The Impression of White
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 at 7:19PM I'm dressed all in white, sipping coconut milk from a young coconut, and thinking. There is a trend. It's in every store. It's white. White clothes, the hot new white iPhone, white lounges, white everything. Perhaps now is the right time to put your money into stocks of bleach producing companies.
I have been thinking about why I have this sudden urge to wear white, and why is the whole world doing the same. Why white? Why this year? Why is apple coming up with white iPod at this very moment? How did Apple know that white will be so trendy?
Wikipedia says:
White is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in nearly equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness.... An object whose surface reflects back most of the light it receives and does not alter its color will appear white...
So white is not a color of light, it's the summation of light intensity across the visible spectrum. TV displays use only three primary colors of light to create the impression of white. The RGB coordinates are (1.0, 1.0, 1.0).
In symbolism, references to white are often related to purity, cleanness, and innocence. That explains why doctors wear white, why office workers are "white collar" workers, why we bleach our teeth, and why the brides (virgin or not) wear white as well.
We use clothing for social signalling. Wearing a luxury brand item signals the world that we are at a certain solvency level (there is an interesting book on this topic, called "The Luxury Strategy" where you can read more about this social stratification technique). Perhaps wearing white signals that one is pure and innocent. Does the demand for white clothing mean that the world is striving to get cleansed? Cleansed of what? Is this white craze an attempt to de-clutter our lives and simplify our looks? Or is it something that was pushed onto us by clothing manufacturers? Where did this trend start?
Reader Comments (1)
This is why codes must be efficient. The less lines, the more white color on the whiteboard and that's trendy.