The colours we wear are personal decisions, but the colours we don are a culmination of the industrial system behind fashion, textile production and the marketing of those items.

I can barely fathom the complexities of that global market, and how it ends in my trousers, or pant purchase that is. Too complex to tackle in my Draperies to Duds: an accelerated enactment of a lifecycle blog, I can however, focus on an element of that industry I enjoy and always appreciate, even placing wagers on. That is, the naming of the colour of the year! The announcement for 2023 came out yesterday, December 1st. I am overjoyed at their selection, as I had already been playing with the reds and magentas within this colour wheel.

The drapery colours in this installation are copied from the colours my grandmother used to make her quilts, which she made prolifically, for everyone in the family. My Grandmother wore the very saturated colours of that early iteration polyester, the leisure pants suit. She used those suits she used to make the quilts.  Thanks to Gramma’s fickle taste, much love to give, and a pressing need to never idle, I became the benefactor of three of her quilts. They have fabulous colour combinations, and yucky fibre content. I was able to explore her colour combinations over the length of about 55 yards of hand weaving.

We don’t have individual input in choosing the colour of the year, upcoming industrial textile production, or the fibre content in those textiles, but we can decide whether we opt in, or not, that is personal. Many of us would like to shake off this past year, dump our veri-peri’s and wrap ourselves in 2023’s viva magenta. Whether you add viva magenta to your life, or you are doubting it will fit in with the other colours, be assured, as I just learned, over fifty five yards of hand weaving, viva magenta and veri-peri look great together, just like my Gramma’s quilt.  You can trust your grandmother, or my Gramma.