A rose by any other colour

IT was a scene that is all too rare these days.

A man walked into a women’s fashion shop in search of a birthday present for his mother.

After the usual browsing he spotted a jumper that he thought would be just right: right size, right style and perhaps the right colour.

He took it to the shop assistant. “What colour would you say this is?” he asked.

She pondered for a moment. “Sage?” she offered.

“Maybe,” he said, “but I thought it was more avocado.”

The shop assistant nodded vigorously. “Yes, avocado is closer.”

Then she looked at the jumper’s price ticket. “Let’s just see what it says here.”

She turned it over.

There is one word on the back of the ticket: green.

Well, hallelujah and pass the common sense!

Finally, someone somewhere has the courage to call a colour for what it is: green is green — light or dark — not sage and not avocado.

Hopefully this is evidence of an end to some of the ridiculous names for basic colours.

Let’s have no more oatmeal, no more banana and no more aubergine. If colours are named after food, we may as well all give up.

The reason for the proliferation of these names or descriptions is obvious.

Simply put, there is a greater range of subtle hues and shades of everything available everywhere.

Most of us are happy to embrace them – we want to look beyond the white car on the lot, forget about the blue shirt in the department store, pass over the sensible black shoes for something with a little more distinction and perhaps a little more attitude.

The trend might have originated in the 1960s, when it became impossibly unhip to wear colours that actually went by the names of colours.

The beige cardigan and the grey slacks were just too much, though it has to be said the cardigan and the slacks are coming off a low base no matter what colour you call them.

Nonetheless, the beige cardigan became that equally naff ‘fawn’, which was just a staging post for the rush of alternatives – buff, oatmeal and sand.

Grey became slate, granite and sometimes stone.

With all this geology going on in relation to men’s slacks and suits, it seems surprising in retrospect, that nothing was ever called ‘dirt’, or better still, ‘mud’.

That kind of madness had some potential – mud could have become the new black.

Instead, that honour – and I use the word loosely – went to brown. Now, brown was the 1970s colour.

Then it was dark brown or light brown (just a shade away from beige, you understand).

Brown’s renaissance could only happen in the current climate, when different words for colours attempt to disguise the real colour.

Brown is particularly good at this. The fashionistas have tried to make brown appealing by describing it in sweet, decadent, melting and, for those with brown-trauma from all those years ago, sickly terms.

That’s why you get caramel, hazelnut and chocolate.

That’s why one of the women’s hair colours on the market is called warm brown. So what would cold brown be like? When the time comes for black to re-establish itself, it doesn’t revert to black, it becomes midnight.

Is it too much to ask to call blue, blue instead of azure?

If something’s orange, can’t we say it’s orange instead of terracotta?

If something’s cream, can we say it’s cream, rather than neutral, which is what the Swiss were during the war?

My late father, who spent his life surrounded by men’s clothing, refused to adopt any of these affectations, with only one exception.

That was heliotrope, a shade of purple not much used in menswear, and therefore a colour my father kept up his sleeve, so to speak, for special occasions to impress friends.

But we knew that everything else was just a load of silliness. Be honest now: if a car salesman describes a car to you in terms of the colour of a vegetable, are you really going to buy it?

No, the truth is that it’s time we stood up and said, just like the fairytale, that the emperor has no clothes.

Sure, he looks like he’s wearing something in a flesh colour, but we all know the truth.

It’s pink.

He took it to the shop assistant. “What colour would you say this is?” he asked.

She pondered for a moment. “Sage?” she offered.

“Maybe,” he said, “but I thought it was more avocado.”

The shop assistant nodded vigorously. “Yes, avocado is closer.”

Then she looked at the jumper’s price ticket. “Let’s just see what it says here.”

She turned it over.

There is one word on the back of the ticket: green.

Well, hallelujah and pass the common sense!

Finally, someone somewhere has the courage to call a colour for what it is: green is green — light or dark — not sage and not avocado.

Hopefully this is evidence of an end to some of the ridiculous names for basic colours.

Let’s have no more oatmeal, no more banana and no more aubergine. If colours are named after food, we may as well all give up.

The reason for the proliferation of these names or descriptions is obvious.

Simply put, there is a greater range of subtle hues and shades of everything available everywhere.

Most of us are happy to embrace them – we want to look beyond the white car on the lot, forget about the blue shirt in the department store, pass over the sensible black shoes for something with a little more distinction and perhaps a little more attitude.

The trend might have originated in the 1960s, when it became impossibly unhip to wear colours that actually went by the names of colours.

The beige cardigan and the grey slacks were just too much, though it has to be said the cardigan and the slacks are coming off a low base no matter what colour you call them.

Nonetheless, the beige cardigan became that equally naff ‘fawn’, which was just a staging post for the rush of alternatives – buff, oatmeal and sand.

Grey became slate, granite and sometimes stone.

With all this geology going on in relation to men’s slacks and suits, it seems surprising in retrospect, that nothing was ever called ‘dirt’, or better still, ‘mud’.

That kind of madness had some potential – mud could have become the new black.

Instead, that honour – and I use the word loosely – went to brown. Now, brown was the 1970s colour.

Then it was dark brown or light brown (just a shade away from beige, you understand).

Brown’s renaissance could only happen in the current climate, when different words for colours attempt to disguise the real colour.

Brown is particularly good at this. The fashionistas have tried to make brown appealing by describing it in sweet, decadent, melting and, for those with brown-trauma from all those years ago, sickly terms.

That’s why you get caramel, hazelnut and chocolate.

That’s why one of the women’s hair colours on the market is called warm brown. So what would cold brown be like? When the time comes for black to re-establish itself, it doesn’t revert to black, it becomes midnight.

Is it too much to ask to call blue, blue instead of azure?

If something’s orange, can’t we say it’s orange instead of terracotta?

If something’s cream, can we say it’s cream, rather than neutral, which is what the Swiss were during the war?

My late father, who spent his life surrounded by men’s clothing, refused to adopt any of these affectations, with only one exception.

That was heliotrope, a shade of purple not much used in menswear, and therefore a colour my father kept up his sleeve, so to speak, for special occasions to impress friends.

But we knew that everything else was just a load of silliness. Be honest now: if a car salesman describes a car to you in terms of the colour of a vegetable, are you really going to buy it?

No, the truth is that it’s time we stood up and said, just like the fairytale, that the emperor has no clothes.

Sure, he looks like he’s wearing something in a flesh colour, but we all know the truth.

It’s pink.