Hello Everyone!
This is not going to become “Fun with Flags with Dr. Sheldon Cooper” from The Big Bang Theory, I promise!
I’ve stumble upon a lot of fun facts about Fashion History and I decided to create a segment on the blog: F3 – Fashion Fun Facts. And for this opening post I wanted to share with you one of the reasons I was inspired to make it: I came across this video on youtube explaining why Country flags don’t use the color purple.
“For centuries purple dye was worth more than gold. The dye used to produce purple fabric came from a sea snail that only lived off the shores of modern day Lebanon. Because it was so rare, purple became associated with royalty. This is the reason you don’t see purple on country flags. It was just too expensive to produce”
On the video, the author explains the dye process to creating the color and a lot of funny facts. I really enjoy History, it was my favorite subject on High School and I’m constantly amazed with the origin of the simple things and how the butterfly effect works.
Purple is a color that I’ve always wore on clothes, but I’ve never noticed that it wasn’t a daily color before in time. After watching the video, I did a little image research and the only purple fabrics you see is on high class women wardrobe. It’s a color that Queen Elizabeth II wears all the time!
And the, I remember I saw a lot of dresses like that whe I visited the Le Musée Mode & Dentelle (Fashion and Lace Museum, previously known as Costume and Lace Museum) in Brussels! (sorry for the bad photos)
Don’t forget to check out the After Skool channel, they have more interesting videos on various subjects! Until than, you can watch this one!
I hope you liked the video and find this knowledge as fascinating as I do!
Comment bellow what did you find more interesting about the color!
See you soon*
Image Credits:
Mara’s Artistry
Mara's Artistry 
Interesting read, thanks for sharing.
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Thanks! I’m glad you liked it 😀
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In old books, it’s referenced a lot that clothes with a color of “royal purple” were only worn by affluent individuals. During the times of the Roman Empire, their word for “purple” was synonymous to the emperor’s office (Akin to throne or crown).
In English, there are some idiomatic expressions like born in the purple (born in the royal family) which etymologies could be traced back to Old English.
I remember reading some articles published in 1856 when the color purple was first synthesized. It was a very big thing back then. I would say that even if someone discovered a way to synthesize gold at the time, it wouldn’t have made that big of a headline like the purple synthesization.
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Wow that’s incredible, I’m always interested in learning about etymology, no matter the subject! Also, about the synthesization because the process of making fabrics are so different across the world, specially when comparing the with asian cultures! Thank you so much for your comment, because of that I’ve been reading your blog and loving it!
Feel free to share your knowledge here any time 😀
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