Pink
- HEX
- #F28DB2
- RGB
- 242 141 178
- HSL
- 338° 80% 75%
- CMYK
- 0 42 26 5
Language
Pink is named after a flower. Garden pinks (Dianthus) have frilly petal edges, as if trimmed with pinking shears, and the flower's name came first. Pink as a word for pale red shows up in the late 1600s; at the time 'pink' could also mean a yellowish paint.
Culture
Pink for girls is younger than you think. A 1918 trade magazine, Earnshaw's Infants' Department, called pink the stronger color and so right for boys, with dainty blue for girls. Other sources said the opposite, and stores disagreed for decades. Historian Jo Paoletti shows the girls-in-pink rule only hardened in the mid-1900s. See pink-and-blue.
Design
In 1937 Elsa Schiaparelli launched a perfume called Shocking and a loud pink to match, shocking pink. Barbie's pink is a Pantone shade, 219 C. And in 2016 the artist Stuart Semple sold the 'pinkest pink' to everyone except Anish Kapoor, in protest at Kapoor's exclusive rights to Vantablack.
Science
In 1979 Alexander Schauss claimed a bubblegum shade, Baker-Miller pink, calmed aggressive prisoners, and jails painted cells to match. Later, tighter studies by other researchers did not find the effect. See color-psychology.
Art
In Fragonard's The Swing, a woman in a froth of pink silk kicks her slipper into the air over a hidden admirer. The dress is the brightest thing in a dim, green garden.
Kin
- Blue: Its partner in the boys-and-girls rule, which once ran the other way
- Hot pink: Schiaparelli's shocking pink of 1937 set the loud end of pink
- Baby pink: The nursery pink of the mid-century gender rule
- Black: The Vantablack feud produced the 'pinkest pink'
- Red: Pink is red lightened with white
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'Pink' (color sense from the 17th century, after the Dianthus flower)
- Paoletti, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America (2012); Smithsonian Magazine, 'When did girls start wearing pink?' (2011)
- Schiaparelli, official site, 'Shocking perfume bottle'; V&A, 'Elsa Schiaparelli: a timeline'
- Genschow et al., 'Does Baker-Miller pink reduce aggression in prison detention cells?' (2015)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.