Diana Eng's journey into an abandoned sulfur mine in a dormant volcano to view this season's most popular yellow color

My friend Diana Eng is a fashion designer. She says:

A couple of years ago trend forecasters at Premiere Vision said a highlighter neon yellow would be a big color for Fall/Winter 2012. I’ve been seeing this color for a while at American Apparel which didn’t mean much since they cater to hipsters. But when I walked into the Gap this holiday season and saw neon yellow everywhere I knew that the self-fulfilling trend forecast had come true! How much do I love this type of yellow?

I visited an abandoned sulfur mine situated in the center of a dormant volcano on White Island to view a super concentrated neon yellow, sulfur. Yes, I like to stare at colors and vacation to spots of geological interest.

Seeing this color in real life is kind of surreal, because it’s so vibrant, it looks unreal

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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blueelm

Is there something wrong with me? Most of those things look green to me, not yellow :( The exception is the last shot of the sulfur mine. Also the hardhat looks yellow. But those shorts and that shirt honestly look green to me.
- Jerril
  
  Neon yellow is definitely a cool yellow, not a warm one. IE it leans in the green direction; most organic yellows lean in the orange direction.
  
  I’m perfectly happy calling it “a kind of yellow with green-like qualities”, but I do understand why people see it and try to call it green.
  
  It doesn’t look very green once you put neon green next to it though. Anything less…. intense doesn’t have the power to provide the right contrast.
  
  I hated the 80s. I was a child in the 80s, people kept trying to dress me in these hideous colours.
  - blueelm
    
    Yeah, when I think of a “neon” yellow in pigment or dye I tend to think more of nickel yellow (which I actually like). Strangely the yellow color of actual neon signs is much warmer!
- Jerril
  
  And no, LCD screens can’t do neon yellow, and most are not well calibrated either. So.
- chgoliz
  
  Having just been shopping with teenaged girls today — kill me now — I can tell you that the color IRL is slightly more yellow than chartreuse.
  
  In other words, yes, it’s a greenish yellow/yellowish green. Not a pure yellow at all.
- aperturehead
  
  Like hearing, taste and the sense of smell, sight is basically a relative thing. My wife and I recently moved into a place with a new color scheme and some new furniture. What was red to her was “maroon” to me – and what ws gray was dark green. A lot of this comes down to semantics – - green, light green, dark green, OFF-green, PARROT-green…one might as well be arguing politics
  
  I’m getting the feeling that Ms Eng might be experiencing a mild form of “synaethesia” a pleasant malady wherein a person “hears” or “smells” colors – as I say, possibly a mild form
  
  Sly Stone covered all this color stuff in one of his songs:
  
  “There is a yellow one that won’t
  Accept the black one
  That won’t accept the red one
  That won’t accept the white one”
  - blueelm
    
    Thank you for ensuring I have a song stuck in my head all night!
  - t3kna2007
    
    “Cold-hearted orb that rules the night,
    Removes the colors from our sight.
    Red is grey and yellow white,
    But we decide which is right
    And which is an illusion.”
    - aperturehead
      
      Oops. That reminds me, I have a letter I’ve been meaning to send
  - monopole
    
    Charge it
    What is that?
    A blue one?
    I don’t have a blue one!
    A red one?
    I don’t have a red one!
    Oh, just that gold one
    I don’t know, do they come in platinum?
    
    TIM CURRY – CHARGE IT!
  - ocker3
    
    Men and women actually have slightly different eyes, and we do actually see colours slightly differently. I think if more people knew this, there would be fewer fights about redecorating
    - aperturehead
      
      My wife only has eyes for me
      
      (and vice versa)
      - ocker3
        
        But how do you walk down the street if you’re constantly looking at each other?? It must get complicated!
    - Preston Sturges
      
      Also “teal” in men’s clothing really is a very different color than “teal” for women.
      - ocker3
        
        Not to mention that size L for some clothing brands is very similar to XL in other brands!
        
        So yeah, if men are used to Teal meaning one thing, and women get Teal clothing as a different shade, it’s going to make it even Harder to agree!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  My monitor renders it as greenish.
- http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius
  
  Looks like a neon chartreuse to me.
  - http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino
    
    I also thought ‘bright chartreuse’ when I saw it, not yellow. I don’t think it’s the monitor either as the sulfur picture looks a lot less green.
- howaboutthisdangit
  
  If you have a problem, then I do also. The ladies’ tops appear to be a luminous green (green with yellowish tints, perhaps?) to me. The hardhats do appear to be truly yellow. The background yellows are golden or moderately dark, with occasional greenish tints, except for a spot to the right of the redhead, which almost matches her shirt, and the areas above that, behind her shoulder, which are pale green.
Mr. Son

“Highlighter neon yellow”? My yellow highlight isn’t the same color as those clothes, my GREEN one is.
- Donald Petersen
  
  I’ve definitely noticed two different flavors of yellow highlighters. More recently the ones I’ve used (like the Sharpie Accent Highlighter I have on my desk today) look bright greenish-yellow, much like the shorts. But I used to see more yellow highlighters (probably different brands) that had more of a school-bus orangish-yellow vibe to them. I don’t see them as often, but they occasionally turn up in my office.
  
  Those older ones don’t seem nearly as fluorescent, or “neon yellow.”
  - Mr. Son
    
    Hm. The ones I have look WAY fluorescent. Maybe there’s three kinds?
PathosBill

Maybe it’s the brimstone messing with my eyes but the woman on the left looks like she was assembled from parts. Poorly.
- jandrese
  
  Those neon shorts and head/body proportions do make her look like a bad Photoshop job.
  
