多巴胺穿搭duō bā àn chuān dā

Dopamine dressing

jīn tiān shì duō bā àn chuān dā!今天是多巴胺穿搭！Dopamine outfit today!

多巴胺穿搭, “dopamine dressing”, means outfits in bright, saturated colors, worn to lift your mood. It was the big fashion word of summer 2023 in China.

Took off: 2023
Started in: Xiaohongshu and Weibo
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

多巴胺 is dopamine, the brain chemical linked to pleasure, and 穿搭 means an outfit, or how you put clothes together. A dopamine outfit puts strong colors side by side: orange with pink, green with yellow.

多巴胺 then became a word for anything that makes you happy. 咬文嚼字 wrote it as a pattern, 多巴胺××, and gave examples such as 多巴胺景区, a cheerful tourist spot, and 多巴胺休假, a happy holiday.

How people use it

The outfit trend has passed its peak, but 多巴胺 for bright and happy is still in use. A phrase like 太多巴胺了 means “so bright and cheerful”.

琦琦

看我今天的穿搭
kàn wǒ jīn tiān de chuān dā
Check out my outfit today.
橙色配粉色？好大胆
chéng sè pèi fěn sè? hǎo dà dǎn
Orange with pink? Bold.
这叫多巴胺穿搭，看着就开心
zhè jiào duō bā àn chuān dā, kàn zhe jiù kāi xīn
It’s called dopamine dressing. Just looking at it makes you happy.
我也想试试，可我衣柜里全是黑色
wǒ yě xiǎng shì shi, kě wǒ yī guì lǐ quán shì hēi sè
I want to try it too, but everything in my closet is black.

More examples

夏天到了，我想试试多巴胺穿搭。
xià tiān dào le, wǒ xiǎng shì shi duō bā àn chuān dā.
Summer’s here. I want to try dopamine dressing.
她今天粉色配绿色，太多巴胺了！
tā jīn tiān fěn sè pèi lǜ sè, tài duō bā àn le!
She’s wearing pink with green today. So bright and happy!

Where it came from

PEdaily and CBNData trace the idea to the fashion psychologist Dawnn Karen, who wrote that cheerful clothes can lift your mood.

In China it took off at the start of summer 2023, pushed by fashion creators and celebrities. By early July, the 多巴胺穿搭 topic had more than 220 million views and 2.52 million posts on Xiaohongshu, and 250 million reads on Weibo. Brands followed: in mid-June, Luckin Coffee launched a “dopamine” iced coffee.

In December 2023, 咬文嚼字 put 多巴胺×× on its list of the ten most popular phrases of the year, and Douyin put 多巴胺穿搭 on its own list of the year’s words.

The original. There is no single image. A typical post shows one person in an outfit of two or three strong colors. PEdaily’s July 2023 article describes the trend. PEdaily (in Chinese)