Colour By Numbers: How Fashion Affects Our Fortune

What colour outfit we wear can affect the outcome of an occasion, research released today reveals.

Wearing silver on a night out can enhance your enjoyment, and blue is the colour to wear if you want to smash a gym session, according to the findings.

The study also suggests men on a first date are more likely to get lucky when wearing black whereas women should dress in shades of red to win their date over.

When it comes to the realm of careers, it seems that black is the colour to choose, with almost half of those surveyed saying they landed a job after wearing black for an interview, and a further 41 per cent saying the best presentation or business meeting of their life was when they were wearing a black outfit.

Even holidays can be enhanced by wearing shades of yellow, with a quarter of us believing wearing yellow makes for a happier holiday.

The study of 2,000 Britons by vaping brand blu, alongside leading UK psychologist Dr Becky Spelman, explored how the colours and hues we wear affect our lives. Spelman says: “The research has revealed some fascinating insight into the colours we should wear to make the very best of different situations and also how we are judged by the colours we choose to wear.

“A whole range of psychological, cultural and historical reasons feed into how and why we react to certain colours. For example, all over the world, the colour red tends to be associated with strong emotions such as anger and passion. This is easy to understand because red is the colour of blood, with associations of anger.

“However, other colour associations can vary wildly depending on the cultural and the historical context. In Britain and in most other European countries, black is the colour associated with mourning, but in China, the relevant colour is white. Today, the colour pink is associated with baby girls, and the colour blue with baby boys, but in the past pink was actually seen as a “boys” colour.

“Associations with colour can also be intensely personal. We might associate a particular colour with a specific experience and the emotions associated with it—and we might not even have a conscious memory of how we formed the association, which may have happened in very early childhood.” 

As many as 42 percent of Brits routinely judge people by the colours they wear, with almost a quarter thinking people who wear white are pretentious, while the majority said men who wear pink are confident.

People who wear a lot of gold and silver are seen as being brash and garish, though almost a quarter say it’s a sign they are glamorous.

To come across as ‘classic’, the best colour to wear is blue, and to give out a quirky vibe, slip on something purple.

And if you want to be seen as a serious person, most Brits think you should dress head-to-toe in black.

A fifth of Brits think women who dress in pink are probably a lot of fun, though 14 percent claim it’s a sign they are airheads. 

Those who wear orange are retro, according to popular opinion, with 11 percent actually believing those who wear orange have a sinister streak.

Dr Becky adds: “An awareness of the cultural and psychological factors at play when it comes to colour helps us to get to know ourselves better and also gives us a way to communicate. Through the clothing and accessories, we choose, we can use colour to communicate, without words, a range of messages and emotions. For example, when a man chooses to wear clothing in colours typically associated with girls and women, he can be communicating a range of messages: that he feels that he is in touch with his feminine side; that he does not feel that his masculinity is threatened by colours stereotyped as “soft” or “feminine”; and that he is something of a maverick. Similarly, if someone dresses in or accessorises themselves with very bright colours, at least on some level they are saying that they want to be seen.”

Peter Blackman from blu told Belle About Town: “Colour is a huge part of our day-to-day life and can subliminally provoke us to judge people based solely on the colours they’re wearing.  It’s been really interesting to see how not only how colour is associated with different emotions and judgements, but the personal experience of colour to affect a perspective for different personal and social events. The launch of the new coloured myblu devices to the market comes at an exciting time, where consumers can now choose a coloured device that they feel reflects their own personality.”

The study found that colour can affect your relationship, as 49 Brits have ordered their partner to stop wearing a shade as it didn’t suit them.

And 42 percent admit that they wouldn’t date someone who consistently wore clothes in unflattering or garish colours.

Men admitted being more likely to blank someone because of their colour choices than women.