![]() ![]() "An object of ridicule, an object of pride: gaudy, fugitive and poisonous, but the new colours proved irresistible to fashionable Paris and London." Garfield included many vibrant photos in a colorful insert, showing the fashions of the times as well as Perkin's earliest dyes. ![]() Queen Victoria wore mauve to her daughter's wedding and Empress Eugénie, the single most influential woman in the world of fashion, decided that mauve was a colour that matched her eyes."Īnd so the fashion trend raged. "And then two things happened to change his life. The light purple that he produced was a hit all over Europe: Perkin, at only eighteen years of age, had discovered a way to synthesize a colour using coal tar. ![]() It was during one such lab trial in an attempt to synthesize quinine in 1856 that he came upon a mauve residue. William Perkin was a young British chemist who liked to experiment. Natural dyes have been around for centuries, yet the first mass-produced artificial dye wasn't a primary red or blue, but in fact mauve. Yet who would have thought that anyone could have made a book about dyes exciting? I read half of this book in one sitting (okay, I was on a plane en route to Fort Lauderdale at the time). I should know this by now about Simon Garfield. Mauve: How One Man Invented a Colour that Changed the World was a joy to read. Before he wrote about maps and fonts, Simon Garfield wrote about dyes, mauve especially. ![]()
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