] ...look at these examples from the Dulux Paint Colour Chart.

Yeah, I know what you mean about colour charts. I myself have just bought a house painted entirely in "Ice Peach". Now, my point is, unless you have a Dulux card in your hand, the average person in the street has no idea what "Ice Peach" is (a hideous shade of orangey-cream but very, very pale, almost like...well, magnolia! A paint colour we all know.) I was thinking more along the lines of colours like coquelicot being understood by everybody; proper adjectives not "made-up" brand names by big companies for their standard, modern, replicable colours.

]....here are the only colours (apart from gold and silver) mentioned in the descriptions of the ladies' gowns from my Lady's Pocket Magazine for 1796.

] ... green ... light blue ..... crimson .... blue ....white

Obviously not common to find "special" colour names. Wonder if it was French fashion journals? Coquelicot sounds pretty French to me.

] ....sable fur

Is sable a colour or the type of dead animal?

] ....marone

Is this what I would call maroon or some other colour?

] I think Isabella Thorpe's description of the hat in a Milsom Street window with "coquelicot ribbons" is a rare example of Austen using a rather fanciful name for a prosaic colour (red) and I suspect that it is supposed to tell us more about Isabella's pretentiousness, than suggest everyday usage.

Ah! It was Isabella Thorpe! And it's spelled differently to the way it is spelled in other places on the Internet. Thank you. Yes, I think you have hit the nail on the head; Isabella is using a pretentious term. Again, makes me wonder if it is a French colour-word from French journals as French Fashions were supposedly the height of fashion and the richest, chicest and most pretentious English women aspired to copy them

] I just had a quick skim through Evelina, but I can't find any mention of intriguing colour you talked about. On my next 'proper' re-read, I'll look out for it.

Please! It will be SUCH a relief to know. It's driving me mad. Interestingly, I wonder if it is in a similar context; a joke about the fashion aspirations of the person bringing it to Evelina's attention? I just CANNOT remember which character it was or the exact name of the colour. Particularly interesting if it does turn out to be a "pretentious French fashion colour joke", as it suggests JA might have copied this idea from Fanny Burney.