SHOWING YOUR KREWE COLORS: The History of Purple, Green, and Gold
Almost 150 years ago, the Rex Organization was created to orchestrate a citywide Mardi Gras party to impress the grand duke of Russia, who was visiting during Carnival season, and to boost the city’s tourism economy. The School of Design, which, to this day, is responsible for Rex’s parade, branded Rex “King of Carnival.” They published “proclamations” in newspapers to convince the entire city to drape their balconies with purple, green, and gold. Since then, those colors have come to symbolize New Orleans, in general, and our Mardi Gras, specifically, the world over. No one is really sure why these colors were selected, although, to be on brand, they certainly would have to convey kingliness. Gold may seem like an obvious choice, but purple and green also have a long-established association with royalty and status. Why would particular colors be more associated with wealth, power, and stability than others? Some colors are rare in nature, and making color requires natural resources. As any painter or designer
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Mardi Gras Manual | Where Y'at Magazine
would tell you, wielding color is expensive. Purple and green require all three primary colors, which makes our Mardi Gras palette the epitome of opulence in itself. Purple pigment from manganese and hematite powder first appeared in cave paintings between 18,000 and 27,000 years ago. However, it is Tyrian Purple dye that likely kickstarted purple’s imperial reputation. The word purple itself is rooted in the Latin term purpura, for
the mollusk that produces the color. It takes 10,000 to 250,000 snails to manufacture a single gram of Tyrian Purple. That’s enough dye to tint a single sleeve, which, even today, will cost you over $2,700. Only the most elite royals accented their garments with, for example, stripes of purple—so, the bigger the stripe, the more powerful the person. But beyond being costly, the actual color of Tyrian
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By Michelle Nicholson
