The Appeal Of Brat Green, The Viral Color Of The Summer

It’s very nearly lime green, though it has less blue and a little more yellow than a traditional lime, which leans closer to emerald (Brat skips up to apple). It’s a slightly updated chartreuse, almost the color of the famous liquor, but with a heavy saturation that marks it as far more modern than the version that blew up in the late 1800s (and again in the 1920s, 1960s, and 1990s). It’s not quite an absinthe green or a pickle green, but it is close. It lacks the depth of those vintage greens, which gain dimension from a touch of ochre, but that’s exactly why we like Brat Green. It is not a complex color, nor is it intended to be. Like the slime green made famous by Nickelodeon, Brat Green is pushy and straightforward. It’s supposed to be brilliant, intense, and rich without being mistaken for tasteful. There’s a flatness to brat green that makes it well suited to black light dance parties, color field paintings, and online life (see the various social media memes the color spawned even before Harris’ “Brat-ification”). In particular, the digital nature of brat green shows when you open up a messaging app and text your friends — it’s right there, in Apple’s lime green chat icon with its little white bubble. It’s also just a whisper away from Spotify green, something I doubt is accidental.