It’s the early aughts and I’m a snotty teen. We’re moving homes and my mom is selecting paint for each room. She’s shuffling through a hefty stack of color cards, torn between one of the hundred shades of neutral. I probably snarked something along the lines of, “IT’S WHITE. PICK ONE.” (I wasn’t allowed to paint my bedroom芭比娃娃pink, but I got away with Tiffany blue.)
Now I’m an adult, weeks away from having my first kid, and there’s a blonde wood bassinet in my apartment. My Instagram feed serves me aspirational posts from two sources: random moms whose babies are swaddled in off-white blankets, and interior designers who outfit million-dollar homes in creamy bouclé furniture. My inbox is flooded with emails from fashion brands, the subject lines touting “quiet luxury” and the contents a display of elegant yet nondescript clothing in shades of taupe.