Hello friends and to all my new subscribers! I was so surprised to have my readership increase over 30% over the weekend after a popular post I typed out about fun vs work upon first meeting someone new. I also found it meaningful that after I created a color story for the month of January, I read about the passing of Rosita Missoni, a champion of color in fashion. If you like stories about design, science, and food—and want to join in on a journey to find and express your own colorful journey through your one precious life—consider a monthly subscription for less than a cup of good coffee.
I have a deep attachment to colors. I realized recently that so many of the things I love to do—garden, pick out things for my home, how I dress—have to do with my interpretation of how I feel and what kind of colors I want to use to express that feeling.
When I was initially drawn to garden design and landscape architecture in my 20s, I often came across the description of a garden designer as someone having a “painterly” approach. While painting is about form, and layering, and texture, for me the abstract version is what you get when you squint: a blurred vision of colors at first, and then focusing in on specifics for each component of the greater whole. It’s mood, a feeling.
Rosita Missoni recently passed away, and she was famous for gorgeous, colorful patterns (especially in knitware) that were truly unique and FUN:
“If “color is the story of our life,” as Rosita once said, then hers was a life as rich and vivid as any of the patterns she and Ottavio invented.”
- Luke Leitch for VOGUE
In a clip I wrote about my 20s and job-hunting, I remembered what I used to consider fashion:
I didn’t really have a sense of style at 21; my clothes were a mishmash of thrift shop shirts and dresses, band t-shirts, jeans and either doc martens or hiking boots. I was going for a mood, or some kind of blend of music scenes I appreciated like pop punk, electronic music, jazz and ska. I had a few wildly colorful pairs of pants and t-shirts in bright yellow, orange and red that my mother bought me to counter the black and grey I wore most of the time. I especially remember a dark grey cardigan that was the layer on top of almost all my outfits for years that she disliked the most.
I soon aged out of dark colors and by 22 I was really into “cute”, “color” and “fun” as my fashion mantra. (Which is why the current tends involving so much beige are really not interesting to me).
So let me explain about how color doesn’t really exist..
Here we go, the truth about color.
The idea of colors is in your brain.
We think of color as a fundamental quality of the world around us. But in the outside world, color doesn’t actually exist.
- “The Brain, the Story of You” by David Eagleman
There is also an excellent Radiolab episode on color (their most popular episodes ever!).
Newton shattered the white light with a prism into a rainbow and changed our scientific view on light forever. He called “a colored image of the sun”.
Colors are energy.
They are just a small part of the electro-magnetic spectrum.
We’re interpreting wavelengths into a perceived color. But we don’t see it the same between each other as humans. I don’t even see photos the way I see them as memories in my head.
Now here is the image before I enhanced it a bit. As it was on my camera. It’s more “true to life” as colors go; Washington State is beautiful but there are the grey days, the days where the mists make everything a bit more washed out. But what is reality vs memory, and so much of color (and your life) is what you make of it.
Love this exploration of color and how it plays such a beautiful part of our lives! I recently had someone tell me that our favorite colors might not be the same color that matches our personality, and I found this to be such an interesting idea. Congratulations on your increase in readership!