“cashmere” and “old corsets”

More tulips are blooming! And, as I read much more about tulips from growers and garden designers, I’m beginning to realise just what a minefield discussion of tulips (or rather, one’s personal tulip preferences) can be – especially where colours are concerned.

I’m a huge fan of “wild romance”, whose over-the-top blowsiness has now reached a deliciously crazy peak, but was surprised to read in Polly Nicholson’s Tulip Garden about the general recent unpopularity of white tulips, particularly in combinations, where some designers have deemed them in “bad taste”. What?! Really?

Then, on Gardener’s World last Friday Monty (who I love and Who Can Do No Wrong) expressed his own dislike for a particular tulip variety he was trialling whose colours seemed too brash and “lipsticky.”

But isn’t it is all a matter of personal taste, Monty? Personally, I don’t think you can argue with the gorgeous lipstick hues of “blushing girl”. . . . ?

What’s interesting, I suppose, is that our tastes – particularly where colour is concerned – can vary so very wildly. One person’s “brash and gaudy” is another’s “jewel-toned” delight, one designer’s “deliciously dark and moody” is another’s “dull and gloomy.” Everyone has their own personal colour preferences, and sometimes its difficult to see beyond one’s own perspectives to a different point of view. The other day, Tom noticed some tulips at the front of the house that were just starting to come into flower, and, with these chromatic matters in mind, I was interested to hear him describe their rather indeterminate hues as “weird” and “muddy”. These are the tulips in question:

This is tulip Belle Époque, and because it looked so different to the other bulbs I planted last year, I’ve grown it not in combination with other tulips, but alone, in its own pot.

It is certainly a very fashionable tulip, part of the “cashmere” palette that seems to dominate current online trends in everything from bridal floristry to interiors. It’s not quite beige (and would not come out top in any personal-brand “beige-off”) but its rather complicated palette is definitely heading in a “Mocha Mousse”* direction. ( *Pantone’s colour of 2025).

Belle Époque is certainly a very interesting and very beautiful tulip of the double or peony type, and it also photographs extremely well (a fact which is probably not incidental to its current popularity). Indeed, I was very interested to hear Tom say he liked these washed out pinks and browns much more once he’d spent some time taking pictures of them.

Looking at Tom’s lovely images, I was also put amusedly in mind of the curt and dismissive lines I read last week in Anna Pavord’s Seasonal Gardener, where she pooh-poohs the currently fashionable faded tulip colours as reminiscent of “old corsets”.

It also strikes me that the actual Belle Époque – a name which has no doubt been chosen for this tulip because of its immediately nostalgic evocation of faded “vintage” hues – was, perhaps more than anything, the era of bold bright, artificial colour: shouty fuschias and loud magentas with something “terrible and aniline” about them: the chromatic opposite, in other words, of these muted latte pinks.

I enjoy thinking about the history and culture of colour, as you know, and it strikes me that horticultural debates about such matters might be a rich vein of enquiry! And speaking personally, I rather like tulip Belle Époque, but (even as a complete tulip novice) wonder about its occupation of this curiously indeterminate colour space. I also think it might be very difficult to combine with other shades and hues in gardens that naturally tend toward the exuberant (at least in my own case). But the value judgments levelled at this tulip – its strongly-worded associations of “cashmere” (luxuriant, indulgent) and “old corsets” (shabby, decaying, Miss-Haversham-like) – really do illustrate just how divisive a cultural matter colour can be – especially, it seems, regarding tulips.

Do you like tulip Belle Époque? Are you team “cashmere” or team “old corset”? Tell me!

Explore other cultural chromatic debates in Colour at Work!