Secret history of color: pink

And an ode to Merit Beauty💄💄💄

Pink used to be the color of kings. When did it become the color of girls? Pink has a reputation problem. And in today’s newsletter, we’re setting the record straight - from the 18th-century pigment of power to Elsa Schiaparelli’s invention that changed fashion history. In partnership with Merit, the makers of my favorite pinks ever🩷💄

You’re blushing! Pink has always made us feel something. Luis Barragan’s interiors. This viral lip liner. Picasso’s Rose Period - the namesake of my newsletter. But here’s the thing: pink might be the most shape-shifting color in history.

Its meaning hasn’t just evolved - it has flipped. Today, we’ll get into it. Plus guest contributor picks from Joanna Goddard, Kelly Klein, somsack sikhounmuong, Jalil Johnson, Emilia Petrarca, Articles Of Interest and Vanessa Krooss.

My pink-board! I got to talk to the “Color Director” of Merit - Kelly - for this piece - can I please add that title to my resume?! she leads color development for all products, which is a fancy way of saying she’s the GIRL behind getting every lipstick, blush, or lipliner just right. dream job!!! The fact that their team is so tapped into art history just goes to show how actually cool they are.

P.S. I’m so excited to work with Merit on this newsletter - you guys KNOW I’m picky about colors, and the Merit pinks are the best.

They’re obsessed with their actual pigment qualities (Stay ‘til the end for when I nerded out with Kelly their Director of Color about it).

When Merit decided to launch on Substack, we thought - why not dive together down the rabbit hole on color, both of our favorite subjects?

Keep scrolling for an inside look into how makeup pigment is designed (I had NO idea) - and drop your favorite pink thing in the comments after this!

yup I drew this with Merit’s flush balm, lip liners and lipsticks <3

WHEN DID THE PINK GET A REPUTATION PROBLEM?

Every pink your eyes see is, in a way, invented - it doesn’t exist on the visible light spectrum the way red or blue do. In nature? Pink is often borrowed. Flamingos would be white if they didn’t eat shrimp.

Gauguin's Riders on the Beach (1902). 1.1 billion years ago, it was the color of Earth’s oceans. 2,000 years ago, the Romans painted Venus pink. Just 80 years ago, postwar marketing flipped it from the color of boys to the color of girls almost overnight.

Even linguistically, pink had to be constructed. The ancient Greeks and Romans considered it light red. Pink as a ~concept~ arrived in Europe in the late 14th century, carried in on shipments of brazilwood dye - and became so popular we had to invent a name for it.

Think about that power: we don’t have separate words for light green or light purple. But light red? That became an entirely different color.

And the way we’ve used it has changed more than almost any other color in history.

The meaning of pink = all over the place! Case in point: Picasso's Rose Period, 1904–1906 - the namesake of this newsletter. When he painted it, pink wasn't feminine. It was considered the stronger, more decisive color (a diluted red, still tied to power). His Rose Period didn't mean soft. It meant hope! Years later, in 1918, Ladies’ Home Journal would still advise: “pink is more decided and stronger,” making it “more suitable for the boy.” That was BARELY a century ago. [Pablo Picasso’s Boy with bouquet of flowers in his hand, 1905)]

The bottom line: pink has lived more lives than almost any color in history.

Today, we're looking at four pinks throughout art history and what each has meant:

1. ROSE MADDER: the oldest pink in the book

Before “pink” even had a name, there was rose madder.

Back it up: Rose Madder is one of the oldest pigments on earth. It comes from the root of the madder plant - a scrubby little weed that once ground up, makes some of the most dusty, romantic pink you’ve ever seen. Volia!

Since it was derived naturally and pretty available, we’ve been using it since the beginning of time - rose madder was found in the ancient Egyptian tomb of King Tut and in the ruins of Pompeii:

Venus, Pompeii (1st century CE). One of the oldest surviving examples of Rose Madder in a painting?! A giant hottie Venus painted onto a garden wall in Pompeii. Here, pink is tied to the origin story itself: in myth, Aphrodite is born from sea foam mixed with blood-red and white, becoming pink. The goddess of love was literally born pink.

