Fashion/Style: The colour purple

Mourning attire is less casual and not an office dress or business suit. It is more of a traditional outfit, though not as universal as it may sound. Principally, mourning outfits should be a semi-formal dress, and particularly relevant to the occasion. Be it black, or white, orange or brown, violet, or pink, during this commemorative period in Rwanda, the appropriate colour is purple. As the country commemorates the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi for the fifteenth time, people will adorn purple neck scarves, wraps, armbands and sometimes as wristbands. Traditionally, the colour purple is associated with royalty. It symbolises power, nobility, luxury, and ambition. It conveys wealth and extravagance. Purple is associated with wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic. In Rwanda, especially during this period of the mourning, the colour is being worn as a sign of respect in remembrance of over a million Rwandans killed during the genocide. Colours have different meanings and they are used differently, for example in some societies, black is commonly associated with mourners on funerals, though colour experts claim that it’s a multipurpose colour. For purposes of commemorating, purple is the colour, and it’s worn by very many people in the country, local print media and broadcasts too, have embraced the colour to pay tribute to the victims of the genocide. However, according to the Executive Secretary of the Genocide Survivors’ Associations in Rwanda (IBUKA), Benoit Kaboyi, the colour purple has nothing to do with commemorating the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi. Instead, it might have been employed by the Church to denote the forty days’ fast preceding Easter. “Colours are some of the things we adopted from the whites,” says Kaboyi. “I remember we once had a debate whether we should use the colour when commemorating the genocide or not because colours have no meaning as far as remembering the dead is concerned.” Jean Marie Ndikubwabo, 28, is a survivor of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. He says that purple is a sign of hope, and it makes genocide survivors and the entire community of Rwandans believe that despite the tragedy that claimed innocent lives, there is still hope of unity and reconciliation amongst Rwandans. “And how you choose to wear purple is up to you - there is really no force, one does so voluntarily.” Many fashion experts believe that colours become popular not just because they are new and fresh and we are bored with last year’s trendy shades, but because they resonate with the ethos of the times. Whatever the colour, let’s remember those that lost their lives in cold blood, for being what they had no hand in being. Ends