Graceful Ladies Like Purple - Television Tropes & Idioms

It's certainly lovely on these Princesses.

Basically, this is a lady wearing purple as a sign of her femininity, whether she is girly and sweet, or graceful and mature.

For millennia, purple was the traditional color of nobility because it was one of the most difficult (and thus expensive) colors to make with naturally occurring dyes. In fact, the Romans actually made it a crime for anyone not of the nobility to wear purple in public, cementing its status in many cultures as the color of The Beautiful Elite. This changed some time after the Industrial Revolution kicked into high gear, when synthetic dyes became the norm rather than the exception. So formerly expensive purple dyeing was now just as affordable as any other color, and thus lost much of its noble lineage. As colors began to take on their now-familiar gender connotations, purple found itself increasingly on the feminine side of the gender divide because it was considered a pinker version of blue. This trope is thus a merger of two associations: purple with nobility, and purple with femininity.

This color is fairly common to see on a young girl, elderly matron, Spirited Young Lady, or princess (even if Princesses Prefer Pink).

Now even though this color can be worn by girls of any age, older feminine women are more likely to wear this color long after a girl who wore pink grew out of that color.

However, the association of purple with positive qualities is sometimes subverted. As such, purple is a colour commonly found among villainesses, particularly in kid shows and older shows, mostly because violet used to be the colour of mourning, associating it with death and sorrow.

This also tends to be a popular color among some Mary Sues.

Just being a woman in purple isn't enough. It has to be a clearly feminine lady.

A Sister Trope to Pink Means Feminine (and can overlap with colors like fuchsia), True Blue Femininity.

Compare Purple Eyes, Princess Phase, Winter Royal Lady, Proper Lady, Princess Classic, Princesses Prefer Pink, Purple Is Powerful (and can overlap with some Action Girls), Supernatural Is Purple.

Examples

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A recent paint commercial has a woman asking for paint that's purple "but not puuuuurrrple." The salesperson understands completely. She is then shown several men all painted different shades of purple so she can have her pick.
In a UK commercial for Tena Lights, a lady wears a purple dress with matching purple underwear.

Anime & Manga

Sumire of Sakura Taisen wears purple as her main color, in both her uniform and regular outfit.
Zakuro Fujiwara, a mature, refined model, has a purple-colored Mew Mew outfit (and purple hair to match) in Tokyo Mew Mew.
Sylphiel Nels Lahda of Slayers wears a mostly purple outfit, fitting for her proper, polite and demure behavior.
Angel Salvia in Wedding Peach wears purple both in her Fairytale Wedding Dress and her Mini Dress Of Power.
While Anthy Himemiya of Revolutionary Girl Utena, the Rose Bride, generally wears a red dress (or white in the movie), her hair is purple, and purple itself is a symbol for royalty and, appropriately, magic and mystery (both which make up Anthy's mystique and outer personality). Most of her outside artwork, namely monochrome drawings, utilize purple.
Hotaru Tomoe/Sailor Saturn from Sailor Moon wears purple.
Lady of War Yuri Tsukikage/Cure Moonlight from HeartCatch Pretty Cure! has purple hair in both forms and a violet-accented Cure outfit.
Ayeka of Tenchi Muyo! has purple hair. However, it's slightly cheating: Word Of God states that her hair is actually blue and she altered it to be purple in order to attract her half-brother/fiance Yosho.
Cornelia li Britannia of Code Geass has purple as her default color.
Austria from Axis Powers Hetalia is a male example. He is an aristocrat with a love of fine arts. He has purple eyes and usually wears clothes in varying shades of purple, from magenta to indigo. Even his hair sometimes gets a strange purple tint. Belarus seems like an example in appearance; a dainty girl in a violet Elegant Gothic Lolita dress. But her personality is anything but graceful.

Comic Books

Psylocke of X-Men is a former supermodel, whose motifs are butterflies, and is often depicted as a elegant Lady of War in a purple leotard, although for a time she fit Purple Is Powerful more than this trope.

