What color is “washed”?

A retail inquiry.

I was doing some online frittering, looking to fill a small vacancy in my wardrobe, when I landed on — or, more likely, the algorithm nudged me toward — Massimo Dutti, a retailer I’ve rarely patronized but have long had a professional interest in, for reasons I’ll get to shortly. I labeled my wardrobe hole “dark brown vest/waistcoat,” and Massimo Dutti offered me Product I37931533, “Knit Waistcoat with Buttons and Opening”:

Knit Waistcoat with Buttons and Opening is what we verbal-branding professionals call “a stupid name.” If the waistcoat didn’t have an “opening,” how were you supposed to get it over your head? (I think they’re trying to describe the way the hemline falls open, but still.)

But that wasn’t my main issue. The Knit Waistcoat with Buttons and Opening looked like it was dark brown, per my search criterion, but the color identification in the copy called it something else: “Washed.”

I assume “Ref.” is the color code: 5744/686

Now, I’d occasionally seen “washed” or “wash” in connection with denim colors. But I’d never seen “Washed” used with any shade of brown, and I’ve been studying browns since my 64-color Crayola days. (Raw Umber and Burnt Sienna were my favorites.)

I clicked through to the matching skirt, which is also offered in “Washed.” Likewise other dark-brown items on the site: Washed, Washed, Washed.

What did it mean? I needed to know.

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Color names tend not to be hugely significant in physical retail stores, where you can see and compare shades, but the opposite is true for online shopping. In fact, color names can play a huge role in consumer decisions. A few retailers, like Uniqlo, don’t bother with fanciful or even descriptive color names: “Blue” is just “blue,” whether it’s light azure or deep indigo. (To figure out whether two Uniqlo blues are identical, you need to compare the two-digit numerical codes that precede “Blue.”) But most online merchants go to considerable lengths to create color names that strike a balance between imaginative and bonkers.

Some academic research suggests that an “ambiguous” color name can be an asset. In a 2005 paper, “Shades of Meaning: The Effect of Color and Flavor Names on Consumer Choice,” marketing professors Elizabeth G. Miller and Barbara E. Kahn reported that consumers tend to react favorably to unusual color or flavor names. “People like the world to make sense,” Miller and Kahn told Branding Strategy Insider. “So when they encounter surprising information, they try to make sense of it.”

But what if they fail — if “ambiguous” tilts into “baffling”? A name like Chocolate or Espresso can be both evocative and motivating. But I was trying to make sense of “Washed” when my eyes told me “Dark Brown,” and my brain was short-circuiting.

If Knit Waistcoat with Buttons and Opening (Washed) had been, say, a Zara product, I could have gone to a Bay Area Zara store and verified that it was indeed dark brown and not just, I don’t know, freshly laundered. I wouldn’t need a color name to confirm my perception. But the nearest Massimo Dutti is in Tijuana, which isn’t just 500 miles away; it’s in a different country. So that was out.

Now, “Massimo Dutti” sounds Italian, but in fact it’s a madeupical name¹ and the brand is Spanish, a division of the global retail giant Inditex, which is based in Arteixo, Galicia, Spain. You’re more likely to have heard of Inditex’s flagship brand, Zara, than of Massimo Dutti, which cultivates a more upscale image and has far fewer retail stores than the ubiquitous Zara. (For the stories behind the Inditex and Zara names, as well as the names of some other Inditex brands like Oysho and Bershka, see this 2012 post on my old blog.)

I know some Spanish, so I began wondering whether “Washed” was a cross-cultural mix-up of some sort. And then I had a flash of what seemed at the time like insight.

Did a copywriter in the Galicia headquarters — possibly a frustrated poet, like so many copywriters — look at dark-brown Knit Waistcoat with Buttons and Opening and think to call that color “Lava”? Volcanic lava can in fact sometimes appear to be dark brown (and also red, orange, or gray, depending on its freshness).

And when “Lava” needed to be translated for the Anglophone market, did the poet/copywriter look in a bilingual dictionary under lava and see lavar, the infinitive form of the Spanish verb for “to wash”? Lavado — washed — is the perfect verb tense and the adjectival form of lavar. Did someone with a shaky grasp of English decide that dark-brown “Lava” could translate to colorless “Washed”?

I liked this theory a lot, and was congratulating myself for being so darned clever, when it occurred to me to make one final investigation. And so I went to the Spanish version of the Massimo Dutti site and entered “chaleca” (waistcoat) in the search field.

Uh-oh.

It’s Lavado, all right. Not Lava. Washed, dammit.

I give up. The linguistic mystery remains a mystery. Unless . . . maybe . . . one of you can solve the riddle.

In the meantime, I discovered that in addition to going directly to MassimoDutti dot com, a shopper can use Zara dot com as a portal to Massimo Dutti. Here’s what happens when do that and search for Knit Waistcoat with Buttons and Opening:

Same color code, different color name.

Same garment. Same price. But the color name here is — yes! — Dark Brown.

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So, Nancy, you’re asking, did you buy the damn vest?

Reader, I did. (Research!) It arrived on Monday.

It’s nice. It’s dark brown. And it’s washable.

1. From the English translation of a Spanish brand-design site, Liderlogo: “The name Massimo Dutti sounds Italian, elegant and related to fashion and trends. But his [sic] origin does not have much to do with these topics. In reality, the brand name is born from two different concepts. The first, Dutti, comes from a nickname that [Inditex founder Armando Lasauca’s] closest acquaintances gave him: Armandutti. The second part of the name comes from an expression that Lasauca used to use when he talked about his project, saying that this was going to be ‘the best.’ ” (“Massimo” translates to “maximum” or “greatest.” I’m sure Armando Lasauca was the only founder ever to use that “expression.”)