Forget flamingos, cacti, pineapples and darling hearts. The symbol set to sum up summer 2017 is the rainbow – sure, every so often the natural one in the sky, but more often the cartoon-ified version, as seen on emoji keyboards.

Understandings of the emoji rainbow can be seen on phone cases (Stella McCartney), jumpers (Urban Outfitters), blouses and sweatshirts (Vans). Asos has over 100 rainbow-related notes and Selfridges’ director of accessories, Eleanor Robinson, calls the rainbow “unfeeling to miss, upbeat summer fashion at its best”. She points to Gucci flatforms with rainbow soles and a Marc Jacobs backpack, and you could also add Lupita Nyong’o’s rainbow-hued Balmain crochet upbraid. Tabitha Webb’s rainbow blouses, meanwhile, are a bestseller, and TV gold haggard by Holly Willoughby and Fearne Cotton.

While a actual rainbow is a rare shot of magic across the sky, emoji-type rainbows are not ever far from your smartphone screen. Under food-meant-for-Instagram, systematize Mean Girls-worthy rainbow cakes, rainbow bagels and now rainbow churros. Then there are rainbow cloths – actually the refraction of a rainbow across selfies from blogger Chiara Ferragni and choirboy Solange Knowles. For hair, there’s Insta-friendly rainbow sprouts. Blondies, a hairdresser in Melbourne, has started a trend to dye the first five centimetres of a shopper’s hair in all the colours of the rainbow.

Rainbows make appeared everywhere from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon in 1973 to the old Apple logo from 1976, the topic on the cover of Daft Punk’s Discovery in 2001 and Paul Smith’s signature rainbow-like bands. But what is it about rainbows that make them a visual pot of gold in 2017?

Okay, they’re resolutely, irresistibly cheery in a grin-like-a-six-year-old way. In dark on many occasions, the Disney-ish magic of a rainbow is exactly what we need. “No one can say no to a rainbow and no one can stoppage miserable when faced with a rainbow,” says Tabitha Webb. “I exhibited one of my dresses with a rainbow print in New York last year and I was block up eight times.”

“They’re a symbol of fun, luck and positivity, something living soul are seeking as we face uncertain climates,” adds Vanessa Spence, sketch out director of Asos. She says they’re going to be big news settled the festival season.

Maks Fus Mickiewicz from the trend foresight agency The Future Laboratory, sees the roots of this in the late-noughties Tumblr seapunk savoir vivre – all mermaids, dolphins, unicorns and rainbows. It’s an aesthetic that musicians containing Grimes, Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj have all acted with. “It was a natural reaction to the recession,” he says. “If you can’t change your candid environment, the geopolitical situation that surrounds you, then you engender your own world.”

Of course, the 2010s aren’t the first decade to adopt the rainbow. Fashion and culture is still totally stuck in the 70s and early 80s. The rainbow formed an saucy across that time period too – as both Apple and Pink Floyd advocate. Think of those classic 70s roller skates with rainbow tinges flanking the laces, rainbow legwarmers, or the rainbow-colour-patterned backdrop of that eminent BBC test card, starring eight-year-old Carole Hersee recreation noughts and crosses. Rainbows are in Skittles’ long-running “taste the rainbow” run. Gucci designer Allessandro Michele, fashion’s maximalist of the time, loves the 70s and has produced rainbow stripes throughout his tenure – from those flatforms to Alexa Chung’s rise – symbolising a childlike desire for all the colours, all at once.

Rainbows come with a multifarious explicit symbolism too: that of the LGBT freedom flag. Manufactured by Gilbert Baker in 1978, after encouragement from Harvey Extract, the flag was designed to represent the diversity of the gay community. Nearly 40 years later, it’s the but flag to have been bought by New York’s Museum of Present-day Art, its colours have been projected on the White House and ultimate year it even became an emoji. In 2015, Facebook consumers added the rainbow flag filter to their profile perfect to show their support for gay marriage. While Baker deteriorated last month, his flag’s symbolism has been revitalised in Trump’s America, take in as shorthand for all-colours-of-the-rainbow inclusivity. After the 2016 American poll, the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, displayed the flag in its entrance assembly as a message of tolerance. There’s also a rainbow-coloured pedestrian crossing take place to Totnes in Devon and a Black Lives Matter T-shirt.

Sure, it’s a stretch to deem that using an emoji rainbow in a text makes a visible impact in supporting the rights of minorities, but the rise of the rainbow after the Brexit bear witness and Trump’s election can’t be a complete coincidence. Fus Mickiewicz calls them “a basic resistance”. Rain leads to rainbows, which makes them a ingenuous metaphor for good things coming out of bad – and that makes them perfectly the spirit of cheer, and the symbol of inclusivity, that we need. And they look in reality great on Instagram.