FWIW, “mauve” was one of the coal-tar dyes developed in the mid-19th century that made eye-wateringly bright clothing fashionable for a few decades.
It was an eye-popping magenta purple
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HOWEVER, like most aniline dyes, it faded badly, to a washed-out blue-grey …
…which was the color ignorant youngsters in the 1920s associated with “mauve”.
(This dress is labeled “mauve” as it is the color the above becomes after fading).
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They colored their vision of the past with washed-out pastels that were NOTHING like the eye-popping electric shades the mid-Victorians loved. This 1926 fashion history book by Paul di Giafferi paints a hugely distorted, I would say dishonest picture of the past.
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Ever since then this faded bluish lavender and not the original electric eye-watering hot pink-purple is the color associated with the word “mauve”.
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Art conservator here! I did part of my master’s degree on Perkin’s mauve dye (which he named mauveine) and it’s a violet purple, not quite so magenta as that first dress pic. I got to do chemical analysis on an actual 1856 sample of the dye! And the sample I dissolved and painted out on paper most resembled Pantone 266, which apparently translates to hex #7329b0. Mauveine is significant because it was THE FIRST synthetic dye ever made.
And it was actually quite fade-resistant! Much moreso than natural dyes. People in the 1920s would have known about their grandmothers’ super bright colors, because those dresses were still folded up in the attic or still in scraps in patchwork quilts, and their grannies were right there to tell them (just like my 2020s niece recently tried on some 1960s dresses that belongd to my mom). And the word magenta has kept its meaning, even though it was also an aniline dye of the same era (and might be the dye in that first dress, aka fuchsine). So I don’t know why the word mauve came to mean a muddy pale color, but I don’t think it’s because later generations were ignorant about historic dye colors. Apparently the color name “mauve taupe” was first used in 1925 for a muddy purple, so maybe that was the start of the shift.
PS, mauve is named for the French word for the mallow flower (probably this one, Malva sylvestris). I love it.
PS! (Sorry-not-sorry, I just really love mauveine history), read more about Perkin’s mauve here! And look at this dress dyed with mauveine. Gorgeous! I can barely imagine how amazing that time must have been, to see previously unattainable brilliant flower colors on fabric. We’re so used to having fabric in absolutely any color we want, but there just wasn’t any purple dye like that ever before.
PPS (SORRY AGAIN!) I was curious about that first dress, and I searched around and found that it was listed on another tumblr as being mauveine, but that was incorrect. The dress lives at the V&A and they describe it as being a magenta dye, but they don’t identify which dye. But also, the first picture posted here appears to have been color enhanced compared to the V&A’s photos. Go and look, it’s gorgeous.
Thank you so much! for your additions to my old semi-informed post that for no reasons I can discern (I am a tiny account) went viral.
This is a fascinating addition that gives it way more context. I wish I had known it when I made the OP, especially given the views it’s been getting.
Now I wonder if people in the 1920s thought mauve was that washed out grey-violet because of the fugitive nature of printer’s inks?
Or maybe it was just one of those things.
Anyway, thank you so much. This is really interesting!
Hi again OP! By the mid-late 19th century, most printer’s inks were just as stable as fabric dyes, or even moreso. Some were also aniline dyes like the ones used in fabric. Maybe someone in fashion started hyping a muddy purple as the cool new mauve and soon everyone was talking about it, like how “millennial pink” got invented. I think more fashion/design history research is needed, which is not my forte.
Brazilian here! Brazil didn’t Ban twitter. Here’s what happened:
Brazilian justice subpoena’d Twitter as a company for the information of 7 accounts of people who are under investigation for being involved with the unconstitutional riot of January 7, 2022, led by far right figures who refused to accept the election results after known military criminal Jair Bolsonaro was not reelected. Rather than comply, Elon decided to close Twitter offices in Brazil, as he believes the due process is an infrigement on freedom of speech, for some reason. Because it is illegal under Brazilian law for any business to operate in Brazil without a local legal representative, the Supreme Court demanded the company appoint one in order to continue operating in Brazilian territory. Elon refused. Therefore, as per Brazilian Law, Twitter is no longer permitted to operate in national territory. This can be reversed once Twitter appoints a legal representative of Twitter in Brazil.
This is not a political act of censorship onto Brazilian people. It is a consequence of Elon Musk’s failure to comply with Brazilian Law. In short: Brazil didn’t ban Twitter, Twitter left Brazil.
holy shit its so much worse. i thought it was a content moderation issue. like “hey you have nazis on you site that not allowed here” and musk said piss off. i didnt know there were specific people actually under investigation for crime.
Okay no I need to talk about the book version of Howl’s Moving Castle. I love the movie but the book has such a different vibe and you, yes you, should read it.
Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn’t shut up if you paid him.
Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it’s really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it’s even funnier.
In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.
In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch’s plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie’s magic works is pretty darn cool.)
In the movie, there’s a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there’s a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.
The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her “destiny” is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she’s so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie’s sisters come up much more in the book and they’re great.) There’s also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.
In the movie, the fourth and final location that the magic door connects to is some sort of black void / mindscape / time portal dealy. In the book the fourth location is Wales, in the UK, on Earth, so that Howl can visit his family, because from Howl’s perspective this is an isekai story.
PRESENTATION 26.3 · HEDRON Expedition 3. We located the source of the resonance in Slidescape-36. It is an entity, a living organism of a considerable mass. I’ve named it “Hedron” based on its physical shape… the part that we can perceive. I honestly think there’s… The resonance it emits… The frequencies… We’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve built a container for it, we’ve brought it in. This changes everything. It’s beyond our understanding.
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