Lorena's Epiphany

United Colors of Lebanon

November 1, 2009 at 4:25 pm 1 comment

Our company is running in the upcoming Beirut Marathon, and after the Walk for Hunger a few months ago, this one’s a piece a cake. We’re participating in the 20km walk and each year, a committee works on the shirts, caps and other promotional items for the walkers participating. Walking advertisements.

I just started designing the T-shirts for this year’s marathon, but the major problem I’m facing is not being able to print on a color. Their corporate colors are gray and orange, so I was thinking of printing on orange T-shirts as opposed to the traditional white or gray. Big mistake. For a second there, I forgot where I was living. Orange t-shirts would fly anywhere else, but here, it’s like holding a sign that says “I’m with Aoun (a politician and leader of political party)”. Nix blue, green, yellow, and red too for their political representation. So for a designer, you can imagine how frustrating this can be.

Four years ago, I went to vote with my family and was carrying an orange handbag. I love the color in general, and naturally picked it to flatter my outfit. In this instance, the “assumption” people made actually helped me. There were a bunch of people standing by the door handing out flyers and bugging passer-bys to vote for the orange political party (as I will refer to them from now on). When they saw me walking towards them, they quickly moved aside with smiles on their faces – “she’s on our side”, they must’ve thought. (Since I don’t agree with Lebanese politics, I won’t say whether this was actually true or not.)

Adding to all the political and religious sensitivities Lebanese have to deal with, here’s another that also controls your wardrobe. That’s one thing I never had to worry about in Boston. I wonder how much this influences clothing stores here as they pick out their collections..

Entry filed under: Floating. Tags: beirut marathon 2009, colors, Lebanon, orange, political colors, t-shirts.