Colour Card

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 373, 6 June 1928, Page 4

Colour Card

A Bewildering Array MERE 2,400 SHADES Every season there are three or four or half a dozen colours which trip off women’s tongues every time they want to add a further touch of smartness,. A year or so ago it was bois du rose; the pinkk shade clouded every other on the horizon, and even tried to shed a rosy mist over the everpopular black. Now it is beige, and to vary it a little, pinky-beige and mushroom beige and goodness knows what else. Beige has become almost a password to chic, with the result that in an endeavour to ring the changes on a colour which women would not relinquish, bright scarves and accessories were introduced, and another colour was allied to beige in the making of ensembles. It is marvellous what the colour experts have been able to do with the primitive red, yellow and blue. They have disguised undistinguishable shades under extraordinary names, which are likely to bewilder any poor woman looking for a simple blue frock.

Consider a few of the names: Ecstasy, eternity, manon, shadow, merida, rosita., dust, mirage, aloma, cinnabar. What wonder that many a woman looks a trifle hurt when she is told that her shoes and stockings, gloves and hat, do not tone. At the beginning of 1920 the Germans complicated matters a great deal by issuing a colour chart on which were 2,400 colours. This was too much even for the designers, who like to have plenty of variety.

A number of conferences have resulted in the elimination of colours considered unimportant and superfluous, and reduced the number by 2,354, leaving 46 shades to confuse the mind of woman.