looking at a 2012 Challenger brochure, yes there is one blue, one red and one orange offered, but every other color available, is in the grayscale from white to black and three colors in between.
 
Why is every house on my street developed from 2004 and up is beige and I'm the only one in Barn Red.
 
Jim 68cuda said:
.... but why is it that almost every 1968 Chrysler product is green. I hate green, ....
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Chryslers were being sold to middle aged family guys who were not into the newer "fab" colours. As far as your hating green ... there's no accounting for taste....
 
Fratzog said:
Chryslers were being sold to middle aged family guys who were not into the newer "fab" colours. As far as your hating green ... there's no accounting for taste....
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My father bought these green four door sedans.
He was middle aged.
Had a family.
Was not into colors (all his suits were dark gray - all his casual clothes beige)
He was a tax accountant.
 
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70bigblockdodge said:
Didn't he have a blue fast top?
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Yep. The 67 that got handed down to me 3 ywars later. His previous cars were salesman specials and after the 67 Fast Top he went back to them. I remember how unhappy he was with that "flashy sports car"! Why he came home with that in the first place is still a mystery to me today. If he were alive today, there are still two questions I need answered from him.
1. Why won't you talk to me about what you did in WWII, and
2. Were you drunk when you bought the Fast Top?

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Just playing around to see what is the color for 2014 as far as clothing and misc. items. Last year one design house picked Emerald Green. Don't see many cars following these color trends.
http://www.pantone.com/pages/index.aspx?pg=21129

There is this article on kitchen colors which autos did seem to follow pretty close to starting with our avocado green and harvest gold in 1968. Browns start to show up in the 70's. Note they say white never goes out of style although many manufacturers are pushing stainless steel as in the gray-silver cars.
http://www.colorcombos.com/kitchen-appliance-color-choices-article.html

The last link is a retro color of the year for 2014 and it is harvest gold. The drawings in it really bring back what I recall from those days.
https://www.google.com/webhp?source...+1968+houseware+avacoda+green+or+harvest+gold
 
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So does a brown formie make that now a brownie according to our new term manager ?
 
What do you put in your brownies, Klaus?
 
Ask Ross, I order them there, profits go to the boy scouts he says. ;)
 
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