Salmon and Friends

 

 
Salmon is a tricky color. Not quite orange, not quite pink, it is stuck in this zone where the only acceptable word for it is also a word for a fish. The darker varietal of this mystery hue – something between a red and an orange – is coral. Another aquatic name—are we sensing a pattern?

Allow me to digress for a moment as I UnPhilosophize on the ambiguities of color-naming. I have always thought of coral as a pink color, with maybe just a hint of orange skewing it to the warmer side of the spectrum. Indeed, if you search my blog for "coral," you will find all my past outfits with the color involved sweaters that were either pink or had muted pink stripes. However, in my clothes-shopping experience of late, the word is almost exclusively reserved for a dark, orange-hued red...a color that I'd be more likely to describe as "vermilion." But (insert crimson tide joke here) you can't fight the currents of popular opinion, and so if they want "coral" to mean "vermilion," I may as well join them since I can't beat them!

While salmon and coral are tricky to pin down in the naming department, they are also tricky to identify online. I can't count the times (well, I probably could, but who has time for that?) that I've purchased something from a website, thinking I'm getting an orange or a pink or a red, only to find that it's actually something in between those hues, and thus goes with nothing in my wardrobe! Tricky to define, tricky to discern in pictures, and tricky to wear—the triple salmon whammy!

Whenever I've inadvertently purchased something either salmon or coral (usually shoes), I typically keep it around for a while, trying it with various outfits but never having success, before admitting defeat and selling it. But today, the challenging colors are found not in my shoes but my dress, allowing me to finally put my salmon skills to the test!

In addition to salmon and coral, the dress comprises two other colors. One is an even paler variant that in some lights might pass for "nude," but in juxtaposition with its darker siblings, becomes the much more interesting "peach"—finally a color that's not named after a sea animal! The other is a solid, unambiguous off-white or beige. With this color in the dress (in however small of a mesh overlay making up just one of the stripes on the bodice), it was an easy decision to wear similarly colored shoes, this pair having been bought at the end of last summer at the thrift store, and thusly making its first public appearance on my feet!

It's a good thing that beige goes with everything, because otherwise I would have had a hard time pairing any of my shoes to this tricky-colored dress...but while I was working on this outfit, I discovered another color that makes the perfect partner to these orangey shades—rose gold!

Rose gold is another tricky color (more than just a color, because its metallic sheen is an essential part of its nature)—not quite gold, not quite copper, somewhat but not quite resembling pastel pink, I only learned of it a few years ago. It seems to be rising in popularity, but I myself have mixed feelings about rose gold. While I appreciate the deviation from the boring standard colors of metals, it never seems to go with anything in my wardrobe! But I finally found its match in my salmon-coral-peach-beige dress. Rose gold is basically a pale salmon in metal form!

 

My glitzy rose-gold earrings paired beautifully with the dress, adding a bit of glam to an otherwise very modest and unassuming (though brightly colored) sheath, with its sensible and unassuming wedge sandals. The earrings make the outfit more fancy, while the shoes make it more casual, averaging out to the perfect workplace ensemble!