Why Does Lydia Love Purple?
Purple isn’t just a pretty color, to me it has a deep significance (both historically and spiritually) which is why I chose to add the word into the title of my blog. I’m named after Lydia in the Bible. She was a seller of purple cloth and the first European woman to convert to Christianity in the first century CE. This makes Lydia somewhat of an ancient boutique owner and certainly a member of the ancient fashion world (if you will). Since the primary focus of this blog is my take on history and fashion I felt that including the word purple in it’s name really sums up the marriage of fashion and history in a perfect way. It’s almost as if God destined my to write about fashion history! (wink wink)
The Color Purple
Purple cloth and garments can be considered couture of the ancient world due to the dye’s labor intense production method. The method of production for the dye was excessively time consuming and thus expensive. As we know, time equals money; and the longer a production time the higher the price. In fact, a synthetic version of purple dye was not invented until the late 19th century. This means that for the majority of human history the ability to own and wear purple cloth was reserved for the wealthy and royal.
How was the color purple made?
Ancient purple dye was derived from a sea snail called the Murex. Thousands of murex’s were crushed and ground up in order to collect the liquids that were produced during the process. While archaeologist aren’t entirely sure what the next step was they know that the liquid from the snails was then combined with either urine or liquids from plants. This step created a yellow liquid which cloth was then dipped in. Next, the cloth would be hung out in the sun to dry. This last step is the crucial one, the sunlight would actually activate the dye turning the cloth from yellow to purple. The shade of purple was determined by which variety of Murex was used (there are 3 which produced purple) and how long the cloth was left in the sun. The finished purple cloth was then sold to cloth dealers like Lydia for further production and sale.
Archaeologist have traced the earliest production of purple dye and cloth back to the mysterious Minoan culture of ancient Crete. The Minoans civilization dates to around 1800 BC. Not much is know about this culture due to the inability to translate their written language. Also, the culture wasn’t even discovered by archaeologists until the early 20th century, when the famous Sir Arthur Evans discovered it. There are even some theories that the Minoans may have served as the inspiration for Plato’s Atlantis.
From the Minoans, to the Greeks, to the Romans, all the way to Victorian England purple cloth was rare and expensive. As I mentioned earlier, in the late 19th century a purple dye was invented, changing the value of purple cloth. These days purple cloth doesn’t hold the same distinction it did a thousand years ago, but we can still appreciate it’s history and powerful impact on civilization.
