From Barbie to millennial pink, the cultural phenomenon behind the color that sells

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The release of “Barbie” is upon us, and the color pink is nearly inescapable

“Think pink! think pink! when you shop for summer clothes. Think pink! think pink! if you want that quelque chose.”

That advice, sung as an epiphany in the 1957 musical film “Funny Face,” has definitely been heeded — just take a look around at fashion and media. The fascination around pink — each shade and hue with its own connotation — has shaped those cultural engines for generations, revving into full force as we reach peak “Barbie” season.

The color has been a crucial detail for films and television — from that scene in “Funny Face,” to Elle Woods sporting her iconic head-to-toe vibrant pink courtroom outfit in 2001's “Legally Blonde,” to “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” where the shades of pink in costuming play a symbolic role in the final season. And, now, with the Greta Gerwig-helmed film's release, the vividly hot “Barbie Pink” is inescapable.

Throughout history, designers, artists, and brands have played with the emotions the color evokes, shaping meanings that are ever-evolving. From gender to class, those associations have constantly been challenged, flipped and subverted — while the definition of pink is always in flux, there's one constant: its cultural staying power.

The meanings behind the many shades of pink

Pink first became fashionable in the 18th century in the French court, because of a new source of dye that imparted a more vivid, long-lasting color in fabrics, explained Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at FIT and one of the authors of “Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color.”

Since then, the cachet of pink has ebbed and flowed; as pink dyes became more accessible to the working class, the color lost its