New York’s ‘Dark Days’ are Over

What is my city coming to? Aside from all the stores that are already shuttered, I understand the hotdog go-to Papaya King is next on the chopping block. The 21 Club, Lord & Taylor, Barney’s and Henri Bendel are no more, and each of our East Side-West Side-all-around-the-town neighborhoods that used to have their own special flavor all look the same with a with a Sephora, Duane Reade and Starbucks on every block.

Now I read an article in another newspaper that Gen Z New Yorkers are eschewing all-black wardrobes for bright colors.

I witnessed this first hand on Father’s Day when I did something I haven’t done in a very long time: I wore a black lace trimmed shirt with a black satin A-line shirt, prompting my 24-year-old daughter Meg to ask: “Who died?”

I had heard this comment just about every day when I was a younger woman and everything I owned looked as though it came from Vampira’s closet.

In fact, when Meg’s older brother Luke was born, I was still in my ebony phase and awed people – not in a good way – with my ability to procure black baby clothes, which included a leather motorcycle jacket that mirrored the one I owned.

Ever since I let my hair go gray – AKA shimmery silver — the transition beginning in 2012, I stopped donning the darkest of dark shades because it was just too harsh against my new lighter color. (FYI: I was born a brunette but for about 10 years during my late 20s and mid 30s I dyed my hair to match my noire wardrobe.) In my mind, this women of a certain age I had become was passing the sartorial torch to young women, especially the newbies just arriving in our city who wanted to look like they belonged: sleek and chic and/or bohemian wearing head-to-toe black 24/7.

Jewel Tones and Pastels

Now though, according to the aforementioned article, black is no longer the new black. Apparently, upon the example of their influencer peers, 20-somethings who wore sweatpants for a year or so during the #WFH pandemic don’t just want to go out, they want to go out and make an entrance in jewel tones and pastels with pink taking the lead as hue of choice. How exactly is one supposed to give off the cool, New York vibe in “fuchsia” or “bubblegum”?

What next? A boycott of “Sex and The City” reruns? Razing the Chrysler Building or 30 Rock?

I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

I may actually give in to my husband Neil’s latest dream of moving to South Dakota. He decided we should consider living there after he and Luke took a cross country road trip. Neil came home extolling the virtues of this foreign land (at least to me) which sounded similar to the Montana landscape I was familiar with from watching “Yellowstone.”

My native-New Yorker response was to begin to decry the idea of plains, mountains and having one’s nearest neighbor be 10 miles away. “I would have to drive everywhere?” I screamed, then promptly went on social media to publicly declare my allegiance to the city of my birth with my motto: New York Or Nowhere. Suddenly though, the idea of owning a horse, milking a cow, and tooling about in a pickup sounds like it might have its charms. (I would stop short of owning a riffle as I’d end up shooting my foot off.)

Sadly, I’m beginning to think that the only way I can ever again experience the borough I love is to watch old movies like “How to Marry A Millionaire,” “The Best of Everything” and “The Apartment.”

Hair color be damned. I may return to wearing all black, not as a way to help revive the fashion trend, but to show I’m in mourning for a city that is slipping away from me.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the new novel, “The Last Single Woman in New York City.”