Ombre

Ombre (pronounced om-brey)

(1) A gradual blending of one color to another, often a blended shifting of tints and shades from light to dark within the range of one hue but it can also be applied when using contrasting colors.

(2) A card game of Spanish origin, dating from the late seventeenth century; played usually by three, it uses a deck of forty cards, the 8, 9 & 10 discarded and gained the name from the phrase “Soy el hombre” (I am the man), uttered at critical points during play.  As a fashionable game, it was superseded by quadrille.

(4) A large Mediterranean fish (Umbrina cirrosa), popular in cooking (archaic and better known as the shi drum, gurbell, sea crow, bearded umbrine or corb).

1840–1845: From the French ombré (shadowed, shaded), past participle of ombrer, from the Italian ombrare (to cover in shadow (in painting)), ultimately from the Latin umbra (shadow).  The name of the card game (as a reference to the player who attempts to win the pot) was from the French hombre, from the Spanish hombre (man), from the Latin homo, from the earlier hemō, from the Proto-Italic hemō, from the primitive Indo-European ǵm̥mṓ (earthling), from déǵōm (earth), from which Latin gained Latin humus (ground, floor, earth, soil).  It was cognate with the Old Lithuanian žmuõ (man), the Gothic guma and the Old English guma (man).  The link between the words for both earth and man wasn't unique to Latin and existed also in Semitic languages, illustrated by the Hebrew אָדָם‎ (adám) (man) & אֲדָמָה‎ (adamá) (soil).  Ombre is a noun & adjective (and conceivably a verb); the noun plural is ombres.

Ombre chiffon strapless bridesmaid dress from Dollygown (left) and Mansory’s Ferrari F8XX Spider Tempesta Turchese (right).  There seems no clear agreement about when a "bridesmaid dress" becomes a "bridesmaid gown" and most retailers avoid the latter term, presumably to avoid compressing relativities between "bridal gowns" and what the bridesmaids wear.

Mansory is a German operation based in Tirschenreuth, Bavaria, the core business of which is the modification of high-priced (mostly European) cars.  Their signature approach is the celebration of conspicuous consumption and they eschew subtlety in favor of an eye-catching appearance, a focus being “one-off” (the “one of one philosophy” as they describe it) creations where a particular combination of colors and modifications are not duplicated on another vehicle.  So, while not exactly bespoke (as the word traditionally was understood), their products are about the closest thing possible to actually displaying a price-tag somewhere on the bodywork;  high sales are said to have been achieved in Russia, China, the Middle East and India.  Mansory's work with specific components (notably carbon-fibre) is renowned in the industry as state-of-the-art and of the highest standard.  One recent one-off creation was the F8XX Spider Tempesta Turchese (Turquoise Storm), a variation of their modified Ferrari F8 Spider on which the ombre color scheme transitioned gradually from a specially blended white to a vivid turquoise, accented by Mansory’s traditional set of carbon-fibre pieces in black.  The company also modifies the 3.9 liter (238 cubic inch) twin-turbocharged V8, its output increased by some 22% to 868 bhp (648 kW) which propels the Tempesta Turchese to a top speed of 220 mph (355 km/h).

Lindsay Lohan in vintage Herve Leger bandage dress, Maxim Hot 100 Party, Gansevoort Hotel, New York City, May 2007 (left) and 1976 PDL Ford Mustang II, Baskerville Raceway, Tasmania, Australia, 1977 (right).

Incorrectly, ombre sometimes is used to describe color arrays or schemes where a variety of distinct shades are applied with a clear line of division between each and this is wrong because the ombre effect is one in which there's a gradual blending of one hue into another.  Where the multi-color (which can be just two) layers are distinct and differentiated, designers use the generic term “color block” to refer to the use of solid blocks of contrasting or complementary shades.  A special case is the “rainbow stripe”, applied to an array which recalls the pattern (not necessarily the curved shape) of a rainbow but this need not follow the classic ROYGBIV (the sequence of the visible spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo & violet) model.  Indeed, an array of colors which in nature would never be seen in a rainbow can still be called “rainbow stripe”, based on the pattern. So, Ms Lohan's bandage dress is in rainbow stripe while the PDL Mustang II's is in a color block scheme.

