Orange is a color we don't see a lot of in Western fashion history. It turns up here and there on a hat, a collar, etc. but it's not really part of the vocabulary the way that red, black, or blue are, most likely because there are very few sources for it in the natural world, none apparently in Europe - then, once synthetic dyes came into use, it was still not a prized color and did not really enter the lexicon. In the 1930s, the era of Schiaparelli/Dali collaboration, it did start to be used more frequently, but it never reached the popularity of being a "usual" color their, either.

One of the few pre-1930s orange pieces of clothing is this striking evening dress in the collection of the Kent State University. It's attributed to Charles Frederick Worth, likely because he was one of the pre-eminent couturiers of the period and because there are a number of Worth gowns with extensive embroidery (1, 2, 3, 4). The color itself is eye-catching, obviously, but I'm fascinated by the embroidery imitating a short peplum-ish overskirt. This dates it to probably about 1867, when the plain skirt was still in fashion but the short overskirt was beginning to be seen. The design of this gown cleverly allows the wearer to combine both fashion elements, similar to the dress on the left in this 1867 fashion plate.

One of the technological innovations that drove the development of modernist painting in France and the rest of the West after about 1860 was introduction and rapid popularization of tubed paint. The Impressionists were able to develop their famous reliance on plein aire painting in part because their paint was easily portable. Before tubed paint, an artist would have to grind pigment in a mortal and pestle and then carefully mix it with a binder (usually linseed oil, though at other times egg tempura has been the dominant medium). The resulting paint would only last a few hours before it hardened to the point of being unusable, and that combined with the expensive prices of most pigments meant that artists were tied to a studio, where they could carefully regulate the amount of pigment they used (also, the equipment for grinding and mixing paint was often quite bulky). Tubes changed all that, allowing artists to squeeze a precise amount of a very pure color onto a palette and use it immediately. This allowed the Impressionists to focus their efforts on the atmospheric effects of light and color by laying pure areas of paint directly next to one another. The Neo-Impressionist/Pointillist/Divisionist painter Georges Seurat carried this Impressionist technique a step further, developing a semi-rigorous "science" of color application based on tiny dots of paint. His huge and meticulous paintings were less often executed en plein aire, but they still relied on that bright tubed paint for their effects. Seurat relied extensively on complementary colors for his works, the most famous of which is undoubtedlyA Sunday on La Grade Jatte. Instead of using lines to delineate the contours between objects, he used contrasts of complementary color. Since he used a fair amount of blue in his work (it's a common color in Western culture), that also meant he used a fair amount of orange. Unfortunately, many of the new tubed pigments he and other artists used were very unstable, something which the artists using them were unaware of. Seurat himself died at the young age of 31, of diptheria, and soon after his death all of his vibrant bright oranges had faded into dull orangish-browns. This means that his surviving works were undoubtedly even more brilliant than we know them today (his bright greens have also faded to dull olive colors). Since he was dead, he never had a chance to switch pigments, and we don't know what his later work would have looked like, had he had such an opportunity.

The fading and changing of pigments over time is a constant in the history of art, but I find this example particularly poignant, since such bright oranges were so new and Seurat died so young.

I’ve been reading Destiny Bay and in a way the book’s left a bad taste in my mouth. I remember several years ago, picking up a magazine with one of those stories in it. I read it avidly for awhile, until — I remember what a distinct shock it was when I suddenly discovered that the characters were a bunch of damned Orangemen. I was not only shocked but astounded. In those days, I in my innocence supposed that the only Irish who ever found their way into decent literature were South-country people. I supposed that, naturally, all Irish writers and men of intellect came from the South — and that the Ulstermen, realizing their low moral and psychic status, made it a point to conceal their shame as much as possible. Such the innocence of youth. Yet here was an Orangeman flouting his shame, and his people’s shame, in my very face — blatantly and brazenly announcing his color, and apparently proud of it. I have received many literary shocks. Few have equalled this. I felt vaguely outraged and insulted. I finally took up the reptilian thing and tried to read it, but the zest had gone out of it. Bred in the traditions of Munster and Connaught, or at least a handed-down remnant of those traditions, a violent hatred for all things Orange was as natural to me, and as much a part of me, as patriotism and love for the striped flag is to the average American youth, reared with Boy Scout standards.

