The new black

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This article is about the catch phrase. For the album by Strapping Young Lad, see The New Black.

"_____ is the new black" is a catch phrase used to indicate the sudden popularity or versatility of an idea at the expense of the popularity of a second idea. It is also the origin of a snowclone of the form "X is the new Y"

1 History
2 Modern examples
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

The origin of the phrase goes back to Diana Vreeland in 1962 who used the phrase "Pink...(is)...the black of India" meaning that the color pink seemed to be the foundation of the attire there, much like black was the base color of most ensembles in New York. The phrase is commonly misattributed to Gloria Vanderbilt and a fictional trip to India in the 1960s where she supposedly noted the prevalence of pink in the native garb. In actuality, it was Ms. Vreeland who made the observation when shown a sample of pink fabric from India.^[1]

In the late 1970s, the phrase "X is the new neutral" was widely used (culminating in the humorous observation that "It looks like red is the new neutral"). By the early 1980s this had changed to "X is the new black".^[1]

Later in the 1980s, the phrase was reappropriated to indicate that other colors (frequently brown, navy blue or grey) were temporarily displacing the position of black in fashion or industrial design; that is a versatile staple that complemented all other aspects, and was generally unobjectionable. The phrase quickly became lampooned for its simplistic nature; The Wall Street Journal soon declared that "White is the new black". It soon degenerated into a complete cliché and is now used in a great variety of contexts, mostly ironic in nature.

The phrase is often generalised to "X is the new Y", where the standard may be almost anything ("the new rock 'n' roll" is a common variant). This makes it an excellent example of the linguistic phenomenon recently dubbed the snowclone, and is so widespread that the British satirical magazine Private Eye chronicles the over-use of the phrase in its column "Neophiliacs".

Because the phrase is so familiar, it is now frequently used in absurd contexts as a signifier instead of as a metaphor.

[edit] Modern examples

(2001) The phrasing was used to humorous effect in the movie Josie and the Pussycats, with increasingly referential claims that, "Pink is the new red", "Orange is the new pink" and "Heath Ledger is the new Matt Damon."
(2001) "Big is the new small," referring to the supposed cool factor of a gigantic cell phone, as used in a 2001 episode of Saturday Night Live. It played off the phrase, "small is the new big," indicating that small electronics were more expensive and modern than larger electronics, and therefore the smaller your cell phone the better. However, that phrase was cast in opposition to the still-earlier concept that "bigger is better."^[2]
(2001) Norwegian folk-pop duo Kings of Convenience named their debut album Quiet Is the New Loud, a descriptive title with regard to their acoustic, subtle music.
(2003) Carson Kressley from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, declared once that "Gay is the new black." It is unclear whether he intended to mean that gay fashion was now extremely hip and versatile, or if being gay was trendy (implying the exploitation of gay culture along the same lines as blaxploitation in the 1970s), or even both. The phrase has also been used by other authors around the same time as the launch of Kressley's show, and it is unclear who was the originator of the phrase.
(2003) Galinda sings to Elphaba that "black is this year's pink" in the musical Wicked.
(2003) Chicago rock band New Black forms, signs to Thick Records, putting out a Self-Titled record in 2004, and Time Attack in 2005
(2004) The tagline for the 2004 film Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to Ocean's Eleven, was "Twelve is the new eleven."
(2005) The New Black is a single off of Every Time I Die's third album, Gutter Phenomenon.
(2005) One of the catch phrases for the Apple iPod Shuffle is "Random is the new order," which may be a double play on words.
(2005) In the New York Times of May 23, the reporter Stuart Eliott stated that "So in a trend-conscious industry, economizing is the new black." The phrase was not used in quotation marks or in an ironic context, and the metaphor is incomprehensible without a familiarity of the history of the phrase. ^[3]
(2005) The most successful album to date of Australian musician Ben Lee; Awake Is The New Sleep.
(2006) According to a January 25 USA Today article, "Gay cowboys are now the new penguins."^[4], in reference to how the "dark horse" success of Brokeback Mountain supplanted the "dark horse" success of the documentary March of the Penguins
(2006) The New Black is the title of Strapping Young Lad's fifth album.
(2006) Janis Ian released the album, Folk Is the New Black in Feb. 2006.
(2006) Chris Stephenson (General Manager of Marketing, Microsoft) on the brown color of their Zune packaging, stated, "Brown is the new black is the new white".
(2007) The second episode of The Apprentice 6 was entitled "Pink is the New Black," in reference to the color of men's swimsuits.
(2007) This Is the New That is the title of the fourth album by Jonathan Byrd.