If you’ve gone browsing for a baby shower gift sometime in the past couple of years, you may have noticed a certain color palette dominating the onesies, the wall hangings and the wooden toys.
This drab monochrome that has taken hold of children’s fashion and design was incisively dubbed “sad beige” by humor writer Hayley DeRoche, who chronicles the offerings of upscale children’s retailers in the somber voice of German filmmaker Werner Herzog on her TikTok account, That Sad Beige Lady. The videos DeRoche told HuffPost she mainly creates in her car during her lunch break from her job as a librarian have now racked up 12.5 million likes.
In a recent post, DeRoche/Herzog soberly intones, “I call this one the blank stare into the abyss towards which we all are headed whether we adorn ourselves in cashmere or clearance.” The video ends by revealing that the “sable cashmere polo for babies,” modeled by an unsmiling child, retails for $95 from Banana Republic.
Even those unfamiliar with DeRoche’s satire and some of the companies she mocks may recognize the less-than-colorful trend in the nursery decor of celebrity babies, such as Kylie Jenner’s son.
In a video entitled “To Our Son” that Jenner released last March on YouTube, images of the child’s nursery are so monochromatic you might initially think they were filmed in black-and-white. Big sister Stormi, in her patternless beige pajamas, leads viewers on a tour of “the baby’s room.” We see her quietly tapping the muted grey, beige and rose beads of a rainbow toy that shares a shelf with brown and white stuffed animals and natural wooden blocks. The walls, the chair, the carpet, the gentle wave created by the shadows of the crib slats: all shades of beige, grey, off-white.