An early pigment not just reserved for the elites (rare!). Renaissance painters used it to show a little skin…

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, c. 1490-1500

Born in a small Dutch town, Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) lived a boring, unassuming life - but somehow whipped out THIS:

Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490–1500). Hands down one of the craziest paintings to ever exist!!! The Garden of Earthly Delights: a surreal, three-panel painting that shows paradise, earthly life, and hell.

Let’s take a closer look at the middle panel, where pink holds everything together. It might seem like a peaceful spring day at first, but take a closer look…

A note on Bosch: he seems like someone I’d be obsessed with - a weirdo doing weird sh*t when everyone else was painting boring Dutch portraits. Sadly, not much exists on him! The anonymous Hieronymus. No diaries, no letters, no writings - just this insane painting where pink clicks it all into place. [Detail from Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490–1500)]

Woah. Plot twist! Suddenly, you realize what’s going on: tiny nude fingers engaged in every possible sinful act. At the core - a blush, Rose Madder pink.

Bosch used Rose Madder for human bodies AND architecture - it looks like its literally made of skin. Today, Winsor & Newton is basically the last company still making true Rose Madder the old-school way - the way it was used in Hieronymus’s time. [Detail from Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490–1500)]

In Bosch’s era, pink was the color of life itself - of flesh, of the sacred body. It wasn’t gendered yet - just human.

By the 1850s, artists already knew the pigment had a tragic flaw: the color could fade over time. Which brings us to 1852…

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851–52

It’s 1852, Victorian England. This redhead in a pink dress and pink cheeks floats in a stream - her eyes are open as she sinks…slowly…down. She’s still singing.

Allow me to introduce you to Ophelia - Shakespeare's Ophelia, from Hamlet - painted by John Everett Millais (aka the anti-art-establishment boys of Victorian Britain).

Millais' Ophelia (1851–52). Yes, THAT Ophelia - Taylor Swift made a song about her.

Look at this! Ophelia is literally drowning, but Millais painted her with such tenderness that you almost don’t register she’s dying.

Rose madder is part of why - he used it for her skin tones and the flush of her dress. The color made her feel soft. Still alive.

And isn’t it so perfect that he used a pigment that fades to paint a woman in the act of vanishing?

Pink up close. But we cannot forget the behind-the-scenes story. The model, Elizabeth Siddal, posed in a bathtub full of water kept warm by oil lamps underneath. One day the lamps went out. Millais was so absorbed in painting that he didn't notice. Elizabeth caught a severe cold - her father threatened legal action until Millais agreed to pay the doctor's bills. He paid - then kept painting anyway.

Pink in Ophelia is the impermanence of life, just like the color at the time. Once we get to the Palace of Versailles, though, pink takes on a different meaning…

2. ROSE POMPADOUR: the color of power

In the 18th century, pink wasn’t just a pigment. It had a name - and a patron.

Back it up: Madame de Pompadour was the official mistress to Louis XV - and the unofficial og influencer for all of France (if Paris had a creative director, it’d be ~Madame~).

She didn’t just wear pink - she commissioned it.

In 1757, she convinced the chief chemist at the Sèvres porcelain factory (still operating!) to develop an entirely new shade of pink glaze - Rose Pompadour.

It was a warm, saturated blush - not too soft, not too hard. almost right in between, it showed up on every vase, teacup, and dinner plate at Versailles. If you wanted to be taken seriously in 18th century France, your china had to be pink. HER pink. [Close ups of Sévres porcelain]

Pink became THE power color at Versailles - influenced by his mistress, Louis XV himself wore it (any girlfriends relate to dressing their partner?! Royals! they were just like us).

Before the 19th century, pink was considered the stronger, more masculine color. It was a lighter shade of red after all, the color of war, blood, kings. Blue was for girls. Pink was for power.

Madame Pompadour’s pink showed up in ceramics, in fashion, in interiors - but nowhere more famously than on canvas:

François Boucher, Madame de Pompadour (1759, Wallace Collection, London)

By 1750, Madame Pompadour’s relationship with the king had become platonic - and she commissioned François Boucher (1703-1770) for a series of portraits where friendship (aww) was the central theme.

