Color Choices --- They Affect Us

by Dana Hayne

^{journey in a train in India}

^{women in India wearing colorful saris}

Some years back, I ventured to India for Ayurvedic healing. (Another story.) I was traveling by train from the hill city of Lanavle to Pune, a city of roughly 3.5 million people and center to India’s 5000-year-old system of natural healing. Thankfully, I had managed to find the women’s-only car, located on the back end of the very long, very crowded train. Here perhaps, there would be less ogling. My pale, Caucasian self was quite the object of attention on the male dominated cars. Right car found, I settled onto my hard wooden bench, thankful to even have a seat in the cheek by jowl crush of passengers.

Safely pinched into place, I began to study my fellow travelers. I noticed a clutch of women, squatting on the floor by the open door. They nattered animatedly among themselves, bangles clinking as the train sped along. Soon enough, they spied me and started gesturing to me, chattering in Maharati. Fortunately, the uniformed schoolgirls next to me were more than delighted to practice their English and translate for me.

Women being the same the world over, these workaday women wondered, “What is the favorite color women wear in America?” “Black,” I answered. To which I received gasps of disbelief. “And next after that?” they queried. “Perhaps, navy blue, chocolate brown, or gray,” I answered somewhat timidly. Well, dang! You’d think I’d announced the Ganges had run dry. Slacked jaw, stone silence. I’d shut those chattering madams down cold in shock and awe.

I looked carefully at those seemingly impoverished women, who owned but the one sari, which they wore. One woman wore an emerald green sari, bordered with turquoise and patterned with gold and rose colored geometric shapes. Another wore pumpkin orange, spun thorough with sunset reds and pinks. Nowhere did I sense poverty of spirit, the morose, deadening kind of poverty that colors everything gray. Their glorious raiment seemed to rainbow their otherwise meager existence and to wrap them in a protective swath of light and hue, to shield them from life’s potential drudgeries.

I pondered my American lady friends back home, in the land of relative plenty. Mentally, I watched them roll out of bed each morning, stumble to their closets, don their little black dresses (“It makes me look thinner.”), shuffle to the kitchen, pour their black coffee, read their black and white newspapers and head off to work in their black, silver or gray cars, mumbling to themselves, “Not enough time. Not enough money. Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.”

Why had they discarded their luminescent mood support? How could they venture forth so unprepared? Had they forgotten this simple means of brightening the day?

Ever since that trip, I rise each morning and approach my closet quite deliberately, asking myself, “What color today? If I’m feeling a little less than perky and need to add a little Brunhilda, I gravitate to shades of red. Some days I’ve just got to wear crisp clear blues and other days complimentary shades of roses and greens demand consideration. I let my fingers do the walking and land on just the right shade. “You’re the one. I can feel it!”

Color, there is actually a science to the impact of color (well known to marketing experts, by the way), and any one who wants validation for their intuitive color choices can google "chromotherapy," or "the meaning and use of color in Ayurvedic medicine" (or in Chinese medicine).

^{promotion photo from official Dolly site}

But lastly, I can’t leave out Dolly. I do know that Dolly Parton might be too big a leap for most of us girls, but she is on this side of the ocean and perhaps a tad more relevant. You see, even dear Dolly understood what those Indian rainbow women knew when she crooned,

“One is only poor, only if you choose to be Although we had no money, I was rich as I could be In my Coat of Many Colors my mama made for me.”

[That coat, by the way, is on display, for all those of you wondering, in the Chasing Rainbows Museum in Dollyland. No kidding.]

So in future mornings, as you get dressed, consider that you can support the mood you would like to have with the color of your clothes.

--article by Dana Hayne
Egyptian Cotton Tshirts Customer
September 2010

Links

^{http://www.colormatters.com/culturematters.html}

^{http://www.colorconnections.com/whatiscolor.htm}

We would like to see how some of you relax in our soft comfy clothing. Would you like to share a photo, to be posted here?

Anne McKenna of Stirling, Scotland wrote to us in June 2007

Received the tshirts I ordered yesterday - they are great - my husband suffers from allergies and has difficulty when buying clothes and these seem to be fine - what kind of dyes do you use?

We received the t-shirts yesterday, so I make that about a week from you to here - that was pretty fast.

Yes, he is finding all the t shirts ok - it is a bit of a hit or miss really - he has bought some clothes that are totally unwearable even if they are 100% cotton and pure white, but he has
other clothes - mainly stuff he has had for a while that are fairly bright colours, but are perfectly fine.

We cannot use most washing powders, any fabric softener and most houshold cleaners. He cannot use shampoo or really anything other than plain white soap. He gets a more or less instant reaction, of varying strengths which causes him a stiff neck, ringing in his head, numbness down one side of his body and headaches. We have tried boil washing some of the things he has had a problem with, so I am fairly sure that it is something intrinsic within the material or dying process that is causing the problem rather than something used to treat the material that would wash or wear off.

We thought the whole thing was a risk, 1. that he wouldn't be able to wear them at all, 2. that they wouldn't fit, and 3. that he wouldn't like them. We were pleased to find that he at last has some new clothes [from Egyptian Cotton Tshirts] - it was getting to the point where everything he had was falling to bits!

--Anne