Abstract
Because of its recurrent and complex use in fashion and cosmetics, the colour red has prospered in these fields in a variety of shades. This does not imply that simple meanings can be drawn from different shades, as red itself, for all its immediacy and apparent lack of ambiguity, can be employed to signify everything from anger to regal authority, from defiant refusal to sexual availability. The language associated with red underlines a narrative of fire, heat, directness, passion. In the formulary of fashion, red-speak is the most constant, the least subject to variation. As Laird O’Shea Borrelli notes, ‘Fashion’s rhetoric is one of absolutes and extremes, allowing only for bangs, never for a whimper’ (1997: 254). The bang caused by red does not get bigger through the addition of hyperbole, for hyperbole is the required tone.
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© 2006 Stephen Gundle and Clino T. Castelli
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Gundle, S., Castelli, C.T. (2006). Clamorous Chroma. In: The Glamour System. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230510456_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230510456_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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