This is real, in Glasgow no less. I post it here because it shares some affinities with the color use in the Etro video I posted the other day. One would expect Italians to make even a car wash pretty but an urban demolition in Scotland? Check out the "making of" video and other Bravia ads:

For the record today at work I wore a subtle plaid shirt by Van Heusen I got from the BMTC clothes closet in shades of magenta, teal and gray with a garish gold and blue paisley tie by Emilio Ponti I picked up at Daffy's the other day along with another "migraine" tie by Forsyth of Canada (since 1903). Fairly reserved made even more so by the boxy black Armani jacket and my lackluster sales reflected that choice. Color casting goes better with the Merona jacket, which I think is the house brand of Target. Some of you out there like to frenchify the name of this retail chain as "tar-jey" to ironically excuse your shopping at a store owned by right-wingers but here in Brooklyn it's "tawgit" as in "we don't give a shit", we even have an IKEA now so I guess the suburbanizing of New York is pretty complete.

But, really, where did this all start? I bought bright colored used shirts from a store on Broadway in the 'seventies or maybe it was Canal Jeans. Now we have Muji's japanese drabness (but I want the rubber clock).

Here's a link to the Amazon site for David Batchelor's book "Chromophobia":
http://www.amazon.com/Chromophobia-FOCI-David-Batchelor/dp/1861890745

Chromophobia has been a cultural phenomenon since ancient Greek times; this book is concerned with forms of resistance to it. Writers have tended to look no further than the end of the nineteenth century. David Batchelor seeks to go beyond the limits of earlier studies, analyzing the motivations behind chromophobia and considering the work of writers and artists who have been prepared to look at color as a positive value. Exploring a wide range of imagery including Melville's "great white whale", Huxley's reflections on mescaline, and Le Corbusier's "journey to the East", Batchelor also discusses the use of color in Pop, Minimal, and more recent art.
(03/04/2008)