Professor Yeti

According to my boss, an affinity for the color orange is a sign of mental imbalance. I’m not entirely sure if he was kidding, though it made me consider the two situations in which one ever sees people attired in a bright-orange outfit: in prison and on the hunt. Perhaps at the circus as well, on an individual with an outlandish hairdo, a red foam nose and oversized shoes.

Orange is a color that is bolder and more outrageous than any of its brethren on the palette, extreme in is associations, both positively and negatively — here, after all, is both the most humorous and most sinister hue. A man walking down the street in an orange suit is wacky. A man walking down the street in an orange jumpsuit should be reported to the police.

I’ve noticed that I feel differently when I wear orange, in part because of its connotations — it makes me feel, by association, tough, menacing, bold, idiosyncratic. That hue midway between red and yellow, draped over my body, somehow seems to project both an endearing, humorous outlook on life — Look at me! I’m wearing orange! I’m charmingly eccentric! — and the unstated threat that perhaps I am an escaped convict.

Most of all, wearing orange (peach? tangerine? light clay??) makes me, an introvert, stand out. I’m not saying that merely by outfitting myself in a particular color, I become more interesting, more intriguing to strangers; it’s not like it’s a magnet that draws people over and starts a conversation. But . . . maybe it helps. If nothing else, orange draws stares and smiles, more so than other colors, and although those stares are not necessarily always wholly friendly — I might, after all, have recently tunneled out of prison — at least there’s some level of attention directed my way. I enjoy wearing the boldest of colors because I am not, myself, at all bold.

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It took me a while to realize why, exactly, I have an appreciation for this hue, why I find it oddly enjoyable to sport it. But once I thought about the symbolism of the color orange, I began to ponder its history. Was I simply projecting a desirable attitude, an endearing sensibility, onto myself, or was this truly a color that had, broadly speaking, an irreverent history and associations? In short, is orange different, somehow, from other colors — not in the technical, red-mixed-with-yellow sense, since it is obviously singular in this manner, but in how people think about it?

A bit of research was in order, beginning with the Lands’ End catalog, that font of offbeat color terminology. Synonyms would surely offer some insight, I thought. Sure enough.

In the world according to clothing retailers, at least this one (and my experience tells me that this is true of most others as well), yellow is known as “jonquil” and “bright sun”; what most of us would label “navy blue” is “deep lake blue”; green is “washed soft moss,” “light balsam,” “soft meadow green,” and “Aegean green”; and red is also known as “deep rose,” “scarlet,” and “cherry.” (This is, of course, a partial list of the myriad color variations dreamed up by Lands’ End’s copy writers.) Orange? There’s “spiced orange” and “soft orange,” neither of which I find very creative.

Then again, though, this speaks to the relative lack of natural occurrences of this hue: greens, blues and browns are everywhere you look, but orange just doesn’t appear in the great outdoors much, and when it does, it’s with other colors (sunsets, autumn leaves) or in less-than-benign settings (poisonous berries, tigers). The most obvious association, of course, presents the problem of homonyms, one not presented by any other of the major colors (just imagine if the standard term for yellow were “banana”).

Mother Nature, for one, seems to agree with my thesis.

In cultural associations, too, this is a hue that is truly an outcast, the black sheep, as it were, of the color wheel.

Blue is famously royal, and orange is literally the opposite of blue, which I take to mean that orange is the true tone of the proletariat, particularly the grumbling, even revolutionary masses. Indeed, one of the most remarkable and effective power-to-the-people political movements or events in recent history was the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, in response to obvious electoral fraud during that country’s presidential election. In the United States, in the lead-up to the 2004 Iowa caucuses, Howard Dean’s campaign operatives swarmed the state in what they deemed “The Perfect Storm.” Their trademark attire, their attempt at a defining look that would capture the attention — and votes — of Iowans? Blaze-orange stocking caps. Screamin’ colors for Howlin’ Howard.

Thanks to Alice Walker’s book, we know that God is in the color purple. Thanks to UPS, there’s an advertising slogan for the color of mud and mocha: “What can Brown do for you?” Green, of course, is the color of money, but also a reference to all things environmentally-friendly. Pink means breast cancer or perhaps gay pride. Red is still, to many people, a symbol of Communism; it also marks love and/or lust, as evidenced by all the leftover Valentine’s Day detritus you see this time of year. Blue? Water, skies, music sung by musicians who have sold their souls at Southern crossroads, little pills for men with erectile dysfunction. Yellow means slow down. Black and white have their deeply-entrenched symbolism of conflict, their yin-yang dichotomy that wends its way through seemingly all aspects of life.

Orange has its breakfast beverage, its Clockwork, and its Agent, the latter two conjuring up images and associations that are intrinsically sinister.

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If a color can be said to convey an attitude, it is clear that orange is — or has come to be — a bold, strange color. And if attitude is formed in part by nature and in part by nurture, it is clear that this status has developed in the environment and been cultivated and perpetuated by humans.

Similarly oh-so-profound things can be said for other colors, of course. But orange is such a misfit color, and therefore seems, to some degree, more appealing. The fashion cognoscenti seem to have finally caught on to this, and I recently read a couple different breathless reports saying that orange is, in fact, the new black. I hope, though, that this trend will prove to be as ephemeral as most, and I will once again be able to wear my orange shirts with the pride of a fashion pariah.

Doug Mack’s favorite color is green. Honest. Send color preferences and fashion tips to (doug@professoryeti.com).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2006 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.