Category: Colour Theory

Studies in colour for the purpose of defining a personal style

Brown

December 14, 2016

Brown is a neutral, and in terms of pigment can be created by mixing two complementary colours. I usually make brown by mixing red and green, so brown is like Christmas, in that you take the shiny, apparently joyful aspects of the holiday, and mix them together to end up with absolute shit.

brown-board1

I kid, I don’t hate Christmas nor brown. Black gets all the love in terms of popular neutrals, but brown is underrated. Brown can be quite serviceable when you need a neutral to break up an outfit but feel that black would be too harsh. Brown is much warmer than both black and white, and grey for that matter. I find brown to be particularly effective with blue, and it can also work nicely with pink, but it’s probably best to keep it away from orange, lest you look too ’70s, unless that’s what you’re going for, and if it is, respect.

brown-board3

When I was conceiving of my brown colour boards I thought I would struggle to find brown objects around the house, believing that since I love colour so much, it’d be hard to find much of the neutral. But brown is everywhere. I’ve got way more brown shoes than any other colour, and plenty of brown fabrics, and trinkets, and furniture. Brown is everywhere! Though curiously, as I was scouting the outside world I found that trees, at least in Montreal, actually appear more grey than the stereotypical brown. Still, brown is associated with nature, just as green is, because it’s the colour of wood (supposedly?) and dirt, and the aforementioned shit. And even though it’s also the colour of chocolate, a lot of people dislike brown. I know a few people who are so anti-brown that I actually feel weird wearing it in front of them. But ultimately their hate is their problem, not mine, so I shall wear brown proudly and shake my brown-clad butt in their faces if they don’t like it!

brown-board2

Burgundy

December 7, 2016

According to the almighty internet, burgundy is a reddish brown, and maroon is a brownish red. So this shade is halfway between the boldest colour on the spectrum and the muddiest neutral. I must confess that while I don’t dislike any colour, burgundy is far from my favourite. Perhaps I find it a bit tough to work with because it can’t decide if it’s a colour or a neutral.

burgundy-board1

I firmly believe that any colour can work with any other colour as long as you pick the right tones, but colours also appear different in various settings, depending on lighting, so an outfit that looks fine at home could be jarring at work. This is where burgundy can be tricky. You might think you’re wearing a sedate and professional blazer only to enter a room with florescent lighting and realize you’re a bright beacon of ridiculousness. But why not be ridiculous?

So maybe I take issue with burgundy because it’s like a red that couldn’t commit. It’s red that rolled around in the mud, because it didn’t want to stand out in a crowd. It wants to play it safe, but still be bold, rich, and opulent. Burgundy is so smug, ’cause it gets to have it both ways. Burgundy and navy should get together and start a band, called the colourful neutrals, and they can roam the urban landscape, being utterly inoffensive and work appropriate.

burgundy-board2

So by now you’re guessing that I shun burgundy in my wardrobe. But no, I’ve got tons of it. After all, sometimes you need to be inoffensive and work appropriate while still privately enjoying that you’ve got some red in you.

Plum

November 30, 2016

If you read my post on turquoise, you know colour perception can be subjective and ambiguous. I decided to make turquoise a separate Colour Theory category from both blue and green because of a particular dress I owned that turned out to be divisive in terms of what colour people perceived it to be. The exact same thing has happened with purple and burgundy, so I’ve created a board for plum.

plum-board1

One day, at work, I wore the outfit pictured above. In my mind the main colour displayed was burgundy, but I got called “purple lady” and was accused of dressing like a grape. Interesting, I thought. Then, months later, as I was mentally preparing to write this blog post, I went in to work in an outfit that to my mind was decidedly purple, and another coworker commented that she liked my maroon outfit. Clearly there is a very fine line between purple and burgundy. You could argue that there is a fine line between any two colours that sit next to each other on the spectrum. The word spectrum itself defines a continuum. But I’ve chosen to write an entire post about plum because the line between purple and burgundy seems to be particularly fine. I’m not even sure the word “plum” is the right one to use. Unlike turquoise, there doesn’t seem to be a definitive name for the colour(s) between purple and burgundy. Fuschia and magenta could fall within this range, but they have more of a pink, rather than red influence, so for the purposes of this exercise, plum will have to do.

As I was creating my plum photo collage, I struggled to decide what belonged in the purple camp, what was more maroon, and what plum really meant. What do you think of my choices? Do you think plum even deserves its own category? If plum does, doesn’t indigo? After all, indigo (midway between blue and purple) is an actual colour on the spectrum, so why not give it equal treatment? Well, the answer, for me, is that no one’s ever accused me of wearing blue when I thought I was wearing purple, and vice versa.

plum-board2

Interestingly, as I was scouring my neighbourhood for plum objects I discovered that a lot of foods fall into this colour range. Plums obviously, but also grapes, onions, beets, eggplant, and blueberries when smooshified. So perhaps plum, as a colour, is symbolically indicative of health and vitality, while also conveying depth, and brooding moodiness. It doesn’t really know what it wants to be, and refuses to be pinned down, but is also plentiful in nature. Plum: an enigma, wrapped in a smoothie.