It’s the colours best associated with the 1980s and Barbie products. It’s Hot Pink and Shocking Pink. They are bright, vibrant pink hues that are a brighter version of magenta. The two colours express vivid feminity when used on apparel, books, furniture or automobiles. The interest in this colour has a bit of a resurgence because of the safe and dull aesthetics of the minimalistic fashion of the 2010s created by people who want to have more playful colours. The bright colours are a part of the design trend called Barbiecore which is a maximalist design style that involves bright hot pink colours and bold mid-century patterns inspired by the Mattel doll Barbie in her Malibu look from the 1980s. This might be because of the movie release as well but it’s a trending style a part of the maximalism design movement seen mostly online, in interior design and fashion.
Shocking pink is a bright reddish purple colour that is close to the colour magenta. It’s a colour that is meant to vividly brighten and shock the viewers. It was a colour a part of the Avante-Garde movement started by the surrealist Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparaelli. She was a fashion designer who created surreal fashion designs and eccentric elements like trompe-l’œil (extremely realistic optical illusions 3D objects and space on 2D surfaces) and bright colours. Known collaborator in projects with Salvador Dali for the Lobster dress and Le Roy Soleil perfume bottle (shaped like a sun on top of a mountain packaged in a sea shell) and Jean Cocteau for coats, evening wear like the long black opera gloves with red tips and Snuff men’s cologne bottle (shaped like a sailor’s smoking pipe in a nod to Magritte).
Photos of the Dada and avant-garde sculpted perfume bottles. Left to right: Dali’s Le Roy Soleil, Cocteau’s Snuff and Schiaparelli’s Shocking de Schiaparelli
She wanted a signature colour that was meant to grab attention yet look daring. The colour inspiration came from her client, Daisy Fellowes. She was known for many things as a prominent celebrity of the early 20th century. She was a prominent French socialite, chief editor of Harper’s Bazaar Paris and heiress to Singer sewing machines fortune but notably an attention-seeking woman with a lot of social influence. She use to wear a large and bright 17.27ct pink diamond famously known as the Tête de Belier (Ram’s Head) that once belonged to Russian royalty but was purchased from Cartier jewellers. Schiaparelli wrote in her autobiography Shocking Life “The colour flashed in front of my eyes. Bright, impossible, impudent, becoming, life giving, like all the lights and the birds and the fish in the world together, a colour if China and Peru but not of the West – a shocking colour, pure and undiluted.” The colour became her trademark on most of the fashions she designed.
HEX code for Shocking Pink #FC0FC0
The colour was featured in many of her designs but in 1937 for the perfume Shocking de Schiaparelli the name Shocking Pink stuck. The perfume bottle shape was sculpted by Leonor Fini to have a voluptuous female torso and Dalí-esque flowers for a head and a velvet measuring tape with the bottle encased in a hot pink case. The bottle shape was inspired by Mae West’s figure. She designed gowns for West in the film Every Day is a Holiday in 1937 and took inspiration from her torso silhouette. The colour was used to express playfulness, exuberance, confrontational attitude and surrealness.
In the film Moulin Rouge in 1952, Zsa Zsa Gabor played Jane Avril, a can-can dancer and love interest/muse in the historical romantic comedy about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Her costumes were designed by Schiaparelli with her signature flares of vibrant colours and bohemian style that takes from Toullouse-Lautrec paintings than historic depictions.
Marilyn Monroe in 1953’s “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” – “Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend”
The 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had a musical sequence of Marilyn Monroe singing Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend wearing a shocking pink floor-length gown with matching shoulder-length gloves that hugged her figure. It became an iconic American film moment and the pink dress was replicated by many others. The costume designer for the musical-comedy William Travilla was quoted in the book Pantone on Fashion saying that he “made a very covered dress. A very famous pink dress with a big bow in the back.” He designed it for modesty after nude photos taken a few years prior were released in a calendar with many inquiring reporters, the studio panicked about having Monroe in the film thinking that the photos were too much for the studio’s image to the public.
Hot pink is very similar to shocking pink. The colours are almost the same. Hot pink is a bright radiant pink. The reference of the word hot is to suggest heat, burning or a glow to the colour. This can only be done with colours considered to be warm like red, pink, orange, yellow and even purple.
