Gentle Readers: You may have noticed that in general, I try to observe the rule, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Occasionally, though, there may be a situation so egregious, so outrageous, that I must deviate from standard practice. This is one of those times. I beg your indulgence.
I knew Tiffany was sliding down market when its stores started showing up in suburban shopping malls, but I thought it was slowly recovering its dignity. I was wrong. When I walked past these awnings in Philadelphia the other day, I literally stopped in my tracks.
Tiffany, what gives? Where is your lovely, iconic, robin’s egg Tiffany blue?
This is teal. It is cheap. It is tacky. It has too much yellow in it. It is too dark.
This is not Audrey Hepburn; it is Drew Barrymore. And nothing against you, Drew, but you were just showing off your cool digs in Domino Magazine, were you not? Do you wear Tiffany? I didn’t think so. I love Prosecco and I love cheeseburgers, but separately. Separately.
I can’t tell whether this blue is a mistake – human error, a migraine on the part of the VP approving the mock-ups, color blindness, etc. – or a misguided marketing stragegy targeting the tween-and-teen Anthropologie set. I fear it is the latter.
The back of the April 14 New Yorker is a Tiffany ad, and the blue at the bottom is suspiciously darker and yellower than the magic blue of my youth. And now that I think of it, my brother and his girlfriend gave me a necklace for Christmas that came in a box on which the letters spelled, “Tiffany,” but the color screamed, “cheap, dirty, sick peacock teal.” I thought nothing of it at the time; I thought he might have left it on the dashboard of his van and the sun did something funky to it.
Would you mess with Yves Klein’s International Klein Blue? Could Jake “Sixteen Candles” Ryan’s Porsche have been any color but candy apple red? Sheesh, Tiffany. Recognize perfection. And leave it alone.