- How we use color as a key element of the living art of designer fashion is extremely important.

Knowing more about the history of color and its impact helps us make better design decisions.

History pushes borders and so do colors.

We'll learn about the color wheel, how colors are mixed, and how new colors are born.

And just think of the design options all of those colors give us.

Join us for Color Play today on Fit 2 Stitch.

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- When I was in design school, I had a color class and my color class was probably the favorite of every class I had and if I could've stayed four years in the color class, I would've.

So when I wanted to do this whole series, you're in school, I wanted to find a color professor that was Jason Reynaga.

It's the first thing I did, before I even knew him, I went into his room where he teaches all the students and you can't describe this room.

I mean, it's just incredible.

But you can tell the person in that room teaches color.

(laughs) So thank you so much for being here.

- It's my pleasure.

- Just, like tell me, how did you even get into color?

- Well, my education in the arts really began in Germany, in Trier, Germany.

- [Peggy] In Germany?

- Yes.

I sold everything I had as a high school graduate to buy a one-way ticket.

- As a high school graduate?

- That's right, I had no plan but I had passion in my heart, love in my heart for a German, a young lady.

(laughs) So, you know, she purchased for me my first course at the European Academy of Art.

- Oh, so that took you to Germany?

- Yes.

And basically, we toured all throughout Europe, and we saw major cathedrals, museums, beautiful, gorgeous, and you know, historically important works of fine art and that reignited a passion in me for the arts.

- Oh, how exciting.

How exciting.

- So I came back to the states and after a brief stint in the military aboard a submarine, I returned to college.

- That's a really interesting contrast.

- Yes, it is.

Yes.

Well I'd lost my Texas residency, I'd been overseas for almost three years, so, you know, I had to, I had to figure that out.

But, it was an invaluable experience that solidified in me a knowledge without doubt that I belonged where I belonged, in the art world.

- And I think color has to have a colorful history.

I think it seems to make sense to me that a colorful, that a person who's gonna do color has to really understand history, is that where we start with color, is history?

- Yes.

I teach Art Appreciation and Art History courses at Waite College and it's very, you know, I do talk about the history of color and color theory and it's important to understand kind of where we've come from.

It's important to understand kind of the history of color theory and how it applies, or how it's being applied.

- And that's really because there was not the colors, when you go back, there wasn't the colors we have today.

- Absolutely not.

- [Peggy] I think sometimes we just don't think about that.

- If you look at, if you go back in the way back machine and you look at primitive man, you know, painted on cave walls, it's very clear to us that human beings responded to color and identified friend or foe, objects in nature through observation and then attempted to recreate that through natural pigments and so forth.

- So all of those things were rocks they found, or berries they found to literally... - Mixed with saliva and all kinds of interesting.

- [Peggy] Oh, how interesting.

- Yes.

Kind of gross but cool.

(laughs) But, yeah, so you know, as early human civilizations developed, you know, through language and written word, then of course, religion developed.

And it's through those early religious art forms that it becomes very clear that specific attitudes towards color-- symbolically or otherwise-- were self-evident in the art works that were produced in various cultures.

- Oh, that's interesting.

So, purple or red had a different meaning than... - And there, of course, are different kinds of colors of red, and purple, and you know, hues that can be identified in different ways, but access to color space was really quite limited early on in early human history.

17th, 18th centuries, you know, really since the 14th century on, you know, artists relied heavily on using the value of color, you know?

Because earth tones pretty much were what was, what artists had access to.

And so, they relied heavily on affecting those few hues that were available with value, with tints, and shades.

- So color necessarily, it came from our environment?

- Yes, very much so.

And, there were a couple of key influences in the history of art that I think really had a huge, or tremendous impact on kind of theories behind how colors should work in order to say, for example, produce the illusion of spacial depth.

Such as Leonardo da Vinci, right?

In his notebooks, you know, there were a lot of notes that really helped us to understand how he himself applied his own color theories that he invented from scratch.

- So at that time, were colors named?

- Oh, absolutely, but they had very, very, you know, they didn't have the names that we have today.

But you know, in many cases, they were named after the raw materials that were used to produce them.

You know, da Vinci used to mix his own pigments by hand.

You know, he'd create his own painting mixtures.

And you can control all kinds of things by doing that.

But, you know, he created techniques called sfumato, for example, where through a glazing technique, you know.

Layering an application of clear, transparent glazes.

- How interesting.

