Purple is a color that has long been associated with royalty, nobility, luxury, and wealth. Throughout history, purple dye was rare and expensive to produce, so the color was traditionally reserved for kings, queens, emperors, and other heads of state. However, purple is also simply one of the colors on the visible spectrum, with its own wavelengths and characteristics. So is purple fundamentally a color of royalty, or just another color like any other? The answer is complex, as purple has multiple symbolic associations and meanings.
The History of Purple as a Royal Color
The association between purple and royalty dates back thousands of years. In ancient times, purple dye was extracted from a species of sea snail called the spiny dye-murex. Thousands of these snails had to be gathered and processed to yield just a small amount of purple dye. As a result, purple cloth became a status symbol that only the very wealthy could afford.
Around 1200 BCE, the Phoenicians discovered an improved dyeing process using the spiny dye-murex and gained control of the purple dye trade in the Mediterranean. The color became known as “Tyrian purple” after the Phoenician city of Tyre. As the dye spread through trade, purple garments became associated with high rank across many ancient civilizations.
In ancient Rome, the color purple was specially reserved for the emperors. Ordinary citizens were forbidden from wearing purple clothing under penalty of death. Roman imperial tradition continued into the Byzantine Empire, with strict sumptuary laws governing the use of Tyrian purple dye. By the Middle Ages in Europe, purple retained its connotations of exclusivity and privilege. Rulers and Catholic bishops wore purple robes and garments as symbols of authority.
The Significance of Purple in Other Cultures
The special status of purple was not limited to Western civilizations. In ancient China, purple was also an imperial color strictly limited to the emperor. Chinese legends credited the mythical Yellow Emperor Huangdi with inventing the combination of red dye from the madder plant with blue indigo to create purple. The Aztec emperor Moctezuma II also wore purple mantles as a sign of rulership. Purple and violet dyes were derived from mollusks in ancient Mexico.
In Japan during the Edo period, a light shade of purple called murasaki was reserved for the robes of the shogun. The name murasaki comes from Murasaki Shikibu, the 10th century author of the classic Tale of Genji who was a lady-in-waiting in the imperial court. Her real name is unknown, so she was referred to as Murasaki which means “purple” in Japanese.
Across very different cultures and historical eras, purple repeatedly emerged as a visual metaphor and symbol for power, privilege, and prestige. The rarity and expense of purple dyes helped solidify its regal status.
The Changing Availability of Purple Dyes
The privileged status of purple began to change in the mid-19th century with the industrialization of synthetic dye production. In 1856, an 18-year-old English chemist named William Henry Perkin accidentally invented the first synthetic purple dye while attempting to synthesize quinine for malaria treatment. This dye, known as mauveine or Perkin’s mauve, sparked a surge in low-cost purple fabrics.
Other synthetic dye experiments in the late 19th century led to new purple and violet pigments like dioxazine purple and manganese violet. Their discovery marked a turning point as vivid purple shades became affordable and abundant for ordinary people. As purple fabrics and garments became more widely accessible, the color began shedding its royal and aristocratic symbolic meanings.
The Meaning and Symbolism of Purple Today
In contemporary color psychology and marketing, purple connotes qualities like imagination, creativity, uniqueness, and innovation. While brands use purple to seem exciting and innovative, the color no longer signifies wealth or exclusivity. However, purple does still appear on official uniforms, honorary medals, and formal sashes at ceremonial events as a nod to its historic royal symbolism.
In fashion, purple evokes unconventionality and individuality. Popular culture frequently associates purple with enchantment and magical characters like wizards and witches. Purple retains some political and religious significance too. In churches, it may represent penitence and solemnity during Lent. And in politics, purple is sometimes used on electoral maps to designate states or counties with mixed partisan control.
The Scientific Properties of Purple Light
Setting aside its cultural associations, purple is scientifically definable as a range of hues occurring between red and blue light on the optical spectrum. Violet light has wavelengths between about 380-450 nanometers, while purple wavelengths span from around 450-495 nanometers.
Purples and violets are spectral colors, meaning they have singular wavelengths on the light spectrum. By contrast, many other colors perceived by humans like pink, brown or olive are created through color mixing and have no spectral wavelength. Grass appears green because plant chlorophyll absorbs red and blue light while reflecting green light back to our eyes. But purple wavelengths pass through space unfiltered with their own inherent color.
Isaac Newton demonstrated in 1672 that white light split into the colors of the rainbow when passed through a prism. This revealed the visible spectrum and the distinct band of wavelengths corresponding to purple.
How the Human Eye Perceives the Color Purple
The human eye sees color through cone cells in the retina that respond to red, green, and blue light. There are no cone cells directly tuned to purple light. But because purple stimulates both the red and blue cones in the retina at the same time, the brain merges those signals into the perception of purple.
This makes purple an intermediate color that the brain constructs from the combined neuronal signals for blue and red. In optical mixing, blue light combined with red light can also produce purple. However, the particular hues that appear purple to us depend on the brain’s complex integrative and interpretive processing of signals from the cone cells. This allows the brain to generate a wide array of perceived purples that don’t correspond to any single wavelength.
Conclusion
So is purple fundamentally a color of royalty, or simply a color like any other? The answer is complicated, because it is both. On one hand, purple is scientifically definable as a spectral color along the visible light spectrum with unique wavelengths and properties. But it is also a color with a complex cultural history and extensive symbolic associations. The rarity of purple in antiquity gave it elite status, though modern chemistry dismantled that scarcity. While purple retains some formal and ceremonial significance today, it no longer signifies exclusivity or privilege in the way it historically did. Purple’s identity rests between its technical optical properties and its accumulated cultural meanings. So purple is neither just the property of royalty, nor ever fully separable from those regal associations. It is both a profoundly meaningful color and one particular hue among many, shaped by both its physical properties and cultural legacy.
References
| Author | Year | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Johnston, F. | 2008 | Purple dye in Late Antiquity |
| Lee, S. | 2010 | Marketing with color |
| Yip, A. | 2018 | The history of purple fashion |
