Do the colours you wear make you happier?
Photo by Pranav Kumar Jain on Unsplash
I've been thinking about the inspiration behind my collections this week and they always start with colour. Beautiful vibrant colour palettes and colour combinations. I think you can bring so much joy into your life by filling it with colour.
The Holi Festival was celebrated this week, a gorgeous festival of colour which celebrates love and friendship and the arrival of Spring. People come together for this famous Hindu festival with joy and enthusiasm, singing and dancing with their loved ones and showering each other in coloured paint.
I love the idea of this festival. I think anything that promotes joy and happiness and having fun with your family and friends is worth celebrating and showering each other in colour sounds so much fun. Sign me up!
Do you wear lots of colour? Are you mindful when you are getting dressed in the morning that wearing a colourful top might make you and others around you smile.
How do certain colours make you feel? Do you have a favourite colour that you wear if you want to feel happy.
- Yellow - is my favourite colour as it is the colour of sunshine. My friends often say I am solar powered and being in the sunshine makes me happy. It isn't a colour I actually wear a lot even though I use it in my home and in my life. My home office is painted yellow. Maybe I'll start to wear it more in 2020. Yellow is thought to be one of the first colours ever used as a paint in prehistoric cave art, as the pigment is derived from clay.
- Orange - is associated with warmth and energy. In Ancient Egypt and Greece, Chromotherapy was practiced or the use of colours to heal. For example orange was used to heal the lungs and to increase energy levels.
- Blue - is considered to be the favourite colour of many people. It evokes a sense of calm and trust and I remember reading you should wear it for a job interview! It is often used for uniforms which began with the armed forces hence 'navy blue' who needed to dye their clothes with a colour that would best resist the action of sun and sea.
- Red - has an intensity that causes strong emotions from love and passion to anger or confidence. Red is regarded as the colour of happiness, wellbeing, and good fortune in China.
- Purple - is often associated with wealth and royalty. The earliest evidence of Tyrian purple dyeing comes from the fifteenth century and was the product of two varieties of shellfish, Murex and Thais. Each specimen contained only a single drop so it took around 250,000 to make an ounce of dye. There was a huge labour involved and Tyrian dipped cloth was literally worth its weight in gold so it meant only a few could afford it. It was usually reserved for the wealthy or royalty. The Byzantine custom was to deck the royal birthing chambers with Tyrian purple cloth so it was the first colour a new born prince would see.
- Green - is considered the colour of nature and fertility and in the 15th century was a popular choice for wedding dresses.
- Pink - although now considered a feminine colour only a few generations ago was reversed with an article on baby clothes in 1893 stating that you should always dress a boy in pink. In Japan pink is associated with masculinity as the pink cherry blossom trees are thought to be symbols of fallen Japanese warriors.
The historical references in this blog post are from the wonderful book, The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair, first published in Great Britain in 2016 by John Murray and the blog post The history and psychology of colours on Canva.com
Your feelings about these colours might be completely different as colour can evoke a very personal response based on your own experience and colours can also have different meanings in different cultures.
What is your favourite colour and do you wear it regularly to change your mood? Leave a comment below and let us know.