- You know, that one can produce spacial depth or illusionism.

But again... - So we do we celebrate his art because of how he used the colors or simply because of the colors that were combined together because he was a great painter?

- Da Vinci was the Renaissance man.

He was at the forefront of a number of different fields, but his applications of color.

- Not just the drawings, the physical drawings, but the application of the colors is a whole nother level.

- The way that he did it, it developed his own techniques that it was all him and of course, that's a tremendous contribution to the history of color.

- Because it was duplicated after that time?

- Oh, sure.

Absolutely.

In fact, following, you know, the few centuries that followed during the Scientific Revolution, you had a couple of visionaries that, you know, created some writings on the subject matter that explored color theory more in depth.

But basically up until essentially, I would say, the Industrial Revolution, understanding color was defined more in scientific terms.

It was kind of a scientific geometric model.

- Interesting.

- Yeah.

And of course, you know, through observation, but it was the Industrial Revolution that really changed all of that.

You know, access to industrial technologies.

For example, you know, furnaces that just because of high temperature furnaces could melt, you know, minerals together, fuse them together to produce new... - And come up with different things.

- Exactly, yeah.

- So question, just to go back just a little bit.

- Sure.

- Did you major in color?

- No, not really.

- What's the, what's the title?

I know as a fashion design, fashion merchandising, you have color as a class, but is there anyone who actually majors in just getting to know that really well.

- Robert Gamblin, for example, is a good example of a colorman.

And a colorman is someone who is focused predominately, expressly on color mixing and understanding how color works and applying that to the creation of specific tints, shades, color mixtures, hues, et cetera.

- So all of those companies out there who are creating the colors tie into, or that's who, that's who they work with.

That's how they work.

- That's how it starts.

- Or that's the background?

That's how it starts.

- But even colormen or colorists, you know, like Gamblin are drawing, you know, their knowledge and inspiration from the past.

They're an understanding of what has come before.

- It's amazing the pioneers and how it goes and how it progress.

Alright, so we've got, we're mixing minerals, we're coming up with new colors.

- That's right.

- And then who names all those?

(laughs) - Right, well, and you know, there are different color systems that are used today.

You know, the RGB, CMYK, Pantone Hexachrome, you know, the Munsell Color System, these different color systems are used or applied in the professional world of design in different ways and within different industries and they are defined differently too.

In the world of graphic design has a different way of identifying specific hues or colors within a color family.

- Yeah, that's so interesting, they all just have their own way that works for them in the mixing of those colors.

- Yeah, and fashion design is no different.

You know, they have their own way of kind of making sense of it all and understanding it.

- And then they have that whole color-- - Codex, we call it.

- Sure, Codex.

They had the whole board that decides what colors are gonna be for what season and then it kinda filters down from there.

- In the fashion world, there's the color trend forecasting.

- Yeah, and sometimes designers stick with it and sometimes they just go off on their own.

- You know, I think it's probably a good thing to mention that we live in the 21st century and while there is this rich history of everything that has come before, I think we, as designers and creatives, need to feel, you know, free to break the boundaries of those traditional constraints.

- I think it's fair to say we've never felt more free.

- [Jason] Right, exactly.

- Your students, do they feel like... - [Jason] Yes, in my classes.

- They have to know rules, they have to know some rules.

- There are rules.

You know, again, you have to learn the basics.

It's kind of like learning to crawl before you can walk and then run.

You know, understanding how things work.

You know, what plus what equals what?

And how that connects to the history of painting, for example.

Why do, you know, 15th century paintings look the way that they do?

Or the 17th century paintings?

- And so because they only had certain colors that they could use.

- Precisely.

- So they're gonna be somewhat all similar in some way because of the colors that are involved.

Or the pigments?

Would that be the right word?

- Yes, it's a safe assumption.

- So history.

What else on the history do we need to know?

- Well, you know, in my courses and the courses that I teach, I ask my students to definitely draw inspiration from the past but that really depends on the situation.

In some cases, there are creatives at the forefront of new innovations and, you know, new discoveries and I see nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from contemporary counterparts as well.

- Sure, bring it all in together.

- Right.

But, you know, I would say that from a historical context, it's probably a good idea to mention that you know, color, understanding color and the pursuit of understanding how color works, it's rolled over into different facets, different areas such as child development, for example.

You know, color is being-- - [Peggy] The whole psychology of color.

- The psychology behind color.

Precisely.

