Cotton Colours of the 1930s

On Wednesday 9th October 1929, Lord Ebury presided over a meeting in the Connaught Rooms at the Park Lane Hotel, London. The proposal under discussion was the formation of an organisation that would determine "colour tendencies for the fashion and allied trades."

The reasoning behind this effort to control fashions in colour dyes was economic. The new fashions for spring and autumn collections were made from textiles that had been dyed to individual company requirements. Often they looked to Continental fashion houses for colour trends, ending up picking up on these quite late on. This led to waste as trends waned before all the the new products had been sold. It was felt that the proposed organisation could both reduce waste and improve colour matching. 

The British Colour Council was officially launched in April 1931 - it was non-profit making and had a board of representatives from throughout the industry. It operated by releasing two colour cards per year - one in spring for autumn collections and one in autumn for the spring collections of the following year.  In order to receive these cards, manufacturers had to become members and pay a subscription. The first colour card for autumn 1931 listed 60 shades. Examples of some of the early members include the Wholesale Textile Association, the London and Luton Bleachers and Dyers Association and a number of Irish linen firms. But it was not an entirely smooth launch, with many companies holding back from membership to see if it was going to work.

However, the resources were enough to release a second colour card in September 1931, and over time the Council's reputation grew - by 1949 membership stood at 2,554 companies. As the council progressed it branched out into more specialist activities, for example, the naming of new colours for Nottingham Lace products in 1939 (Rufford Rose, Portland Blue, Clumber Beige, Belvoir Blue). The Council also advised on colour schemes for the major state occasions of the 1930s such as the jubilee and coronation. On the death of King George V in 1936, the Council shared the correct colours for the mourning period - Regal Purple, Silver Grey. The Council's pronouncements became a regular reference in newspaper fashion pages and would take into account trends and events in their decisions. 

The relevance of this to the ESCC is that the Council would have, to a certain extent, dictated what shades of the colour were in use, and how much of it. They may have been responsible for naming it, as each shade on the colour chart was given a specific name. In addition to the Nottingham Lace names given above, a range of colours was brought out to mark the 1937 coronation including the Sylko cotton favourite, Buckingham Lilac. Another of the new shades was called St James Rose, another Sylko colour. Marina Green marked the occasion of a royal wedding.

If a colour name begins with a geographical reference, it seems to be a fair guess that the British Colour Council will have come up with it going on the examples collected for this summary. Many seem to have aristocratic ties. 

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