Color informs

This weekend, I listened to the 99% Invisible Episode: “The Secret Lives of Color” with Kassia St. Clair while on a stroll. Always having an interest in color, Clair dove into the history of color when learning about what women wore to masquerade balls during the 18th century. In the episode, Clair walks through the cultural significance of color and emphasizes on how it evolves in importance overtime.

She mentions the statistical connotation of the color red amongst sports teams. For years, in games of football and combat sports, it has been statistically proven that teams adorned in red are more likely to win more on average.

While there are measurable impacts of colors, Clair also mentions the impact on biodiversity that color has when people go to the extent of discovering pigments of color. For example it took “70,000 bugs to get a pound of cochineal,” which created a vibrant red dye, which almost takes cochineal bugs to the brink of extinction. In fact, the demand of dye is a result of trade and colonization: Spanish seeking out cochineal a natural resource to create dye that was originally found in South and Central America.

It was really interesting to hear about the limitations of color: people who were restricted to use a specific color and who was warranted to wear a color. The color purple sparked controversy when it was associated with royalty. Clair cites a story about the “Emperor Nero, who turned up to a recital and saw a woman in the audience wearing a Tyrain purple gown, and she wasn’t of the right class or status to wear it.” As a result, the woman was punished and “had all her lands confiscated” for donning the color purple, which I think is pretty dramatic to establish power over the exclusivity of a color.

Lastly, color ties cultural significance to gender and Clair brings up the origins of how blue initially connotes to “unlucky, uncouth, and unfashionable” before Virgin Mary in Christianity was pictured wearing blue garments. Virgin Mary was seen dressed in blue as at the time the discovery of a the pigment lapis lazuli that created the color ultramarine. The reason for its exclusivity stems from the arduous task of transporting a stone over long distances, and grinding the stone into a powder before it is purified, mixed with wax and kneaded until you get a bright blue sediment.

I think the extremity that pigment discoverers used to go to is quite remarkable. What intrigues me about this episode is the cultural resonance of color of how it has impacted our biodiversity, informed our perception of gender, status, and has contributed to wins at competitive sports.