- And it's facts.

I mean, there's so many people that I meet that will argue with, you know, oh, that can't possibly be true but it's, it's facts.

- Oh, absolutely.

- I mean, it's been tried on literally all kinds of... - Sure.

After centuries of color being defined in scientific terms and even, even today, really in some cases.

- The psychology of color is fascinating to me.

- It is and there was some interesting stories done that broke down, broke it down into three main classifications.

But essentially, you had the objectives, who really kind of responded to color in purely scientific terms.

And then you had the associatives, who made sense of color in terms of its association with that which is around us.

And then you had the psychologicals that responded to color in an emotional and intellectual level.

And it's because of those early studies that we use color the way that we use it today.

Certainly, in the area of psychology.

- Well and they do.

They use it in hospitals, they use it everywhere.

- Child development is a big one.

- For a long time, it was really colors and then I know it went to black and white 'cause they said the early child didn't see colors.

It does change as well just because-- - Of course.

As the science changes, theories and attitudes change as well.

But.

- [Peggy] So I have to keep current.

- You have to remember that it is, that understanding color and working with color, it really is a marriage between art and science.

- Wow, I love that.

I love that.

So, this part is like my favorite part.

Like, if I could stay here all day, I probably would.

- Okay.

- 'Cause this is in the actual fun stuff, yes?

- Alright, yes, yes.

So, let's see.

- What can I do?

- Yeah, if you'll hand me the yellow and the red.

- So when you really call these yellow, is it hard for you as an art teacher to actually call them yellow?

- Yes, sometimes, yes.

- Because that's not yellow, is it?

- No, yes.

The cadmium makes it.

But you know, you know, when you order in a scholastic setting, when you purchase or order a basic set of paints, you know, it comes with your primaries, white, and black.

And so, we keep it pretty simple and we don't wanna like, overwhelm anyone too fast.

- So red, they don't, I mean, 'cause how do you know this is even red when there's so many variations of red?

- Exactly, yeah.

And there are different theories out there about what really constitute as the primaries of pigmented color.

And it's probably worth mentioning that the primaries for pigmented color are different than the primaries of light itself.

- [Peggy] Okay.

Alright.

- Okay, so here we go.

So what I'm gonna do first is I'm gonna draw a color wheel here.

I'm just gonna use my Sharpie here.

So basically, this is your basic color wheel.

- [Peggy] So how many sections is that?

- It breaks down into 12.

12 distinct hues.

Your primaries, your secondaries, and your tertiaries.

Okay?

So, yellow, for example.

You know.

(laughs) And, you know, red and blue form what's called a triadic color harmony.

But it's these mixtures that produce the secondaries.

So for example, if I squeeze out a little bit of my yellow here and yes, right on track there.

- I can read the little letters and figure out what's coming next.

- Right on.

- [Peggy] There ya go.

- That's awesome.

And then we have the blue.

Blurp.

See how much thicker that is?

There ya go.

We'll use our palette knife here for example.

So we can, you know.

The way the color wheel's laid out, a great way to make sense of it is the resulting color mixture will always fall directly in the middle.

- Okay.

- Okay?

- So these one, two, boom, right in the middle.

So there's gonna be something else here and something else here?

- Right.

- Got it?

- Okay, so we'll mix yellow.

Excuse me.

And we'll mix some of the blue together.

Now, when it comes to color mixing, it really is very much about choosing the right amount of each.

- Sure.

Because that's what makes all those... Yeah.

- Exactly.

- This really gets fun.

- It does.

Yellow and blue will of course, produce green, but it'll also produce yellow-green and blue-green, right?

- [Peggy] Depending on which one's more, obviously.

- Mmhmm.

And so the key here is most definitely using the right amounts of each.

- Okay, so those were the primaries.

- Which, the two primaries, in this case, yellow and blue mixed together to produce a secondary of green.

- Okay.

- Then of course, if we take al little bit more of the yellow and we mix it, I'm just gonna mix it with what's already on my palette knife.

- [Peggy] Oh, you mix it with the green?

- Mmhmm.

Well, essentially, you're using these two primaries but that is the mixture of the two.

But I'm just using what's on my knife here to mix this together and this will produce-- sorry, excuse me.

There we go.

Yellow-green.

Can you guys see that?

- [Peggy] You're having all the fun.

- [Jason] I am having all the fun.

- Yes, yes, yellow-green, sure.

