Green Ties and Blue Accent Colors

[Retrograde]

12. Could have been a status thing

Dark,vibrant colors are more expensive to produce since they require specialized knowledge and expensive materials. Natural dyes on wool and linen give muted colors unless you take extra steps. From my experiments, madder produces soft corals and pinks, but I've read that if you use a more complex process you can get Turkey Red, which is a vivid red. It's a multi-step process that included rotted sheep manure and rancid oil IIRC, and was produced far from population centers. A lot of bright colors required toxic metals or other chemicals, such as Prussian Blue, or the arsenic salts used for some greens. The colors would last (provided they weren't exposed to too much light or harsh treatment (such as washing with lye soaps) but they cost more.

I think that people then and now just like strong colors. A few years ago I saw a museum show that tried to recreate the "real" look of ancient Greek statues, based on what remained of the pigment on the statues and contemporary descriptions. Garish barely starts to describe the results! So it may also be the fashion of the times - I remember the mid-60s when it became more acceptable for men to wear something other than black, gray, brown, and navy, and psychedelic clothing was everywhere! There's a certain shade, Nile Green, that screams 1930s - it was widely used for a decade or so, then vanished for a few decades.

An out-of-print book I recommend is Barbara Brachman's "Clues in the Calicos", which talks about colors in US cotton textiles in the 19th and 20th centuries.