How colour brings together garments that look nothing alike
The red belt takes up little space. Yet it changes the relationship between the short pink striped dress and the long tiered one.
These are two Paperlace Spring Summer 2021 looks, documented on page 10 of my portfolio. I was responsible for creative direction and collection development for the brand.
Red moves from an accent to a broad area of colour; pink and the pale shades return in different proportions. Colour direction makes these relationships clear and allows the garments to retain distinct shapes and roles.
Two roles for red
On the short dress, the fine stripes run down the bodice. The belt breaks their flow and focuses attention on the waist, while the white openwork hem introduces a wider pale band. The shoes worn with it pick up the red lower down and reinforce the look; the belt keeps that connection on the dress itself.
On the long dress, red covers the bodice and continues into the upper part of the skirt. The belt is red too, defining the waist within an area of the same colour. The sequence of pink, sand and white tiers draws the eye towards the hem.
Colour meets the surface
Pink also connects two different surfaces. On the short dress, it alternates with a pale shade in fine stripes; on the long one, it occupies a broad tier below the red. How the colour is distributed also shapes the relationship between the two garments.
A closer look at the long dress reveals sheer areas and overlapping layers that break up the surface of the tiers. On the short dress, the small openings in the openwork hem interrupt the white band. To read the colour, we also need to observe these shifts between solid areas and gaps, as well as the boundaries between shades.
The photographs allow us to observe these effects. To establish a material’s composition or how it responds to dyeing, we need technical information. A fabric’s handle, meaning how it feels to the touch, is assessed using samples. Datacolor also notes that texture, sheen and transparency influence how colour appears: visual assessment under controlled lighting remains necessary when approving a textile colour.
The palette and the garment’s proportions
A colour card with equal-sized swatches puts colours on the same footing, even though they will carry different visual weights on the garments. In these two Paperlace looks, placing red on a belt or across the bodice and the top of the skirt changes how we read the silhouette. The swatch alone leaves that decision open.
A colour card, after all, has no waist.
In Interaction of Color, published in 1963, Josef Albers proposed studying colour in context. Here, pink and the pale shades surround the red accent on the short dress; on the long one, they appear below a much broader red area.
An exercise in reading the collection
Cover the red belt on the short dress with a small piece of paper, leaving the shoes visible. Then look at the long dress again. The connection remains, but it drops towards the feet, further from the long dress’s red upper section. Uncover the belt and the connection returns close to the waist. The comparison isolates the contribution of that detail.
To preserve this relationship during development, an instruction to “pick up the red” would be incomplete. For this pair, it would need to describe the accent at the waist of the short dress and the broad red area on the long one. A change in material or volume would call for looking at the garments together again, because it could also change the visual weight of that colour.
Placed side by side, the two garments show a shared direction that remains recognisable across stripes and tiers.
Meanwhile, the white at the short dress’s hem deserves another look. It returns at the bottom of the long skirt, after pink and sand, on a different surface.
Romina Tosi
Disclaimer
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