- And likewise, I can... - But it wouldn't be called yellow-green today.

They'd give it a name.

- Well, exactly.

- They'd give it a whole bunch of names.

- Lime, for example.

Depending, I mean, the fashion world, you know.

Yeah, there's probably some pretty interesting names out there.

So I'm gonna take this green and I'm gonna mix it with some more blue.

- [Peggy] Okay, this looks really fun.

- [Jason] And this is now going to produce blue-green.

Now, true blue green is... - That's pretty.

- It's really dark, too.

So it isn't until you spread it out that you can really see that, you know?

So if I kinda spread it thin, maybe you can kinda see that a little bit.

- Ah, it's really pretty and there's the different shades all three there.

It's really pretty.

- Likewise, if we mix red and a little blue together, this will give us our violet.

Oh, you're gonna squeeze some more out for me?

- Well, why not?

- Cool.

- You're just having way too much fun.

- And I think I'm gonna need probably-- well, let's see.

- So question for you, 'cause this color chart, and you always hear warm and cool and those different terms I never can understand what's cool and what's warm or how do you remember that?

Is that an appropriate time to?

- No, it's perfectly, it's perfectly okay.

There is kind of a, a warm spot and a cool spot on the color wheel.

There's only one place where two warms come together and only one place where two cools come together.

- So warm would be... - Hot colors.

- What's closest to the sun?

- Yeah, think of the hot Sierra Desert.

Basically, your yellow, your yellow-oranges, orange, red, red-violet.

- Okay, and then the cools are the ocean, the waters, opposite.

- The deep, cool ocean or a dark forest at night.

- That's the easiest way I know to remember it.

- That's right, yeah.

So the temperature of color is important also from a psychological standpoint in that, you know, color can have a tremendous impact on the human mind and body.

And from a fashion design standpoint, of course, that's very important consideration.

- Sure.

Because they certainly... We know they're gonna purchase something before they know they're gonna purchase something if we hit the right colors.

That's what I love about it.

- I think what's important to remember is that some people are going to choose colors based on how it makes them feel.

Others are gonna choose colors based on how it makes them look.

And I think there's-- - Or how it makes others feel as they look at them.

- And on the subject of how it makes you feel, you know, some people respond to color for very personal reasons, from a contextual place where they're, you know, there are lots of external influences that can affect our interpretation or response to color.

You know, cultural, ethnic.

- Absolutely.

- You know, where you come from and the personal experiences you had can be a part of you know, making those decisions about color too.

- Right, right.

So this is my violet.

I like that.

That's really pretty.

- Yes.

But it's a little, it's more, it's not bad.

I would've maybe added a little more blue.

But.

(laughs) Let's go ahead and make that red-violet you're talking about.

So more red than blue in the mixture.

And it's just, it's very similar to violet, it's just gonna have more of a reddish tone.

And it's definitely, you know, got more red in the mixture.

There you go.

And again, I believe, I would've, for a true violet, you'd wanna mix just a little more.

You know, it's trial and error.

My students sometimes find this part of it all very taxing because you know?

- [Peggy] This is the fun part.

- This is the fun part, though.

- This is the fun part.

- But it does take a little bit of experimentation and mixing this with that until you get it just right.

- And then, how do the white and black play in?

- White and black, if you'll hand them to me, play out in terms of when we talk about color space, it's important to identify that they center, central core of a color wheel is where you neutrals exist.

- I'll trade you.

- There you go.

- Alright.

- Yep.

- The center is the neutrals?

- The center represents the neutral core.

And so, this is where value.

In a three-dimensional model, you're moving up and down, right?

A three-dimensional model of the color wheel.

All you're doing is pulling that color wheel up in space.

- Got it.

- And essentially, your values are represented in the center from lightest tint to darkest shade.

During the Renaissance, the great masters of the Renaissance relied heavily on access to colors that were limited, they were closer to the neutral core.

It wasn't until, like I said earlier-- The Industrial Revolution, that we could move a little further out on that color spectrum and we had greater access to color space.

And then really, up until the chemical kind of revolution, chemistry developed color further and gave us access to a whole new spectrum of light fast colors out on the outer perimeter.

So, chroma, or color intensity, your intensive colors are located on the outer perimeter.

- Well bring me up to today.

Bring me up to today a little bit and then we'll come back to this because I wanna talk about this artist who's-- not artist, but the designer.

- Absolutely.

- Yes.

