The Color Revolution by Regina Lee Blaszczyk (review)

It is no accident that a particular shade of lilac (or lime green, to use the author’s example) is nowhere to be found in stores one year and is ubiquitous the next year, in everything from jackets to umbrellas and earrings. Similarly, the simultaneous introduction of aquamarine cookware and kitchen accessories is more than mere coincidence; it is the work of a cohort of professionals who deal in the business of color and the subtle manipulation of consumer taste.

This well-researched and informative book tells the intriguing story of how color became an integral part of consumer culture in the years between 1850 and 1970, influencing the design, production, and marketing of consumer goods. Blaszczyk treats the sociological, economic, and cultural aspects of the subject as well as its historical development, examining the diverse elements and many participants in what she describes as an international movement.

Taking her title from a 1929 article in Fortune magazine, which cited the explosion of color in automobiles, advertisements, and interior products in the several preceding years, the author explores—in meticulous and sometimes exhaustive detail—the work of the theorists, forecasters, makers, and merchandisers who learned to apply color to trigger emotions, change moods, and influence consumer behavior. More evolution than revolution, the events in the book spanned many decades, during which a simple phenomenon of light was transformed into a functional element infusing almost every aspect of modern life.

Blaszczyk deems professional colorists to be as influential in shaping consumer taste as the designers and producers whose accomplishments are more frequent subjects of study. Focusing on the vagaries of the marketplace, as in her previous book, Imagining Consumers (2002), she adds colorists to the less-known and unexamined cohort of “behind-the-scenes actors who contribute to innovation in product design” (xiv) and tells their stories in a series of biographical narratives.

The revolution (or evolution) began in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, when the development of synthetic chemicals enabled artificial dyes and a range of colors never before possible. The new synthetics originated in France, Britain, and Germany—and the shade card, the first tool for color forecasting, was a French invention, the product of Michel-Eugene Chevreul’s development of the theory of “color harmony.” But the United States led the way in implementing the use of color as a marketing tool, linked to industrial design, market research, and the burgeoning fields of advertising and public relations. Most of the book deals with the commercialization of color in American life: in the apparel industry, in mass-market consumer goods, in the workplace, and in the home.

Early chapters chronicle the struggles of Albert Munsell to market his color system and help improve US taste, in addition to the establishment of the Textile Color Card Association (TCCA) of the United States, whose color cards and seasonal fashion forecasts enabled producers to offer products that would appeal to consumers. The activities of the TCCA (later, the Color Association of the United States), which affected almost every industry in which color played a role, are threaded through the otherwise-unrelated sections, providing a flow to the narrative.

The book highlights changes in consumer behavior that affected, or were affected by, the activities of colorists, including the transition from home-sewn fashions to ready-to-wear clothing, and the role of department stores in facilitating this trend—a by-product of which was the association of bright colors with mass-market taste and neutrals, the preference of a sophisticated elite. With some justification, the standardization of color is linked to scientific management and the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor and Lillian Gilbreth, who sought to improve industrial productivity with more efficient standards and time-saving procedures. The functionalist approach of color experts like H. Ledyard Towle and Faber Birren is credited as helping to prepare color-wary US citizens for the bold Bauhaus aesthetics and the lively hues of Postmodernism. More far reaching, however, was the...