Blue

Colors. They are all around us and ever-present in our lives. Most, if not all, of the food, clothes, accessories and objects we buy have been chosen at least partially based on their color. I, for example, still feel weird about purple cauliflower, even though it otherwise looks and tastes pretty much the same as its "normal" white cousin. Yet we almost never give colors much thought and relegate them to a second plane.

Purple Califlower (Photo by Sports Mom Survival Guide)

Browsing through Albertine (one of my favorite bookstores in New York), I encountered Le petit livre des couleurs (The Little Book of Colors) by Michel Pastoureau, French professor of Medieval history and expert in Western symbology, and Dominique Simonnet, French writer and journalist. Pastoureau and Simonnet recount the cultural associations and historical developments behind colors and provide a short, easy-to-read, and incredibly interesting introduction into the "world of colors". A world that, I have to admit, was very much unknown to me until then.

Each color is unique and has such a particular history and "identity", and today I will talk about with blue.

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Blue seems to be everybody's favorite color. My personal experience confirms it: when asking friends what their favorite color was, most of them said blue, and if you asked me the same question, I'd say blue is one of my two favorite colors (I don't like all shades of blue, which is why blue isn't my single favorite color). More importantly and scientifically, actual research confirms it too: a survey made by YouGov found that blue is the number one favorite color across the 10 countries and 4 continents where the study was conducted (from Germany to the US to Hong Kong to Australia to Indonesia), and almost every other credible source and article I read had similar findings. However, blue wasn't always so popular.

Blue's Humble Origins

In ancient Rome, the "king of colors" was red. Blue was the color of Barbarians, of foreigners, and having blue eyes was considered bad luck for a woman (a "sign of a bad life", according to Pastoureau) and a sign of ridicule for men.

In ancient Greece, vocabulary distinctions between blue, gray and green were blurred. Furthermore, there was no word for blue in ancient Greek, and Homer described the sea as "wine-dark" instead of blue in The Odyssey. Some 19th century philologists even came to believe that perhaps the Greeks weren't able to see the color blue.

Blue is also barely mentioned in the Aramaic and Greek versions of the bible. Ancient biblical texts apparently used very few words for colors. The latter were only added in the translations into Latin and then into modern languages. I was surprised to learn about some of these "translations" from the original Hebrew into the Latin bible:

• The Hebrew "rich", became the Latin "red".

• "Dirty" became "gray" or "black".

• "Bright" became "purple".

Pastoureau claims that even though blue is naturally abundant in the Mediterranean region, it is difficult to manufacture and master blue pigments, and this is probably the reason why blue didn't play a significant role in the social, religious or symbolic life of classical ancient civilizations.

Blue's Cinderella Story

Today, blue is considered a discreet, rational color. It is associated with wisdom, conservative values, and used by reputable international organizations such as the UN and EU in their emblems. Out of curiosity, I did a Google search, and every single one of the 8 international organizations that came up has a blue emblem (the UNESCO official webpage shows its logo with white letters in a blue background). But if blue had so little relevance in the Ancient world, then how did it achieve the prominent place it now has?

Blue Everywhere

It all started with religious changes around the 12th and 13th centuries, a period in which Europe was predominantly Catholic. The Christian God became a god of light, and light started being depicted as blue. For the first time in the West, the skies were painted blue (previously, they had been black, red, white or golden). In addition, more people started worshipping Virgin Mary who, through her blue robes, became one the color's main promoters. In time, the French kings started wearing blue as well, medieval lords started imitating them and, in three generations, blue became an "in" color in the aristocratic world.

Philip II was the first French king to adopt blue

Towards the end of Medieval times, the Reformation's moral codes separated colors into two categories: those that were dignified and proper and those that were not. Reformists valued restraint and austerity, so it should come as no surprise that this got translated into an appreciation for a more discreet palette, where the "proper" colors were white, black, gray, brown and blue.

The Reformation's moral discourse, which was partially adopted by the Counter Reformation as well, promoted black, gray and blue for men's clothes. This legacy reaches us today, and if you walk by any street in New York, Paris or London (or most of the Western world), I can guarantee almost everyone, not only men but also women, will be dressed primarily in one of those three colors.

This bias towards dark and neutral colors was a bit of a shock to me at first (if you walk by any street in Colombia, you will find most people wearing colorful clothes and all kinds of patterns). However, it is so prevalent and pervasive, especially in New York City, it has slowly influenced my wardrobe choices, to the point where I now feel weird and a little self-conscious wearing the colorful clothes I used to love.

Typical NYC Scene (Photo by ABC News)

From the 18th century onwards, aided by technological and cultural developments, blue became Europeans' favorite color. Dyers and painters got better at producing and working with blue, and the Romantic era further promoted it: Goethe's Werther wore blue and German poetry celebrated this melancholic color. Then in 1850 Levi Strauss came up with the blue jean, which eventually boosted even further the widespread use of blue in Western societies. By the 1930s, the blue jean became a casual garment, and by the turn of the century, it was already present and incredibly popular (worn by the rich and the poor, the famous and the unknown, and urban and rural dwellers alike) almost everywhere around the world.

Pastoureau thinks the "reign" of blue is here to stay, at least for a while. In the meantime, blue will continue to be omnipresent and associated with wise, discreet, and reasonable choices.