Luxury Is Color

The legendary YSL logo was designed in 1963 by Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron a/k/a Cassandre

I'm currently entrenched in this design project. That is ironic because all this time I was thinking like a groupie (given my lack of schooling ), simply content to take pleasure in the masterpieces notable for their font jurisdiction and color scheming, visual weighting and negative space employment.

But I got the gig against all odds and decided to just keep thinking and talking with my client until we hit the right notes. The challenge then is to activate three simple letters and make them feel like an expression of ultra-high quality. I was talking really fast when I said "Luxury is color. Luxury is always a color. The burnt orange of Hermes. The regal red and gold of a Cartier box. The robin egg blue of Tiffany's. Luxury is always a color. Color is hard but we have to custom color very specifically and then the three letters will take on meaning".

We started to talk about the YSL logo for instance which is one of the most beautiful, mutable, timeless and yet audacious logos in all of fashion. That logo was designed by 1963 Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron a/k/a Cassandre , a Ukrainian-French painter, commercial poster artist, and typeface designer. That YSL logo never withered over time. It can be reduced to monochromatic severity or overlayed in orange and fuscia and still remain totally and eternally YSL. It's minimal and feminine, deco and disco. It testifies to the wisdom of judicious choices and relentless taste. It is giving me hope today.