Decades before Pantone’s colour of the year, the Textile Colour Card Association (TCCA) led the way in the standardisation of colours and colour names. Established in 1915, the TCCA provided American textile industry and dealers with “indispensable guidance in the manufacture and ordering of colours.”
Yardley ran this series of wartime adverts over 1942/3. Each shows a woman engaged in "war work" - Wren, factory girl, nurse - and a patriotic message encouraging women to "work hard and let no weariness appear". The superficial read of course is that a woman’s duty above all is to be decorative — but, if you look at it a bit deeper, what intrigues me about this campaign is the focus on a specifically feminine strength.