Well well well if it isn’t the Madame herself. The woman was a FORCE and naturally chose one of the most respected artists to paint her - François Boucher (1703–1770) was the most celebrated French painter of the 18th century, and the artist most synonymous with pink. And nobody understood the power of pink better than his most famous subject. [Boucher’s Madame de Pompadour (1759)]

In this 1759 version, every detail is deliberate and symbolic:

See that statue of Friendship consoling Love in the corner? And her little spaniel? That’s her doing a REBRAND: She’s showing herself as loyal, reliable, a woman of the people. From the king’s lover to an indispensable friend. This is GOOD PR!! She is the queen of optics - of modern-day BRANDING. And at the core = powerful pink. [details of Boucher’s Madame de Pompadour, 1759]

At the heart of it: her Pompadour pink dress - the shade she made famous. It’s not just a pretty choice - it’s a POWER move.

Yup, she used pink to solidify her rebrand from lover to powerful patron of the arts.

By 1764, she'd be dead at just 42. But she hadn't just worn pink, she'd made it the color of French aristocratic life.

Just three years after she died, Fragonard would take her pink somewhere a little more scandalous…

Fragonard, The Swing (1767, Wallace Collection, London)

Just a few years later, Pompadour Pink was so popular - it shows up in one of history's most scandalous paintings - but not without a juicy backstory first.

Fragonard's The Swing (1767). Dun dun DUHHH. When pink became a scandal! So scandalous it was never shown publicly, only passed around private collections! What strikes me here - how much this swinging lady resembles Boucher’s Madame de Pomadour - they are wearing the same style of frilly dress, the same shade of pink. Clearly, Pomadour’s influence lasted even longer than her.

And so it goes: the commission didn’t even come to Jean-Honoré Fragonard first.

A court gentleman wanted his mistress painted on a swing, pushed by a BISHOP, while he watched from below, looking up her skirts.

The first painter said no effing way. Fragonard said hell yes - with one small adjustment: the bishop became a cuckolded husband.

The pink ties it all together. Her billowy dress floating with drama, doing exactly what Pompadour's pink did (wealth! taste! class!) - minus any of Madame's ambition.

DETAILS! The pink slipper mid-swing?! Not accidental. In 18th century French culture, a woman losing her shoe = a metaphor for losing her virtue. And look at the Cupid Statue. It’s an easter egg - it’s actually a real statue you can see at the Louvre that was literally made for Madame de Pompadour herself. The woman who MADE this pink is watching this scandy play out!

Here, pink is foot-loose and fancy free! It’s a pleasure. Zero consequences. The exact energy that the French Revolution would later decide to punish the aristocracy for.

The Revolution didn’t kill pink - it stripped it of status. For the next 150 years, pink went from power move to pretty wallpaper. Until Elsa Schiaparelli got her hands on it…

3. SHOCKING PINK: the shade that broke fashion

By the 1930s, pink was in danger of becoming pretty. Italian haute couture designer Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) had other plans.

Back it up: Schiaparelli was at the center of the Surrealist movement - collaborating with Dalí and Jean Cocteau. She needed a color to match her energy. Enter the signature shade she'd immortalize forever: Shocking Pink.

Shocking pink by Elsa<3 It was a pink SO saturated it was a shade of its own. In her own words: “bright, impossible, impudent, becoming, life-giving, like all the light and the birds and the fish in the world put together - a shocking color.“ [📸: George Hoyningen-Huene, 1932]

The story goes: Schiaparelli's client, the sewing machine heiress Daisy Fellowes, waltzed into her workshop wearing a 17.27-carat pink diamond. Schiaparelli was spellbound - and introduced it into her own line:

Elsa Schiaparelli, Shocking Perfume (1937)

In 1937, shocking pink hit the market in Schiaparelli's perfume Shocking.

Her friend and Surrealist legend Leonor Fini designed the bottle - shaped like Mae West's torso - wrapped in the electric shocking pink packaging.

