I have always loved the colour purple. I remember as a child staring myself in the mirror once trying to finitely decide what my favourite colours were. Purple was the obvious choice, coupled occasionally with pink. As I got older the choice of complimentary colour changed to yellow, and again to orange but always the purple remained. Lately I have found myself wearing more and more of the colour. People were beginning to mention it to me, not that it was a bad thing, but that I was obviously into the hue. I was noticing it everywhere as well. Even when I went shopping I’d find myself coming home with things in purple packages. It was becoming absurd.
I was worrying that I was becoming one of those ‘Purple Ladies’. You know the kind. They’re middle aged, of the spiritual variety and clad head to toe in royal and earthy tones of the colour purple. A friend of mine told me about a lecturer of theirs who signed her emails (which were all fonted in purple) as ‘Unapologetically Purple’. Everything in her life is purple. Everything she wears and everything she owns is purple. Apparently some people have found this hard to deal with and she has friends who even refuse to enter into her Purple Palace. Something about the phrase ‘Unapologetically Purple’ stuck with me. To let go of feeling confused and kind of embarrassed by my addiction and to instead fall deeply into the purple passion pit.
So I decided to indulge in my obsession completely and wear exclusively purple for seven days straight. Attempting to not repeat any item of clothing. It ended up being powerfully easy. I have an alarming number of purple items in my wardrobe. I found that when I was getting dressed in the morning I was becoming very specific with the hues that I wanted to wear. You know, not putting too much lavender with violet accessories etc. The further that I got through the week the more disinterested I became in the prospect of only wearing purple. Until come Sunday I was actually feeling really bummed out and over the whole experience. Looking forward to being able to reintroduce some other colours to my wardrobe.
One thing that I learned definitely about the colour purple is that everyone has a very different opinion about what the colour means, and all were very vocal in wanting to tell me about their own association with purple. That it’s the colour of friendship, spirituality and homosexuality. The most interesting thing I was taught was about the colour’s place on the visual spectrum. It’s the last colour that the human eye can see before ultra violet. It is also believed to have the highest frequency of the whole rainbow. This is why it is associated with the Crown Chakra, which is considered to be man’s link with the universe, the connection between wisdom and spiritual insight. A friend told me that when she was in India she became completely obsessed with the colour orange, and then when she went home and had a Reiki realignment she was told that her Sacral Chakra (which is represented by the colour orange) was out of tune. The healer asked if she had been drawn to orange, saying that it is common to be attracted to the colour that represents a blocked Chakra in your psyche.
I consider myself to be a very grounded person. Very much living and walking around on this here planet Earth. And I sometimes believe that I’m not as connected to the stars as some other people seem to be. I was never one to play imagination as a child. My dreams are always very realistic and believable. Even when having psychedelic experiences I’ve never hallucinated something that wasn’t physically there. So to me it makes sense that my purple passion is possibly about my desire to connect with the unknown universe. But there’s also something else about this colour that makes me feel good. It seems to make other people feel good too. Even now a few weeks after this experiment I’m still having at least a daily conversation about the colour. Before I started this Purple Project I was wondering if I would overkill it by saturating myself so completely, but it’s like three weeks later and I reckon there’s only been one, max two days that I haven’t worn purple. I don’t know if I am destined to be one of those Purple Ladies, and there’s only one way to find out.