FASHION DESIGN
An Ode To Blue
A blue flower dress I designed and the history of the color
Blue.
Astonishing, majestic, sumptuous blue.
Imagine a dress blue as a bluebird on a summer morning,
wings light as magic.
Such a shock of blazing blue,
a summer comet in the heat of day.
I designed a blue flower dress with Midjourney AI — perhaps Artificial Intelligence is the future of fashion. I kind of hope it is. I can’t sew and I can’t draw, yet I desperately want to be a designer.
I’ve been creating digital art for years and am inexplicably drawn to images of women — infinite incarnations of myself? My mom can’t understand it. She’s into landscapes and wildlife and flowers.
If I could design dresses with AI, I could create images with the Midjourney app and then hand them off to a team knowledgeable in sewing and fabrics.
Here is the command I typed into Midjourney to produce the flower dress:
haute couture, gorgeous black woman wearing modern blue flower petal dress, beautiful, photorealistic, highly detailed, full body portrait, volumetric lighting
That’s it. Just a few simple words for such stunning results.
The ancient Egyptians made blue dye from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, which they imported from faraway lands such as present-day Afghanistan. Extracting the blue dye from the stone was complex and labor-intensive, making it a highly prized and expensive commodity.
Blue was a sacred color in Egypt, associated with Horus, the god of the sky, and was used to decorate tombs, temples, and other religious buildings.
Additionally, blue was used to dye the clothes of pharaohs, gods, and high-ranking officials, as well as to create jewelry and other decorative objects. The use of blue dye was so closely associated with the elite and powerful that it became a symbol of wealth and status.
The ancient Romans didn’t use the color blue as extensively as the Egyptians, but blue dye was still made from lapis lazuli and was quite rare and expensive. Because the Romans didn’t have access to the same sources of lapis lazuli as the Egyptians, they couldn’t use it as extensively in their art and fashion.
However, the Romans still used blue in their frescoes, mosaics, and glassware, although these were luxury items and not widely used by the population.
Blue wasn’t a common color in Roman clothing, but it was used occasionally to create striking contrasts with other colors, such as in striped togas worn by high-ranking officials.
Indigo became the go-to source for blue in the Middle Ages. Indigo plants were grown and harvested in many parts of the world, including India, Africa and Europe. People had found that the process of extracting the blue dye from the indigo plant was less labor-intensive and expensive than extracting it from lapis lazuli, making it more widely available.
During the Middle Ages, blue became a popular color for clothing, particularly for the robes of the wealthy and the nobility. The blue dye was high quality and used to create rich, deep shades.
It also decorated fabrics with intricate patterns and designs. Blue was associated with the Virgin Mary, and became a popular color for religious garments and church vestments. It was also used in illuminated manuscripts and stained glass windows.
In the 19th century, new methods of producing blue dye from synthetic sources were developed, which made the color much more widely available and less expensive. The first synthetic blue dye, called “Prussian blue,” was discovered in 1704 by accident, but it was not widely used until the 19th century.
In 1856, the synthetic dye “indigo blue” was developed, which could be produced on an industrial scale and was much cheaper than natural indigo. This made it possible for the average person to afford blue clothing.
Another synthetic blue dye, “aniline blue,” was discovered in 1857 and was even cheaper to produce than indigo blue. It was widely used in the textile industry and in the production of blue-colored consumer goods such as paper, ink, and paint.
These new methods of producing blue dye allowed for more vibrant and consistent shades of blue, and also made it more affordable and accessible to a wider range of people. As a result, blue became a very popular color in fashion, appearing in a wide range of shades and tones, from pale baby blue to deep navy. These are some of the shades we recognize in our clothes today.
Blue, blue. How we love blue. Immerse yourself in it. Close your eyes and sink into the deep blue sea.
Thanks for reading! Here are a couple more articles I’ve written for my new Medium publication, Fashion Police:
