Pink has been heralded as the colour du jour as we enter AW16, described by Vogue as “intelligent, modern and strong…more stylish than saccharine”. But there is much more to the colour than meets the eye. Beneath the surface of gender perception (pink is for girls, right?), lies an elaborate and convoluted history that weaves its way through perceptions of sexuality, masculinity, femininity, religion, the struggle for gay rights, surrealism and the rise of mass marketing and consumption. If you think the story of the colour pink can be viewed through rose-tinted spectacles, you might want to think again.

The naming of the colour ‘pink’ was relatively recent, first appearing in the 17th century, expressed previously as pale or light red, or metaphorically through flowers. However, its description in literature dates back to ancient civilisations, most commonly to describe natural phenomena, such a dawn and dusk. During the Middle Ages, the colour was associated with the body of Christ and the religious connotations of the colour persevered until the Renaissance. In Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks, the infant Christ is depicted presenting a pink flower to the Virgin Mary, meant to symbolise the sacred bond between mother and child.

In fashion, pink did not become popular until the Rococo period. Prior to this, the nobility of Western cultures preferred bright, strong dyes – blue, red and purple, especially – to convey their wealth and power. The deeper the dye, the more extravagant the garment. But, with the rising popularity of pastels in the 18th century, pink made its debut in the world of fashion. Throughout this period, pastel pink was the only shade possible with the dyes available, but the colour had a multitude of implications and insinuations from sexuality to innocence, masculinity to femininity and strength to tenderness.

It was not until the 20th century that pink inherited a spectrum of its own, with the dawn of chemical dyes. This revitalisation of the colour was pioneered by the Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who is identified with the surrealist movement of the interwar period. She was the first designer to introduce these dyes into mainstream fashion, and by mixing magenta and white dyes she created her signature shade, shocking pink. She called the colour “bright, impossible, impudent, becoming, life-giving, like all the light and birds and the fish in the world put together.” This characteristically eccentric description of the colour, though bordering the surreal, highlights the infinite connotations with the colour, having not yet been appropriated as a feminine trope.  Her obsession with the colour inspired François Nars to create the iconic lipstick Schiap, in the colour Schiaparelli created, in 1998. Both the lipstick and a nail varnish of the same name are still in production to this day.

During the Second World War, the history of pink grew infinitely darker. The pink triangle was used in Nazi concentration camps as a badge to identify male prisoners incarcerated for homosexuality. The colour was intended as a symbol of shame and punishment, but became an expression of the struggle and ultimate freedom of suppressed sexualities during the 20th century. The pink triangle was adopted in the 1970s by the gay rights movement as a means of commemorating the oppression of gays while remodelling the symbol of shame into a symbol of empowerment. In 1995, following over a decade of campaigning, a pink triangle plaque was installed at the Dachau Memorial Museum to commemorate the suffering of gay men and women during the Nazi occupation. The pink triangle has also inspired the designs of many major gay rights monuments, including the Homomonument in Amsterdam, the Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Monument in Sydney and the Pink Triangle Park in San Francisco.

It was only after the Second World War that pink began to gravitate towards female stereotypes, while blue adhered to male. There has been some evidence to suggest that the opposite was true before this time. An article in the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department in June 1918 said:

“The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

However, during the interwar period this began to change. In 1927, Time magazine ran a survey of department stores in various cities to find out what colours they used for boys and girls – the results were remarkably equal in their division of the colours by gender. It was not until after the Second World War that the current gender-colour classifications manifested themselves. In fact, it was not until the the 1980s that the constructs we see today started to coagulate