English Colours

There was at least one school of aesthetic thought (if it can be called that) in India that required one to dress in "English colours" which chiefly constituted pastels. Apart from the fact that we have chalked up 60+ years as an independent nation and are no longer English, this school's death knell may also have been sounded by the new aggressively marketed Bollywood which ignores anything that is not a sherbet colour.

This preference for English colours was no doubt a leftover of the Raj and touted as an indicator of respectable, good taste - as opposed to those untouched by the Angrez who persisted with vermilion red and brilliant yellow. That English colours do not equal pastels and is indeed a fairly fluid concept was brought home to me in many ways, most notably in The French Lieutenant's Woman which took a diversion into brilliant costumes and aniline dyes (also of interest to me as a chemist). In fact Victorian ladies possibly looked like this:



Likewise, Byatt's Victoriana oddity Angels and Insects also had brilliant costumes, albeit to literally illustrate the author's theme.



If I had to choose an English colour, it would be the autumnal palette of the Aesthetic movement. Not too far from that brief flowering of ethnic wear in the early 80s in India but more on that some other day.