When exploring the era’s of design, something that really stood out to me was the deference in colour tones and how colours have been ascribed social meanings for thousands of years. We tend to think of the meanings of colour in fixed terms: red for anger, yellow for cowardice, pink for girls and so on. But when we look at different colours from a historical perspective, it turns out that their meanings are often changing depending on place and time.
Car manufacturer Dodge launched its 1955 pink and white ‘La Femme’ model (complete with lipstick holder and complementary pink umbrella) with the slogan ‘never a car more distinctly feminine’, while Elizabeth Arden used ‘Pink is for Girls’ to market their cosmetics. Over the years pink has changed from being primarily associated with women to becoming a gender neutral colour, of course not all men would choose to decorate their homes, or style themselves in this colour, but having the option to in this current decade is very important.
