The Journal Of Popular Culture

The Journal of Popular Culture.

In response to American punch and Victorian eclecticism, early twentieth century color intermediaries attempted to standardize and manage color systems, the focus of the second and third chapters. Albert H. Munsell, an artist by training, and Milton Bradley, a childhood education reformer, dueled about color psychology and standardization systems. In the interest of greater efficiency and coordination between the textile, millinery and apparel industries, the patriotic Textile Color Card Association (TCCA) was founded in 1915. It also served as the first color forecasting organization in the United States.

According to Blaszczyk, standardization and rationalization were the color revolution buzzwords, basically until the 1960s, the denouement of her periodization. After WWI, color psychologists and camoufleurs, including H. Ledyard Towle, brought their expertise into the home, espousing rhetoric about efficiency, mood conditioning, productivity, and a woman's special “color smarts” (91). Towle was one of the first corporate colorists and the founding director of the Duco Color Advisory Service, a subsidiary of the DuPont Chemical Company in collaboration with General Motors. Duco automotive paint unleashed a spectrum of car colors in the 1920s, and marketing divisions acknowledged the ever-important point of view of “Mrs. Consumer,” the primarily middle-class but otherwise undifferentiated woman of the household. While many consumers admired the array of color options, Blaszczyk rightfully emphasizes dealers' and retailers' anxieties over the unpredictability of fashion cycles and difficulties in stocking and color matching.