MYSTERY IN COLOUR TERMS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 145, 25 July 1914, Page 6

MYSTERY IN COLOUR TERMS.

NEW TINTS PUZZLE THE ARTIST.

To one who knows colours only as a painter knows them the catalogue of a fashionable costumer of to-day is a perplexing thing, when the finding of a catching name for a new tint is almost a* important v a business detail, as. the selection of a title for a novel.

Among the blues are Nattier, Saxe, marine, electric, hydrangea (there ib also hydrangea piuk), automobile and "new shades of French." The reds and pinks . are even more confusing, with beetroot, aubergine, /tomato, dahlia, rhododendron, fuchsia, lie-de-vin (a muddy purple red supposed to resemble the lees of -wine), tango (a more orange tomato), and maxixe or atattschiche, as the French modistes prefer to spell it. Absinthe, creme, de menthe, asparagus and lime *re*"fairly identifiable shades of green, as among the greys are such a zoological assortment as oyster, mouse and elephant; cigar, again, is expressive, as is milk chocolate; and we remember" how a few seasons ago ' ifcio Tinto was a fashionable shade of golden copper. Even midnight—something between silver and steel blue—might be guessed by one who had never heard the name before as not impossibly might tete de negre and corbeau. But what Koyal Academician., would by the light of nature 'dare to take his brush and paint the shade of radium or petrol or of "natural"? r One of the prettiest names of a colour is "robin's : «gg blue," which is borrowed from the United States. •*'Hedge sparrow blue" one might call it in England, "but the name is not so musical.