  Plus the fact that she was clearly photoshopped on top of a picture of a sulfur spewing hot spring.
  - theophrastvs
    
    here’s a (article referenced) source of the one less iteration of copy/pasting of the left-side image [shrug]: http://store.americanapparel.net/rsaf304.html?c=Neon%20Yellow
    - jandrese
      
      She still looks photoshopped. That color is just unnatural.
      - blueelm
        
        She doesn’t look shopped to me, but she does look about 11.
      - Donald Petersen
        
        She disturbs me a bit. The pose and her back look pretty va-va-voom to my lecherous eye if I cover her face and front with my hand, but otherwise yeah, she looks so frighteningly underage that I want someone to send her to the vice principal’s office.
        
        Actually, it’s me that should be sent to the v.p.’s office, come to think of it.
      - xlr7
        
        Lot of strange racism going on on boing boing about this girl. Finding all these things wrong, etc. People are disturbed? The disturbance is within you, there’s nothing wrong with the girl. Unless we’re doing the dentist-fires-assistant-because-he’s-disturbed thing.
      - blueelm
        
        xlr7 I’m a hetero woman. I’m not attracted to her. Not sure what’s racist about finding child like models non-sexy though. Maybe you should drop psychotherapy as a hobby.
      - copperwatt
        
        Unnatural! Just like volcanic hot springs! And gay giraffes! Someone need to start calling nature out on its unnatural habits.
chgoliz

This color looks bad on most people, and especially anyone with olive or ivory in their skin tone. I predict it will not do as well as other colors-of-the-season have done. But it looks great in a sulphur mine!
- elusis
  
  Target is showing it next to clothes in a pinkish maroon and dark teal, which makes it look even worse. Imagine my surprise to see it all over the post-Christmas 30% off clearance racks… It was horrible in the 80s and it’s horrible now. I’d like to smack whoever decided this was “in.”
- BunnyShank
  
  The one thing is to consider is multi ethnic mixtures. I have what looks like olive skin, I look “Greek”, and this color looks fantastic on me, so does orange. Wouldn’t think it would work, but that’s what’s unexpected when you have lots of people mixing together.
  - chgoliz
    
    Trust me, I am considering multi-ethnic mixtures. In our family, we all have different skin tones (and appear to be different ethnicities) but none of us can wear this color.
    
    It should be used instead of orange for prison jumpsuits, for the really hardcore violent offenders.
orwell

self-fulfilling trend forecast is exactly right… duh, if every clothing manufacturer follows the projected “trends,” then everything in stores will be those colors… groundbreaking visionaries indeed…
Guest

American Apparel vs. Pantone. Pantone’s color of 2013 is Emerald [http://www.pantone.com/pages/index.aspx?pg=21055], which is thankfully less eye piercing. But, I guess American Apparel’s ‘projections were for Fall/Winter 2012. So, maybe just an excuse for sulfur pictures?
Robert Cruickshank

Is there anything about the colour of sulphur that’s hard to reproduce in a fabric? (I understand why computer monitors could have trouble) It’s not actually fluorescent, is it? It looks muddy under a black light, as I recall.
Guest

Visited White Island last week, there’s also an awesome dilapidated heat exchanger behind the stargate.
http://www.facebook.com/les.weiler Les Weiler

reminds me of Wolfgang Laib’s art.
MollyMaguire

“dormant” ?
http://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/info/whiteisland
yikes!
iCowboy

White Island isn’t a dormant volcano, it’s a very active volcano which is known to erupt with very little warning. Right now it appears to be pushing a spine of highly viscous lava out of the vent, which is never a good sign.

Visiting White Island is very risky indeed and there could be a tragedy there any day.
- Boundegar
  
  You mean a… fashion tragedy?
cfuse

The 80′s/early 90′s colour palette can go jump into an active volcano as far as I’m concerned. It’s vulgar – there’s no better word for it.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=812189866 Corina Claire Chen Paul

The smell must be awesome..so glad I cannot smell via computer LOL
Gerald Stevens

My favorite “point of geological interest” is the Dakota hogback between Morrison and Boulder…
Halloween_Jack

The color of the shorts of the model on the left is actually not a bad one to have for your cycling gear.
plyx

Did I accidentally step into Jezebel?……
http://twitter.com/davejenk1ns Dave Jenkins

It’s not such a hard “prediction” to make. There actualyl _is_ something called the Style Council, and they meet once a season (spring/fall of each year) to decide on “fashion colors” about 18 months into the future. There’s a very practical reason for this: the lead time in clothing production. Raw cottons, wools, and synthetics must be manufactured in India, China, or Bangladesh. Cloth is then sent to Italy, Europe, London, Tokyo, New York, where designers do their thing. Designs are decided, patterns set, and then sent electronically to factories in China, where (meanwhile) thousands of bolts of cloth have been sent ahead in preparation. Clothes made, shipped to some premier markets, tested, patterns refined, and then released to the masses.

All in all, this takes about 18-24 months. Depending on where you shop and the magazines you read, you can get a heads up on what’s coming in a few months, what’s here now, or what’s being cleaned out with excess inventory.

Knowing all this (from a job in fashion retail) kinda kills the fun of shopping, but it’s made me very practical and functional in my clothing choices.
- Boundegar
  
  Wait, wasn’t the Style Council just the Jam after they quit punk and went all blue-eyed soul?
Bodhipaksa

The girl on the left looks horribly photoshopped. The shape of her body and her body’s size relative to her head size seem very, very wrong.
HammerheadFistpunch

Oh, good. This guy can cheer up, then.
Now he’s fashionable instead of just plain dorky looking. http://www.motorcyclenews.com/upload/281011/images/dayglo.jpg
http://twitter.com/stuck411 David

Those popular green & yellow colors remind me of the ‘safety’ colors worn by road workers & joggers. This is fashion?