I Trawled the Internet for Gross Green
Last November, my colleague Michael Zhao went to the opening of the knitwear brand Extreme Cashmere’s new store, its first in New York City. Inside, everything — drapes, carpet, shelving, display tables — was a swampy, vibrant yellow-green. I’d seen similar greens elsewhere and noticed a strange pull. The level of commitment told me I hadn’t been hallucinating: Something in the Zeitgeist has aligned to make gross green cool.
Gross green isn’t a single shade but a spectrum running from deep, earthy chartreuse the color of a pickled lime to a lighter hue that’s yellower than sage and paler than khaki. These shades lack the synthetic pop of neons or the fresh-pea shade found in millennial offices in the 2010s. They’re natural but a little freaky, a little sour: If a normal green calls to mind healthy ferns and forests, these shades come straight from bogs and sulphuric hot springs. Everything in your mammalian brain is telling you not to eat them. Yet … there’s an allure.
I’ve already noticed some gross greens selling out: At Extreme Cashmere, leather-goods company Linquist, and bedding brand Sutram, stock of the swampy hues is limited. With the help of my Strategist colleagues, I’ve rounded up 25 items in my favorite color family, each grosser than the last.
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Two gross greens in one tee with a light-pink accent at the shoulder.
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Dip a toe into gross green with a swampy-green nail polish.
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Hanoi Square Silk Velvet Coat
Nothing more glamorous than swanning around your home in a silk-velvet coat. (The seller also makes a silk-velvet bathrobe, which you can custom-order in dozens of colors, including chartreuse.)
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A pair of “gasoline green” athletic socks from the Gap.
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I asked Strategist chief bookworm Tembe Denton-Hurst if she has seen any gross-green covers, and she scanned her bookshelf and picked out this essay collection by Simon Wu. He “turns over every part of his life in this collection,” she says, inviting us to “look at our own lives with similar keen attention.”
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A lighter gross green from Baserange, one of my favorite sources for interesting basics (and pajama pants, but wait ’til they go on sale).
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The French liqueur, made by Carthusian monks from 130 botanical ingredients, is gross green in its most distilled form.
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A suit the color of dried reeds from Homme Plissé, the men’s equivalent of Pleats Please. (Keep an eye out for tariffs, which are listed at checkout.)
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A sharp-cornered, acid-green-and-mint pillowcase from bedding company Millaux, which we wrote about last year in the Secret Strategist newsletter …
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… and a barrier-strengthening face mist with a similar color combination from Eadem (which also makes a lip balm we love).
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A sulphuric greenish-yellow scarf from Banana Republic.
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A milky Australian opal set in a hand-carved sterling-silver band for a tiny yet powerful dose of gross green.
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Leather company Lindquist made several bags in this deep swampy green, many of which are now sold out — but restocks are on the way.
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I poked around to see which blank T-shirt producer came the closest to gross green, and the award goes to British company Sols. You can find them at Walmart or on eBay (albeit for a little more than you would pay in the U.K.).
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Strategist senior toy writer Liza Corsillo pointed me toward this chartreuse kids’ sweater with a pattern of cute pink rabbits.
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This soap-on-a-rope from a beloved Portuguese soap company looks swamp green but smells like bergamot, neroli, musk, and vetiver.
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I would use these for party invitations — imagine opening a chartreuse envelope to find a matching chartreuse note card inside.
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This velvet Colleen Allen dress is a perfect example of the lighter gross greens — yellowy, luminous, and vibrant.
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Turns out if you boil Mountain Dew down into a jelly, the product is a rich gross green the color of pickle juice.
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Benjamin Moore Green Earth Paint
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Benjamin Moore Sesame
A few months ago, I decided to paint my office gross green and tested a few swatches on the wall. None were quite right, so I kept adding swatches until somehow I ended up with 18 colors. I went with Sherwin-Williams Narcissus, which reminds me of the neon-yellow-greenish cast of buttermilk. That shade is probably too bright to qualify as a gross green; from my research, I would recommend Benjamin Moore’s Green Earth on the lighter side or Sesame for a deeper hue.
More unique greens
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