As you all may be able to tell based on the colors of this website, I love the color purple/pink. I love how vivid, unique, and rebellious it is. It is the color that defines vivacious audacity. It questions the status quo. It brightens a gloomy day. Paired with black there is little else that says “Badass”. Since I was about 5 years old I have been fixated on painting a Volkswagen beetle that bold raspberry color. It is humble, yet daring.
When I was about 8 years old my parents decided they would renovate our attic and make it my new bedroom. While the unique A-frame space was a huge upgrade from the tiny room I had grown up in, I was most excited about getting to choose the paint color. We went to the paint store and I chose a brilliant purple/pink. The purple/pink that I dreamt of sporting in a 68 Volkswagen bug. This was the late 80s so the popular purple/pink back then was more of a dusty mauve in the home decor aisle of the paint store, but it was still a purple/pink. A dark, bold, expressive color that would climb up the 3 foot wall s pace to meet with an A-frame white ceiling.
When it came time to look at paint chips and color swatches my parents so patiently repeated “Remember, it will dry darker”. I would choose a swatch, and they would swap it out with a lighter swatch and assure me “It will dry darker”. This was repeated over and over until the final color was chosen and to this day the room is Pepto pink. Little Bo Peep pink. Hardly badass, but I made it work.
And while purple/pink does not always go over well when representing a brand, I can not let go of it. Many people have told me that they feel it is too overtly feminine for my career-oriented website. Those people have pink complexes.
Though one could debate it’s place in the working world there was no doubt that a variation of it would find it’s home in the color scheme for Jim & I’s wedding. And a funny thing happened while shopping for dresses, ribbon, paper, and just about everything else. No one agrees on what to call the color purple/pink.
As you can imagine this makes it a google challenge, I can’t just search the color to find items in that color because everyone interprets it differently.
JCrew calls it Spiced Wine while Paper Source insists that it is the color of a Beet.Luna Bazaar sells Chinese lanterns that are spot on in color called, but they refer to it as Violet. David’s Bridal chooses the very festive name of Sangria while Crayola labels their crayon as Mulberry.
The other colors we are using as accents in the wedding most people tend to agree on… It seems that many people are on board with chartreuse or lime for a vivid yellow/ green and sky blue is beautiful shade of light blue. But what’s the deal with purple/pink? Why is this so confusing?
What name do you think suites it best?
4 Comments
I vote for puce! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imiSri_sRv4&feature=related) Haha :)
— March 31, 2011
I too adore the family of hues hovering around purple and pink. If you haven’t already, you should read, “Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World” by Simon Garfield. Interesting read about the invention of synthetic dyes and how it revolutionized dyemaking and the fashion world. The purplish color Perkin created became all the rage of the 1860s.
— April 5, 2011
I totally know what you mean by the hue of purple that’s more towards red/pink than blue—it is also my favorite color (and one that I’m using for the branding of my letterpress stationary store on Etsy)! I usually call it “plum.” If you google “plum color” you get a bunch of images that match the right hue of purple we’re talking about.
If you search for “violet color” you get purple, too, but the bluish hue and not the reddish one. The more pinkish purple-pink would probably be Puce or Mauve.
— April 22, 2011
Definitely plum! It’s a great combination of the exterior and the interior colors of the fruit. I know your pain with this color though. That’s the color of the bridesmaid dress I will be wearing for my sister’s wedding. While I love it, it was incredibly difficult finding the right papers to use to create the invitations for this event.
Love the idea of this color on walls!
— April 25, 2011