Inspiration: Raymond Chandler and Godard on Colour

I spend most of my free time reading for pleasure.  So, it isn't shocking to me that reading is usually at the root of my inspiration--be it the J.Peterman catalogues*, descriptions of Bruce Patman, coal miners wearing suits in Zola's Germinal.  Alas, the printed page doesn't make for the most visually beguiling research in a portfolio. More often, I am intrigued by how authors' descriptions of colours are what get my designing mind racing.  I'll take Steinbeck's first chapter of East of Eden over the complete collection of (both!) Steve McQueen(s!) images any day. Nabakov's Ada or Ardor is another key text in how I react to colour combinations.  If somebody else were to read these and design a collection, the colours that they would identify as parched California earth or black fur against cream would be different than mine. And maybe they wouldn't even identify these colours as the inspirational material in these writings**.  Let me get to my point: I'm 2 1/4 through a collection of three of Raymond Chandler's stories.  His style is so spare that at first I didn't notice many mentions of colour and clothing. I was shocked when I noticed Marlowe commented on a starlet's white blouse with a scarlet scarf around her neck contrasting with her dark braided hair and her pale centre part.  But now that I'm starting to read a bit more critically, colour and costume are all over the place:

A fat man in sky-blue pants was closing the door with that beautiful leisure that only fat men ever achieve. He wasn't alone, but I look at him first...[my elipses, not R.C.'s] Above the sky-blue gabardine slacks he wore a two-tone leisure jacket which would have been revolting on a zebra. The neck of his canary-yellow shirt was open wide, which it had to be if his neck was going to get out. He was hatless and his large head was decorated with a reasonable amount of pale salmon- coloured hair. His nose had been broken but was well set, and it hadn't been a collector's item in the first place.

 It is funny, because the words of those colours and fabrics: sky-blue gabardine, zebra, canary-yellow, pale salmon remind me of my memories of the film we watched 2 nights ago, Pierrot Le Fou, where those slightly bleached, but otherwise heavily saturated colours sorta burn into my retinas and frontal cortex.

But the Pierrot Le Fou colours have more sizzle or something. I imagine the Chandler colours filtered through a dusty, smoggy, sepia lens, where Godard's are only muted only because you are looking at them through an icy glass of pastis. I don't know if that makes sense to you. I guess that is why I've started this blog, to help me express what I'm thinking in terms of design. This year is both new and snowy, and my brain is starting to think about SS2011.  

*If you are reading this blog, you probably know me in real life and are thinking "why is Elizabeth writing in British English; she is American? I know she can be all affected and only eat raw milk cheeses, but this is a bit OTT."  My answer is this: America doesn't need another style blog; England does. Although I get much of my news from American websites, most of what I look at is on this funny island.

** At work, I realize how subjective the experience of colour is. I call a tweed "wheat;" the guy sitting next to me calls it "green."