Well, I know more now and I’m broader-minded. I’m no more like an old Irish acquaintance of mine from Leinster who used to almost have apoplexy at the very slightest mention, even, of Belfast. But still I can’t stomach that Orange tint with which the late Byrne besmeared all his works — well, maybe not all. He professed a fine national Irish flavor. And he was a liar when he did.

Well, no good luck can come, talking of the dead, and he did love Ireland, even if all his love centered in the North. Great God, why the old Irish families should side with the English is more than I can see. It’s certain, the MacFarlanes can’t claim a Norman origin. Either they come of a pure Irish stock root or else their clan heads lie, when they say the family is descended from Parthelon out of Egypt.

But Byrne can’t give the native Irish justice. He has to drag in the Scotch or the Normans, or the Phoenicians or God knows who else. In Crusade, who did he glorify? Why, the O’Neills — God knows they’re as true and fine a pure Irish family as ever lived but he made the hero half Norman and why did he pick the O’Neills? Because they’re Ulster stock; maybe the reason why a just God hasn’t blasted Ulster long ago. And he can’t even give the O’Donnells of Donegal justice. Aborigine, he calls them and all other native Irish families. Oh well — you said he’s half d’Arcy, didn’t you? I’ve gotten so I’m suspicious of all Celtic seemings. I expect to find a Fitzpaul or a Fitzgerald lurking under every straight-forward Costovan and O’Brien.

Oh well — I’ve nothing to say against the old Norman-Irish families. But I like to see justice done to the original Irish. No people is perfect. All men are swines, more or less; each race has its scuts and its saints. But — oh well — why should I care? What’s Ireland to me, with her troubles or her triumphs — if I went back there, I’d be a stranger in a strange land and no one would own me. What’s Ulster to me, or Connaught?

Bah. My ancestors thought little enough of Ireland to leave her — those who weren’t deported for sedition. So it’s little I’ll worry myself about her. America with her mixing of strains gave me an English name for a joke, with just a mite of Norman English blood, and a little broader strain of Scotch — but mostly I’m South Ireland, thank God, and “The Boyne Water” puts my teeth on edge in spite of myself.

• Robert E. Howard to Harold Preece, Sept 1929, Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 1.370-371

Destiny Bay (1928) and Crusade (1928) were works by Irish writer Donn Byrne (fully: Bryan Oswald Pierre Marie D'Arcy Donn-Byrne O'Byrne); the term "Orangemen" refers to the Orange Order in Ulster, named after William of Orange, and by extension is sometimes slang for Northern Irish and British unionists in Ireland in general. I strongly suspect that Howard is gently taking the piss here - he being, as noted, several generations removed from Ireland, despite his great admiration and interest in Irish history and the pride he took in his identity as American Irish. It's worth noting, for instance, that one of his major characters he created was Cormac FitzGeoffrey, a half-Norman, half-Irish knight that appeared in several of Howard's historical adventures.

I'm sure many have wondered if the fruit is named after the colour or vice versa. Well, it's the colour that's named after the fruit. To quote etymonline.com:

c. 1300, of the fruit, from Old French orange, orenge (12c., Modern French orange), from Medieval Latin pomum de orenge, from Italian arancia, originally narancia (Venetian naranza), alteration of Arabic naranj, from Persian narang, from Sanskrit naranga-s "orange tree," of uncertain origin. Not used as a color word until 1540s.

Before the colour started to be called orange, it was apparently called yellowred or its Old English equivalent, but I can't find any literary sources on a cursory googling that use this term.