I was read­ing the the New York Times today, and one arti­cle in par­tic­u­lar caught my attention.

The arti­cle gave a brief explo­ration of the cur­rent trend in nam­ing col­ors after foods. It was only a few para­graphs before I found myself think­ing of Patrick Jordan’s Supertrends con­cept and lecture(s). This arti­cle on food-colored cars struck me as yet another sign point­ing towards hedo­nism in particular.

I found it inter­est­ing though that the author dis­cussed the var­ied range of avail­able color palettes on the auto mar­ket, and yet the cur­rent crop of vehi­cles on the US roads these days seems far less var­ied than the sup­pos­edly avail­able range (though per­haps the diverse range is more focused on the high end mar­ket — even the aspi­ra­tional cars seem to be lim­ited to fairly patri­otic col­ors). In keep­ing with Pat’s uncanny eye and sense for trends, I find myself draw­ing a par­al­lel to the abun­dantly patri­otic color palette of cars on the US roads today (pre­dom­i­nantly red, white/neutral (white, grey/silver, champagne/gold, black), blue and occa­sion­ally yel­low or orange) and the present social, eco­nomic and polit­i­cal cli­mate of the nation.

I remem­ber talk­ing to Pat sev­eral years ago in Pitts­burgh about this phe­nom­e­non — the more suc­cess­ful or “healthy” the social/economic/political cli­mate, the more var­ied the avail­able and con­sumed color palette of cars, the less healthy, the more con­stricted the palette. Pretty abstract in con­cept, and yet oddly true.