FEATURE:
Pink.
A Cutting
Edge
Colour
June 11, 2026
Bubblegum, Fiji barfi (shown in slideshow), fairy floss, Sakura, marshmallows, flamingos, breast cancer awareness, The [Grease 2] Pink Ladies, The Pink Panther, Marilyn. You get my gist.
Pink. Soft, pretty, fluffy, feminine. Mother Earth’s first and oldest colour. It was also originally a colour for men.
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The Stylander Video Stories – Pink. A Cutting Edge Colour. Read by TS Publisher SN.
“Pink is the navy blue of India“, so said esteemed American editor Diana Vreeland, a quote I first heard in 1994. If you’re curious, I share that context in the Wella Design Awards 1994 episode
Watch here on our YT channel. [Video starts at the reason]
Vreeland meant that in India pink is worn and used everywhere, as an everyday colour, unlike in the “west” where it is viewed as a trend or occasional colour.
The glimpses shown in the video are around Rajasthan in 2018.
TRAVELISM:
Why Is Jaipur Known As The “Pink City”? XX/06
Why Is Jaipur Known As The “Pink City”? XX/06
Jaipur is awash with pinks but that’s because it’s a Northern Indian city where pink was used as a colour of hospitality before the English royal visit and the Rajasthani royal decree in the 1800s. Northwest India was literally a part of the Persian Empire in 500 BC. Naturally pink would have been used in India from then onwards. [FURTHER READING in Travelism]
Yes, pink is revered across India, but its significance varies by region. In South India, pink has more spiritual than royal associations. Regardless, in India pink is worn by everyone freely without it needing to be a trend, but it’s not the “navy blue of India”. Navy blue is the colour of uniformity. India is a multi Hue-man country and Vreeland was steeped in whitegaze, something which makes an editor bland blind insular.
Celebrated by the fashion community and I agree she deserves acclaim, Vreeland’s (sk)insularity came to light in a 2023 documentary about the Supermodel Donyale Luna.
In the 60s, Vreeland, not at all a supermodel, just born rich and connected, told avant-garde photographer Richard Avedon that Donyale, an upcoming star model who was Black, was not “suitable” for [what went on to be a historical] shoot starring 60s white supermodel Verushka.
Avedon wanted Donyale Luna for this shoot but Vreeland said “she wasn’t anyone’s idea of what they wanted to look like”
“She’s extraordinary,” Avedon argued. Vreeland, an ordinary looking woman, said, “So was King Kong“.
The connotation and euro-colonial lie is loud to those not tone-deaf from white noise. I will let Neil de Grasse Tyson explain why in this 2015 article.
Also, I believe it is significant to note that Vreeland’s mother, a woman known for her physical beauty, called her own daughter her “little ugly duckling”. That’s got to hurt a girl privileged or not.
Instead of breaking toxic cycles, Vreeland used her hurt-tinged privilege to sabotage others, despite having been sabotaged by her own beautiful mother. Or because of. Hatred fuels ambition more than love, and instead of changing the system, it perpetuates it.
By the way, I have seen that “historical shoot” many times and remain underwhelmed.
PUBLISHER’S LOG: The Most Expensive Fashion Shoot Ever. June XX.
Back to pink and it being “the navy blue of India“; Vreeland made the proclamation a decade before the Luna sabotage.
British photographer Norman Parkinson was a pioneer of white magazine fashion shoots in “exotic” locations. Previously western fashion photographers had mainly worked from the studio but Parkinson took his models out of the studio and on to the street, and in this case, to India
When Parkinson returned from India and on seeing the photograph Vreeland said “How clever of you, Mr Parkinson, also to know that pink is the navy blue of India.”
Strangely it is Vreeland that has become associated with that India shoot, despite not having anything to do with it. Vreeland was the fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar US and the shoot was for British Vogue, at that time helmed by the revolutionary Audrey Withers, a journalist, editor, media legend and a white woman I admire. [More info at end]
Withers okayed all of Parkinson’s ambitious shoot ideas, including the legendary November 1956 “Winter Sunshine Wardrobe” editorial.
“Parkinson’s primary association with India is […] summer of 1956, for British Vogue’s Winter Sunshine Collection. […]
The goal was to combine Western and Indian fashion, both in terms of clothing and photographic aesthetics. The most recognised images from this shoot are a photograph of Gunning, clad in a pink mohair coat at the City Palace, Jaipur […]
Anne Gunning by Norman Parkinson, 1956. Image courtesy of Iconic Licensing.
