If you go shopping with me, I’m keen to look at 99% of any clothing store. I will rifle through racks of disheveled clearance items, kids’ sections, and the never ending piles and piles of men’s graphic tees. I will gladly spend 2 hours in one store to make sure that I did not miss one article of clothing that I potentially might want to buy.
That being said, I will skip over anything navy blue on almost any clothing rack or shelf or website. It is the most infuriating, pointless, and commonly mismatched color known to man, yet nobody else sees a problem with it.
The thing with navy is, it’s a neutral, but unlike almost any other color on the color wheel, you can’t wear it with black, like, ever (there are a few specific cases in which this can work, but for the every day Joe, you cannot wear it with black). On top of that, it’s so close in hue to black that most people can’t even tell the difference between the two colors unless under very good lighting circumstances.
Navy blue is the cause of many a wardrobe mishap on nearly every clothing-wearing human being walking the face of the earth. Sorry dude, but that shirt is actually navy blue and you shouldn’t be wearing it with your black shoes.
Black is a color that you are supposed to be able to wear with anything—hence the popularity of black leggings, black skinny jeans, black converse, black combat boots, black baker boy caps, black leather jackets, black belts, the little black dress. Most wardrobe staples that are not denim or white are going to need to be black for the sake of being able to wear it often.
So why the heck do brands keep putting navy blue in all their spring collections!?
I get that it’s a nautical color and all, hence the navy part of the navy blue, and in the spring you want to go boating and take beach trips, but why can’t the color cobalt blue become the new color of all spring collections known to man? That way, if colorblind Bob over there wants to wear his black shoes and black belt with that new spring polo shirt his wife bought him, his wife doesn’t have to send him back to the closet to change.
And if you really need a dark color in your plaid prints or as trim on some article, why can’t you just make it black!? Make it easier on consumers who don’t want to buy a specific set of clothes to wear with navy blue clothes. I don’t want to have to buy a pair of gray leggings to wear with all of my navy blue sorority t-shirts when I already own 10 pairs of perfectly comfortable and decent black ones.
