Orange is the New Black is a good title for a show about a middle-class New Yorker who finds herself in prison, but it's not exactly accurate. Only the new inmates, like Piper in the first episode, wear orange, and subsequently even Piper wears regulation beige. Beige is not an exciting colour at the best of times, so using it to promote a new TV show was understandably a no-sell, which is why we ended up with promotional material featuring shots of Piper in the orange uniform we associate with prisoners in pop culture. What Orange is the New Black loses in credibility for that marketing calculation, it more than makes up for with the orange twist on the traditional fade to black at the end of each episode. Again, would anyone really prefer beige?