The colour of the models’ outfits was usually matched with some key design element of the location of these shoots as can be seen in the pink walls of the Jaipur City Palace and Gunning’s pink coat.
[…] “These images are among Parkinson’s most iconic work, […]
Scholars see this photoshoot and others like it as examples of cultural escapism of the West.
The mystified idea of the Orient, the luxury of travelling in a foreign land and the seemingly apolitical and frictionless notion of using Indian monuments as a backdrop for European visitors….”- READ MORE at Imp.Art April 21, 2022
Withers may have been revolutionary [“Vogue no longer merely reported on fashion, but had the power, if it so chose, to change it, to make things happen“] but she was still stunted by Eurocentric perspectives. Although the images are works of art, knowing the time, knowing what Eurocentria did to the People of India, knowing what we know in 2026, the facts and truth ‘un-colour’ the imagery.
See Parkinson’s images, including contact sheets, here at Iconic Licensing.
While researching for this piece, I saw that I already knew much of what came up online and realised that my 3 decades of work, shared freely via print, web, in person workshops and panels, have contributed greatly to the information the info-bots collate. Which is fine, knowledge is for sharing but oh the lack of attribution, particularly from non-writer “authors” who pass off others’ writings as their own. It’s not AI that’s the issue, it’s the user. Anyway I digress.
Republished here are excerpts from a 2010 article from my old life and style blog, re edited with growth and more knowledge. But first, here’s something I didn’t know back in 2010.
ANU scientists discover the world’s oldest colours
July 10, 2018
“Scientists from ANU and overseas have discovered the oldest colours in the geological record, 1.1 billion-year-old bright pink pigments extracted from rocks deep beneath the Sahara desert in Africa.
Dr Nur Gueneli from ANU said the pigments taken from marine black shales of the Taoudeni Basin in Mauritania, West Africa, were more than half a billion years older than previous pigment discoveries. Dr Gueneli discovered the molecules as part of her PhD studies.
“The bright pink pigments are the molecular fossils of chlorophyll that were produced by ancient photosynthetic organisms inhabiting an ancient ocean that has long since vanished,” said Dr Gueneli from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences.
The fossils range from blood red to deep purple in their concentrated form, and bright pink when diluted.”
“Scientists from ANU and overseas have discovered the oldest colours in the geological record, 1.1 billion-year-old bright pink pigments extracted from rocks deep beneath the Sahara desert in Africa.
Dr Nur Gueneli from ANU said the pigments taken from marine black shales of the Taoudeni Basin in Mauritania, West Africa, were more than half a billion years older than previous pigment discoveries. Dr Gueneli discovered the molecules as part of her PhD studies.
“The bright pink pigments are the molecular fossils of chlorophyll that were produced by ancient photosynthetic organisms inhabiting an ancient ocean that has long since vanished,” said Dr Gueneli from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences.
The fossils range from blood red to deep purple in their concentrated form, and bright pink when diluted.”
1. Dr Nur Gueneli, Paleobiogeochemist
2. Taoudeni Basin – Wikipedia
THE DUSK ZONE: Mister Pink...
Nov 30, 2010. 11.59pm | June 11, 2026
Firstly let’s understand what this colour called PINK is; it’s a shade between red and violet and it actually doesn’t exist in the spectrum.
Pink is “scientifically absent” from the rainbow because it is a “non-spectral colour”, that is, it cannot be made by a single wavelength of light. It requires a mix of red and violet light from opposite ends of the visible spectrum. Our brains make it exist because our brains need to bridge gaps.
The light spectrum consists of a range of wavelengths of “electromagnetic radiation”. Red has the longest, violet the shortest and the colours in between (orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo) have wavelengths in between the two. When our eyes see colours, it’s because our brains are ‘feeling’ the different wavelengths hitting the retina, the optical satellite dish. The brain then processes this information and produces the visual display that we experience as colour. Cool huh?
Our brains ‘create’ pink because green needs a complementary opposite. If the spectrum was laid out in a circle, red is opposite to blue, orange to indigo and yellow to violet. Poor green is lonely, it wants a partner. Upon seeing pink the brain needs to bridge the gap between violet and red.
The visual cortex (located in the occipital lobe at the back of the head), sees red and blue but not green wavelengths and ‘invents’ the colour they called pink, but not until the 1700s, even though the naming word and verb existed since the 1600s.
