Blossom Pink | Connections: How colour interacts with the wider world
Source | Connections | Physis | Sense
Lily Donaldson, British Vogue, 2008 © Nick Knight
“After women, flowers are the most divine creations.”
– Christian Dior
Fashion too follows a cyclical nature, returning to specific tropes again and again. It should come as no surprise that when Maria Grazia Chiuri took over as Dior’s first female Artistic Director in 2016, her first Spring/Summer collection (2017) was claiming of her space: a delicious nod to the femininity of pink but also its historical place in world fashion – flowers and delicate, youthful hues never truly go out of style. She showed the collection again in Japan, making its link to hanami explicit in a series of dresses in palest rose silk with flowers sewn on; raw linen jackets and dresses with ukiyo-e tree branches and little bluebirds appliqued in exquisite detail, blossom branch hairpieces curving over elegant buns. Blossom’s recurrence through 72 years of Dior designs can be seen at the V&A’s spectacular exhibition Designer of Dreams, on until September 1, 2019. Having seen this exhibition three times and eager to return, I would agree with Dior that “happiness is the secret to all beauty”.
Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams
© The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
The venerable British brand Burberry combines mannish tailoring with the freshness of youth, urban with floral. Cara Delevingne references her childhood in Her by Burberry, “I was lucky enough to grow up outside of London enough to know that I still had nature, but London was still this essence of this heaving source of energy, of people, of things to be discovered”. In the video shot by Juergen Teller, Cara’s joy as she experiences the daffodils, blossom and fresh green of London’s springtime parks perfectly taps into that magical combination of fashion and freshness.
CARA DELEVINGNE FOR HER BLOSSOM, 2018 © Juergen Teller
This connection to youth and beauty and love is celebrated in music too: in Sakura Sakura, the hugely popular, exquisitely melancholy Japanese folk song, is sung every year in Japan. It’s so famous Bon Jovi sampled it in their huge hit Tokyo Road (1985). The first verse goes:
Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,
In fields, mountains and villages
As far as the eye can see.
Is it mist, or clouds?
Fragrant in the rising sun.
Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,
Flowers in full bloom.
Pink Dress, Distant Dreamer, 2010 © Andrea Hamilton
Maybe it is the mix of youth, freshness and impermanence of fragile beauty which draws us to pink. Listening to Cerisiers Roses et Pommiers Blancs, written by Louiguy in 1950 has been a number 1 hit in the US and the UK more than once, and was a massive hit in an instrumental version by the Cuban ‘King of Mambo’, Perez Prado: Jane Russell danced to it in her blockbuster movie, Underwater! It perfectly encapsulates the fresh, jaunty attitude of the 1950s, when the world seemed wide open and the American Dream all fresh and pink and ready for the picking. Nourish yourself in this romantic, magical song and breathe in the pink blossoms.
PORTALS SERIES: ROOSEVELT BIRD SANCTUARY, 2018 © Andrea Hamilton
Source | Connections | Physis | Sense