Poor Old Brown

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29170, 2 April 1960, Page 3

Poor Old Brown

[A Fourth Leader in “The Times”} We are living in an un-brown world. Gay colours are everywhere, in the bathroom as much as in the restaurant, and brown is out of favour. Its name is mud. This displeasure it arouses has its roots in the out-dated belief that it was the best means of concealing dirt. In schools and institutions, below stairs in the big houses, brown was such a sensible paint and also a discreet one. But when a more scientific age decided to let in the light and air brown went out of the window and only a fleeting glimpse has since been had of it. ‘lt is as though we had not been able to forget its association with that gloomier side of life. Washable paints in delicate shades of margarine that reflect the light or match the sink unit have left their plodding colleague far behind. It has been an exciting decade for wallpapers, but whether they have found their old stripes again or come out in little pictorial designs, most of them give brown a wide berth. After all, there is not much left of that colour in the room for it to go with. Even the leather armchairs flourish only in board room and club.

The tendency is not only to be seen in interior decoration. The gleaming brown limousine is a rarity which among the sometimes tawdry or pretentious colouring of its companions introduces a note of quiet dignity. The chocolate-coated chauffeur is more familiar on the stage than in real life today. The brown Derby is a genial eccentricity. Brown Windsor has become a laughing stock of the menu. Significantly, brown paper is no longer considered gay enough for wrapping presents. Luggage, traditional stronghold of brown leather, is not only changing its substance and its shape but is blossoming out into tartan or porridge or Air Force blue. Nor is clothing an exception. But who is he, with modest looks, And clad in homely russett brown. Who, indeed? In njarket towns he may hold his own, but in cities the brown suit is seldom seem and even dess seldom admired. The same decline has surely been noticeable through the years among shirts and ties. Into the realm of women’s fashion it is hardly safe to venture, so fickle and inscrutable are its ways. But the best hope for the colour would seem to be that it should fall so far out of

women’s favour as hardly to be tolerated at all. For then it would not be long before at the highest level it became the colour to wear. When that happens it may at expert hands recover some of its lost prestige.