Who uses color incredibly.

- Iris van Herpen.

- [Peggy] Yes.

- Yes.

- So Iris van Herpen, tell me a little bit about her.

She designs for Lady-- well she designs for a lot of people.

- She does.

- Lady Gaga is just one of them.

- Yes, absolutely.

Which of course, put her on the map probably, right?

But Iris van Herpen is a Dutch fashion designer who, you know, she went to school to become a fashion designer and that's where she was introduced to soft fabrics.

I believe she found out pretty quickly, or realized very quickly that she felt limited by those soft fabrics.

- That wasn't enough.

She wanted more.

- Yes.

- More color, more texture, more everything.

- And you know-- - [Peggy] And she's young.

She's 33 years-old.

- She's young and...

But during the educational process, you know, she was encouraged to explore a conceptual direction for her work.

And you know, she realized very quickly that soft fabrics didn't connect meaningfully with her conceptual direction.

And you know, she explored other non-traditional materials such as metal working fabrics.

- [Peggy] It's incredible.

These photos are just really showing a bit of what's going on.

- [Jason] It illustrates that she's willing to kind of, you know, work for more of a fine art almost point of view.

You know, inspired by sculpture, for example.

- Well, and I noticed the colors that come in are all kinds of varied by the shades that she's using also.

So she really puts every little thing into play.

- I would say her neutral color pallette, her color pallette is selected in part-- - Which just comes back to the center here?

- Right, but it also goes back to her conceptual direction for her work.

And I wanted to read a quote.

- Yes, please.

- If I may, to read.

In her own words, she says, "My general idea of fashion is pretty abstract.

"It's more than a garment, "it's more than a commercial product.

"Fashion is really an inter-connected thing.

"It's very locked down, however, "in its own system and in its own world.

"And I really don't think about it in that way.

"Things are happening all around us "and that should be connected to fashion too.

"I feel it can be a form of art.

"So, from the very beginning, "I have tried to define my own visual language, "trying to have it interact "with other disciplines like the arts, "architecture, and science."

- And I think as I see her works, it's a perfect example of taking the rules and then understanding how to apply them, but broadening them enough to where you bring in a few of your own.

- Van Herpen's work defies categorization.

And I think that's important.

- That's fair.

That's definitely fair statement.

- And I think, I think that, you know, it's important to understand that in her own creative process, you know, it's important to have freedom of expression and the freedom to explore other possible, you know, means of expression.

And it also, when, you know, working with clay, working with metal, working with 3-D printing, this access to new technologies and new methodologies has given her the creative freedom she needs to push those boundaries.

- And sometimes I see that in younger people where as they are the ones who are breaking boundaries.

And too many rules, you probably see that in your college students.

- You know, I kind of encourage it, though.

I want my students to learn the rules, I want them to understand how things work and why they work, I want them to understand the history of where it all comes from, but I also want them to feel creatively-- - Because they have to understand that.

- Free.

- They have to understand that base.

- Absolutely, yeah.

- Because I know that there was never a sea-foam green.

Is that correct?

- One of my personal favorite colors.

I don't know what this says about me personally, but I do love sea-foam green.

- Well I have a bathroom in sea-foam green.

That's why when you mentioned that, I knew it was something.

- Well, I used to have a kitchen in sea-foam green.

(laughs) But you know, you're right.

A lot of the colors-- - It's a new color.

- A lot of the colors that are used by-- in the fashion industry, for example-- are colors that are, you know, were only created within the last couple of centuries.

So, you know.

- Well it's been absolutely amazing because I think what I learn about colors is the more I learn, the more I realize there is to learn.

- Always.

- And this is just way too much fun to play.

We're gonna encourage you to learn so much more about colors because this is just a small introduction to what we can do.

Thank you, Professor Jason for being here.

- It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you.

- Admittedly, my favorite part of design school, pattern rules.

I will make them easy for you.

Be sure to see how next time on Fit 2 Stitch.

(elegant piano music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Britex Fabrics.

(piano music) Vogue Fabrics, Evanston, Illinois.

(piano music) Bennos Buttons.

(piano music) Kai Scissors.

(piano music) Sew Steady.

(piano music) O.C.

Sewing.

Buena Park, Fullerton, Garden Grove, and Irvine, California.

Richland Sewing Center, Dallas, Texas and the Metroplex.

Cynthia's Fine Fabrics.

(piano music) And Mike Gunther Industries.

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