THE COLOUR PINK
MEANING
The colour pink represents compassion, nurturing, romance, and love. It is associated with sweetness, childhood and playfulness and represents friendship, harmony, inner peace, and approachability.
It can also be associated with inexperience, weakness and inhibitions, timidity, or a tendency to be overly emotional.
As a mix of red and white, pink takes all the passion and energy of red and tempers it with the purity of white, leaving us with the colour of tenderness and affection.
HISTORY
Pink was first used as a colour name in the late 17th century and the colour has been described in literature since ancient times. In the Odyssey, written in approximately 800 BCE, Homer wrote "Then, when the child of morning, rosy-fingered dawn appeared..." Roman poets also described the colour. Roseus is the Latin word meaning "rosy" or "pink."
Pink was not a common colour in the fashion of the Middle Ages; nobles usually preferred brighter reds, such as crimson. However, it did appear in women's fashion, and in religious art. During the Renaissance, pink was mainly used for the flesh colour of faces and hands. The pigment commonly used for this was called light cinabrese; it was a mixture of the red earth pigment called sinopia, or Venetian red, and a white pigment called Bianco San Genovese, or lime white.
In the 18th century, pastel colours became very fashionable in all the courts of Europe. Pink was particularly championed by Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), the mistress of King Louis XV of France, who wore combinations of pale blue and pink, and had a particular tint of pink made for her by the Sevres porcelain factory, created by adding nuances of blue, black and yellow
In 19th century England, pink ribbons or decorations were often worn by young boys; boys were simply considered small men, and while men in England wore red uniforms, boys wore pink. In fact, the clothing for children in the 19th century was almost always white, since, before the invention of chemical dyes, clothing of any colour would quickly fade when washed in boiling water. Queen Victoria was painted in 1850 with her seventh child and third son, Prince Arthur, who wore white and pink.
In the 20th century, pinks became bolder, brighter, and more assertive, in part because of the invention of chemical dyes which did not fade.
The more recent association with women and femininity started around the mid-19th century when men in the Western world increasingly wore dark, sober colours, leaving brighter and pastel options to their female counterparts. Branding and marketing in post-war America that used it as a symbol of hyper-femininity, cementing a pervasive "pink for girls, blue for boys" stereotype.
While the West has had a somewhat gender-divided relationship with pink, it’s different in the Far East. In Japan, pink blossom trees represent fallen warriors, and the colour has masculine associations. In China pink wasn’t even recognised as a colour until contact with westerners – it was merely a shade of red. As such, it carries all the same positive associations and isn’t linked to gender. In Korea it represents trust.
Pink regained some its allure around the 1960s, when public figures such as Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe adopted it as mark of luxury. Punk bands like The Ramones and The Clash made it edgier in the 1980s, while in more recent decades, pop, celebrity, and hip-hop cultures have embraced the colour in different ways -- from Madonna performing in a Jean Paul Gaultier soft pink cone-cupped bustier in 1990, to rapper Cam'ron attending New York Fashion Week in a pink mink coat and matching hat in 2002, helping to show that pink could again be considered a men's colour.
Pink has also been embraced as a colour of protest and awareness for various other communities. Pink triangles, once used in concentration camps by the Nazis to identify homosexuals, became a symbol of gay activism in the 1970s.
Elsewhere, it has become internationally synonymous with the fight against breast cancer, in the form of a pink ribbon. In the US, meanwhile, female protesters have been wearing pink to signify ownership of their sexual, reproductive, and social rights.
PINK AND BRANDING
Pink can offer versatility for brands; it is fun and light-hearted. Unlike the colour red it’s unthreatening. Brands which employ pink can retain a sense of energy and youthfulness.
Pink will now always be associated with femininity at a subconscious level; however, a stronger and darker pink has the potential to hold its own against other traditionally non-corporate colours such as yellow, orange, and purple.