Saturday Search - Colour

There have been heaps of studies done about colours - the best ones to make dentists, doctors and hospitals calming. To ensure you move fast in travelways. That you eat well in restaurants. There've been studies done in wildlife too about why colours attract/detract. It's always been something I've read about. Not something I've brought to my life.

I do muted pallettes. Yellow seems to be a recurring theme in these photos I've just grabbed that I've used on here before. But I do navy, black, yellow, grey, pastels. The colours that allow you to hide in plain sight.

There are a thousand reasons why, and I won;t go into those here or you might be reading for ages! But I'm not comfortable standing out - although yellow is sort of a stand out colour, isn't it?

When I was a kid I wore bright yellow, bright green, red. I wore apricot/orange. I wasn't quite so muted. I don't know when I began to fade to the background, but in high school sewing, the clothes I wore were muted - beige and pale green or olive were a couple of things I remember making. So it was sometime between being 8 or 10 and 15. Puberty.Which is probably when my skin erupted, so that makes sense.

Anyway, I began to notice this recently. I have 'home' clothes that are quite bright - but I don't go out in them. I get changed before I go out.

Then I noticed when I was in my favourite shop (it's sort of a mixed hippie/weird shop), that they had these awesome cotton pants in bright green and purple, but I didn't buy them, I went with the black and grey ones. When I got home, it nagged at me. Why did I change my mind? What was wrong with purple and green?

A friend rang and in our rambling, wild conversation, I told her of my pants dilemma. We laughed about it. We laughed about me fitting in and not standing out. About how I now lived on the coast where wild things happened and I could indulge my inner hippie because surely no one cares on the coast. But...they do...don't they?

So, I thought about it some more. I caught a train up to Sydney and when I was daydreaming out the window, I noticed that when I was a kid, there was a "dress code" of what you could wear to work, to the shops, to church, etc. And I'd had that drummed into me and although I didn't like it, it was what you did, or mostly did!

I was a rebel in that I wore trousers to my grandfather's funeral, when skirts were the done thing. I wore trousers to lots of things I was supposed to wear skirts or dresses to.

I'd been to a friend's wedding (I was maybe 18 or so) and I had what I thought was a smart black suit and a green shirt/jumper. I remember sitting at this table with her friends who were discussing everyone's clothing and who was 'appropriate' and who wasn't. I learned that you never wear white to a wedding as you upstage the bride. You never wear black because that's for funerals, and never a suit because that's even worse and certainly for funerals, and never green because that's a sign of jealousy. Holy cow! I broke so many dress rules I was a disaster.

But rules have relaxed now. People wear anything they want. And so, when my friend came to visit, we went to my favourite shop and there were no purple and green pants, but there was a pair of rainbow pants with dragonflies on them. She dared me. I can't back down from a dare! So I own these. At home, I team them with whatever colour I want. The few times I've been brave and worn them out, I've gone with a white top. The first time, a mate told me I 'looked like a yes vote' and I didn't want to clarify what he meant by that. The next time, an older lady told me that I made her happy - not just because I chatted to her, but because of my smile and my happy pants!

She's right, they do make me happy. When I'm having a blah day, I drag on the rainbows and every time I take a step, I have to smile at all that colour.

They remind me that Mum used to wear purple a lot when she was sick, because it made her look healthy and people would say how good she looked. And I think that's important.

We need to wear whatever colour makes us happy, makes us feel good, makes us look good, makes our day.

So I'm going to try being brave and wearing bright colours out. Bright colours make me smile. They make me happy. And the world needs to be a happier place!

What's your colour? Do you wear your favourite colours out?

(Author buddy, Lily Malone is in one of the photos here in her pink beanie - I love that she has that and that she wears it with pride and a beaming smile!)