Films — Animation

The Disney Princess site offers several purple Pimped Out Dresses in the Virtual Paper Doll game.
Bianca from The Rescuers dons purple often, including in her Iconic Outfit with the bow.
Meg from Hercules has purple eyes and a lavender dress.
Rapunzel of Tangled wears a purple and lavender dress.
Ariel of The Little Mermaid wears a purple seashell bra as a mermaid, and in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, she wears a purple dress.
In a lot of The Merch, Jasmine from Aladdin is shown wearing the purple dress she wears towards the end of the movie, rather than her usual blue outfit.
Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame has a predominant scheme of white, teal, gold, and purple—with purple standing out the most as the color of her skirt.
Shanti from The Jungle Book.
The Black Cauldron's Eilonwy wears dress that is a mixture of purple, pink, and white.
Jane from Peter Pan: Return to Neverland.
One of Mulan's outfits in Mulan II.
In Barbie in a Christmas Carol, Eden wears a purple nightgown and Sleep Mask, while Catherine in a possible future wears a purple dress as an Evil Costume Switch (her present dress is pink and white).

Live-Action TV

WWE Diva Ivory's favourite colour was purple and nearly all her outfits were purple. She also had her trademark purple scarf which she carried to the ring with her. She often referred to herself as a lady, calling the rest of the Divas sluts and skanks.
Ambassador Delenn in Babylon 5 loves purple robes and wears them when handling interstellar crises' or blowing bad guys up.
Lady Morgana wears a lot of purple on Merlin whilst she's living in Camelot's court, and Guinevere's coronation gown is purple.
- In fact, Morgana gets no less than four purple gowns, two of silk and two of velvet: one◊, two◊, three◊, four◊.
The dowager countess, Maggie Smith's character on Downton Abbey, is named Violet and wears lots of purple.
Princess Aurora in Once Upon a Time wears a lavender gown.

Music

Jasmine You◊ of Versailles took full advantage of this trope as part of his image.

Puppet Shows

On The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy is never seen without a pair of lavender Opera Gloves. She is the very definition of delicate, graceful femininity and will punch out the lights of anyone who says otherwise.

Toys

Several outfits Barbie has worn have been purple, as well as several characters in the Direct-to-Video movies.

Video Games

Action Girl Virginia's fuchsia Pimped-Out Dress in Wild ARMs 3.
Blaze the Cat from the Sonic the Hedgehog series.
Morrigan of Dragon Age: Origins is a Lady of Black Magic who mostly wears purple and black. Violet is often emphasized with her in official artist's depictions, as well as occasionally being the color of her magic.
Katamari Damacy's Velvet wears purple as a sign of her maturity and haughtiness.
Ivy Valentine of Soul Calibur wears purple dominatrix suits and is the most...womanly character in the game.
The more recent depictions of Princess Zelda often tend to show her in a purple dress.
Yakumo Yukari from Touhou wears purple dresses. Also overlaps with Purple Is Powerful.
- Her name even means violet.
Princess Schala of Zeal in Chrono Trigger.
Alisa Bosconovitch of Tekken wears a dress that is mostly purple.
Jaina Proudmoore wore a long hooded purple mantle decorated with runes in Warcraft III, along with white clothing. By World of Warcraft, she had switched that outfit for a more elegant purple and white robe befitting her status as the ruler of Theramore.

Western Animation

Rarity, the most feminine main character in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, has a violet mane and tail, and even her white coat had slight lavender tint to it. Her choices in outfits for herself also tend to be biased towards purple and blue.
- She even wears purple camouflage at one point, while dragon-watching, which the others call her out on. She doesn't seem to mind.
Yue, the princess of the Northern Water Tribe Avatar The Last Airbender, wears purple, when all the other water tribes wear blue (although a play involving her portrays her wearing pink).
This is one of the most common colors worn by Daisy Duck of the Classic Disney Shorts.
- In Mickey's Christmas Carol, where she played Isabelle, her second outfit (including dress, parasol, and fur cape) were shades of purple.
Fallon of Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders wears purple and has purple hair.
In the Fairy Tale episode of X-Men Jean was a Princess and wore purple and pink.
The Ashleys in Recess have a tradition around this color. When they first met in kindergarten, they were coincidentally all wearing purple, and every anniversary of that day is "Purple Day", where the girls only wear the color purple. The episode which introduced this began with their leader, Ashley A., arriving late, but accidentally wearing yellow. She, for a brief moment, is kicked out of the club.
Princess Ilana wore a purple dress in the first episode of Symbionic Titan when she and Lance first arrive on Earth.
Marzipan from Homestar Runner wears a purple dress... or her body is purple and just looks like a dress.
Princes Clara in Drawn Together wears a simply purple frock.
Luciana in Barbie As The Island Princess wears a purple dress.
Sofia from Sofia The First wears a purple princess gown. Even before she became a Princess she wore purple.
She-Ra: Princess of Power: Princess Glimmer has purple in her outfit and lavender hair.