‘The best stylist of purple is not fashion but nature. Style it like a florist or a gardener, not a fashionista’
Wearing purple is a statement, but not usually one about style. In Jenny Joseph’s poem it is the colour you will wear, defiantly, when you are an old woman. It is the colour of which Alice Walker says, it “pisses God off if you walk by… in a field somewhere and don’t notice it”. It is the colour of goths and glam rockers, popes and bishops, princes and Prince. The Victorians used lilac for half-mourning, which makes sense when you consider the way it always seems a little off-key, among the sweetness of other pastels.
Purple, lilac and lavender were put back on the fashion slate when Miuccia Prada piled her spring catwalk with sand in a lurid, lava lamp shade of violet. The half-psychedelic, half-folkloric 70s mood was echoed at another Milan house, Alberta Ferretti, with purple suede, fringed shift dresses.
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