The Dark Truth of White

Associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, and virginity. It is considered to be the color of perfection. White means safety, purity, and cleanliness. This color can represent a successful beginning but have you ever wonder if white also has a dark side?

The Color of Wealth and Power

The color white has traditionally been associated with wealth and power. Wool and cotton fabrics, for example, had to be severely processed to appear white. The new lace and linen cuffs, ruffs, and cravats worn in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries could only be kept clean by the exceedingly wealthy, who were supported by battalions of staff. This connection is still valid. A snow-white winter coat sends a subtle visual message: 'I don't need to use public transportation.'

The Color of Beliefs & Superstitions

White, on the other hand, is considered as a pleasant color or as having a transcendent, sacred character by many.

It's the color of death and sadness in Chinese culture.

Brides in the West and Japan wear it because it is a color associated with sexual purity.

The Holy Spirit is frequently represented as a white dove coming in a surge of pallid golden light, descending on benighted humanity.

The Color of Haughtiness

White's power and hauteur have been used by high-end modernists and minimalists from Tadao Ando, the famed Japanese architect, through Calvin Klein and Jonathan Ive at Apple. (At first, Steve Jobs was opposed to the influx of white products that Ive started making around the millennium.) He eventually consented to the characteristic 'Moon Gray' headphones and keyboard.

The Color of Lie

We think of them as white, but they're actually a very pale grey. White has come to be associated with cleanliness, despite, or perhaps because, it readily shows dirt. 'White goods,' tablecloths, and lab coats are all rebellious in their impracticality, challenging users to spill anything. Customers are now demanding for teeth to be bleached so unrealistically white that entire new teeth-whitening palettes have had to be created, according to American dentists, in their search for dazzling clean teeth.

The Color of Assumption

The foundations of white's architectural idolatry are constructed on a false assumption. Classical Greek and Roman ruins, with their bleached bone color, were a pillar of Western aesthetics for millennia. It is possible to discern the legacy of Andrea Palladio, a Venetian architect of the sixteenth century, and his Palladian followers in every big building in every important city in the West.

Researches only discovered that classical statues and buildings were typically painted in vibrant colors in the mid-19th century. Western aesthetes were not convinced. When asked about the lack of coloration, Auguste Rodin is claimed to have beaten his chest and stated, 'I feel it here that they were never colored.'

Source: CNN Style

About the Writers:

Maina Zaina, Writer and a Virtual Assistant at AVCreativity Studio. She enjoys media entertainment and is an avid fan of "K-Wave". She loves her job because she is exposed to different types of entertainment. She also believes in the saying "If you want to be successful, don't seek success - seek competence, empowerment; do nothing short of the best that you can do" by Jaggi Vasudev

Pamela Elizabeth, Editor-in-Chief at AVCreativity Studio. Earned a Bachelor’s Degree of Secondary Education Major in English. She loves going on little adventures alongside reading good books. She is enthusiastic about her work and ensures that her clients receive the finest service possible.