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The Age of Silver - Part 2
Gleaming grey has long been the color of eminence, a shade to be taken seriously, from silver foxes to boxes of Nurofen. There is something smoothing and soothing about all those dully reflective surfaces, delivering durability with lustre. Silver denotes wealth: while a black plastic television can never hint at transcending its plasticity, a silver television represents in plastic something of greater value. "Silver suggests quality and solidity by an obvious synaptic jump to hard and precious metals," says Stephen Bayley, cofounder of the Design Museum.
Vanessa Allen, a sales assistant at Currys on London's Oxford Street, stands behind the counter, a wall of silver cameras behind her, a cabinet full of silver mobile phones before her. She is wearing three pairs of silver earrings, a silver necklace and silver bracelet (and has just sold her silver Peugeot). "Silver's cool," she says. "It's effortless but still looks good. When it's damaged, it's not scruffy. My kitchen is silver and black - silver oven, silver and black kettle, silver and black TV. Silver goes with everything."
Noushka Belobi, who is browsing silver laptops, thinks the color "looks new, feels technical. I moved last year," she says, "and everything I bought was silver."
But if, on the one hand, silver implies preciousness and luxury, it also bespeaks industry. The thrall of the stainless-steel kitchen had its origin (this time around) in the decline of industry and the subsequent rise in popularity of lofts and warehouses as living spaces. "People wanted them to look utilitarian," says Jeremy Langmead, editor of Wallpaper* magazine. "It started with kitchens and electronic goods. And then it spread. Now straight boys are wandering around with foil-covered sneakers on. I think it says 'efficient' and 'modern' and 'technical', and that's how we want to be seen. We're in a fast-moving period of design and technology and these reflect that - literally." It may not be accidental that one of the few kitchen appliances not displayed in silver in John Lewis on Oxford Street is a slow cooker.
If gold means for ever, silver means for now. It is the color of the future - or, at least, the color of the present when the present is preoccupied by concerns about the future. When, for example, the space race was at full pelt in 1964, the French fashion designer Paco Rabanne showed a collection of dresses whose aluminium chainmail beamed light in all directions. Pierre Cardin and Andre Courrèges slipped shots of silver into dresses, sent out tunics and trousers with hard-edged silvery belts and buckles, in their twinkle and glint somehow a glimpse of the galaxy.
Apollo 11 itself may have been white, but nothing says space like silver. In 1994, when it was time to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first moon landing, spiky silver fabrics chased out grunge. "I like silver, with its suggestions of mercury, outer space, satellites, modernity," said the designer Liza Bruce, maker that spring of a pair of silver pyjama pants. "I like the way it looks forward, not back."
Never mind that the foil miniskirts that fi lled the pages of Vogue that year recalled those of the 60s, futuristic only in a retro way. Silver is the color we turn to when we are at our most self-conscious about our place in the future. Televisions turned silver en masse when widescreens reached the shops, as if a silver surround was the best way of describing the shape of things to come. Silver appliances began to proliferate as the last millennium dwindled.
Back at the close of 1999 the editor of British Vogue was facing a conundrum: who or what to put on the cover of a magazine that claims to mirror the times. What would properly capture the leap to the future, the glance at the past? In December, on the threshold of 2000, it went on sale, a solid wash of silver. In fact, the cover was so shiny that the only face to be seen on it belonged to the person looking at it, selfconsciously wondering what might come next. Faint and misshapen it may be, but in addition to technological advancement and luxury, perhaps what we see in all our silvery appliances, in the bling of the Brabantia bin and the dull gleam of the silverised microwave, is a wobbly reflection of ourselves.
As surely as the 1970s were patterned in aggressive abstract, and matt black expressed the ambitious seriousness of the 80s, the past 10 years belong to silver. But when even Thermos flasks have long yielded tartan for stainless steel and the RSPB is selling bird feeders in the same, you know that a trend has only so long to run. "I'm not a big fan of silver," says Isaac Ansah, on the till in Currys. "It's just playing safe. That TV," he says, dismissing a silver plasma, "is so boring it wouldn't catch my eye. I'm a risk-taker. And that shiny black one is so slick".
Author: Paula Cocozza