Importance of Colour in Fashion

‘If fashion were a song, colour would be the beat.’ – Fran Keenan, Saks

Colour is the first thing other people notice about us, and its impact is immediate and long-lasting. Our fashion colour choices say a lot about the image we are trying to portray and how we feel about ourselves.

Everyone expresses themselves through colour. From the moment we pick out our clothes in the morning, to the shade of lipstick or scarf we put on, to the time we put on our pajamas at night, colour factors into how we convey emotion, identity, and meaning.

So if colour is so fundamental, it only makes sense for brands to adopt a colour strategy that conveys their core values to consumers in a single glance. Unfortunately, colour is also one of the most fluid and frustratingly subjective things to quantify.

Psychoanalysist and Sigmund Freud collaborator Carl Jung famously said, “Colour is the mother tongue of the subconscious.” So if the effects of colour are so difficult to codify, how can brands and designers tap into this primal conduit to a consumer’s emotional core? The answer lies in an industry that’s almost completely dominated by seasonal (aka “subjective”) colour trends: Fashion.

While certain colours almost always align with certain emotions or traits, dozens of academic studies agree that, “It’s more important for the colors to support the personality you want to portray instead of trying to align with stereotypical color associations.”

Colour decisions begin at one of the first stages of the development cycle, the ‘colour palette’ is what designers use to begin their first selection of experiments with colour.  The first initial selections of the colour palette are important because those colours define the personality of the collection. The colour story will then collaborate with the prints, yarn dyed fabrics and other accessories and finally, the garments.  approximately 200 pieces of textiles are used for one collection.

Colour palette decisions can be time-consuming, however the initial drive to get them right is the potential of a successful sell. Also colour grabs the customer’s attention and makes an emotional connection with them, colour charts are also known as a piece of abstract artwork in its own right, Gerhard Richter who is a famous painter produced his series of colour charts, this fact supports the point of the sub conscious, emotional connection customers have with colour.

Colour is also absorbed by the consumer in fashion in advertising, when colour was accessible through a TV set; a newspaper, or magazine, colour has set the mood of the campaign and what the designer has to offer.