To create the colour brown, you can mix equal amounts of the three primary colours: red, yellow, and blue.
Another way to make brown is by combining a secondary colour with its complementary colour - for example, green with red, purple with yellow, or orange with blue.
Due to the use of all primary hues, there is a wide range of brown shades with different undertones. More yellow will result in a sandy brown, more blue will create a plum brown, and more red will produce a burgundy or brick brown.
Brown is abundant in nature and represents an earthy, rustic, natural, practical, down-to-earth, comfortable, or luxurious image in fashion. It is associated with wood, coconuts, autumn leaves, animal fur, soil, and clay.
While brown can sometimes be linked to dirt and waste, suggesting ugliness or poverty, historically it has been a symbol of modesty and simplicity in clothing. In ancient Rome, the urban poor were known as 'Pullati,' meaning those dressed in brown. Franciscan monks wore an espresso shade to signify their vows of chastity and poverty. In the fourteenth century, sumptuary laws designated russet brown for professions like carters and oxherds.
Renaissance artists such as Correggio, Caravaggio, and Rembrandt used shadows and brown pigments to add richness and depth to their artworks. Seventeenth-century Dutch artist Anthony van Dyck utilised a shade known as Cassel Earth, which later became 'Van Dyck Brown.'
In the 1920s, taupes and neutral brown tones were incorporated into Art Deco fashion to achieve an elegant, sophisticated and luxurious appearance.
Light brown was associated with trench warfare and was adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party's paramilitary group, the 'Sturmabteilung' or 'Brown Shirts.' Formerly, the colour had been part of European soldiers' uniforms since the sixteenth century.
During the 1970s, earthy hues like rust, tan, and auburn became wardrobe essentials, reflecting the increasing interest in ecology and conservation.