Dopamine Dressing 🖍️🎨🌈

How the colors you eat and wear change your emotion and thought patterns

Hi Happy Sunday! It’s a bit chilly and rainy in Los Angeles and I cant help but feel a little sliver of relief that it’s not sunny (shock!) because I would be missing out on sunshine dopamine goodness as I’m inside my cozy nook writing to all of you. All you need to know is in true dopamine fashion, my red light is on, it’s warm, I’m drinking another smoothie, and I’m listening to the sweetest little playlist of ballads made by my friend Kate

Erewhon could never feat my dopamine wrist of happy bracelets I made with my aunt. We call them “grandmas funeral bracelets” because we made them together the week she passed and the colors make us happy ❤️

I cannot lie, I didn’t create the concept of “Dopamine Dressing”, but I will be taking credit for expanding the concept beyond something much deeper than its initial parameters of clothing and self expression. I believe dopamine dressing is a daily investment for our mood and mental health..a pattern of thinking and an all encompassing expression of who we are…even down to what colors are on our plates and within our home 🖼️

Dopamine is a hormone produced in your body that acts on areas of the brain to give you feelings of pleasure, satisfaction and motivation. Dopamine also plays a role in controlling memory, mood, sleep, learning, concentration, movement and other body functions (delicious, we love you dopamine!). The term “Dopamine dressing” was coined by the fashion psychologist Dawnn Karen, who defines it as the act of wearing clothes that make you feel happy and confident to boost your mood and overall well-being. I had first heard of it in 2021 when my sister called me after going to a “dopamine dressing” exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Art..I think we both really gravitated towards this idea of wearing colors that can boost mood and emotion because we were both guilty of only owning black and beige. I adore black don’t get me wrong…it’s très chic forever 🖤 but I have become awake to color in a whole new way 👁

In my eyes, dopamine dressing is not only the colors you wear and how they influence the amount of dopamine produced in your body, it’s equally the colors we eat, the colors we notice on the street, the colors you surround yourself with, the colors you crave. One could argue the colors you surround yourself with are just as important as the people you surround yourself with..you become everything you absorb. Dopamine dressing is the energy transfer you get when you see someone wearing a bright yellow outfit that puts a smile on your face. A stranger walking across the street in bright orange velvet courdoroy trousers on a sunny day, the person in the produce aisle picking up a head of kale while wearing an all green outfit, or spotting a beautiful human in all creams and buttery yellows with a pop of brown socks peeking out and a light blue bag. THAT MAKES ME HAPPY!!

It’s partly about finding beauty and joy in the mundane, and also realizing that the mundane isn’t actually mundane? It’s special, prized, one of a kind, a fleeting moment, and unrepeatable.

my friends are pretty dang cute for this

I don’t want to get too off topic, but I think dopamine deficiency is an epidemic right now. We’ve lost touch with well touch! Physical touch, food touch (the act of preparing your food..think convenience culture already prepared meals + uber eats), movement, laughing, sun, small pleasures, hugging, HUGGING…in this post pandemic world it’s extremely easy (esp depending on your job and lifestyle) to find yourself feeling lonely and losing meaning + connection to the simple pleasures in life (why do you think Flamingo Estate resonates with so many people). As author and family therapist Virginia Satir once said, “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth”. I don’t know about you, but this sits with me on a daily basis. My friends and I laugh about how long it takes us to say goodbye and how we will inadvertently hug 10x trying to say one goodbye before we can actually walk away, but maybe its just our bodies craving this rush of dopamine and connection. I find myself listening to a lot (like too much) of Andrew Huberman’s podcast “Huberman Lab” because it feels as though he can’t record a single episode without discussing the science and biology of dopamine, and I can’t help but feed my ~addiction~ to a very addicting hormone (and neuroscience in general) to learn about! Listen to his “Dopamine Masterclass”

Dopamine dressing has become a powerful tool I use on a consistent basis; more than just clothing choices, it’s about tasting, seeing, touching, and experiencing the rainbow of potential happiness. I believe our plates should be colorful, and we should be able to find joy in eating a purple sweet potato with a bright green Nour Green Goddess on it (Chloe made this). Or a bright orange salad shining in the late summer sun. Dopamine dressing is quite literally dressing your salads with colorful + flavorful juicy goodness 🎨🙏🤲 Finding excitement and color in how your nourish your body. Eating different colors is nourishing, and we are meant to taste all of the colors 🌈 I even think to a degree, girl dinner just gave people the freedom to feel empowered to plate a random assortment of different colored foods on their plate because innately it feels good and it feels good and it feels right

I even made Nour’s first merch - a dopamine dressing tote bag. I created my own definition of what it means written on the back in the context of both dressing your body and dressing your salad…a very hedonistic practice 🤲

Dopamine dressing is a daily investment for our mood and mental health. It’s a self care practice, and at zero cost oftentimes. If we can practice seeing the world for what it is..these happy pops of wowza, razzle, dazzle color explosions…doesn’t science tell us that our thought patterns will follow suit and we will feel more awe in other areas…when was the last time you felt awe or you felt euphoria? Are your eyes awake to what goes on in each passing day? Do you worship the sunset? When was the last time you worshiped or honored anything beyond yourself that has your questioning how you ended up here? 🤲

Color, very similar to how we discuss viewing sunlight, there is a large emphasis on viewing morning + afternoon sunlight, but often overlooked there is an independent and positive effect of being in darkness for up to 8 hours a day. Similarly with color, I believe that we put an emphasis on bright color, but variation of tone, pattern, texture, saturation, hue etc are often overlooked just like getting a healthy amount of darkness (does that make sense?). There is an independent and positive effect of variety of color in life and I encourage you to celebrate wherever you see color in your life, neighborhood, surroundings, grocery store, farmers market, at your gym, on your walks, in your mundane routine, ESPECIALLY THE SUNSET 🌅🌞🌀 (and maybe even consider how color + light could be a a tool to help your circadian clock and get higher quality sleep) 😴

Call me crazy, but I have to admit I’ve based countless small and big decisions in life partly (and sometimes solely) on color. For example, let’s start small. This cute yellow cutting board HAD to have it. What about that time I bought this huge canvas that I KNEW I had to bring home and paint but was way too large so I sketchily drove it home strapped onto of my car and barely fit it through my door frame just so I could paint it the perfect chartreuse yellow to stare at everyday 🥹 OR what about the fact that I knew I had to live in this apartment after a 10 minute conversation/tour just because the door was orange 🫣 Color is extremely powerful, and can overcome us almost as if it's our 6th sense or combination of all 5 senses.

Wherever you’re reading this, whatever temperature it is, whatever color your walls are, however much the sun is shining..thank you for being here and thank you for reading. I hope you are able to take something beautiful from this and find a glimmer of happiness in a stranger, your surroundings, or somewhere else in this crazy colorful life for the the rest of your life 💛

BIG LOVE

Annie