Color Analysis Compendium

Colors challenge language to encompass them. (It cannot; there are more sensations than words for them. Our eyes are far ahead of our tongues.) Colors bear the metaphors of entire cultures. They convey every sensation from lust to distress. They glow fluorescent on the flanks of a fish out of the water, then flee at its death. They mark the land of a woman deity who controls the soft desert rain. Flowers use colors ruthlessly for sex. Moths steal them from their surroundings and disappear. An octopus communicates by color; an octopus blush is language. Humans imbibe colors as antidotes to emotional monotony. Our lives, when we pay attention to light, compel us to empathy with color.”

Ellen Meloy

This beautiful passage captures in words what color can do, its power and impact. While I’ve always intuitively used color in my works – also in my wardrobe and home – it was only after receiving a color consultation that I began to consider color more intellectually. While the consultation – by the talented Anna of ChezAnne in Rome – focuses on personal color, the sessions led me to new practices in designing as well.

Besides identifying my own power colors, personal “bests” and also worsts, I was inspired to create a line of scarves for the four seasonal palettes. May these affect you at a visceral level – and compel you to an emotional state. I’ll be working more with palettes and these ideas in collections to come for my design line Clù.