With most opera donne one associates some idea of love-making and courtship; but who could fancy the possibility of any creature, living or dead, “making up” to Persiani? Then, never was seen a living woman so gratuitously ill-dressed ! One might have believed that she had a sworn antipathy to pure colours, or becoming “ cuts.” Hot pink, mouldy blue, livid lilac, and diseased green : such were her preferences ; and I used to wonder, sometimes, that she did not end by walking forth in that mulberry satin gown which is as constant a feature on every opera stage, as an inaudible Tisbe in “ La Cenerentola.”
-Musical Notes in July (Page 193), Bentley’s Miscellany, 1849
This story about Madame Persiani, an opera singer, describing her concerts and performing in the opera Asmodeus was the first time hot pink was used in literature.
Some people understand the draw of this colour is the feeling of being youthful, brash, loud and fun which is why many try to incorporate it into their brand. For example, Angelyne, a billboard girl in 1980’s Los Angeles printed large-scale modeling images of herself around town. She wore bright vibrant pink to stand out and be ultra-feminine and sexy. She became a symbolize the glamour of LA for a while. She was a cultural phenomenon throughout the 80s to 90s appearing in movies and TV shows with her curvaceous figure and pink Corvette convertible. Even though her aesthetic comes from the punk movement, her style has looked very Barbiesque.
The Barbie doll always had pink as a part of the brand until the mid-1970s when most of the brand identity and product design incorporated more vibrantly pink attire. After the doll series for The SunSet Malibu Barbie, the dolls were pinker than before. The series was about beachside aesthetics like blankets, a blue one-piece swimsuit, a yellow towel and most importantly bendable knees. Mattel wanted to sell more toys to children but in a more effective style through branding. The branding for Barbie’s trademark pink only became more pink until Mattel trademarked the vibrant magenta colour in 1998. The Pantone colour code for Barbie pink is 219C. It’s a similar trademark to Tiffany’s Robin’s egg blue. The difference between Barbie pink and Shocking pink isn’t hue but contextually. When something that’s kid-friendly, bright and fun it’s Barbie pink but if it’s bold, attention-seeking and daring it’s Shocking pink.
HEX Code for Barbie Pink #DA1984
By the 1980s another fashion trend took over as kid friendly which was vibrant-neon clothing. Since pink was a signature colour, the neon clothing styles were incorporated into toys, clothing and stationary accessories for kids because most kids like bright colours and technological advancements to create more dayglow colours were accessible. The trend was also new and stood apart from the past.
The motive of the trend for Barbiecore is to maximize the playfulness of wearing hot pink clothes and accessories to achieve a pink-tinted doll-like lifestyle. Barbiecore is a part of the maximalism style by the loudness of colour combinations, textures, patterns and accessories in an all-out ultimate feminine appearance. The clothing is inspired by the 2000s aesthetic of Paris Hilton’s baby pink velour Juicy Couture sweatsuits and Disney’s Mean Girls Plastics clique outfits in combination with the patterns and pasts fashion trends of the 60s and 70s as well.
Barbiecore is a part of the trend that was emerging online during the lockdowns called dopamine dressing. People would dress in clothes that would make them feel good and then post them online. Dopamine is a chemical messenger to the brain that reinforces good behaviours like listening to a favourite song, making someone happy or laugh and self care on a day off. It’s also called the feel-good hormone. Therefore, this trend also encourages playing dressed up and playing with colours as a part of the style.
For instance, many brands have Barbie partnership deals that show off the brand and trademark. But many other brands have pink products to tie into the new pink phenomenon.
Is Barbiecore a unique fashion trend? In my opinion, no. After writing this blog and the colour pink infrequently, pink hues and vibrancy are sometimes named after trends that signify a social shift relating. For example, Millennial pink is about social gender barriers breaking down, Pompadour pink is about a fiercely influential woman in the Versailles court, and Mamie pink is an homage to femininity after the world wars and homemaking. Shocking pink and Barbie pink are similar hues of pink with messages of playfulness and fun to some degree. It may be a trend for summer wear for the early 2020s, but bright pink’s playfulness will never go away.
