ArcaMax

Every year around this time, I get inundated with emails telling me about the latest fall trends and what I should buy and what I should toss. Having been down this wardrobe rabbit hole before, I didn't want to make a fall fashion faux pas, such as I did last year, when one trendsetting site told me the "it" shoe was a pointed witchy boot that was so tight it nearly made my pinky toes fall off.

So this year I cross-referenced all the fashion sources to see what everyone agreed on.

And the consensus was ... pistachio.

The big fall color was pistachio.

As photos of pretty clothes in hideous shades of pistachio swam before my eyes, I wondered, who decides these things and, for goodness' sake, why pistachio? Pistachio is not even a good color for a nut, much less a woman over 50 with a fading summer tan.

Generally, I tend not to do well with clothing colors that are named for foods. I don't look good in eggplant or cantaloupe or mustard, so I didn't hold out much hope for pistachio. And really, calling a color "pistachio" doesn't distract from the fact that it is basically just ugly green. It falls somewhere on the color wheel between hospital-room green and algae, neither of which is a particularly good shade for anyone. When your clothes give you the pallor of a dead person, you know it's time to move on.

I was duly forewarned when I hit the stores, and even though I was expecting it, the sight of all that pistachio-ness was still a shock. There were pistachio pants and pistachio coats and even little pistachio berets for the woman who wants some panache with her pistachio.

A woman with pistachio-painted fingernails breezed by on her way to the racks of pistachio-colored palazzo pants in plaid. It was all just a little bit excessive and made me long for the days of mustard and cantaloupe.

All around me, trendy women were scooping up the pistachio-colored clothing as though there was about to be a shortage of pistachios and they might be forced to settle for clothes in avocado instead. As I watched in awe, I decided it couldn't hurt to try on one pistachio-colored coat just to see how awful it would actually look on me. I didn't want to be one of those women who judged a trend without trying it, even if it did make me look like I'd just had food poisoning.

But as I reached for my size, another woman in a pistachio-induced shopping frenzy reached past me and whisked the coat off the rack and into her basket.

"Excuse me," I said. "I was just about to try that on."

"Just take another one," she said dismissively.

"That was the last one in my size," I replied.

"Forget it," she said. "I'm doing you a favor. ...

"This color would look terrible on you."

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Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

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