A blue silk dress in a Renoir. A blue sweater receiving a rather severe appraisal in The Devil Wears Prada. One color has found its way into two very different arguments about looking at clothes. Both interest me, though I would prefer to be standing in front of the painting than on the receiving end of the appraisal.
A word from the sky
The name reaches further back than either image. Merriam-Webster traces cerulean to the Latin caeruleus, meaning dark blue, probably from caelum: sky or heaven. A generous association for a word that can also appear on a paint tube or a sweater label.
Of course, a word is not a swatch. Blue silk, blue wool and blue leather take the light differently. Put them beside one another and the common name begins to feel less like a definition than an invitation to look more carefully.
That is one reason color makes such a good starting point for a conversation about clothes. Most of us have preferences before we have vocabulary. The fabric lets us become more precise.
Renoir’s La Parisienne
Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted La Parisienne in 1874. Museum Wales records its appearance at the first Impressionist exhibition that year. The Frick’s account identifies the clothes as an outdoor morning outfit in blue silk.
The dress does a great deal of the painting’s work. Its folds catch the light; the hat carries the color upward; the quieter background leaves the figure room. Fashion is not an incidental accessory to this portrait. It is part of how the person arrives before us.
A visual merchandiser could spend a productive few minutes with that arrangement. Color gathers attention, but it also relates separate things. The challenge in a window or on a mannequin is to make the relationship legible while still allowing the material to be itself.
Miranda’s sweater
In the 2006 film, Miranda Priestly explains how her assistant Andy Sachs’s cerulean sweater connects to decisions made across the fashion industry. It is a fictional speech; the collections it names should not be treated as a documentary history. The larger observation survives that distinction rather well.
The apparently ordinary garment has a working life behind it. Designers, textile specialists, buyers, merchandisers, makers and retailers have all helped bring something like it into a wardrobe. Indifference to fashion does not remove someone from that chain of decisions. Miranda is simply less patient than most of us would be about explaining it.
For someone working with clothes, the opportunity is to make one of those decisions visible without administering the reprimand. Why does this weave fall as it does? What changes when the lining is removed? Why does this blue look different beside another blue?
Those are small questions with considerable depth. They are also where an interest in beautiful things becomes knowledge another person can use. The working world of luxury has room for people who enjoy following them.