Indigo

I have written about indigo before .... mentioning that it was produced from a marine snail, but at the same time indigo can also be obtained from the indigo plant. The entry on Wikipedia has quite a bit of information. it is a purplish-blue colour and usually quite expensive when manufactured from one of the two organic sources.

I'm more interested in the use in fashionable garb. The most fascinating use is for the traditional garments worn by the "Blue men of the desert".

Picture from: "Colors of Africa" by Duncan Clarke

The indigo in their clothing is not dyed in the usual way, since water is scarce. Therefore the indigo is pounded into the fabric, instead of boiled, giving the fabric a beautiful sheen (as seen in the picture above), but as the garment is worn, the dye rubs off onto the skin as can be seen in the pictures below. Because indigo is an expensive dye, it has become a status symbol amongst the Tuareg; the bluer the skin, the richer the wearer. The Tuareg have  always fascinated me and only after visiting quite a few sites did I come across the fact that the Tuareg use the indigo plant to dye their clothes.

Other African tribes use indigo for items like the one below.

 Indigo resist dye, hand-spun cotton; Dyula peoples, Bobo-Dioulasso region, Burkina Faso, 1990's
Taken from "The Art of African Textiles" by Duncan Clarke

All other pictures taken from this website

The most famous piece of indigo clothing we know, is denim (on which I will have to do another post).
Denim has been warp dyed, meaning that only the warp threads (the ones that run length-wise) have been dyed with the blue. Since the end of the 19th century synthetic dyes have replaced organic indigo, and linked mostly with practical fabrics and work clothes. Further information can be found here...

In the Bible, indigo is not mentioned by name, but whenever the cloth is dyed "purple" or blue, probably indigo was used. You can see that there are quite a number of references and each of them is found in relation to Kings, wealth or at least denoting some indication that the cloth was expensive. I have mentioned before that the "Proverbs 31 woman" is a trader in purple cloth, i.e. she is so rich that she can support her family so that they lack nothing.

As part of the rainbow, it is one of those colours that appear, but that people cannot usually distinguish from purple, or even see on the colour chart, because we divide the chart into three and then further into 6 (and not 7). Indigo sits between the blue and the purple on the colour chart and as such, is a beautiful colour, if you look at the reference in Wikipedia.

There is not much more to say.... happy browsing through the websites

Blue

Second-last post in the series "All the colours of the Rainbow"
We all have had the blues, right? Funny how blue in the English language is associated with feeling depressed or "down", when blue skies imply sunshine and a happy day.
Being of German descent, I cannot resist giving the meaning for being blue in German: drunk. The Afrikaans combines the two states into "dronkverdriet" (drunken depression), but does not associate that state of affairs with being blue.

There is a German kiddies song that goes:

Blau, blau, blau sind alle

   meine Kleider,

Blau, blau, blau ist alles, was ich hab.

Darum lieb ich alles, was so blau ist,

Weil mein Schatz ein Seemann,

   Seemann ist. 

Blue, blue, blue are all

   my clothes

Blue, blue, blue is all that I have

So I love anything that's blue

because my love is a sailor,

   a sailor.

On a more serious note: the sky above is blue, and sometimes the lakes and rivers reflect the blueness to then also be drawn / photographed as blue. (Case in point - pictures taken from deviantart profile: alexandru1988 - go to his profile for some awe inspiring work)

In the Bible, blue and scarlet are often used in conjunction. I have discussed this already in the post on scarlet and actually noticed that scarlet, purple and blue are mentioned as one and the same colour, or at least quite close to each other in shade and intensity. I think, that there is quite a difference between what we would call indigo (purplish blue - think denim) and blue and scarlet (reddish), but in biblical times the shades probably depended on the kinds of dye and the concentration used in the solution. Also, perhaps how much the fabric was "bleached" in the sun or eventually worn - time fades the colours and leaves a redder tint rather than a blue one.

The point remains though, that scarlet, blue and indigo (purple) are all royal colours and were extremely expensive. In the references given you will see that blue and scarlet are mentioned in the garments of the priests as well, setting them apart from the rest of the population. Mostly fine linen was used to be dyed in these colours, making the priestly garments even more expensive.

Finally, as Christians, we are called to be a "royal priesthood" (1 Peter 2:9) and in that sense set apart for service to God, showing by our dress that we belong to him by not conforming to the world. This does not mean we are to be dressed in scarlet and indigo, but that we show by our differences that we belong to someone else.

Green

I have heard or read once that green has more shades than any other colour - just look at the colours when you try to change the colours in a program

Usually associated with hope and growth, but also with death, jealousy, sickness and envy. Nature is most likely to come to mind when thinking about green, though.

Just look at those shades....

Now we can get lost in nature - all of God's creation.

From the history of fashion we can learn a few things:
1) during the middle ages, right up to about the turn of the 20th century, fashion took forever to change -sometimes decades went by with only minor changes in dress.
2) Fashion was determined by the upper class - mainly royalty
3) Exclusive fabrics were only available to royalty - as in the Napoleonic era, where the French silk production was not allowed to be used for anyone else but the emperor and everything, from curtains to upholstery to fashion was done in silk. This also meant that the French silk industry flourished, but faltered thereafter, since it could not be sustained.

