As each January, the Pantone has elected its "color of the year", which is supposed to inspire designers and seduce the crowds in the worlds of fashion, beauty or decoration. After the "tangerine tango" (bright orange) in 2012, the "emerald" was chosen as vintage color. Color wise if one believes the various comments that this announcement has raised (the shade is so very smooth, designated as "soft", "nice", "cool", "spontaneous", "natural", etc.. ). Emerald green is it a color so "without history"?
How we see color is not neutral: we do not apprehend a fact chromatic gross. The apprehension of tint is indeed always taken in a network of cultural meanings, the legacy of a set of theories and social practices (artistic, religious or techniques) that we do not realize it, but our guide tastes and preferences. In his books on color, historian Michel Pastoureau constantly reminded: "The problems of color can not be reduced to no biological or neurobiological problems. They are largely social or ideological," says he and in his captivating blue.
And it is clear with green, a fortiori in its shade emerald layers of meaning and implicit symbols abound, making the proclamation of fashion emerald green, if problematic, at least no more complex than 'it seems: "If the French stores of clothes, even today, offer for sale so few green items (...), but also and especially because green sells difficult because of the beliefs which surround men, but more women, this color is considered to bring bad luck. Several vendors clothing for ladies have confirmed that green robes went wrong. One of them, working in a large sign Parisian even stated in the eyes of some clients a green dress is a dress witch. ' To these remarks come ready-to-wear, jewelery could add their testimony, those who know that emeralds, despite their undeniable beauty of the stones are difficult to sell, "written in 2010, Pastoureau Colors in our memories.
In this book polychrome, the historian (and the man who admits that green is her favorite color) and reminds wear green has long been taboo. A superstition that nothing would fall into the naive credulity, but that is based on very sound reasons. Before the era of industrial production colors, fixing the green dye on fabrics was problematic: Derived from vegetable matter, the green oxidized quickly losing its luster and turning gray and bland. This "chemical instability" would - according Pastoureau and quite "logically" So - the origin of the association of the color green "everything symbolically changing or ephemeral youth, love, luck, fortune, hope. "
The negative connotation that comes with the idea that random will necessarily harmful ('s reputation for green jinx) resulting, in turn, the solution found by chemists to address this problem fixing chromatic: the use of corrosive and toxic substances (acid or arsenic) for vivid greens and made durable, in fact, the vesture dipped as dangerous as a tunic of Nessus!
Thus do we find, to use the classification proposed by Annie Mollard-Desfour in his book The Green (scholarly dictionary devoted to the exploration of the semantic field of this color), several greens. Besides the "green greenery and water, life, vigor, fertility" (obvious for our time that combines the color of nature) remain, as many prospects and potential meanings , other greens, those "chance, bad luck or good luck, hope" but also "the otherness, the strange and the stranger, the supernatural, the marvelous often evil" , or "the alteration, discoloration and macabre."
Emerald tone ("reference to the shade of bright green, bright emerald, gemstone particularly desirable for the brilliance of its nuances," recalls Annie Mollard-Desfour) seems to summarize all these "contradictory symbolic" he waved to nature and to the latter that is most precious (mineral Jewel.
For proof, go see the replica of the crown of the Empress Farah at the exhibition of the Museum of Decorative Arts dedicated to Van Cleef & Arpels, brightness and sheer "When a ray of sunshine gilded the highest branches, they seemed, soaked in a sparkling moisture, emerge only from the atmosphere and liquid emerald where the forest as a whole was diving under the sea ", we read in the writings of Proust in Du cote de chez Swann), but also to the supernatural ("The emerald green crystal of Superman, kryptonite, obviously does not mephitic connotation, but noted the supernatural origin of the superhero," says Sandra Gorgievski in The Myth of Arthur : the imaginary medieval mass culture), and even to drunkenness most artificial and dangerous either (and absinthe was she referred to as "the fairy emeraldine"). Wear emerald fabric (adjective derived from the Latin smaragdinus, "emerald") is not as trivial as it seems ...
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