Under The Moonlight 
It’s the colours best associated with the 1980s and Barbie products. It’s Hot Pink and Shocking Pink. They are bright, vibrant pink hues that are a brighter version of magenta. The two colours express vivid feminity when used on apparel, books, furniture or automobiles. The interest in this colour has a bit of a resurgence because of the safe and dull aesthetics of the minimalistic fashion of the 2010s created by people who want to have more playful colours. The bright colours are a part of the design trend called Barbiecore which is a maximalist design style that involves bright hot pink colours and bold mid-century patterns inspired by the Mattel doll Barbie in her Malibu look from the 1980s. This might be because of the movie release as well but it’s a trending style a part of the maximalism design movement seen mostly online, in interior design and fashion.
Shocking pink is a bright reddish purple colour that is close to the colour magenta. It’s a colour that is meant to vividly brighten and shock the viewers. It was a colour a part of the Avante-Garde movement started by the surrealist Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparaelli. She was a fashion designer who created surreal fashion designs and eccentric elements like trompe-l’œil (extremely realistic optical illusions 3D objects and space on 2D surfaces) and bright colours. Known collaborator in projects with Salvador Dali for the Lobster dress and Le Roy Soleil perfume bottle (shaped like a sun on top of a mountain packaged in a sea shell) and Jean Cocteau for coats, evening wear like the long black opera gloves with red tips and Snuff men’s cologne bottle (shaped like a sailor’s smoking pipe in a nod to Magritte).
She wanted a signature colour that was meant to grab attention yet look daring. The colour inspiration came from her client, Daisy Fellowes. She was known for many things as a prominent celebrity of the early 20th century. She was a prominent French socialite, chief editor of Harper’s Bazaar Paris and heiress to Singer sewing machines fortune but notably an attention-seeking woman with a lot of social influence. She use to wear a large and bright 17.27ct pink diamond famously known as the Tête de Belier (Ram’s Head) that once belonged to Russian royalty but was purchased from Cartier jewellers. Schiaparelli wrote in her autobiography Shocking Life “The colour flashed in front of my eyes. Bright, impossible, impudent, becoming, life giving, like all the lights and the birds and the fish in the world together, a colour if China and Peru but not of the West – a shocking colour, pure and undiluted.” The colour became her trademark on most of the fashions she designed.
The colour was featured in many of her designs but in 1937 for the perfume Shocking de Schiaparelli the name Shocking Pink stuck. The perfume bottle shape was sculpted by Leonor Fini to have a voluptuous female torso and Dalí-esque flowers for a head and a velvet measuring tape with the bottle encased in a hot pink case. The bottle shape was inspired by Mae West’s figure. She designed gowns for West in the film Every Day is a Holiday in 1937 and took inspiration from her torso silhouette. The colour was used to express playfulness, exuberance, confrontational attitude and surrealness.
In the film Moulin Rouge in 1952, Zsa Zsa Gabor played Jane Avril, a can-can dancer and love interest/muse in the historical romantic comedy about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Her costumes were designed by Schiaparelli with her signature flares of vibrant colours and bohemian style that takes from Toullouse-Lautrec paintings than historic depictions.
The 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had a musical sequence of Marilyn Monroe singing Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend wearing a shocking pink floor-length gown with matching shoulder-length gloves that hugged her figure. It became an iconic American film moment and the pink dress was replicated by many others. The costume designer for the musical-comedy William Travilla was quoted in the book Pantone on Fashion saying that he “made a very covered dress. A very famous pink dress with a big bow in the back.” He designed it for modesty after nude photos taken a few years prior were released in a calendar with many inquiring reporters, the studio panicked about having Monroe in the film thinking that the photos were too much for the studio’s image to the public.
Hot pink is very similar to shocking pink. The colours are almost the same. Hot pink is a bright radiant pink. The reference of the word hot is to suggest heat, burning or a glow to the colour. This can only be done with colours considered to be warm like red, pink, orange, yellow and even purple.
This story about Madame Persiani, an opera singer, describing her concerts and performing in the opera Asmodeus was the first time hot pink was used in literature.
Some people understand the draw of this colour is the feeling of being youthful, brash, loud and fun which is why many try to incorporate it into their brand. For example, Angelyne, a billboard girl in 1980’s Los Angeles printed large-scale modeling images of herself around town. She wore bright vibrant pink to stand out and be ultra-feminine and sexy. She became a symbolize the glamour of LA for a while. She was a cultural phenomenon throughout the 80s to 90s appearing in movies and TV shows with her curvaceous figure and pink Corvette convertible. Even though her aesthetic comes from the punk movement, her style has looked very Barbiesque.