Before then pink wasn’t seen as a separate colour, it was seen as a lighter red, a “watered down red”, which is why it was originally for boys.
Pink was considered “masculine” because it is a derivative of red, and in battle, the colour of splattering blood is a pink mist. Perhaps that can explain why the British called their traditional English hunting coats “pinks“ even though they are actually scarlet.
Pink was perceived as a warrior’s colour; assertive, strong, robust and dominant, you know, “manly”. In Europe, blue was viewed as “dainty” and delicate, all the supposed feminine qualities, virtuous and pure. Mainly because blue was linked to the Virgin Mary in Christian art, despite not being based on fact.
Miriam of Nazareth would not have worn blue, as only the elite wore blue because blue dye was expensive. According to this site, ‘Women In The Bible’,this is what she would have looked like, a Woman of Arabia.
Blue’s popularity is also credited to China’s Ming Dynasty, red/pink dye was cheap but blue dye was expensive. Cobalt had to be imported from Persia so the use of blue had to be worth it. In the Ming Dynasty’s L’Oreal ads, only the boy was worth it because of a royal decree. [FEATURE: Colours XX/07]
_____________________
Apparently, and to no one’s surprise, war -the very reason pink was originally considered a man’s colour- was the cause for the gender switch in the western world. Quite recently too, 1940s, but why this switch was facilitated isn’t factually chronicled. Just information that shows the how.
During World War 2 (1939-1945) the Nazis used a complicated colour and shape code system to keep track of their prisoners, all different groups, indentified by their coloured shapes. Ah that famous German precision. The best known colour code was the yellow Star of David to identify Jewish people.
Homosexual males were given a pink inverted triangle (which could be seen as “half a star”). Read the Pink Triangle Wikipedia page.
My understanding is that homosexual males were ‘assigned’ pink because it is a watered down red, therefore “a watered down male”.
Please note: I support all communities and their rights but life is binary. However, we evolve with Life and bigots have underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes and insulae.
Please note: I support all communities and their rights but life is binary. However, we evolve with Life and bigots have underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes and insulae.
The pink “half a star” is the most popular theory explaining why pink then became easier to associate with The Feminine Woman. From the 1940’s onwards, pink was pushed as a woman’s colour but as I mentioned before, why exactly isn’t known, just the how. In the US, “Think Pink” was the marketing slogan to convince women to “embrace their femininity”.
Now that they had their taste of earning their own money and being the bosses and learning “boy” things and playing baseball etc, Women had to be [gasp] de-manicipated! And de-stressed like delousing or a nuclear exposure shower.
NOT for their benefit, for the returning heroes, so they could dump their PTSD on the Women and get back to making money for the capitalist war wheel.
Women were encouraged to be less Rosie The Riveter and more Rosy Pink cheeks, to be soft and ethereal, wise but delicate, to be “more feminine“. They used department store marketing campaigns and movie stars like Audrey Hepburn to entrench the whimsical qualities of pink into the psyche of a public encouraged to “buy new” for their country.
The 1950s was considered “the Golden Age of Advertising”, ad agencies were THE influencers. Collaborating with the retail industry, they began systematically categorising products, delineating pink for girls and blue for boys, which allowed companies to double their profits. AND if clothing and toys were strictly gender-coded, parents could no longer pass down hand-me-downs from an older brother to a younger sister, forcing families to “buy new!”.
Constant wars tend to make people feel less than whimsical. I think I understand why people continue to have children while in battle zones. Children represent hope and encourage whimsy. Pink is also the colour of hope, which is why 1950s [m]admen sensing something to exploit, knowing that hope comes from confidence and not “weakness”… made PINK the colour of whimsy and softness.
In the 1957 musical film Funny Face’s opening musical number, the fashion magazine editor character [supposedly based on Vreeland but actually based on Carmel Snow*] decrees the “Think Pink” campaign to dictate the fashion tastes of American women. Interestingly, Hepburn and the acress who playes the Editor don’t wear pink themselves. Watch the “Think Pink!” number here on YouTube here.
Hepburn’s character Jo wears pink once, a soft pink that she wears to open the fashion show. See it here on Instagram.
