First, a confession. I thought “lavender” was spelled “lavendar”. Really! Me, the Typo-Psycho! I was getting it mixed up with “calendar”. This is a prime example of the Middle-Aged-Mush-Brain I am currently experiencing.
Now that I know how to spell it properly, let’s talk about it.
Lavender is light purple. I used to hate that color. This was the result of a trauma that happened when I was in about the 3rd grade.
My older sister had a bee-yoo-tee-full lavender dress that I COULD NOT WAIT for her to outgrow. Finally, finally, it came to me. I tried it on, looked in the mirror and was HORRIFIED. My skin looked YELLOW!! I ran to find Mom and told her, “This dress makes my skin look yellow!” She was astonished that yes indeed, it did make my skin look yellow and probably even more astonished that her 8 year old daughter noticed such a thing.
It was a life-defining moment, although I didn’t know it at the time.
In the 1980s, my Mom took my older sister and me to a color consultant to “have our colors done”. (My younger sister was and is too smart to need this and too cute to care.) Doesn’t that sound wonderful?
It was. Turns out that everyone can wear almost every color. The problems occur when you choose the wrong shade. That lavender did not have enough blue in it to suit me. I still have my color swatches from that session, and they have helped me tremendously through the years.
You can learn about it from a book called “Color Me Beautiful” by Carole Jackson.
I also learned that as we age, our eyes become more aware of the color purple. Sure enough, in the last 5 years or so, I have come to be almost obsessed with the purple color that has a ton of blue in it. There is a version called periwinkle, and a darker version that is the color of my favorite dutch iris and some lupine and definitely a penstemmon and for sure my favorite Mineral King wildflower called “Explorer’s Gentian.
Explorer’s Gentian
So, I’ve grown from “I hate lavender” to “Oh wow, check out that color!”
What else would you expect from a color junkie?
