The title is of course inspired by the hit US TV series Orange Is The New Black based on the life and times of Piper Kerman during her year in prison. I loved the first six seasons, but season 7 has failed to catch my fancy thus far. In any case, today´s blog is not about the show, but more about the colour orange itself.
Autumn has definitely arrived in Berlin, as the temperatures confirmed. This morning I definitively packed away all my summer clothes with sadness, and replaced the empty space with my fall and winter wardrobe. Out came the long sleeves, turtlenecks, and all the sweaters. Sniff, sob, snort. I will miss my light summer tops and shorts, not that I got to wear much of them this year, but the sheer absence of layers always made my day. Even my shoes got to play on my organising carousel, as all the sandals got demoted to the bottom of the rack, with the boots and heavy duty walking shoes (all-weather) now in the staring roles. They are the most unflattering of footwear and have never known the meaning of sexy, but they keep my feet warm and dry, and that’s really all I give a bleep about.
Every fall season I find myself enamoured all over again with yellows, browns and oranges, accentuated with reds and purples, basically all the colours of the changing leaves outdoors. Of this wonderful spectrum, orange is my favourite, after having spent the rest of the year head-over-heels in love with green and black. If I had my way, I would wear mostly orange, but it has been my great misfortune to live in countries where orange is not the most fashionable of colours, and my dear friend MLTU will attest to this. In the Philippines orange is the colour of prison garb (Manila), so if you go to city hall on the day that all the prisoners are being hauled into court, unless you want to be mistaken for a prisoner as well, it is best to stay away from that colour. In India I tried not to wear plain bright orange either (especially with matching dreadlocks) so as not to offend the sadhus, or be mistaken for a nun. In Thailand, many of the monks wore robes that ranged between saffron and maroon, orange being one of them. Again, in the interest of not offending the monks, I stayed away from it.
So here I am in Berlin, where the fashion trend leans heavily towards grunge, with the mistaken assumption that it would be finally acceptable to parade around in orange. Uh, not unless I want to be mistaken for one of the garbage collectors or sanitation engineers, or even a highway maintenance crew. I think it might be time to move to The Netherlands!
FrogDiva Thoughts 