Have you been feeling like you could use a brain reboot these past few months? According to some in the travel industry, a colourful adventure trip could be the answer.
Stolen from the fashion industry’s trend for “dopamine dressing”, a new trend for “dopamine travel” is emerging. Essentially this involves a major change of scenery, where you can flood your senses with dramatically colourful, monochromatic or aesthetically pleasing destinations.
Just as the dopamine dressing fashion trend championed wearing bright, often primary, block colours, the travel incarnation is mainly centred around heading somewhere with a uniformly bright landscape. One example is Morocco’s Chefchaouen, also known as the ‘Blue City’, not far from Tangier, while another might be India’s ‘Pink City’, Jaipur.
The theory is that certain colours have a strong and immediate effect on people’s mood – such as the striking ice-whites and azure blues of Greece’s Cycladic Islands (including Santorini, Milos and Paros), or densely green tropical islands such as Bali, St Lucia and Sri Lanka.
“Colour therapy and chromotherapy have long been of interest to cultures dating back to ancient Egypt and have been integrated into interior and environmental design,” Maria Costantino, a culture studies lecturer at the London College of Fashion, told Harper’s Bazaar in January.
“For example, cool hues are used to enhance concentration, or pale green to enhance quietness. Colour is closely associated with emotions; it colours our language – we say we are ‘feeling blue’, ‘seeing red’, ‘green with envy’ or ‘in the pink’.”
Chefchaouen, Morocco’s ‘Blue City’
(Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Others have interpreted it as fantastical, multicoloured locations that fill you with a burst of energy simply by being aesthetically pleasing. This approach might take you to brightly-tiled Lisbon, paintbox-varied Oaxaca, Mexico, the candy-coloured neighbourhood of Balat in Istanbul or the pastel fishing village of Maraola in Italy’s Cinque Terre.
It’s the focus of Original Travel this season, whose founder Tom Barber says it’s all about immersing yourself in a setting that gives you an instant emotional and psychological reaction – be that a spike of happiness, curiosity, or utter calm.
“This year we’re focusing on ‘gratifications’ – everyone deserves a break, quite literally, and it should be as joyful and guilt-free as possible,” Tom tells me. He explains…
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