The consumer commentator Bernard Salt says black will be in fashion for as long as the baby boomers are fat. Dressing in black came into vogue in the early 1990’s, just as the baby boomers hit middle age and wanted to conceal their newfound bellies and bottoms. An interesting take.

I’m not a baby boomer but I have been thinking for some time that my wardrobe needs more black: colour is just not cutting it for me at the moment. I haven't, however, felt the need to extend the black trend to my bathroom and update my so-last-season 2-ply white toilet paper. Earlier this year the Portuguese company Revova launched it’s black TP, and according to The New York Times article This Season’s Must Have: The Little Black Roll, it has been snapped up by a number of Manhattan's urgent hot spots like the Double Seven, Frederick's Bar & Lounge, Frederick's Restaurant and the basement bar at La Esquina. It says the wow factor gets people talking, but guests tend to pinch the rolls.

I haven’t decided whether I think it’s fabulous or banal. Can toilet paper be an object of cutting edge design? Should it? I like the confusion it could arouse, since the colour is so counterintuitive to the product. But most anything can be chic for some period of time and when its value is based solely on shock, it’s not going to have a very long shelf life. Ultimately I think it’s momentarily interesting but anything trying so hard to be edgy, and with such heavy brand management and hype, can’t really be cool. Just have a look at the pretension in their press release:

Elegant, sophisticated, rebellious, alternative and eternally fashionable, black has become virtually synonymous with chic and style. But while this colour is often present in avant-garde creative work, no one has ever dared to use it for toilet paper until now. Black in the loo, how chic and sophisticated can you get?

It gets worse. On their website they suggest you “look out for your family with the very best in luxury bath tissue,” “discover today which tissue product is more fashionable & unique, just right for your sensual needs” and “be invaded by these vibrant pulpy and glossy black handkerchiefs.”

In the NY Times article Paulo Miguel Pereira da Silva, the president of the company, is quoted as saying "the question for us was not why, but why not." He had been thinking about the idea of spectacle and how it relates to consumer products, and black was an intuitive choice for toilet paper because it signals "avant-garde creative work." "In a design sense, black means irreverence, maybe touching a bit on the core nature of art, which is to break rules and set new ones. Culturally, deep down, Renova Black invites people to break down whatever might be limiting as common sense ideas,” he says. His new product is “not solely a product, an object or a communication tool," but some heady combination of all three. Such modesty.

So is the idea of black toilet paper so bizarre that it’s brilliant? What do you think?

Now for the (rather twisted) quote of the day (apologies in advance):

"But to conclude, I say and maintain that there is no arse-wiper like a well-downed goose, if you hold her neck between your legs. You must take my word for it, you really must. You get a miraculous sensation in your arse-hole, both from the softness of the down and from the temperate heat of the goose herself; and this is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the intestines, from which it reaches the heart and the brain."

From chapter 13 of the first book of the 16th century series of novels Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais: "How Grandgousier realized Gargantua's marvelous intelligence, by his invention of an Arse-wipe."