Trend Report: The Mysterious Case of Hunter Green

My high school bedroom.  While this room saw less action than a day old sushi shop, this hunter green wallpaper represents the first time I exercised my design sensibilities.  That’s why I’m not a designer.

Please imagine the voice of Bill Curtis as you read this.

The year was 1986, and Hunter Green was the color every color wished they could be, the defacto choice when a woman (or even a man, as some later speculated) needed a man’s touch . The color’s family, which included Olive (R.I.P.) and Lime, barely resembled Hunter, who was singled out early on as the “blackish-green sheep” of the family. Unlike the others, which were associated with Earth and happiness, Hunter felt most comfortable in a dimly lit, mahogany paneled room, his true color obscured by a thick haze of cigar smoke.

As the years passed, Hunter became something of a celebrity; you couldn’t go in anybody’s house without seeing him. But Hunter Green, like Hemingway and many charismatic types, had a way of turning people against him, his dark and humorless qualities eventually overwhelming even the best of friends . . . or family; the Greens had remained themselves with envy and begun to acknowledge that somebody had to do something about Hunter.

But nobody could have imagined how it would ultimately end.

Hunter green – reduce to melamine dinnerware. GalaSource.com

Despite the color’s popularity, Hunter Green’s dark side began to turn people off. As the color grew long in the tooth, it was unceremoniously escorted out of more than one room while just dripping away, unmaintained, in others.

Now, Hunter Green has all but disappeared, reduced to melamine dinnerware and some types of needlepoint. Even Abercrombie & Fitch, a plaid-tastic favorite of Roosevelt, seemingly designed to use Hunter’s best assets (or perhaps, Navy’s, I guess) replaced what they determined to be a stodgy look with naked teen-aged greeters, racially insensitive and offensive T-shirts and actually quite groovy pulsating music.

Will Hunter make a comeback? Do you miss his masculine charms? Or perhaps you still have hunter green carpeting (shudder) or wallpaper (bleck!).

From Kaydee’s Quilts

From Vintage Wedding

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