Apricot

The origin of apricot lies on the Silk Road. The apricot tree is native to the Western Regions of China, and its seeds were brought back to Chang'an by Zhang Qian after his pioneering journey. The flesh of a ripe apricot presents an ambiguous color somewhere between pink and orange. Tang Dynasty writer Duan Chengshi, in his 'Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang,' recorded the phrase 'apricot steams the Jiangnan'—the first time the color of apricot was used to describe the hue of distant mountains in the mist.

In medieval Persian miniatures, apricot was the designated color for women's skin. Painters mixed a mineral powder containing lead white with ochre to create a soft apricot shade for the cheeks and arms of court ladies. This standard of skin tone influenced aesthetics across Central and South Asia for centuries; to this day, Indian bridal makeup retains a tradition of an apricot-toned foundation.

In the 18th century, French Rococo painter François Boucher pushed apricot to its extreme. The bathing Diana and frolicking shepherdesses he depicted feature large areas of skin rendered with apricot shading. Set against a pale blue sky, it created a porcelain-smooth and delicate fleshiness. Diderot criticized Boucher's apricot as too saccharine, but this couldn't stop noblewomen across Europe from imitating the figures in his paintings.

In the 1920s, the cosmetics industry spawned apricot blush. Max Factor formulated the first compact apricot blush for Hollywood silent film actresses because black-and-white film was most sensitive to apricot tones, rendering a natural-looking facial flush on screen. Off-screen, women followed the stars, switching to apricot and bidding farewell to the pallid makeup of the Victorian era.

In recent years, the 'milky tea' color trend in the beauty world is essentially a contemporary variant of apricot. From lipstick to blush to eyeshadow palettes, the apricot family, with its extreme closeness to natural Asian skin tones, has become the top choice for a 'no-makeup' makeup look, blurring the line between wearing makeup and having a naturally good complexion.