AGENT YELLOW: “Yellow is a primary color, and it is the basis for all other colors in the realm,” said artist and curator Gabrielle Richardson, after a Y-3 show where bright yellow touches shot through the collection designed by Yohji Yamamoto.
And the veteran designer wasn’t the only one. Kenzo, Pigalle, Maison Margiela — their runway backdrop was yellow, too — and many more went for the sunny color.
While on social media, Instagram in particular, yellow has begun to make the rounds, and a term has even been coined to describe the spectrum from eggyolk to mustard, and beyond, “Generation Z yellow.”
The Art Hoe collective, founded by Richardson, is credited with the emergence of this hue as a successor to Millennial Pink as the color du jour. “We feel that people of color are the basis of the majority of creativity, and often aren’t credited for it. We just wanted to really accentuate that fact by using primary colors,” she explained.
Richardson, who is working on a solo show in New York for the spring that will include performance pieces and a focus on the color red, was particularly happy about the cast of the show. “It’s really amazing to see a designer of color like Yohji bring black models, Asian models to the forefront,” she said, noting that people of color were still underrepresented in the industry.
Associated with optimism, vitality and ambition, the historically rare color could be read as a metaphor for a generation eager to surpass the troubles of the epoch. “The people who contribute and create are a population of young, creative people of color who want their work on the forefront. That’s the generation,” the young artist said. An apt description, then.