Sun, May 30, 2004 page9

• The new black is pink, but the next big thing is orange

  • By William Safire / NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  "Brown is the new black," Meera Syal said at the ImagineAsia film festival in London a few years ago. She is the original librettist for the musical "Bombay Dreams," now playing on Broadway.

  The Indian writer was not making a fashion statement; she was speaking of the popularity in the Western world of South Asian culture, including food, drink, dance, drama and films from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and other portions of what used to be called the subcontinent. The booming Hindi movie industry is called Bollywood, a 1976 coinage of the crime-fiction writer H.R.F. Keating that combined Bombay with Hollywood. All this, wrote Richard Corliss in <> magazine this month, has the glamour "to curry favor with more than those who favor curry."

  Tangent: The spice mixture known as curry, sometimes based on the aromatic leaves of the curry tree and often mixed with turmeric and other strong spices, drew its name from the Tamil <>, a sauce or relish to give a fresh zip to rice. Corliss' pun plays that against a quite different phrase, to curry favor, based on curry, "to comb, dress, rub down," and favel or fallow, a pale brown color of a horse. Most brown horses, including those preening for the Belmont Stakes, enjoy this grooming by comb, and the phrase has come to mean "to ingratiate." End tangent.)

  "Brown is the new black," as used above, meant the culture of people with the brown skin color of South Asians is now as popular as, or even "hotter" than, that of the culture of black-skinned people -- in the estimation of with-it whites, especially in Britain.

  Now to the fashion origin of the new black. Start with the universally accepted notion that black is basic. Hems may rise and fall (or do both asymmetrically), and feather boas may come into vogue or stay out, but black just keeps rolling along. When its fashion dominance lasts too long, however, and the whole couture world looks as if it is on its way to a funeral, something new is desired. In 1983, Suzy Menkes, then of <> of London, wrote, "Charcoal gray is used everywhere as the new black with occasional splashes of red and green." A year later, Nina Hyde of <> quoted the textile and color specialist Elaine Flowers: "There is a tremendous range to the color brown. It is the new black."

  Reached in Paris, where now holds sway as a columnist for <>, Menkes says: "I didn't realize that I set off this neophiliac fashion trend! I think of the seminal moment as Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, known, like all Japanese designers, for her black shrouds, announcing, `Red is the new black,' probably in the mid-1990s. Since then, it has become a fashion cliche." (I cannot let "neophiliac" go by: It is a useful word coined in 1942 for "one who believes that every change is an improvement."

  So what is today's new black, Suzy? "For the first time I can remember, the front row at last season's fashion shows was not just a sea of black, but one with lots of pattern and print. Perhaps florals are the new black."

  Fashion authorities less influential than my columnist colleague in Paris suggest that pink has become temporarily dominant. But coming to the field of lexicography, it appears that the meaning of the phrase has gone beyond the confines of fashion and morphed to "whatever is avant-garde; the latest innovation to attract a following." The Menkes formulation, like Coco Chanel's "little black dress" of the late 1920s, has achieved the status of a classic even as the popularity of colors rises and falls. The word from California is that "orange is the new pink."

  "No Longer the Next Big Thing" went a recent front-page headline in <>, "Hummer Offers First Rebates." That phrase was originally clasped to the bosom of the music industry. John Baker of the American Dialect Society found a 1951 use by the Washington radio personality Eddie Gallaher: "Guy Mitchell looks like the next big thing among the male vocalists." It was popularized in Britain by Paul McCartney of the Beatles in 1968, when, after hearing a new album, he reportedly said that a group named the Fugs "are the next big thing!"

  An early use of this as a self-conscious expression -- that is, placed in quotes by the speaker to show it is a cliche -- was in 1977, when Steve Ditlea wrote in <> that "others waited for the `next big thing' to replace rock 'n' roll as the dominant popular music style." Fred Shapiro, editor of the <> found that for me, along with an earlier Times use, not self-conscious, by the president of the Aero Club of Illinois in 1910: "New York to Chicago is certainly the next big thing in aeronautics."

  Here's a secret to etymological sourcing: Access <>, and its membership will go to work. Sam Clements came up with an 1892 use in <>: "The next big thing to be done in the market," wrote a financial reporter, "is the floating of the new Richmond Terminal securities." (I don't know if it was such a hot stock; next big things often turn out to be smaller than anticipated.)

  But in this world of fascination with predictions of big things to come, what neologism will replace this redoubtable phrase? Erin McKean, editor of <> and a real comer in the language dodge, has spotted "next-gen" and notes that "early adopter" is the phrase for people who buy electronic gizmos when they are introduced and are at their most expensive. With-it teenagers are using "off the chain" to describe the latest of the latest fads.

  But if we can find the next big thing for the next big thing -- on the leading, cutting edge -- we will have discovered the new black.
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