Lush Powder

Middle English lush, possibly from lascious, lascivious — a word that drifted from sensual ripeness toward visual abundance. Used as a color word since the eighteenth century for the saturated greens of well-watered foliage and the deep saturated jewel tones of velvet upholstery. Used across the deep and bold buckets where the hue is simultaneously dark and vivid.

Talc — magnesium silicate ground to fine particles for personal hygiene since the nineteenth century. Powder blue refers to the pale, slightly green-shifted blue of mid-century Robin's-egg talc tins and the quilted cotton of newborn-boy nurseries: a soft, very pale blue with the matte finish of micron-scale particles. Lighter than periwinkle, warmer than ice, with the postwar consumer-goods association of a color tied to bath salts and powder rooms.