Elsa Schiaparelli, Shocking Perfume advertisement, 1937)

Schiaparelli’s advertisements for her Shocking perfume. By the way, does anyone want an INCREDIBLE bday gift for fashion buffs?! This OG Shocking Perfume from Etsy, original packaging and all! [Left: Marcel Vertès for Schiaparelli, Harper’s Bazaar, c. early 1950s. Middle: Schiaparelli Parfums Paris, c. 1937. Right: Marcel Vertès for Schiaparelli, c. 1953]

It didn’t end at packaging - she cut suits in shocking pink, splashed it across the iconic Lobster Dress she made with Dalí, and dressed Zsa Zsa Gabor in it for Moulin Rouge (1952).

Zsa Zsa Gabor in Moulin Rouge (1952) in Schiaparelli’s shocking pink. The designer WAS shocking pink. She wore it on her head, smoked cigarettes with hot-pink-dyed tips, and inspired a whole generation of women who were too much on purpose - Diana Vreeland, Daisy Fellowes, Marilyn Monroe in her pink gown for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

For Schiaparelli & the fashion that followed it, pink wasn’t sweet - it was something you wore to be impossible to ignore.

4. QUINACRIDONE: pink goes modern

At the exact moment America was turning pink into a gender, the first modern pink was born in a lab.

Back it up: quinacridone was first identified in 1896, then basically ignored for decades until in 1955, American chemists figured out how to mass-produce it.

Now, artists had access to a pink unlike anything before it: hyper-saturated, lightfast, and most importantly, it didn’t fade.

what was happening to pink when quincridone came on the scene? Advertisers dressed the ideal suburban housewife in it, department stores gendered entire aisles around it, and pink became synonymous with girlhood altogether. [Pierre Boncompain’s Purple Mountain]

The abstract expressionists used quinacridone to push against some other boundaries:

Helen Frankenthaler, Pink Lady, 1963.

Frankenthaler (1928–2011) was one of the few women to break into the postwar NYC abstract expressionist boys club - who changed what painting and color - could be.

See that bold hot fuchsia streak in Pink Lady? It's almost certainly quinacridone rose - the new synthetic pigments hitting studios in the early 1960s.

Frankenthaler's Pink Lady (1963). For Frankenthaler, Pink Lady is the moment everything clicked. After years of loosening line and working through pure color, she poured heavily diluted paint directly onto raw unprimed canvas - her stain-soak technique. Color became the surface itsel!

But here’s what makes Pink Lady the painting it is: by the early 1960s, American culture had decided pink was for girls. Sweet, decorative, domesticated.

Helen, who was twice divorced and answered to NOBODY, went the opposite route: she took pink and made it raw, big, radical. Same pink. Completely different world.

The title says it all: the namesake of her painting - Pink Lady - is a cocktail - gin, grenadine, egg white. Looks delicate. Packs a punch. Just like our girl Helen, who whose work opened the door for all the female painters that came after her.

Meanwhile, a few years later, Philip Guston went all in on pink in a very different way…

Phillip Guston, Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973)

Guston (1913-1980) was an NYC painter running in the same downtown circles as Helen Frankenthaler, de Kooning, Rothko, the whole Cedar Tavern crew.

But by the late 1960s - right as America had FULLY turned pink into feminine perfection - Guston started painting almost everything in it.

This pink wasn’t pretty:

Guston's Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973). We don’t know if Guston was specifically using quinacridone pigments the way Frankenthaler likely was. But his paintings show how radically modern artists were rethinking pink at the exact same moment synthetic postwar pinks were entering the culture. His late paintings are loaded with cigarettes, shoes, clocks, mattresses, and lightbulbs all rendered in these swollen cartoonish pinks outlined in black.

It was a new genre of pink entirely: ashtray pink, flesh pink, cheap wall paint pink. Guston pink.

Critics described the works as “fleshy” and “meaty.” At the exact moment culture made pink decorative, Guston made it grotesque.

Cy Twombly, Untitled (Roses), 2008

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) grew up in the same modern postwar New York art world as Frankenthaler and Guston (but spent most of his life in Italia!). His paintings are a cocktail of graffiti, poetry, and ancient mythology.

Late in life, he became obsessed with roses - painted in quinacridone pink.

Twombly's Untitled (Roses) (2008). six monumental panels, each one a rose in full bloom. Acrylic on plywood. Those deep, saturated pinks — almost certainly quinacridone.

