Ways to Wear: Orange

Some years ago, a fashionable friend shared that she didn’t own any orange clothing. And I wasn’t too surprised by her confession, as orange is not a color that many (except the Dutch) are clamoring to claim as their own.

But orange deserves better. To engender more positive associations with the color, here are some fun facts about the only color named after a fruit (in English):

• Carrots weren’t orange until the 17th century

• Orange is the national color of the Netherlands

• Those with red hair are redheads, and not orangeheads, as the earliest known use of the word “redhead” postdated the first recorded use of “orange” by only a few years in the early 16th century

• Autumn leaves, like mangos, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and oranges, get their orange color from carotene

• Orange is the complementary color of azure, making it an ideal choice for traffic cones and work zone marking equipment

In compiling outfits for this post, I contended with how expansive the color orange is: Is caramel orange? (Sometimes.) What about marigold?? (Yes.) Surely not pecan?! (Ehh.)

What I concluded: As brown is technically just dark orange, if you have to ask if something is orange, it probably is (at least a little). But for this post, I limited my search to yellow-red hues with only a little black in their composition.

Some orange picks: