mauve

Mallow wildflower

Mauve (Mallow)
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#E0B0FF
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(224, 176, 255)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(276°, 31%, 100%)
Source		Maerz and Paul [1]
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Mauve ⁱ/ˈmoʊv/^[2] (rhymes with "stove" if you're British, "suave" for Americans; from the French form of Malva "mallow") is a pale lavender-lilac color, one of many in the range of purples. The color mauve is named after the mallow flower.

Mauve is more grey and more blue than a pale tint of magenta would be. Many pale wildflowers called "blue" are actually mauve. Sometimes mauve can be considered a dirty pink or a shade of purple.

Mauve can also be described as pale violet.

Another name for this color is mallow.^[3]

The first recorded use of mallow as a color name in English was in 1611.^[4]

Mauveine, the first aniline dye

Mauve was first named in 1856. Chemist Sir William Henry Perkin, then eighteen, was attempting to create artificial quinine. An unexpected residue caught his eye, which turned out to be the first aniline dye – specifically, Perkin's mauve or mauveine, sometimes called aniline purple. Perkin was so successful in recommending his discovery to the dyestuffs industry that his biography by Simon Garfield is titled Mauve.^[5] As mauveine faded easily, our contemporary understanding of mauve is as a lighter, less saturated color than it was originally known.^[6]

Variations of mauve

Rich mauve

Mauve (Crayola C.P.)
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#E285FF
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(226, 133, 255)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(286°, 48%, 100[7]%)
Source		Crayola C.P.
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

At right is displayed the rich tone of mauve that is called mauve in Crayola colored pencils.

French mauve (deep mauve)

Mauve (Pourpre.com)
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#D473D4
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(212, 115, 212)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(300°, 46%, 83[8]%)
Source		Pourpre.com
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

At right is displayed the deep tone of mauve that is called mauve in Pourpre.com, a color list widely popular in France.

Opera mauve

Opera Mauve
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#B784A7
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(183, 132, 167)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(276°, 20%, 62%)
Source		ISCC-NBS
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

At right is displayed the color opera mauve.

The first recorded use of opera mauve as a color name in English was in 1927.^[9]

Mauve taupe

Mauve Taupe
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#915F6D
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(145, 95, 109)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(285°, 37%, 54%)
Source		ISCC-NBS
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

The color displayed at right is mauve taupe.

The first recorded use of mauve taupe as a color name in English was in 1925.^[10]

See the article on taupe to see additional shades of taupe.

Old mauve

Old Mauve
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#673147
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(103, 49, 71)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(336°, 52%, 40[11]%)
Source		ISCC NBS
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

At right is displayed the color old mauve.

The first recorded use of old mauve as a color name in English was in 1925.^[12]

The source of this color is the ISCC-NBS Dictionary of Color Names (1955)--Color dictionary used by stamp collectors to identify the colors of stamps—See sample of the color Old Mauve (Color Sample #259) displayed on indicated page: [2]

In human culture

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2007)

Decade nostalgia

• William Henry Perkin's aniline dye mauveine allowed the widespread use of that color in fashion. By 1890, this color had become so pervasive in fashion that author Thomas Beer used it years later in the title of his famous book about the 1890s, The Mauve Decade.^[13] Perkins's accidental discovery that he was able to make the color purple (mauve) chemically led him to search for ways to make other colors through chemistry. Now, many colors are made chemically instead of taken from natural sources. Chemistry also became a more profitable career^{[citation needed]}.

Genomics

• Mauve is the name of a multiple genome alignment tool under development at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Occultism

• Occultist Kenneth Grant wrote a book called Beyond the Mauve Zone published in 1996, a brief summary of which states:

  "Oblique to the paths that give on to other dimensions, and beyond them, there lies a region which the author has named the Mauve Zone. Mystics, magicians, sorcerers, alchemists, artists of many kinds have - over the centuries - skirted it, stumbled upon it, and fled from it. Very few have penetrated beyond it and survived, or cared to leave any record of the experience. Those that did, have had to present their accounts as fiction or discover a new means of communication - via weird art, symbols, hieroglyphics, signs which fellow pilgrims alone might recognize. Access to the Mauve Zone has been facilitated in more recent times by the use of magical systems developed by occultists such as Austin Osman Spare and Aleister Crowley, both of whom established contact with inter-dimensional entities possessed of transhuman knowledge and power. Both systems involve the use of sexual magick to open hidden gates that have remained sealed for centuries."^[14]

Television

• In 2005, the British science fiction TV show Doctor Who, mauve is the universal color for danger (Earth is an exception).^[15]
• Television host David Letterman once stated jokingly that "you know somebody is gay if they know the difference between mauve and taupe."

Theatre

• Mauve is a commonly used color in stage lighting to represent sunsets.
• In Angels in America, Louis identifies the color of the sunset as "purple", to which Belize replies: "Purple? What kind of a homosexual are you, anyway? That's not purple, Mary, that color out there is mauve."
• In Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 1988 musical Into the Woods, Cinderella's stepsisters return from the Prince's ball to comment "Never wear mauve at a ball."
• In the song "Joseph's Coat" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, one of the colors mentioned on the coat is mauve.

See also

• List of colors
• Malvaria

References