Brochure for 1975 Ford Mustang II Ghia, the pitch summed up in the phrase “Economy is emphasized”; note the model's veavage dress.  Although the V8 had returned to the option list, the advertising continued to focus on “prestige” and “luxury” with the the new engine mentioned only in passing although Ford had good reason not to make too much of a fuss because to describe the much de-tuned V8 as “spirited” really was damning with faint praise in that it was justified only because the four and six-cylinder alternatives were more anaemic still.  For many reasons, it was a troubled decade which “started well, got worse and ended badly” and in the era, ombre color schemes could be a challenge because there were so many shades of brown. 

1974 Ford Mustang II.

Although of the seven generations it's the least fondly remembered, commercially, the Mustang II (1973-1978) was a great success.  Smaller and lighter than what its predecessor had evolved to become, serendipitously, it had been released just weeks before the first oil shock began on 17 October, 1973.  It's sometimes forgotten the shift in the US to also produce smaller cars pre-dated the oil crisis of the 1970s and was a reaction to changing public tastes and success of imported cars, most notably those from Japan.  Upon debut, the Mustang II surprised some (and appalled others) because a V8 engine wasn't even on the option list (and wouldn't re-appear until the 1975 season although what was offered was a far cry from the potent units which had been fitted not half-a-decade earlier) but it was the right car at the right time and a great success although it's the only Mustang not to have some sort of following in the collector market.  That said, the car's front sub-frame proved most attractive to builders wanting a quick way to splice in the combination of IFS (independent front suspension), disk brakes, a V8 engine and rack & pinion steering which meant at least part of the Mustang II didn't last long in wreckers yards.  Being cannibalized for a higher purpose isn't the most desirable fate but it was a contribution to the ecosystem the original incarnation never achieved.

1970 PDL Mustang.

“Electric Blue and 180 mph” (290 km/h) was a good hook for a company in the business of producing electrical components but the livery was adopted only in 1975, the car in the previous four seasons having been variously white, orange, green and a fetching fuchsia.  Although by 1975 New Zealand’s transition from imperial to metric measures was almost complete (phased in, 1969-1976), Electric Blue and 290 km/h wouldn’t have had the same cachet.

Since 2001 owned by Schneider Electric, Plastic & Die Casting Ltd was founded in 1937 in Christchurch, New Zealand and in 1957 was re-branded with the snappier name PDL Industries Ltd.  The core business was the company’s highly-regarded electric switches and fittings but beyond the industry what generated most “brand-awareness” were the two PDL Mustangs used in racing.  The first was a genuine 1970 Mustang Boss 429 (one of 499 built that year with the special 429 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8) which had been stolen and recovered without its valuable engine and transmission.  Purchased for what was in retrospect the bargain price of US$500, it was a good basis for a circuit racer because Kar Kraft (the specialist operation to which Ford had out-sourced the Boss 429 installation programme (1969-1970) was compelled to widen the front track to accommodate the width (the “semi-hemi” cylinder heads with their huge intake ports (nicknamed “shotgun” because the sight of two of them recalled a side-by-side 12 gauge shotgun) were unusually bulky), something that, when fitted with an iron-block 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) unit, greatly improved the handling.  Later, in the quest for more pace, it would be fitted with one of the rare, aluminum-block 351s.      

1976 PDL Mustang II.

The PDL Mustang II was a space-frame race car built in 1976 to conform with the commendably liberal rules which at the time applied in New Zealand, then something of a parallel universe which had continued to follow the path other regulatory bodies a decade earlier had abandoned because the machines were becoming to too removed from their origin.  So extensive were the modifications from the donor vehicle that any relationship with an actual Ford Mustang II wasn’t even skin deep and it used the all-aluminum (Cleveland; 335 series) 351 its predecessor had run the previous season.  Both cars enjoyed much success but so radical were the modifications to the Mustang II, eventually it was compelled to wander the planet to find events where the organizers were prepared to let it run.  When unleashed, it was fast, loud and spectacular and made a good case for there being more Formula Libre races.  That case can still be made.