Colours in Fashion: x. Brown
- Joanna
- Jul 7, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: Jan 25
To create the colour brown with paint, you can mix equal amounts of the three primary colours: red, yellow and blue. Although it is considered a tertiary colour, it can also be created by mixing black with orange.
Another way to make brown using paint is by combining a secondary colour with its complementary colour: for example, mixing green with red; purple with yellow or orange with blue.
As all the primary hues can be used to create brown, there is a wide palette of brown shades, with different undertones. More yellow in the brown will result in a sandy brown; more blue in the brown will create a plum brown; more red in the brown will produce a mahogany or brick brown; a lack of blue will result in a more true brown.
Brown is abundant in nature and represents an earthy, rustic, natural, practical, down-to-earth, comfortable or luxurious image in fashion. It is associated with wood, coconuts, autumn leaves, animal fur, soil and clay.
While brown can sometimes be linked to dirt and waste, suggesting ugliness or poverty; historically it has also been a symbol of modesty and simplicity in clothing. In ancient Rome, the urban poor were known as 'Pullati,' meaning those dressed in brown. Franciscan monks wore an espresso shade to signify their vows of chastity and poverty. In the fourteenth Century, sumptuary laws designated russet brown for professions such as carters and oxherds.
Renaissance artists such as Correggio, Caravaggio and Rembrandt used shadows and brown pigments to add richness and depth to their artworks. Seventeenth Century Dutch artist Anthony van Dyck utilised a shade known as Cassel Earth, which later became 'Van Dyck Brown.'
In the 1920s, taupes and neutral brown tones were incorporated into Art Deco fashion to achieve an elegant, sophisticated and luxurious appearance.
Light brown was often associated with trench warfare and was adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party's paramilitary group, the 'Sturmabteilung' or 'Brown Shirts.' Formerly, the colour had been part of European soldiers' uniforms since the sixteenth Century.
During the 1970s, earthy hues such as rust, tan and auburn became wardrobe and interior essentials, reflecting the increasing interest in ecology and conservation.
