The Colour of Happiness

Vintage 70s cotton dress, bought on Etsy; photo: March 2014

When I think of the colour yellow I immediately think of sunshine, summer, and happiness. I also think of taxi cabs, and the bright yellow raincoats of childhood. There are also bananas, daffodils, lemons, butter and … lemon meringue pie! Yum!

Yet while the golden hue is associated with positive notions such as amusement, gentleness and spontaneity, it is also symbolic of ‘duplicity, envy, jealousy, avarice, and, in the US, cowardice’. In a survey, only six percent of respondents in Europe and America named it as their favorite color, compared with 45 percent for blue, 15 percent for green, 12 percent for red, and 10 percent for black. [Wikipedia; Inspector Insight]

Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha), Australia's national flower blooms in springWhat's more sunshine yellow than the sunset on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland?A vintage yellow cabLemmmmon mmmmeringe pie!

The Origin of a Bad Rep

Obviously there is there are certain common phrases incorporating the word ‘yellow’ that have negative connotations, such as ‘yellow belly’, ‘yellow fever’ and ‘yellow journalism’, but everywhere I looked researching this topic people talked about jealousy, duplicity etc, and they were only parroting other sources. It took me a long time to track down the origin of this colour defamation.

I recalled an old printed copy of the book The Language of Flowers listed jealousy and guilt as the meaning of yellow roses, but their website now states joy and friendship. Another source, Lily’s Rose Garden has a very different tale, which is probably the source of the negative connotations:

‘According to the legend, the Prophet Mohammed, while away fighting a war, was tormented by the idea that his wife, Aisha, was being unfaithful. He asked the archangel Gabriel for help. Gabriel suggested that when he returned home Mohammed should ask his wife to drop whatever she was carrying into the water as a test. If she was faithful, it would stay the same colour and prove her unconditional love. Mohammed finally returned from his battle and Aisha rushed to greet him, carrying a huge bouquet of red roses. She was surprised when he commanded her to drop them into the river, but obeyed and the roses turned saffron yellow. Eventually, Mohammed forgave his favorite wife but, for some, the yellow rose remains a symbol of infidelity.’

Could these beautiful yellow roses actually imply 'you are not worthy'?!Lily’s Rose Garden goes on to suggest the new association with friendship has simply been made up by rose growers to promote sales. I say, all power to them. I think yellow roses are beautiful, and much more original than pedestrian red. If anyone wants to buy some for me I will gladly accept them and never mind such connotations, as ‘I am not worthy’!

I think yellow roses are beautiful, and much more original than pedestrian red.

Cotton cable knit; photo: July 2016

Child of Heaven

In China, however, yellow is a very popular colour and represents happiness, glory, wisdom, harmony and culture. Yes! There are five directions of the compass in Chinese tradition; north, south, east, west, and the middle, each with a symbolic color. Yellow signifies the middle. China is called the Middle Kingdom; the palace of the Emperor was considered to be in the exact center of the world.

Yellow has strong historical and cultural associations in China, where it is the color of happiness, glory, and wisdom. This 1400 year old gingko tree turns the ground into a yellow ocean come mid-November. The ancient tree grows next to the Gu Guanyin Buddhist Temple in the Zhongnan Mountains and is a perfect celebration of autumn.The emperor of China is considered a ‘child of heaven’, and the legendary first emperor of China was called the Yellow Emperor. The last emperor of China, Puyi (1906–67), described in his memoirs how every object which surrounded him as a child was yellow. “It made me understand from my most tender age that I was of a unique essence, and it instilled in me the consciousness of my ‘celestial nature’ which made me different from every other human.”

Wool and angora cable knit; photo: July 2016

On the Palette

Joseph William Turner is historically one of few artists who loved yellow and used it extensively and predominantly in his paintings. He loved it so much British critics mocked him for it, writing that his images were ‘afflicted with jaundice’, and that the artist may have a vision disorder.

Sunflowers, Vincent Van Gogh 1888Another artist who favoured yellow, Vincent Van Gogh, loved the sunshine and wrote to his sister, “Now we are having beautiful warm, windless weather that is very beneficial to me. The sun, a light that for lack of a better word I can only call yellow, bright sulphur yellow, pale lemon gold. How beautiful yellow is!”

Paul Gauguin, a friend and artistic companion attests: “Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent, the painter from Holland, gleams of sunlight warming his soul, which detested fog.”

Before them, there were artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Bruegel did use it extensively, but more in the case of painting yellow subjects. Creating paintings in which a particular colour is significant, or even the subject, seems to be a modern phenomenon in Western art (ie, before the Post Impressionists).

Sunshine yellow gown by Jason Wu

On Your Back

Yellow in every shade was huge on the Spring/Summer 2016 runways, where it appeared on the catwalks of Stella McCartney, Christopher Kane, Roksanda and others, and in the Resort collections of this year; Beyoncé wore it, accessorised with a baseball bat. (Visit this Pinterest board for some inspiration.)

In my personal experience, I have heard many people exclaim with fright or horror at the notion of wearing yellow, and I can only conclude it is too eye-catching for them. Some may say ‘oh, yellow doesn’t suit me’, but they are forgetting that there are many shades – just as one shade of green may not suit one, a different hue will; it all depends on one’s complexion. I’ve never heard anyone say, ‘black doesn’t suit me’, but in truth it can make some skin tones look sallow, just as pure white can. Shade (hue) and tone (warmth or coolness) are crucial. You know when a colour suits you: it makes you look radiant.

My conclusion is this: if you want to look like a goddess, WEAR YELLOW.

~

Fashion Notes

The golden yellow cotton dress I am wearing in the first picture is vintage 70s, which I found late one evening trawling Etsy – yellow dresses are literally one of my regular searches online – and I snapped it up immediately for a song. Amazingly, I have found another one on Etsy which is from the same range, available still on publish date, although it is unfortunately much more expensive. My dress is as large and loose as the one in the picture, but I would be swamped if I wore it without a belt. It is certainly very swingy and fun to wear, and I always am given compliments when I have it on.

This dress is listed as XS/S/M; its 12" yoke is much smaller than my 16" yoke.

My two taxi-yellow cable-knit jumpers are virtually identical, except that one is a winter weight in wool and angora, which I bought on eBay from America and had it shipped here at great expense, and the other is cotton, which I found in an op shop right here in town for around $6. Now I can wear the colour of happiness summer and winter.

Here are a couple of other lovely yellow vintage items, currently available on Etsy.

A super fun 60s cotton skirtA vintage 50s velvet dress and fitted jacket