Why We Do This – Spray paint collecting explained in three colors.
By JoeWelcome CMC
Part 1: Grand Dame Avocado
We at Cap Matches Color know two things well. Firstly, that many people look at us with head cocked and puzzled look while saying, “I never heard of anyone collecting that stuff before.” And secondly, that we’re far from alone in collecting and studying the history of spray paint. Since we decided to come out of the hardware store basement and expose ourselves to the world, we’ve heard hundreds of voices hollering back. Quite a few of those voices bear different accents than ours, and if anyone can help to build spray paint pipelines to Europe, Asia, and Australia, do let us know. Coming originally out of a culture that gives so much value to destruction, paint collectors find nothing ironic about conservation. Vintage spray paint is what we dutifully dig up, fanatically clean, and carefully add to our shelves, knowing that we are protecting something from the past in the interest of the future. Paint nerds, one and all.
As usual, context is everything. Many older writers love the paint they used to use, and many more collectors love the cans they never could have found in a regular store. The pangs of being born a bit too late fuel the fiends in many hobbies, not just ours. From personal nostalgia alone to the power of holding an actual artifact of a time no one can ever revisit, the allure of history is hard to put into words. For us, one color has fascinated us like no other. Avocado is not merely the highest calorie fruit and the soul of guacamole; it was once nothing short of a cultural shockwave. From the late ‘60s, when Krylon and Rust-Oleum first produced the color, into the early ‘80s, it took over décor and design in a way that may never have happened again. Avocado was not just a popular appliance color, it appeared seemingly everywhere from new cars to footwear, from luggage to wallpaper. Perhaps most surprisingly, the paint was rarely the exact same shade. It ranged from pale and creamy with a lot of white or yellow, to bold and punchy with a lot of blue undertones. Metallic Avocado appeared alongside Avocado Shadow (for that additional two-tone effect), there also was Royal Avocado, Fresh Avocado, the misspelled “Avacado”, and a few clever brands even dubbed it Antique Olive. Avocado joined muted gold and orange as the hot colors of the ‘70s, but it exceeded Harvest Gold and Burnt Orange in both popularity and visibility. In the 1970s glory days of the US spray paint industry, there seems to have been a nearly endless amount of small regional brands which produced an avocado spray paint. Cap Matches Color keeps finding more and we’re at about 200 brands. That means a LOT of avocado refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines. Ask anyone over forty-five and chances are they‘ll remember the era– just watch the look in their eyes.
How people remember is essential to understanding this color and why we love it so much. Avocado became a true diva of popular color: that is, an aged star destined to fight their way back from scorn. As a badge of the groovy ‘70s, it naturally became shunned by the middle of the glossy ‘80s. For about twenty years Avocado was dramatically out of fashion and people wrinkled their noses at its mention. It became a punch line in the obligatory mocking of the disco-and-bellbottom era. Avocado appliances in your parents’ house became unfortunate memories to many, and the creamy texture of avocado was all but dead by the early ‘90s, when bright pastel colors became the dominant color trend. This is when the obscurity of what some have called “puke green” really gave avocado its funk; when we discovered the rapture of using the perfectly buttery Rust-Oleum Avocado. In the past ten years our beloved “Avo” has seen a significant resurgence in home design and popular culture; even if Martha Stewart’s company rebranded the same color as Asparagus (we use Asparagus towels in one of our two Avocado-themed bathrooms.) The color came full circle years after it stole our hearts—it was the runt of the ‘90s long after its dominant reign of the ‘70s. There may never have been a green so willing to play with other colors as this one, and perhaps never a color with a story quite like that of the mighty Avocado. Slice and serve.
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