By 2008, pink had already lived a thousand cultural lives: Versailles pink, Schiaparellio pink, Guston flesh pink. Twombly took all of that and went BIG.

These roses don’t feel delicate or decorative. They feel all-consuming:

Twombly’s Untitled (Roses) (2008). The inspiration for his roses was poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who wrote about roses as symbols of beauty, excess, and mortality. These aren’t delicate botanical paintings - the roses are practically overflowing the canvas

Quinacridone changed what pink could carry.

For the first time, artists had a pigment saturated enough, stable enough, to hold real emotional weight at monumental scale. Twombly knew exactly what to do with that - his pinks aren’t about culture or gender or power. Just feeling.

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So what’s with pink’s reputation problem? Just look at how artists have used it: Bosch used it to show life. Fragonard used it for scandal. Schiaparelli made it a rallying cry. Twombly made it theatrical.

Pink has never been just about gender. It’s never been weak. It’s unruly. We invented it, then spent centuries reinventing what it means.

It’s the OG provocateur. Pink is a color that we can give its own power to.

So - what do you want to say with yours?

O’Keeffe, Shell on Red, 1931

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Guest Curators’ Best of Pinks🩷

I texted some of my most stylish, design-minded friends for their favorite pink picks of the moment…

Joanna Goddard - founder of Cup of Jo, author of Big Salad, & the internet’s longtime big sis

I LOVE the use of pink in Jordan Casteel's paintings. Pink splashes across clothes and walls, but also in her subjects' skin. "Her subjects’ skin is not always black, but an array of red, green, yellow, and blue, alluding to the slipperiness of categorizing identity solely based on skin color," writes the Studio Museum in Harlem. Jordan herself told Vogue: "I was interested in the fact that people were going, ‘Oh, you’re painting Black men.’ And then they would be like: ‘Oh, actually, he’s green.’ I loved witnessing the externalization of that internal process.”

Kelly Klein - author of Kelly Klein, stylist, and my patron saint of interesting outfits

The most notable pink moment I can think of, unfortunately, isn’t a happy one. Jackie Kennedy was wearing a pink boucle suit when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, which also happens to be my birthday (unimportant). Everyone urged her to change before appearing in public but as you know, she refused. She wore that suit, blood-stained, when Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president on Air Force One. She wanted everyone to see what had been done.

Most people assume it was Chanel but the suit was actually fitted and sewn in New York by Chez Ninon, a high end boutique that imported European materials and constructed them in the US. Jackie did it to appear patriotic. First ladies were expected to be seen in American-made clothing. So one of the most iconic outfits in modern history was Chanel in design but American in construction.

When I went looking for a photo, I typed in Jackie Kennedy’s name and the pink suit came up before anything else. That’s either my algorithm or how embedded it is.

Jackie Kennedy, Dallas (1963)

somsack sikhounmuong - Creative Director of Alex Mill, author of SomStack & my bestie

White on the verge of red, or is it red on the verge of white? That is the dilemma of pink. Youth on the verge of adulthood. Naivety on the verge of experience - these are the expertise of Elizabeth Peyton, often described as soft and gentle.

I just love how in this piece pink feels the opposite of that - strong and disruptive rather than transitional - perfect for this piece of Chloe Sevigny on the red carpet at the 2000 SAG awards - a newbie on the verge of stardom.

Elizabeth Peyton, Chloe Sevigny (2000)

Emilia Petrarca - Fashion editor and writer you’ve definitely seen in NY Mag, The Cut, WSJ and more. She is the author of Shop Rat on Substack.

One of the most-copied dresses in the world, this dress to me symbolizes the peak “man repeller” moment in fashion, when a stranger sort of sex appeal took hold. It looks like a gorgeous pink vulva, or a piece of bubble gum that’s been popped over the wearer. The pink is obviously feminine, but there’s a bold confidence and strength to it as well.

Favorite pink: Phoebe Philo for Celine Spring Summer 2017 pink cape dress

Jalil Johnson - author of Consider Yourself Cultured, my everyday style icon

Whenever I think about the color pink, I can’t help but think of “Think Pink” from Funny Face (1957), which stars a young Audrey Hepburn alongside Fred Astair ( whose character is loosely based on Richard Avedon), and Kay Thompson (whose character draws inspiration from Diana Vreeland, who was then at Harper's Bazaar). The song, and the entire sequence, feels so light and airy, and in my opinion, it’s incredibly catchy, especially the opening line, “Banish the black, burn the blue, and bury the beige. From now on, girls think pink!”

