Just back from New York in the post fash­ion week fren­zy, I was lost in a maze of fash­ion choic­es all tout­ing spring/sum­mer 2020. It was a wash of colour, all with eth­nic per­sua­sions and lus­trous feels. Even above and be­yond that, as fall set in, I wit­nessed the mag­ic of na­ture and the chang­ing hues of the fo­liage. Au­tum­nal re­galia was quite fas­ci­nat­ing to me and I chan­nelled my thoughts to the pow­er of colour and how it in­flu­ences our soul, our style and our lives. As Wilde pro­claimed, “mere colour can speak to the soul in a thou­sand dif­fer­ent ways.”

The old adage, ‘every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son’, or bet­ter yet, Samuel Selvon’s “what is to is, must is”, seems poignant at this junc­ture. Every­thing in my im­me­di­ate purview or­gan­i­cal­ly seems to be cen­tring on colour. I feel as though the uni­verse is tru­ly speak­ing to me. I have al­ways been en­tranced by colour, not bright colours, per se, but colours which seem to speak to old Greek ‘tem­pera­ments and hu­mours’; colours that car­ry a sto­ry even be­fore you de­fine it by name. It seems crazy! How­ev­er, I left Mass­a­chu­setts see­ing the rus­sets, the browns, the ter­ra cot­tas and the or­anges, be­gin­ning to trans­form the land­scape. I ar­rived in Brook­lyn to see the set­ting up of the ex­hi­bi­tion of the larg­er-than-life French ‘pho­tograf­feur’ Jean René (JR) at the Brook­lyn Mu­se­um, with his icon­o­clas­tic black and white im­agery, the bold­ness of which in­tones that life is like a box of crayons. Every­thing in my world seemed to be ac­knowl­edg­ing the rel­e­vance of colour to style.

Then I bounced up­on the movie ‘The Colour Pur­ple’, and I recog­nised Celie’s at­trac­tion to the pur­ple hue as a sig­nal of her iden­ti­ty and her com­ing of age. Al­ice Walk­er us­es the colour to treat with no­tions of trans­for­ma­tion, in­tegri­ty and con­fi­dence. I won­dered, if sub­lim­i­nal­ly, there is a prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion in my cur­rent con­scious­ness of colour. The colour of egg­plant and re­lat­ed hues of pur­ple in­deed un­earth a rel­e­vant emo­tion­al­i­ty and a sen­tient cor­re­spond­ing of vibes, at­ti­tudes and per­spec­tives, re­mark­ably not dis­sim­i­lar to the ‘tem­pera­ments and hu­mours’ of which I ref­er­enced be­fore.

Lo­cal de­sign­ers like Zadd and East­man, Lisa’s Fab­rics and Heather Jones cer­tain­ly cor­rob­o­rate my pre­vail­ing pro­cliv­i­ty to lush pig­ments. They rev­el in the use of vi­brant colour through their sig­na­ture tex­tur­ing on tex­tiles, jux­ta­pos­ing colour con­trasts to cel­e­brate our dis­tinc­tive style. The New York scene was abuzz with this ac­cep­tance of an ex­ten­sive colour palette re­ver­ber­at­ing our tene­brous, thresh­old pos­ture for the first year of the third decade of the mil­len­ni­um. “Com­bin­ing our de­sire for sta­bil­i­ty, cre­ativ­i­ty, and more spon­ta­neous de­sign ap­proach­es, the colour palette for Spring/Sum­mer 2020 in­fus­es her­itage and tra­di­tion with a colour­ful youth­ful up­date that cre­ates strong mul­ti-coloured com­bi­na­tions as well as en­er­gis­ing and op­ti­mistic pair­ings,” said Leatrice Eise­man, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Pan­tone Col­or In­sti­tute.

To fur­ther so­lid­i­fy my colour-pur­ple sen­si­bil­i­ty, I looked at the movie ‘Free­dom Writ­ers’ last evening, tes­ti­fy­ing to the es­sen­tial­i­ty of di­ver­si­ty, more­over, the sig­nif­i­cance of the spec­trum of colour. As Marc Ja­cobs glibly quips, “colour is the fin­ish­ing touch on every­thing”.

On the run­way at the wa­ter­front in Toron­to, Zadd and East­man jux­tapoes colour con­trasts