The Purple One. If we’re not referring to him as either ‘The Artist Formerly Known As Prince’, or simply ‘one of the greatest performers to have ever walked the planet’, there’s no doubting the connection Prince has with the colour purple.
He wore it on the cover of his most iconic album, in most of his marketing material, and even recently had his own Pantone colour made in his honour – his signature shade of purple, of course.
But according to his sister, that iconic shade of purple wasn’t even Prince’s favourite colour, but instead just something that became associated with him throughout his career after the massive success of Purple Rain. His actual fave colour? Orange, apparently – almost the opposite colour to purple.
Chatting to The Evening Standard (via SPIN), his sis Tyka Nelson dropped the surprising factoid while chatting about the legend’s iconic guitars, which were being auctioned off by his estate – just the latest item to be flogged following the sale of handwritten lyrics written on, yep, purple paper.
“The stand out piece for me is his orange Cloud guitar,” she said. “It is strange because people always associate the colour purple with Prince, but his favourite colour was actually orange.”
This might seem weird at first, but it wasn’t just his guitar that was orange. As SPIN notes, he wore orange all the time at awards ceremonies and public appearances, including his final appearance at the Grammys. After all, we can’t expect someone to wear the same colour their entire careers, can we, no matter how strong the association is.
Hell, even Jack White ditched his iconic red, white and black colour scheme after breaking up The White Stripes, taking on a blue theme for his solo work, and wearing plenty of black the rest of the time.
But while Prince’s sister may say his favourite colour is orange, we’re sure that if she and the rest of his family follow through on the idea of bringing the late icon back as a hologram, they’ll be decking him out in his iconic purple all the same.
Prince’s newly-released clip for ‘Grand Slam’ is just as purple as you’d expect it to be