Funny Face (1957)

Vanessa Krooss - author of Hobby-ish, head of brand at Merit, owner of the most fabulous head of red hair

I have a very obvious pink pick, but it has to be Marie Antoinette – both Sofia Coppola’s interpretation + the real thing! Specifically, this pink feathered gown with the matching rosy cheeks and the below dress that belonged to the real MA, both of which were shown at the V&A exhibit in London I visited late last year. I guess we could broaden it out to French Rococo in general – my mom had a museum print of Fragonard’s The Swing in our house growing up, which definitely imprinted on me early.

best movie.

Avery Trufleman - author, producer, and host of my absolute favorite podcast Articles of Interest (her bone structure & radio voice is even better in person)

The Pink Dress from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. For one, “Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend” is such a deeply sad heterofatalist song dressed up as a jazzy sexy little number (eat your heart out Sabrina Carpenter), and the dress that Marilyn Monroe wore to sing it is just... perfect. No wonder its been replicated by Madonna and Normani. It was designed by Oscar-winning costume designer Willy Travilla, back when the Hollywood studio system had couturiers to make everything for the movies. Apparently Travilla claims to have also been Monroe’s lover for a time, which- I mean, I believe it looking at this dress.

For this scene, Monroe was originally supposed to wear a glittering showgirl outfit that looked like she had diamonds all over her nude body. But at the last minute it was discovered that Monroe had posed nude back, in her Norma Jean days, and to avoid the scandal, they opted for an ensemble that was more demure. I mean the element that keeps it from looking too ladylike and gives it that showgirl pizzaz is the color. That pink is doing the talking

Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

FIELD RESEARCH: WHAT MAKES THE PERFECT PINK?

Ask a makeup chemist what the hardest color to formulate is. Almost universally: pink.

I talked to Kelly, Merit’s Director of Color about why - and why we started wearing pink in the first place.

Before pink lipstick, there was only rouge - red. And red was loaded. In the 1800s, Western women wearing makeup were considered women of loose morals. Pink was the workaround: color, but subtle. Wearing makeup, but barely. A little rebellion.

Which makes it all the more ironic that pink is the hardest color to get right.

Pink is just red and white - sounds simple!! But in cosmetics, there are only about five red pigments to work with, and white is the troublemaker. Too much and it goes chalky. Too little and it disappears. For deeper skin tones, that margin is razor-thin.

I asked Kelly this while wearing my Merit pink lipstick (live field research).

Three things:

• Use as little white as possible so the natural lip shows through.

• Test against as many skin tones as possible - most brands test against competitors, Merit only tests against itself.

• Coated pigments: a pigment wrapped in a “caring” substance (isn’t that such a good term?) that stacks better, wears longer, does more with less.

The goal, Kelly told me, isn’t the most pink pink. It’s just the right one. ♥

Merit bts<3

MY FAVORITE MERIT PINKS:

• Signature Lip Liner - lip liner scared me until Alex DiCapo Patel and I decided to embrace it one evening - now I can’t stop wearing it! I love it in “subconscious.”

• Flush Balm - I’ve been using it for years. It’s one of the only things I consistently put on - I use it on my lips, cheeks, even eyes.

  • We had an Alex Mill dinner at Bar Étoile last week and we gave all the girls it in Postmodern - and we all had it on by the end of the night. Actually we loved it so much that we packed it up for our HOL26 shoot - and Som used it on our model for the lookbook.

  • I love it in persimmon

• Signature Lip Blush - when Kelly talked about making sure the pigments had “caring” ingredients, this is exactly what she meant. Gone are the days of those waxy feeling lipsticks floating around your mom’s purse - this is genuine butter.

OK everyone! That’s a wrap on pink🩷💄What other interesting strange unusual art topics are you interested in learning about? Drop in comments below or find me on Insta @roseflorenceanderson

Milton Avery, Pink Chair, 1944

Read my other color histories here: