Did you have a hyperfixation color combo?

Or were you a normal kid? 🧸🩰⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆

Hey so I’m just wondering if you guys were normal or if, like me, you experienced a hyperfixation on a specific color combination so intense it bordered on identity defining.

I can’t pinpoint where the inspiration originally came from, but I do remember the turning point with crystalline clarity: I was ten years old, at my best friend Dina’s house, and I changed my AIM font to Comic Sans (obvi) in baby pink set against a chocolatey brown background. And something just…clicked. From that moment on, pink and brown became my entire personality for a good three years. My backpack was pink and brown. I changed my family’s desktop wallpaper to some 2000’s pink and brown graphic. My most treasured GAP zip-up hoodie was pink and brown. I even ordered a chocolate cake with pink frosting for my birthday, despite preferring vanilla, and would choose Neapolitan ice cream purely for the aesthetic, even though I’m (famously!) a mint chip girl. It was an almost unsettling level of dedication to a palette.

My family's desktop computer had both of these backgrounds at some point.

Eventually, the obsession faded into the archives of my childhood, eclipsed by the much more intense and all consuming hormonal gloom of my teenage years. But recently, while helping my husband pick colors for a design project, I offhandedly suggested pink and brown. The moment the colors appeared side-by-side on screen, I practically blacked out. I was instantly transported back in time, hurtling through a time capsule made of American Girl catalogs, Paul Frank t-shirts, and Teen Spirit deodorant. It was a sensory ambush.

After spending multiple sessions discussing my toxic relationship with my phone, per the suggestion of my therapist, I have been trying to incorporate sort of low lift things that generate whimsy and excitement into my day IRL, which I find, at least personally, comes easily through tapping into nostalgia. For example, I’ve been revisiting the albums I played on repeat as a teenager (Best Coast’s “Crazy For You” went triple platinum in my first car), spending afternoons doing arts and crafts with my sister like we did as kids, and eating the foods I once loved with the same earnest enthusiasm (Reddi Chick at the Brentwood Country Mart makes me feel like I just left a pool party).

With this in mind, I decided one of the easiest ways to inject more joy would be to resurrect that color combination, whether that be through style, makeup, or any other aesthetic choice. And I gotta say, it’s been fun, and I remember exactly why these two colors work so well together. I think at the end of the day it’s a contrast thing, both in terms of the colors themselves and the feeling they evoke. The softness and sweetness of pink is balanced out by the richness and earthiness of brown—it’s playful and unexpected, but it’s not jarring because still nice to look at.

So today I’m sharing all the brown and pink things I’ve been loving lately, from the perfect pair of brown corduroy pants and pink ballet flats to the sweetest baby-pink cardigan, plus the hair colorist in Los Angeles you have to see if you’re after Neapolitan hair (or honestly, any bold, vibrant color).

Wardrobe