Red is not a color that I wear often. It means too many different things. I think that I read that Louboutin uses the color for the soles of their shoes because it is an auspicious color. To me, red shoes mean something different. Crimson is a color associated with silk as well as blood. To me, it has a certain weirdness that comes from its being slightly silvery, and from the word itself—how it sounds slightly silvery. To me, it sounds and looks a bit like oil. I absolutely hate it.
Crimson, according to “Werner’s Nomenclature of Colour”, has the base of Carmine Red, which has the base of Lake Red and a bit of Arterial Blood Red. Crimson also contains Indigo Blue, which is a bit more than half blue-green, is mostly purple, contains no yellow, and is about a third black. Carmine is a bright orange-red, a warm hue that’s entirely red and blue, not at all green, and contains no black. Lake Red contains a bit of Berlin Blue, an ashy grey blue that is about half greenish-blue, and then reddish-blue and then black.
Arterial Blood Red is a small portion of all these reds that also goes into Crimson. Arterial Blood Red is a foundational color here. This color has no blue or green in it, but has a lot of reds and yellows—and is slightly more than half black. As the base of the blue/black reds, this color is what gives Crimson its warm hue. Especially when combined with the ratio of the blues that give Crimson a slight purple-ness.
These reds that go into Crimson are mostly made of the same ratios of blues, greens, reds, purples, and blacks. And what this does to the end color, Crimson, is create an ashy red hue as a base because of the colors that cancel each other out. This leaves yellow, which does not cancel itself out, and combined with the ashy red, creates a warmed up slight-orange, which is detest far more than Crimson.
The Indigo and the Berlin Blue cancel out the green-blues to warm the Crimson up, and contain no yellow, leaving the yellow in the Carmine, bringing out that detestable orange. This is what makes Crimson a warm color, rather than a cool one. Basically, all those blues and reds thrown into this color create a muddy-looking ash that, when combined with the orangey-yellow, result in a muddy-looking orangey red. It’s probably the most disgusting kind of red I can think of.
Because of the fact that every color is pretty much thrown in here, and the only color that remains is the yellow, this color rarely looks good on anyone. To me, it stops the eye, appears too solid because it absorbs light. It’s the black hole of reds, and I wouldn’t wear this color unless my skin had a lot of blue undertones in it, almost to the point that I was purple.
This color is awful, let’s send it to space.