Concept Post

Electric Blue 

(Photo credit: Nothing But Jason)

When we were thinking of a concept for this month we wanted to come together not only to show our different styles but also bring out how our unique individualities compliment each other. So we met up for our daily rondayvoo: two of us drinking water and the other two drinking Redbull vodkas. Tori went with the Redbull vodka becuase she had had a hard week involving dropping her phone into water (which she consequently refused to drink). Meanwhile, Liam just loves redbull (he drinks like five cans a day) and wanted to make his Wednesday more exciting.  After many different ideas were proposed, Cam threw out electric blue. We knew we wanted to come out with a bang, and electric blue had been on Cam and Tori's minds ever since the start; they had initially considered calling the blog Electric Blue.  Electric blue can be exciting, it can be subtle, and can even allow you to stand out, so welcome to our first concept.  

-Yaw

(Photo Credit: Nothing But Jason)

Over the past few seasons, runways and street style blogs have been all over pops of colour, either as solo statements or as part of eye-melting colour-blocked outfits.  One of the most prominent – and most wearable – shades has been electric blue.  Electric blue is essentially a vibrant, striking blue in a rich shade neither too light nor too dark.  In practice, "electric blue" ranges from the light, almost florescent shade preferred by Raf Simmons to the medium-light blue of Jill Sander to the darker so-called "Yves Klein Blue" repped by D&G, Etro, and Burberry Prorsum last year, and even Avatar blue, which is a made-up colour that exists on a made-up planet. 

For our purposes, most especially-bright blue is going to be called "electric blue".  I'm not sure which one is the true and original "electric blue" because I'm not, like, a colour historian.  But neither are you so I'm confident that a) I won't get called out, and b) none of you actually care about minute differences between particular shades of blue.  The point is that it's a really bright, really solid blue.  In our shoots, we didn't really have ideal lighting for bright electric blue; we generally had on more of a very primary and basic shade of blue, but with a bit more saturation that your average Crayola marker might have.  

(Photo Credit: Nothing But Jason)

Like all bright colours, electric blue can be tricky to pull off.  However, its advantage over other more outlandish shades is that basic blue, no matter how bright, still shares a phylogenic tree (shout out to all you Bio majors) with the blue of blue jeans, and as such is a less-dramatic break from everyday colour schemes than, say, neon green or safety-orange.  We've opted to showcase electric blue in a couple fairly doable ways. 

One is to let it pop, but not dominate, by pairing it with black and white for a solid, balanced image.  Another is to give it more of a center stage by pairing it with only white (again, because of the dominance of blue jeans in everyday wear, all-over blue and white doesn't seem all that outlandish).  A third approach is to balance the bright blue with other bright colours, as you can see in Liam's belt in his first look or his socks and shoes in his second look.  We didn't really go in on this approach, but you can see it pretty prominently in the D&G spring 2011 pic below.  Finally, you can always tone down electric blue with neutrals, as I've done in both my looks and Yaw has done in his second look.  Light or washed-out neutrals can sometimes be too insubstantial to hold up against electric blue on their own, so it's usually a good idea to include darker and more assertive neutrals like charcoal, dark brown, and khaki.  

(Photo Credit: Nothing But Jason)

Protip: Blue and brown pretty much always look good together, and electric blue is no exception.  Brown accessories will keep the blue from popping quite as starkly as it would with black.

Protip: Electric blue ties are basically impossible to pull off without looking like you're in a pop-punk band.   

Protip: If you are not a model, or starring in a music video, and you try to wear what Liam is wearing in his second look, I give you my firm guarantee that you will be made fun of for resembling a Smurf.  Nobody can say I didn't warn them.                    .   

Alright, now you know the deal about electric blue.  Go give it a shot and let us know what you think.  If you're not quite ready to go all in on wearing bright blue, you can always psych yourself up for it by listening to the blues, "I'm Blue Abadee Abadai", Blue Rodeo, Blu & Exile, "Electric Blue" by the Cranberries, "Electric Blue" by Icehouse, or this ridiculous French song.  

-Cam


Examples of electric blue in and around fashion shows:

(GQ on D&G and style.com on Louis Vuitton)

(The Sartorialist and Style Sightings)