A new exhibition shows how a textile transformation brought brightness to the masses, in an era where electric purples and absinthe greens reigned supreme
Early photography’s sepias tint our impression of the 19th century. Yet a real-life encounter with an everyday 1860s gown reveals a startling truth: “It’s electric purple and still shocking now,” curator Matthew Winterbottom enthuses. And, as the exhibition Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion and Design will explore, its garishness was typical in the 19th century.
A decade earlier, the flamboyant purple dresses made fashionable by the style leader Empress Eugénie of France were the preserve of the fabulously wealthy. Yet in just a few years, colours once made with expensive vegetable dyes were being industrially produced cheaply, thanks to an accidental discovery by an 18-year-old chemistry student William Henry Perkin. While attempting to synthesise quinine from aniline, a derivative of coal tar, Perkin realised the intense purples this colourless chemical produced could be used as a dye. He quickly established a factory for his new “mauveine”, as he called this early synthetic dye and chemists across Europe soon followed suit, expanding the synthetic colour palette. “The modern world of ubiquitous colour begins at this point,” says Winterbottom. “London’s streets and train stations are covered in brightly printed posters. People wear brightly coloured clothes. Everything from books to postage stamps becomes colourful.”
