Navy
- HEX
- #1C2B5A
- RGB
- 28 43 90
- HSL
- 225° 53% 23%
- CMYK
- 69 52 0 65
Navy or Royal blue?
Far darker and greyer than royal blue, nearly black.
History
In 1748 Britain's Royal Navy gave its officers their first official uniforms: dark blue coats with white facings. The blue came from indigo, which stood up unusually well to sun and salt water. Navies around the world followed, and the color took the navy's name. A popular tale says George II picked the blue after admiring a duchess's riding habit; it's told without solid evidence.
Culture
Navy took over from black. Between about 1910 and 1950, uniforms for police, postmen and others moved from black to navy, and from the 1930s men followed with navy blazers and suits. The historian Michel Pastoureau counts it among the great fashion shifts of the 20th century: navy now carries much of the sober respectability black once had.
Language
Navy sits at the dark end of an old dyers' ladder. Eighteenth-century English dyers graded indigo from milk blue and pearl blue through sky, queen's, watchet and garter blue to deep and navy blue. The name itself comes from the dark blue of Royal Navy officers' uniforms.
Kin
- Indigo: The dye that let navy cloth hold its color at sea
- Khaki: Another color civilians borrowed from a British uniform
- Midnight blue: The darker blue that challenged black for evening wear
- White: Navy and white: the 1748 uniform, and every sailor suit since
In paintings
- The Milkmaid, Johannes Vermeer
Sources
- National Portrait Gallery, 'An Officer and a Gentleman: naval uniform and male fashion in the eighteenth century'
- Wikipedia, 'Navy blue'; 'Uniforms of the Royal Navy'
- Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (2001)
- St Clair, The Secret Lives of Colour (2016)
- Finlay, Color: A Natural History of the Palette (2002)
- Balfour-Paul, Indigo: Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans (2011)
- Greenfield, A Perfect Red (2005)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.