“THE COLOUR OF BITTERNESS” A fashion tale from a collection of short stories

A colourless woman.

Let’s talk about colours. The true colours of certain characters and the colour of emotions, betrayal and love.

As a creative woman working a lifetime in fashion, I’ve had plenty of long and colourful serpentine years to reflect on what colours I like and the tones that makes me shine. I’m drawn to a plethora of hues that lifts your spirit.

I’ve happily worked my way through a glorious career full of curiosity for connecting mood and personalities with colours.

My daughters are fresh out teenagers as I write this, and I’ve watched them shift from a pleasant baby blue to a full blown tone of angry purple. Experienced mums around me calms me with the knowledge that this headstrong screaming tone will soften when they’re about 18.

The little unsullied rosebud me mostly mused about the scarcity of cotton candy coloured pink platform sneakers and matching imaginary red hot polka dot stick ponies jumping in the backyard. Or how to escape mum’s sturdy hands frantically washing my tousled self-styled and mushed black berry home dyed hair at bathtime and sleepy bedtime tales about mini-Coco Chanel in sharp black and white twin sets.

At the end tail of a very frosty blue cold February 2023, I encountered the ugliest looking shady shade in my life, never had I laid my eyes on such an unflattering colour. After the chocking discovery of this dreary colour, I spent time, plenty a terrible time that is, to ruminate, examine and cry over other human’s poor taste and badly coloured behaviour.

I’m forever sworn not to utter any gory details the colour mix ; The Godfather blood red horse head in the bed style, but oh boy, am I often dreaming about clever ways of painting my horror story to the world, how to loudly express it to all the beautiful women I know.

 As a movie buff I liken what was to happen as ‘The Devil Wears Prada darkest of dark’.

Telling a story, when your voice is stitched up; I call it “speaking in paint”, drawing pictures that says it all, without any words. I call it fashionable grieving in conversations to my husband, I say “dress yourself like a rainbow, don’t be influenced by shiny looks with ugly and muted colour combos” to my daughters.

The chilling discovery of the shade of bitterness occurred without any pre-fit or foreboding.

 A call to a meeting, on teams.

 Like a colourless slap in my face, sharp as a scissor, I was about to be thrown into the dark gaping landfill,

 ‘You’re old season darling!’

The slap was delivered by a woman I thought was my friend and accompanied with an absence of care and taste. Perhaps I’m making this bit up; but I’m almost sure she wore a greyish snake skirt, a prison bar striped polo neck jumper and steel blue clawlike perfectly manicured nails for the occasion. Her face like a wall of grey dried up cement, with icy steel button like eyes hiding behind her Anna Wintour wannabe dark sunglasses. Words coming out of her jagged mouth, mechanically and frosty.

The news of the impending landfill dump made my face a pasty white, and quickly spread a chill that crawled deep inside my heart.

Suddenly I was little again, the smallest I’ve ever been, no cotton candy coloured pink platform sneakers or red-hot polka dot stick ponies carrying me on the catwalk of life. I was deeply hurt and unsure as of why the news of this awful thing was thrown at me with avalanche force, burying me deep under in silent heavy darkness.

Had I not been the best, the most bright, creative and trusty hue in the palette, just a moment ago?

Could it be, that I, as of lately, had put my heel down, for the first time in decades, and not participated in the woman’s tincture mixing, in her latest dark soap opera episode she cunningly conducted behind shady closed curtains? I will never know.

Small and vulnerable, gutted and raw, a dropped chunk of dirty and gritty nothingness, messy threads, cut up and discarded pieces of fabric, left in a gutter somewhere, in desperate need of mending.

Besides feeling black and blue, with invisible bruises and cuts, my whole being took on an unflattering tone of bitterness. This ugly shade insisted to dress me every day, from morning to noon, wherever I went, whatever I did. I cried bitter tasting tears, I mourned the decency of mankind’s evil colour ways.

This colour did not look good on me. It was not a colour I deserved.

Bitterness is dulling, it overtakes all the beautiful colours and patterns that brightens your soul.

Bitterness makes one want to disappear in the starless depths of empty drawers, it erases the rosebuds on your cheeks, and God forbid you try to wear it anywhere else but, in the pitch-black inner wardrobe of your mind.

Time moved on, leaving the distance longer between me and the woman. With loving tenderness and support, from friends close to me, more than willing to soothe and clothe me in warm pink hugs, a very skilled psychotherapist, always donning cute flowery dresses, and a superhero dapper husband, somewhere in the deep orange twilight late last Summer and the cerulean clear promising skies of Autumn, the black and the blue and the colour of bitterness slowly started to fade.

The memory of the betrayal from the woman still lingers deep in my invisible scars, I’m forever a soul of kintsugi now, but I’m grateful she showed me her true colours, and that I no longer have to endure her wicked games.

The colour of love has reintroduced itself to my wardrobe, dressing my heart with joy and I’ve welcomed it with open arms, blush pink lipstick and high heels.