Colour Walk: An Afternoon with the most Colourful Crowd in London
As I walk into Old Spitalfields Market on a windy Thursday in January, I spot a woman with bright blue hair, matching shoes and an equally bright blue bag dangling from her right hand. She wears a flowing, yellow dress with a yellow coat and her head is decorated with a white beret adorned with flowers, ceramics and other embellishments. The woman walks determinedly towards a corner of the venue where other extraordinarily colourful people have assembled for the monthly Colour Walk. Among the crowd, there is a hat made of a place mat, Crocs embellished with detailed pearl tapestries and a crochet hat made of old plastic bags. Not the usual attires you would expect to find in a business district.
The group’s first event was held in August 2016, then another in November of the same year, but Florant Bidois, or Flo, wanted to meet more regularly and started organising the event on Facebook. They now meet on the third Thursday of every month, apart from October, when they meet on artist Sue Kreitzman’s birthday. The community started around Sue, Flo tells me. She would go to the market every Thursday, which is Market Day at Old Spitalfields Market. Flo would go with her and was contacted by more and more people that wanted to walk around the market with them. ‘Sue was doing it rather than naming it, it’s just her lifestyle’, Flo says. ‘She is an amazing face for it [the Colour Walk]’, he adds. Sue is indeed an amazing face for the group with a vibrant, imaginative personal style that has been well documented by The Times, The Guardian, Refinery29 and CNN, among others. Today, Sue is wearing a multi-coloured floor-length kimono, a massive necklace with a mermaid and plastic snakes on it, and her signature red glasses. Amazingly, this must be the one crowd where she doesn’t stand out.
Most of the participants of the Colour Walk create or alter clothes, jewellery and accessories to design a unique look. Upcycling and unexpected combinations are the common thread, with elements such as dolls’ heads, Christmas ornaments, plastic flowers and various thrift store and market treasures. Flo, for instance, is dressed in a large, flowery headdress, chequered trousers, a transparent waterfall skirt, a giant embellished bowtie and a blazer decorated with buttons and badges. He tells me that the group’s favourite stall at Spitalfields is the one that sells jewellery, broches, pearls and pins, all for £1.
As more colourful people arrive for the event, a gathering of photographers and curious bystanders forms around them. The Colour Walkers smile and pose politely for anyone that asks, and some of the photographers are just as much a part of the community in spite of their ‘normal’ clothes. I get talking to Jim (whose real name is Ismael, he whispers), who photographs the event every month, and ask him what he does with the pictures he takes. ‘I delete them’, he says, ‘I look at them and then I delete them. I just like snapping’, he laughs.
Colour Walk is a maximalist’s wet dream and a sight for sore eyes in a sea of black and navy. Participants spend considerable time crafting inventive looks, new accessories and exceptional makeup. Most impressively though, the community consists of both students and retirees, men and women, people of different ethnicities and nationalities that have all found a common interest. That is perhaps the most unique thing of all.