[*”Carmel Snow**, the should-be-known but isn’t legendary editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar apparently wrote to Dior, “Dear Christian, your dresses have such a new look“, thus immortalising the famous phrase associated with Dior’s 1947 collection. The New Look.”- I Explore Dior ]
Pink is a de-stresser colour. It is gentle on the neural pathways. Looking at pink feels pleasant because the colour ‘physically’ soothes the nervous system. It is a lighter, softened form of red, allowing the brain to respond to red’s warmth and confidence without reacting to its urgency and boldness. Not just looking at, listening to too. Pink noise is a thing and it’s better than white noise.
PUBLISHER’S LOG: Pink Noise. The Sound of Balance. XX/06
Pink is such a de-stresser that a certain type of pink has been used in prisons to calm aggressive prisoners. It’s called “drunk tank pink” aka Baker-Miller Pink and it was invented by Dr Alexander G Schauss.
As he shared in his 1985 paper, ‘The Physiological Effect of Color on the Suppression of Human Aggression: Research on Baker-Miller Pink’; [READ FULL PAPER HERE].
“Even if a person tries to be angry or aggressive in the presence of pink, he can’t. The heart muscles can’t race fast enough. It’s a tranquilizing colour that saps your energy. Even the colour-blind are tranquilized by pink rooms.”
Schauss found that the specific shade of pink [R:255, G:145, B:175 to be precise] calmed angry, antagonistic and anxiety ridden prisoners. This was supposedly proven with the help of two high ranking military officer wardens of the naval correctional center where he first tested his theory, late 70s.
Baker and Miller were the ones who painted the walls of the “seclusion room”, monitored the prisons and wrote the report stating that it worked and had been the first to support the theory, which is why Schauss named the shade Baker-Miller.
Apparently, despite the powerful initial effects, substantial evidence suggests these reactions are short-term. According to studies done to disprove its effectiveness, Baker-Miller Pink may calm the angry, aggressive and/or anxious person for about 15-30inutes but after that “the body returns to a state of equilibrium and a prisoner may regress to an even more agitated state.”
1988 report published in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine
co-written by James E. Gilliam and David Unruh;
“Baker-Miller Pink doesn’t work consistently because later scientific studies revealed it lacks a biological tranquilizing effect. Instead of pacifying individuals long-term, confinement in the colour often leads to heightened agitation. Initial success stories were largely due to the novelty of a fresh environment rather than the colour itself.”
[…]
[…]
“The initial 1979 study by Alexander Schauss lacked rigorous controls. Observers were often aware of the experiment, leading to confirmation bias where they noticed o what they expected to see.”
READ MORE here.
I have a theory about this and it has to do with internal vulnerability. About either feeling weak, when what they felt was calm enough to unknowingly feel vulnerability, and/or being made to feel ‘weak’, therefore “feminine” if the pink worked on them.
The aggression returned and perhaps doubled because of paranoia and that perception. Aggression is always a result of another action, direct or indirect.
A theory to explore further another time
Fact is, Women love the colour pink not just because of nurture, it does make us feel feminine, whatever that means, I know I feel it, hot and soft and safe and bold, but as you have read, colour is not a gender-specific preference. It’s mood-dependent, liking or not liking pink can be indicative of how one feels about oneself.
Girls and Women tend to go through phases of hating pink, especially during the ages at which they start asserting themselves, again it’s about perception. Feminine Woman v Female Man is the choice thrust upon us and pink, already manipulated to woo us, became a way to manipulate us.
This article by Zoya Malik in The Harriton Banner sheds some light;
“It’s not that girls hate the colour pink, they hate what it represents. […]
Rejecting pink is about identity. It’s about wanting to appear serious in a world that equates softness with incompetence […]
As a way to appear strong and powerful, many girls growing up had a rebellion against pink because of its stereotypes. Many assumed (author included) that hating the colour automatically makes them less weak and fearful. […] many boys also distance themselves from the colour pink because of its association with femininity. […]
READ MORE here.
In 2026, men have a different view about pink, as shared by renowned artist Blak Douglas in TS MAY STARLIGHT on BLAK DOUGLAS:
5. What colour would you use to describe yourself? Why?
“Pink. Unashamedly ambiguous. A challenge to the conservative mind. A perplexity to the gossips and prejudiced yet striking! Being raised in Penrith, NSW in the 1980’s, a male didn’t dare wear pink as the feebleminded stereotype was solidified. Lo & behold, my hometown NRL champions now occasionally don pink when competing.” – Blak Douglas
Up top I mentioned that pink wasn’t officially a colour-word until the 1700s, even though the naming word and verb existed since the 1300s.
