Lavendula: A Color Story

For all you fellow color lovers (chromatophiles?) out there, I want to talk a bit about the color I've chosen to represent the House of Caswell brand on the website and any other branded materials going forward. The official Pantone color is called Lavendula, 15-3620, and I've chosen Snowfall and Black Beauty as accent colors.

Originally I wanted to change the color scheme of the brand's website to correspond with each new collection as it launched, and that is how the site was first designed, but every marketing instinct I have in my body (and lots of articles I read and courses I took on marketing) told me that this was going to be a bad idea in the long run. A brand needs a cohesive and lasting through-story for customers and fans to recognize on recurring trips to your home base. So changing my whole color scheme every few months to match the colors of the latest collection would be confusing for the brand.

Besides, all my own personal favorite brands have their signature colors. How I’ve loved walking down a street or through a mall after making a purchase, carrying a bag in a color that signified a purchase I’d made at one of my favorite places, or maybe seeing somebody else with a bag from one of these places and feeling that excitement for them. I hope to be able to create that excitement for people too someday, so I need to have a color in place that lets people know that this is House of Caswell.

So, what color? To me it seems obvious, and if you know me well, you’d know it has to be purple. I have three sisters, and all four of us love purple more than any other color. Our sister group chat is full of purple hearts. It was our favorite color anyway, but in 2007 our dad died of pancreatic cancer, and then purple took on new meaning for our whole family. It was a no brainer for me that the House of Caswell signature color would be a shade of purple, but it’s a diverse color with many shades to choose from.

A color can be dark or light, warm or cool and still fall into the purple category. Personally, I like lavender. It comes across as purple faded by the sun, which suits House of Caswell because the brand is frequently inspired by aspects of the past, and so maybe it is faded a little, like a shirt you’ve loved for years and washed a million times, or a very distant memory. Lavender is also said to represent tranquility and calm, which could never be a bad thing, and it is also known to evoke creativity and whimsy, which are pretty much my two favorite words.

I sifted through a lot of shades of lavender and landed on Lavendula. Then, as my art teacher Barbara always says, you always need a light, a medium, and a dark value to make good art. So I added a soft white called Snowfall (ironic, since I hate snow), and a gentle black called Black Beauty, and the three colors together are truly pleasing. I updated the website to reflect these colors (except the Lookbook page, which will still be an extravaganza of colors reflecting the newest collection) and voila. I now have a recognizable landing page with colors people can relate to the House of Caswell brand going forward. Say hello to Lavendula.