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Color is a topic of some interest in fashion and clothing. There are also interesting eoconomical technical aspects. Dyes were valuable trade goods in the anicent world. Scientific advances in chemicals during the 19th century made available a wide-range of color dyes which affected the use of color in fashion. Curiously many of these colors came available just at the time when the fashion wold was emerging from the standard black of the mid-19th century Victorian era. HBC has not yet seriously addressed the subject of color in fashion. It is, however, an important topic that needs to be addressed in some detail.
Color is important in the animal world. This and the fact that we know that color was important to known primative people suggests that from the earliest points of pre-history, color has been important and used in fashion aand decoration. Paintings provide a very useful depiction of the use of color in fashion. Here we have to realize that paintings are not color photographs. As a result we can not be sure jusyt how color depictions are in paintings. We note quite a few medieval paintings, for example, where crods of people are painted with extrodinarily colorful garments--almost cartoonish. We see this in both Bilica scences (often done with comtemprary clohing) and secular contemprary scenes. We think that individual portraits are more likely to have accurate color depiction. We think that by the 16th century we begin to get more accurate color depictions. Of course a great deal of art was commissioined by the Church or the aristocracy and other wealthy individuals. Thus we know much more about the elite than the common people. We note both plain brown clothes in the18th century as well as very colorful clothes. This can be seen in the individual 18th century portraits we have found,
Dyes were valuable trade goods in the anicent world.
Science and fashion are often considered world apart. In fact science or technology in general has played a major role in fashion and clothes manufacture. The first dyes were of course national dyes. Gradually man learned how to extract dyes from plants and animals.
Scientific advances beginning in the 18th century played a role in the European industrial revolution which was a first centered in the textile industry. The discovery Prussian blue and the publication of Newton's Opticks (1704) were some of the important early developments. Perkin synthesized mauveine dye (1856). These and many othger advances, often centered in Germany, created an array of color dyes providing fashion designers a much greater range of colors than had previously been available and at low cost. Curiously many of these colors came available just at the time when the fashion wold was emerging from the standard black of the mid-19th century Victorian era.
Color in clothing has often carried very significant messages. Here we mean both the shades of color as well as presence or absence of color. Slaves and poor people once wore clothes with little color, only the natural colors of the material from which fabric was woven. Here the primary significance was the cost of colorful dyed clothing. Purotans wore mostly black to show their rejection of conspicuous clothing which in fact was a poerful fashion statement. The Cavaliers that replaced the austere Cromwell introduced riotous color into clothing and in part signified their social outlook.
Some colors have been associated with royalty, in part because of their rarity or difficulty to produce. Purple bcame associated with Roman emperors and the color was ressrved for them. Yellow was reserved for the emperor in China.
This is a vey complicated topic. Color has been used differently in various countries. This has of course varied over time. And there have been different uses of colors by various groups within countries. Here we have only begun to assess the topic of variation in the use of color in fashion among countries. Often there was considerable continuity in the use of color over national borders within regions.
Some authors use the modern associations between colors and genders as a way of determining gender in old paintings. There is much reason to believe, however that the blue-for-boys, pink-for-girls idea is a fairly modern one, even a 20th-century convention. Other colors such as the idea that wedding dresses must be white are fairly recent, many dating to the Victorian era.
HBC relies heavily on photography for it many fshion pages. Here there are limitations becuse until well into the 1970s, photography was primarily a black and white entrprise. Thus on most pages we are not sure about the colors, in fact we often have no idea about colors. There are, however, several sources oif information on color. These sources differ substatially in accessibility and reliability. HBC is working hard ti make these sources more accessible to readers. The reliability of these sources is a more difficuklt question. There are two HBC sections that do provide us helpful information about color. These are the art section and the vintage clothing section. Both of which readers interested in color may want to utilize. There is also some color information in the catalog section. There are relatively few color illustrations, but the ad copy often includes color details.
One aspect of historic clothing that the old black-and-white photographs do not provide is color. Some boys clothing is rather dark muted colors, black, greys, and dark greens, blues, and browns. Not all clothing are these colors. Unfortunately the bklack and white photography gives the impression that the clothes worn by boys were these muted colors. Some color infirmnation can be discerned from black-and-white photographs, but it is very limited.
A Kent State University Museum exhibition provides a great del of information about color and fashion. The curator tells us, "Wearing color is part of the human experience. From time immemorial, colors were an integral part of the fiber of society and their presence, or absence, served a social function. They contribute to making us who we are as individuals and can speak of culture, beliefs and life stages. In the days of slavery, clothing of undyed and unbleached osnaburg fabric served to strip a person of their ndividuality.(1) The somber yet saturated palette of blues and purples of Amish clothing is part of their culture and beliefs just as the tricolor scheme of revolutionary France."
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