Sunday, September 30, 2007

Purple is the new... pink?

If you know me at all, you know that purple is my favorite color. Because I was in charge of things back in high school, purple became my graduating class's color, as well. Never mind that the school colors were blue and white; every Homecoming week the Class of 1999 sported purple "P's" on their faces, and we girls found glittery purple eyeshadow to paint our eyelids with. The year I planned prom (junior year), everything was purple (and silver); our senior yearbook cover was purple, a fitting tribute to (I like to think) me. Among my two best friends from high school and I, we can pretty much count on the fact that purple anything will be a well-received gift.

So, of course, purple is a natural choice for my -- sorry, our -- wedding colors. After just a few weeks of casual (I promise! Only casual!) browsing through pictures of invitations and bridesmaid dresses, it's pretty clear that the mainstream wedding industry is not going to be easy to work with. Brides today are obsessed with pink -- usually in combination with brown -- and at best, I've found things in pale lavenders. Not horrible, but not ideal, either.

For instance, these invitations would be totally adorable in either a pale or vibrant purple, but it only comes in pink or blue:












So imagine my delight when I picked up a newspaper today at the grocery store and found this article in the Features section: The color purple: Fashion's bright idea for fall. I'm glad the fashion world has finally caught on, because purple is pretty much the best color in the world. It's slated to be popular this coming spring as well, so maybe the wedding world will catch on. The front-runner in this industry is J Crew, which has gorgeous wine-colored bridesmaid dresses in its fall collection:



















Ignore the astronomical prices of these dresses; maybe I can find them on clearance in December.

Purple is also my go-to makeup color. I have to say that purple eyeshadows complement my eyes and skin pretty damn well, and since I recently ran out of most of the purples in my makeup bag and had a day off last week (and because it's well-established that when I have a day off I like to go shopping), I somehow acquired a whole bunch of new purple eyeshadows:

Estee Lauder Pure Color eyeshadow in plum pop and rose confetti, part of a free gift-with-purchase (I bought a new eyeliner I've been lusting after ever since I got a sample in another free gift a couple years ago, in charcoal, and a lip gloss in tender berry):













Clinique Colour Surge Eye Shadow Trio in come heather, which I bought to get the Clinique gift-with-purchase:












And an eye shadow duo in mochaberry, which came in the free gift:








I probably should have thought about all my purchases a little more, because the come heather and Estee Lauder freebie are very similar, and the mochaberry is enough in that same color palette to take the place of either one, so if I had planned a little better I could have bought something else completely different instead. But that's OK, because these will all still get plenty of use, and they are all strong contenders for wedding-day makeup.

So here's hoping that other people start to think of purple the way I do, and that I have many more purplish things to choose from in the next year and a half. Although even if there aren't, I won't be too upset, because I already have strong intentions of designing our own invitations (wedding theme/motif is already decided on and is to be unveiled in a future post). All I really need are the purple bridesmaid dresses.

2 comments:

Katie said...

I LOVE the idea of using purple ! It's a beautiful color !

I like the JCrew dress !!!

PCJ said...

Yes. Purple is a one thousand times more interesting color than pink. When I bought the bridesmaid's dresses for our wedding, which were in "Plumberry," David's only made two of its dresses in that color. But every dress came in at least three shades of pink.