Direct Reap Denim

From the Latin directus, straight — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as straightforward and unambiguous. Direct red, direct green: moderate-to-high saturation combined with optical clarity. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside clear and frank.

Old English rīpan, to harvest. As a color modifier, reap implies an autumn-harvest-and-sickle quality, the visual register of late-summer-and-early-autumn hand-reaping-and-binding wheat-and-barley harvest-and-sickle-and-sheaf surfaces under late-summer-and-early-autumn harvest-field raking-light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to fall and harvest in usage.

The diagonal-twill cotton fabric originally woven in Nîmes, France — serge de Nîmes, contracted to denim — and dyed with indigo since at least the eighteenth century. The color refers to a worn but un-faded pair of raw denim jeans: a saturated, slightly muted blue with the matte finish of cotton fiber that has absorbed dye through generations of weft and warp. Cooler than royal, warmer than navy.