The Barbie doll always had pink as a part of the brand until the mid-1970s when most of the brand identity and product design incorporated more vibrantly pink attire. After the doll series for The SunSet Malibu Barbie, the dolls were pinker than before. The series was about beachside aesthetics like blankets, a blue one-piece swimsuit, a yellow towel and most importantly bendable knees. Mattel wanted to sell more toys to children but in a more effective style through branding. The branding for Barbie’s trademark pink only became more pink until Mattel trademarked the vibrant magenta colour in 1998. The Pantone colour code for Barbie pink is 219C. It’s a similar trademark to Tiffany’s Robin’s egg blue. The difference between Barbie pink and Shocking pink isn’t hue but contextually. When something that’s kid-friendly, bright and fun it’s Barbie pink but if it’s bold, attention-seeking and daring it’s Shocking pink.
#DA1984
By the 1980s another fashion trend took over as kid friendly which was vibrant-neon clothing. Since pink was a signature colour, the neon clothing styles were incorporated into toys, clothing and stationary accessories for kids because most kids like bright colours and technological advancements to create more dayglow colours were accessible. The trend was also new and stood apart from the past.
The motive of the trend for Barbiecore is to maximize the playfulness of wearing hot pink clothes and accessories to achieve a pink-tinted doll-like lifestyle. Barbiecore is a part of the maximalism style by the loudness of colour combinations, textures, patterns and accessories in an all-out ultimate feminine appearance. The clothing is inspired by the 2000s aesthetic of Paris Hilton’s baby pink velour Juicy Couture sweatsuits and Disney’s Mean Girls Plastics clique outfits in combination with the patterns and pasts fashion trends of the 60s and 70s as well.
Barbiecore is a part of the trend that was emerging online during the lockdowns called dopamine dressing. People would dress in clothes that would make them feel good and then post them online. Dopamine is a chemical messenger to the brain that reinforces good behaviours like listening to a favourite song, making someone happy or laugh and self care on a day off. It’s also called the feel-good hormone. Therefore, this trend also encourages playing dressed up and playing with colours as a part of the style.
For instance, many brands have Barbie partnership deals that show off the brand and trademark. But many other brands have pink products to tie into the new pink phenomenon.
ID 263129025 © Qa9392331
Is Barbiecore a unique fashion trend? In my opinion, no. After writing this blog and the colour pink infrequently, pink hues and vibrancy are sometimes named after trends that signify a social shift relating. For example, Millennial pink is about social gender barriers breaking down, Pompadour pink is about a fiercely influential woman in the Versailles court, and Mamie pink is an homage to femininity after the world wars and homemaking. Shocking pink and Barbie pink are similar hues of pink with messages of playfulness and fun to some degree. It may be a trend for summer wear for the early 2020s, but bright pink’s playfulness will never go away.
Further Reading:
Bentley’s Miscellany 1849-07: Vol 26, The story Musical Notes in July
References:
Clair, St Kassia. “Shocking Pink.” The Secret Lives of Colour, John Murray Publishers, London, 2018, pp. 126–127.
Blegvad, Kaye. The Pink Book: An Illustrated Celebration of the Color, from Bubblegum to Battleships, Chronicle Books, 2019, pp. 10–13.
Video: The Take: The Rise of Barbiecore – How feminism turned hot pink
Refinery 29 – Forget Pantone, Barbiecore Pink Is The Color Of The Year
Schiaparelli – Inpired Designer and Global Expansion
Lisa’s History Room – Elsa Schiaparelli: Shocking-Pink
ELLE Decoration – Elsa Schiaparelli and the power of shocking pink
Doll Reference – Identifying Vintage Barbie Dolls 1968-1972
Bustle – 50 Years After Creating Her Alter Ego, Angelyne Is Still Driving That Pink Convertible
CNN – What is Barbiecore? Celeb stylists explain the fashion trend and share their favorite pieces
Self – How to Embrace ‘Dopamine Dressing’ and Shop Your Own Closet
Fashion Quirky – The Glorious 80s Neon Fashion: A Nostalgic Journey Through Vibrant Colors and Bold Statements
CBC – Think pink, think Barbie? How the doll changed the way we think about colour
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