The Drab Colors Squashing the Spirit

As a teenager, shopping with my mom one day, I saw a bolt of material with a beautiful splash of color among the sea of drab greys, dark browns, black, ink blue, and very dark olive. Wondering how that escaped the eyes of the communist censorship, I begged my poor mom to buy me 2 meters of it so I could have a new dress, a special treat for me since my parents were very poor and could not afford such things often. They were honest blue-collar workers, the proletariat that the regime talked about all the time and kept oppressed and hungry. I wanted my aunt Stela to make me a short sleeve dress out of the cheap polyester material sprinkled with red roses against a green and black background. I knew I would stick out like a sore thumb in a sea of drab colors, but it made me happy just looking at it.

I would often say to myself that, if I would ever afford beautiful and bright colors, my clothes would be happy hues, something the communist economy never offered to their trapped and impoverished “customers.”

Our school and work uniforms were dark grey, navy, black, ink blue, various shades of brown, and white shirts. Nothing fancy, just basic. Shoes were black, white, and brown with thick brown or black hose. Pants were discouraged in women unless they were working in factories. I wore black pants in winter as a child, to keep warm. Photographs show high waters when the same pair was worn two years in a row.

Finally I came to America and my eyes were overwhelmed with beautiful colors. Even though I could not afford anything, the fact that such beautiful fabrics, clothes, and colors existed, it made my heart dance with joy.

Years later, I discovered Lilly Pulitzer with its array of greens, blues, pinks, beiges, and white. It had not yet morphed into the mixture of designs and dazzling colors of today - they stand out at airports among the sea of black clothes as if everyone is going to a funeral.

Strangely, in the last four years, since the forced Covid lockdowns, everything around us began to change in the direction of the drab life we lived under communism. Everything became utilitarian, small, crowded, plain, and uniform.

It started with the selection of clothes, towels, in department store offerings and in car colors. They all looked the same as if they had used the same designers and manufacturers – a lot of greys, blacks, beiges, browns, navy, olive greens, and white. A few colors here and there but nothing like it had been.

Cars became indistinguishable on the road, the same shades of grey, silver, black, beige, and white. I had a hard time finding a new car in red or a beautiful blue. It took me a year and a half to find my red SUV.

Then I noticed that all fast food restaurants started changing their outdoor appearance as if a Bauhaus conference had taken place and all have decided that they would go with the same drab and depressing interior and exterior décor – shades of grey, brown, black, and beige.

The big arches were gone, the big windows were gone, and so were the playgrounds which my children loved even though the food was never great. It was a part of Americana that disappeared and was replaced by Bauhaus drabness. Colors that made the buildings look happy and inviting, disappeared. Some even looked like a prison from the exterior. The only holdouts were the Mexican food restaurants which remained the same colorful and happy places.

The fast food and regular restaurants now look inside and out like the utilitarian Bauhaus architecture, not inviting, cozy places where you go not just for the food but for an atmosphere and a pleasant experience that pleases the visual senses.

Bauhaus, founded by Walter Gropius became a movement in early 20^th century Germany, featuring “straightforward and functional designs with simple geometric shapes, clean lines, and minimal embellishment, using basic materials like steel, concrete, and glass.”

This type of architecture was the basis of our lives in communism – simple and utilitarian, nothing fancy for the proletarian masses. Reinforced concrete high-rise apartments withstood a strong earthquake of 7.2 on Richter scale. It did not demolish such ugly buildings but broke pieces of it, dangling them like loose teeth.

Next time you go out to a fast-food restaurant, notice the simplicity and drabness of color, the smaller windows, or the windows that had been taken out and replaced by grey walls. And they all look alike, drab, ugly, uninviting, and prison-like. Who wants to eat in such an unhappy place? Perhaps that is the idea, driving the masses back to their own homes, ordering food and staying indoors, better controlled.