Clothing Colours

This comes in response to the question

Most colours are OK as long as they appear to be from natural dyes (nothing fluroescent or overly-bright). Some colours were more expensive than others to produce, so it's best to go with something simple, unless you're making a posh outfit. For an overskirt I'd suggest going for a dull-ish red, blue, brown, grey, browny-yellow, burgundy or a russet colour. Earthy colours, generally. Striped cloth was popular for skirts, but it's probably best to avoid that. Green was quite an expensive colour and black and purple mega expensive, so avoid them.

Generally the initial colours were very bright, but quickly faded as it was hard to get the dye to fix well, so it's best to go for something dull and boring to start with - brown, grey or a dull red/burgundy or blue.

We can get a little pedantic with dye colours.

Black, Purple & Green are really the province of Rich people:

• Black dyeing invovling several overlaying dyeings, and thence being Cloth destructive.
• Green having no natural dye producing it, so it has to be dyed twice, yellow (Weld) then blue (Woad).
• Purple dye was expensive (See note below) or produced by double dyeing red (Madder) then blue (Woad).

As a Note, “Lincoln Green” was actually a muddy grey/brown shade.

Here are some rules of thumb

• Standard Camp follow colours are madder and weld dyeds really, range of colour depending on Mordant used.
• Anything “Bright” in hue is pretty much out for anyone with no money as more dye/expensive mordants are required.
• Anything that has an expensive mordant is out for lesser peoples.

Madder gives a large ranges of Rusty reds, Brick reds & muddy/dull oranges (It was the cheapest dye going, we grew LOTS of it.)

Weld gives the yellows, it gives what you could call “Supernoodle” colour through to sallow/muddy/“American mustard” shades.

Woad & Indigo both produce indigotin, which is blue. Woad is the cheap way to get indigotin, but it is a tricksome/time intense process to get dyed up with, so in the mid-cost range.

Purples come from either Logwood dye or the ultra expensive Tyrian Purple. Logwood was banned at our time period even though it was cheap and easy to dye with because it effected the far more lucrative Tyrian Purple import market. Purple could also be double dye produced (naturally!), but that then puts it into the cost bracket of Green…

I don't believe they had specific “grey” dye - dyeing grey just means dyeing to a lesser saturation of black after all. However, Homespun of mixed sheep produces a grey cloth.

But there were grey-coated regiments in the civil wars. The Covenanters for a start. So you may be OK wearing grey, you'll just have to put on a lowland Scots accent as an accessory…

All the blame is mine (James Kemp), credit to Nikki, Mutts, Emily and others who contributed to the discussion (including Steve who asked the useful question)