Pink, for as long as it’s been around, is still a hotly contested color. Headlines aplenty ponder whether men should wear it still…even though they have been for decades, if not centuries. In fact, in a widely circulated trade journal published in 1918, pink was the de-facto color for boys everywhere.
“If you go back to the 18th century, little boys and little girls of the upper classes both wore pink and blue and other colors uniformly,” Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology, told CNN. Later on, though, manufacturers made a push to codify color codes. “In America by the 1890s and the early 20th century, manufacturers attempted to sell more children’s and infants’ clothes by color-coding them.”
Consensus was divided still, though, on which corresponded with which gender pole. Popular lore attributes the final verdict to the high-profile acquisition of two pieces of 18th century art, Steele explains to CNN, a painting of a boy in blue called Boy in Blue and a painting of a young girl wearing a pink dress called Pinkie.
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Ever since, pink has sustained through subversion: “Real men wear pink,” and “Who cares? Wear what you like,” represent two widely-held sentiments about the hue. Popular in prep circles and in streetwear, pink thrives as an extremity: a bright pink polo with navy slacks, or, bright pink accents on an otherwise all-black or all-white sneaker. Nike, however, is testing our tolerance for rose-colored sneakers with its upcoming release calendar.
Although one has already come out, the Stüssy x Nike Air Max 2013, Nike is readying three more pink sneakers for later this year: the expressive Nike Air Pesto ‘Triple Pink’ and Nike Air Max 270 ‘Triple Pink,’ as well as the tame Nike Air Force 1 ‘Low Desert Berry’ (seen above). There are also two more sneakers with pink accents, a new Air Max 95 with pink laces and pink foam, plus an Air Pegasus with (kind of random) pink laces. Are they for everyone? Well, no, but there’s certainly something to Nike’s new penchant.
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