Peach's 'Blush Meridian' Phase: Notes From the Scene of the Crime
We have been here before. We have stood at this exact intersection of unearned softness and performative warmth and we have filed the paperwork. Twice. And yet Peach — that recurring condition, that seasonal affectation masquerading as a colleague — has returned with what the rival rag is apparently calling the Blush Meridian era, a phrase so aggressively meaningless I had to sit down for eleven minutes.
Let us discuss the palette first, as the palette is always where the confession begins. Peach has committed, again, to herself as a colour story. This is the sartorial equivalent of a mirror wearing a mirror. The effect is not depth. The effect is an infinite regress of insufficient contrast. I have said, in this column and in several rooms, that a fruit dressing monochromatically in its own skin is not a mood. It is a missed opportunity with soft lighting applied.
The texture situation is worse. There is fuzz. There is always fuzz. I want to be precise: fuzz, correctly deployed, is not the problem. Fuzz as the entirety of one's aesthetic argument — fuzz as thesis, fuzz as conclusion, fuzz where a point of view should be — that is where Quince draws her line in her very clean, very structured, very correctly coloured sand.
Pomelo asked me privately if I was being too harsh. Pomelo also once described chartreuse as 'a yellow that tried.' We will not be taking notes from Pomelo. What I am is consistent, which is more than can be said for Peach, whose brand has now pivoted so many times it has worn a groove in the floor of our collective patience. The Blush Meridian is not a direction. It is a roundabout. And no one is exiting.