I've been navel gazing again. My inner cynic hasn't quite been able to wrap itself around the dippin dots color palette I've been drawn to lately.

Then it hit me. "Black Mirror".

Not all dystopias are grim & cheerless. Yes, some dysfunctional future scenarios are very dark & hopeless: Mad Max, The Walking Dead, Altered Carbon, Fringe, The Hunger Games, The Matrix, Colony, 3%, etcetera.

However, every coin has another side and that holds true for TV show & movies also. Even some of the grimmer dystopian stuff has a pretty looking surface reality. Altered Carbon has that beautiful utopian sky city that is a perfect contrast to the conditions on the planet below.

Black Mirror has really done some interesting stuff; it has several episodes that paint a pretty picture of a future world that technology has made "better". It's not as in-your-face as something like RoboCop, The Walking Dead, and all that other scary stuff. In painting the future so bright and pretty in many episodes, the producers of Black Mirror make the downside of technology appear that much more sinister.

And that's how I've finally managed to wrap my inner cynic's mind around the dippin dots color palette. Black Mirror has several episodes that are bright and pleasant looking, most notably USS Callister (1st pic) & Nose Dive (pics 2 & 3)

That got me to thinking about designers who create avant garde stuff in a color palette that isn't all black. So much of it could exist in worlds like Black Mirror takes us to.

1) Black Mirror, USS Callister
2 & 3) Black Mirror, Nose Dive
4) Jeremy Scott having fun with color is a bit alice in wonderland
5) Jeremy Scott making a statement about becoming slaves to the corporate overlords
6) Margiela having a "12 Monkeys" moment (the original film, not the new series)
7) Margiela doing color
8) Margiela doing something a bit spaceship corporate
9) Margiela having fun
10) Rei Kawakubo (a bit of wonderland, perhaps?)
11) Rei Kawakubo doing some dippin dots
12) Rick Owens, dirty dystopian
13) Rick Owen's, a lighter vision
14) RickOwen's, more dystopia

All that navel gazing and collage making to say this:
I think I finally resolved the conflict between my inner cynic & my current obsession with dippin dots colors. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Dystopias can look like Candy Land barfed on them. I may be reading more messaging into these runway shows and clothes than the designers intended. What do you guys think? Are these clothes an omen of a technicolor dystopia in our future? Or is this one of those times when a cigar is just a cigar?