Colour as an afterthought... PART I

Feel like I am opening the door to an abandoned room, & Mine Eyes are squinting, trying to re-adjust to the light. Sorry for neglecting you blogdom, our travelling boutique 'Swanfield on Tour' has been keeping me busy. Loie Fuller can scare away the dust with her "Serpentine Dance".



This is the most beautiful footage, and I could hardly believe it was made as early as 1896. It kind of pre-empts the rise of fashion film today over the frozen image, and shows a hyper real quality given to film by early colour tinting. The inky lilac blending to pink as she lifts her arms, constantly weaving new shapes which burn into acidic yellow & banging orange... it's mesmerizing to watch. The movement of her dress as she dances suggests a continuing metamorphosis, as if she is turning into a butterfly.






















Pinched cheeks, cherry stained lips and eyes like crystal pools… when black and white photographs were hand-coloured, part of their charm is when they went outside the lines… Not an exact science, portrait artists paid attention to heightening their subjects features, yet in doing so, create a somewhat warped sense of colour. This is what I find most alluring about these tinted postcards.






















Here is a postcard of twenties film star, Lilian Gish who was the muse for my AW08 collection “Elsie Moved in Circles”. One of the pretty young things emerging from the jazz era, she fared better than some male actors who were also attacked by the paint box.






















For sometime I've been interested in the idea of "colour as an afterthought" and so I dabbled with this mode of colour in my drawing of Lilian Gish, her hairline merging into the city lights of skyscrapers and refracting into kaleidoscopic shapes. This was the key digital print for AW08 which is still one of my favourite collections.






















Judy Garland sang wistfully “Somewhere over a rainbow"... and when she stepped from the grey scales of Kansas into the colourful canvas of Oz, the rainbow came and Dorothy's shoes got their magic.
































The symbolism of colour appearing within a black and white film makes for some poignant moments, like the red that appears on the lips of a fifties housewife in 'Pleasantville' when she rediscovers love, or the red coat in 'Schindler's list', or the red and green siamese fighting fish in 'Rumble Fish'...









... oh k, time to close Mine eyes, and click my heels. There's no place like home x