The Color Story

I have been a lifelong lover of color. I spent countless hours as a child listing every color name I found in my crayon box, from colorway listings in catalogs, and all the makeup colors used in fashion magazines. I filled whole notebooks with nothing but lists of color names. Colors are so important.

So colors are always going to be of the utmost importance to the House of Caswell brand. I wanted to share a little about the color palette for the first collection, how I got to it, and what it means to me.

The Still Life collection is meant to be a bit of a transitional collection. Maybe it’s transitioning between stages in life or maybe just between seasons, but there is something about embracing the new while still remembering the past in this collection. There are garments for both warm and cooler temperatures. Every piece can be layered and combined with every other piece to fit the current mood or feeling. 

I love the primary colors used in the collection because this brand is something new, and when you’re starting something new you start with the fundamentals. Most of the colors are mid to dark in value, with the one pop of yellow-green for contrast and interest. I believe you need contrast in your wardrobe, just like you do in art.

When I was working on this color palette, I started by image tracing my inspiration artwork in Adobe Illustrator. I tried this in several different ways. First, full color, then black and white, then limited to 30 colors, and finally a limit of 8 colors with the color saturation turned up. This combination of colors, 3 blues, 3 reds, a green and a yellow-green, spoke to me and I knew I could base a full wardrobe around these colors.