"Where's my Brick? Where's My precious Baby?"

OK, so that's a line from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" said by Big Mama, but that's not what this post is about. This is about my observation that the "in color" for 2008 Fall mens' fashions is what I am calling "brick red". I'm sure professional fashionisti know it by some other official name, but it seems like brick red to me. And, judging by their TV ads, I bet I could find a pair of brick red jeans at Target. While I am no slave to fashion, I do think color has a cyclic appeal. When we have saturated our eyes with, perhaps, waves of teal, we find ourselves yearning for something like the color of fire. When we have had enough of Marimekko lime green, we move to the muted rusty plums of Alexander Julian. And so it goes. One color is a salve for too much of another. My natural color is sapphire, and I should stick with it, much as Katharine Hepburn learned that her natural color was camel offset by black. When she found the tops and slacks that she felt great in, she bought fifty sets.

Yesterday, I ordered some sapphire blue contact lens. Not that I don't like my natural golden brown eye color. It's just that color is everyman's luxury. It's sad and foolish to deny one's self the delicious embrace of strong and varied color. The time to be careful is when you are furnishing your house. You are going to have to live inside your color choices for quite a while. For Florida, I just took delivery of glass tile in a color that is like the sky before rain, or through polarized glasses, or, cornflower, or maybe the color of a pack of Gauloise, This, for the kitchen backsplash. I know I won't grow tired of that color.