‘To pink’ meant and still does, to decorate with a perforated or punching pattern, a term commonly used by 14th century tailors and leatherworkers in Medieval England and most likely originally French. Linguistics experts say the English word was likely adapted from the Old French word “piquer“, meaning “to prick or pierce”, hence also a sword-fighting term.
This linguistic blend occurred because French-speaking Normans ruled England’s upper classes, heavily influencing the vocabulary of skilled English tradesmen.
So this is why the zig-zag scissors that all sewing enthusiasts (including me) love, are called ‘pinking’ shears. See? Cutting edge.
As for how a verb for perforate became the name of the colour, surprisingly despite the piercing and perforating, this part has nothing to do with war and a lot to do with peace.
The earliest verified evidence of the colour-word pink being mentioned is in a 1566 book by British man, William Painter, to describe a “pale red” but it wasn’t until 1755 that the colour-word was officially recognised in a mainstream English dictionary.
Samuel Johnson published his influential book A Dictionary of the English Language, where he officially codified “pink” as “a colour used by painters”, solidifying its place in the modern language.
Around the mid-1500s, the Dianthus flower was very popular in Medieval England, not just for its sweet clove-like fragrance and delicate appearance, also because it was considered a divine flower, the name literally translates to “Flower of Zeus”.
Throughout Europe and Greek and Roman theology/mythology, Dianthus flowers were used in sacred ceremonial ways. This divine association carried over into Christianity’s theocracy centuries later. The much maligned in pop culture carnation, which is a specific type of Dianthus, (Dianthus caryophyllus) became highly symbolic in Renaissance art, where it was frequently painted alongside the Virgin Mary to symbolise divine love.
Because the most common colour of the popular Dianthus was pink and also because the jagged edge petals looked like materials that had been manually “pinked” with a blade, people began calling the flowers “pinks”.
However, there is another angle on the “pinkvolution” still involving the Dianthus flower, which was also popular in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Known there as Anjer, it was also called “pinck oogen” meaning “small eyes,” because the Dianthus has small dots resembling eyes, so this is one Dutch reason the Dianthus came to be known as “pink”. The other reason is that the flower blooms around the time of the Pentecost season in May, and the Dutch word for Pentecost is “Pinksteren“.
Mentioned earlier, looking at pink feels pleasant because the colour ‘physically’ soothes the nervous system, like massage, like prayer. My theory is that we all like closure, we need the comfort of “no loose ends”. Looking at pink, and what that physically does to our brains, suggests pink helps our brains ‘close a circle’.
The exact origin of the colour-word PINK may not be clear but the general consensus is that the colour-word PINK is definitely named after the flower Dianthus, and not just because of its colour. By the late 1500s, the flower’s popularity led to a figurative use of its nickname “pink” being used for the highest example of excellence of anything. An oft cited example is in Shakespeare’s 1597 play ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
In Act 2, Scene 4, Romeo and his pal Mercutio engage in banter, with Mercutio teasing Romeo about what he had been up to the night before, etc. Eventually, Romeo sarcastically, backhandedly compliments Mercutio on his manners. Mercutio replies; “Nay, I am the very pinck of curtesie“.
Meaning he was the very essence of courtesy. Pink here means the height.
Quite a divine notion no? Considering that pink doesn’t exist, yet we can still see it. Like hope.
– SN
FURTHER READING:
1. RANI PINK
“The colour was complex enough to showcase the weaver’s skill, saturated enough to make gold zari pop, and culturally loaded enough that wearing it was statement, not decoration.”
READ MORE of this fascinating article about ‘Rani Pink’ (although national pride has “pinked” some facts… by that I mean softened, not clouded).
2. AUDREY WITHERS
Read: Dressed for War: the story of British Vogue editor Audrey Withers
Read; The 1955 Vogue South Africa and Rhodesia supplement article
“The decisions about the bodies represented in the pages of this 1955 Vogue supplement are a clear reflection of Nast’s ‘class publication’ strategy […]
The deliberate erasure of black bodies from ‘white’ spaces is what links this magazine to the architecture of colonialism and, in the South African context specifically, to the architecture of apartheid and forced removals.
Rosemary Cooper is credited as the editor of this 1955 Vogue supplement. […] Audrey Withers, who served as editor-in-chief from 1940 until 1960 […] had some influence on the direction of this 1955 Vogue supplement“
Run the lens over the cover and all the pages of the 1955 Vogue South Africa and Rhodesia supplement.