If we dig a little deeper, we can very quickly get to environmental issues and protection. This of course links up with environmental fashion or sustainable fashion. Unfortunately no-one really knows how to define sustainable fashion, since fashion is not really sustainable in any way, because of planned obsolescence. This means that every six months, if not more, fashion changes. This is either because we demand the change (instant gratification), or because we have become used to the changes that anything that lingers in the shops will be old fashioned. Now if you have linked to the article, you will notice that there is much work to be done, and though words like "green" and "Eco-friendly" and "Organic" pop up, what will that mean for the normal guy on the street?

I cannot answer those questions either and I suppose they turn into ethical issues as well - how much do we need to take care of our planet? Are we not supposed to be its steward? When it comes to fashion, how much are we destroying the planet in the process, with all the dyes and processes that a piece of fabric goes through? If we continue like this, where is it going to stop?

Orange

This is more difficult than I thought. There are no matches for the word "Orange" in the Bible. But I think that there are some implied references just by the amount of sunsets and sunrises that are mentioned.

 

Also, one can link it up to "fire" of which there are a number of references. (437 in fact) 

Another aspect, I suppose is the fact that it refers to a fruit. Unfortunately, the orange is also linked with orange peel, which links it up with beauty and plastic surgery on a completely different level of interpretation.

Coming to orange fashion, it seems that orange is quite the colour this summer - although these trends will hit South Africa only next time around i.e. at the end of the year. Still, I think it is a very versatile colour and will suit most people's skin. 

Speaking of skin colour: the colouring of skin is divided according to seasons - so Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Each has their respective colour scheme that goes best with hair, skin and eyes. So, for Autumn (which I am), this is the basic palette: Taken from this website.

There are some greys and darker browns that will work just as well. If you want to have your own analysis done, go the website above and try it out.

After all that linking you had to do, let me summarise. Orange, like all the colours of the rainbow enriches our lives in that provides for more shades to be produced. It is part of God's creation and without it the world would be rather dull. Who can imagine a sunrise/sunset without it?

Yellow

After contemplating yellow for a while, I did a Bible search, thinking that the colour would be mentioned in relation to the sun or radiance, but quite the opposite was true. There are only four references actually, three of which were quite yukky. The fourth had to do one of the beasts of revelation and the yukky smell of sulphur.

Hmmmm

Why then is it that we think of the sun as yellow, when in biblical terms it is white and pure? Although, when the sun is mentioned, often it relates to harvest and growth as well as sunrises and sunsets as indications of time as well as heat. If you read Ecclesiastes, there is a lot about life "under the sun", meaning life on earth without considering God.

This still does not have anything to do with yellow, right? Correct. Perhaps I read too much into the colour, and thought it had positive connotations, but even, according to Wikipedia, the colour used to be associated with cowardice and jaundice, caution (as on traffic lights) and aging - so not the most pleasing in any way. Also, sulfur is yellow, and we all know what that smells like....

So, fashionistas, for inspiration you can go to Wikipedia and get loads of colour inspiration for the future, although I'm not sure how the colour "Olive" wound up there, is that not a shade of green? Perhaps I also forgot that often yellow is used instead of gold. Now we are getting to positive connotations. The colour also often is associated with happiness, and isn't this what we all want fashion to give us? After all, isn't the Happy Face yellow and a fashion statement at that?

Not sure what else to say. I then did a search for yellow in fashion, and this yielded a few more results, but not quite what I was trying to say. Since this is part of the post about All the Colours of the Rainbow, I think I need to link this up with orange, so that the link with sunsets will become clearer, so until then.....

All the colours of the Rainbow

What are the colours of the Rainbow....?

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Indigo
Violet

The fact that there are seven seems significant to me, since it is the number that God uses to represent completeness.

However, I don't know why what we know as "purple" on the normal colour wheel would have been split to give indigo and violet.

I like the fact that when we talk about the entire spectrum we will refer to the colours as "All the colours of the rainbow". Even with technology we can try to reproduce the entire spectrum, but it is amazing that our eyes can identify changes in colour without any technological aids.

Looking at the colour wheel, we are taught that there are three primary and three secondary colours. we can split them up further to lessen the stark changes. Furthermore we can add black to each and get all the shades and then also add white to get all the tints, to produce a wheel similar to the picture.

Add a little more black or a little more white, and you have a different colour altogether. That is why one has to be so careful about dyelots when ordering fabric for production. One cannot mix dyelots within garments, because it will be noticed, especially under neon light or sunlight, and after washing the garment a few times it will start to show.

Unlike the fading of fabric, the promise behind the rainbow, to never destroy the earth again by flood will not ever fade away. (Genesis 9:12-16)

I started the blog with black and white and then went on to scarlet and violet (purple) in another post, which you can read by clicking on the relevant link in the list above. In the future I will look at each of the colours, just keep on reading.

Ok, Yellow and Orange have been added, follow the link above.
EDIT Green and blue are up - one remaining
EDIT: All colours are linked. Happy reading