By Tim Schrag '12 / Photos by David Mayes '96 and K-State Athletics
Purple is not a common color.
Since the time of the Roman Empire, it’s been set aside for people and things of great importance. Purple has been associated with elegance, royalty, faith and individualism.
In Kansas, however, purple means one thing: Kansas State University.
K-Staters all over the world use purple in their wardrobes, on everyday items, their vehicles and even in the food they eat.
“Purple is more than a color,” said Amy Button Renz ’76, ’86, president and CEO of the K-State Alumni Association. “It represents the strong bonds of community that exists among our alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends. Purple is K-State. It’s our strongest symbol of the pride and passion we share for our great university and one another.”
K-Staters have had a long affinity for the color, more than 120 years, and the history is worth celebrating.
How purple became K-State
The process of picking purple as the college color is not well documented. The accounts are mostly second hand or based on the assumption that purple had already been selected.
According to the 1922 Royal Purple, a student committee met in fall 1896 to select a recommendation for the college color. The yearbook identifies the committee members as Ina E. Holroyd 1897, Frank Uhl 1896, Winifred Houghton Buck 1897 and Minnie Copeland 1898. Purple, specifically royal purple, was chosen, “both because of the beauty of royal purple, and because it could not be found in use in any other school.”
A report from the committee was tendered to the Kansas State Agricultural College administration, but no action was taken.
Documents in the Morse Department of Special Collections concur with this report.
Moving forward, royal purple served as the de facto color of the college. Purple was used in many school functions for purposes of decorating. Baseball uniforms dating as far back as 1907 featured purple. In 1909, the college annual was titled Royal Purple and continues to this day under the same name.
Five presidents of the college would hold office before action was taken by the faculty in 1921 to approve royal purple as the official color.
News of this decision was printed in the Oct. 12, 1921, issue of the college’s newspaper, The Industrialist:
“Ask almost any student what the colors of the college are and he will respond, ‘purple and white.’ Purple and white are used in the decorations for nearly all Aggie affairs at all functions of state or otherwise. The white has insinuated itself into the company of the purple, royal that is. The white, as far as is known, has no business mingling with the college color at all. It is a rank outsider and guilty of impersonating a college color. Purple as indicated in the college annual, The Royal Purple, is the one and only color that represents K.S.A.C.”
The article further indicated it was unknown why an official declaration to make purple the official school color was never made and implied it was likely an oversight.
What about white?
This is where things get fuzzy.
“The white was the idea of some decorating committee,” a report on the college color notes in the 1922 Royal Purple.
Despite the color not being declared official, the university’s fight song, Wildcat Victory, written in 1927 refers to “the purple and the white” as the school’s colors.
Documents from Special Collections indicate the Student Council voted to approve white as a “contrasting color” to purple in 1950 with faculty signing off in 1951.
Today, K-State only claims royal purple to be the university’s official color. However, white, black and grey are used along with royal purple as the university’s primary color palette.
Defining royal purple
So what is royal purple?
Well, it’s been many shades and varieties. Darker purples, lighter lavenders, Tyrian purple, mauve and other shades within this colorspace have all been used to promote and draw connections to K-State at one time or another.
It wasn’t until 1978 that the university first attempted to define and standardize exactly what color royal purple was.
According to a university memo, the color Pantone Matching System 527 (PMS 527, later called “medium purple”) was adopted by K-State to go along with the rollout of the KSU wordmark used on stationary at that time.
“It is a royal purple which is slightly bluer than was in common use previously,” the memo stated.
Later versions of the university’s branding included an attempt in the mid-1990s to shift from other purples including “medium purple” (PMS 527) to “Pantone violet” (PMS 266), to set a more standard color. These shades, however, are very different; one skews red, the other blue. Additionally, other shades were still used across the university.
For the past eight years, K-State has made a more concerted effort to reign in the color to a more standard purple across the university’s brand and image, setting the purple to PMS 268.
“We looked at what’s being used across the academy, and we had several different style guides, we had different logos being used. We also found that there were multiple shades of purple,” said Jeff Morris ’80, K-State vice president for communications and marketing.
Morris said the goal became to establish a purple that was right for K-State and wouldn’t be replaced.
“Purples can go red or blue, which are colors we avoid at all costs. So we went and looked at the spectrum,” he said. “Then we looked at other schools that have purple like Northwestern and LSU. We wanted to make sure we weren’t using another school’s purple. We also wanted something that we could own.”
The color, Morris said, needed to exemplify the concept of royal purple with a rich and deep color that isn’t too red or blue. It needed to avoid getting too dark as some purples can look almost black.
“The idea was to find a purple somewhere in the middle,” he said. “So we took all the purples that were currently in use, made some swatches, put them out there, then we sat back and looked at how they were used.”
The shade stakeholders kept coming back to what was being used by the football team at that time, PMS 268.
“I call it ‘Bill Snyder purple’ because it was a purple the football team was using and it seemed to be right in the middle of where everything sat on the Pantone list,” he said.
From there, the Division of Communications and Marketing set up guidelines to standardize K-State purple to match as close as possible to PMS 268 as it appears on coated paper.
Purple in K-State sports
K-State partners with Nike to produce team uniforms and sideline clothing.
Scott Garrett, executive associate athletics director and chief revenue officer for K-State Athletics, said the purple Nike uses for K-State is called “new orchid purple” and is very close to PMS 268. This shade is designed to appear on TV correctly, as previous iterations of purple used by the team have looked blue in the past when broadcasted.
To keep their purple consistent with the uniforms, Garrett said Athletics uses PMS 2695 when selecting purples on everything from printed materials to paint in venues.
“Purple is very much the primary color that we use both from an apparel standpoint with our teams and then throughout our facilities,” Garrett said. “Obviously people are very passionate about getting the color right. We’re very conscious of making sure that we use it in the right way and that it is the predominant color when we do any sort of facilities branding project or design merchandise apparel for both retail and for our teams.”
K-State’s relationship with Nike dates back to the early 2000s, Garrett said. Additionally, he said Nike works with each team’s coach and staff to produce uniforms that have a look and feel that’s entirely K-State.
Occasionally, teams like volleyball, baseball or basketball might wear a predominately black uniform, but it will still feature some degree of purple.
“It’s very important for us to have our uniforms speak to the tradition of K-State and have that purple featured somewhere,” Garrett said. “Our fans are very passionate about purple.”
How K-State has used purple with regard to athletic uniforms in the past has been far-ranging.
The 1907 baseball team is referred to as the “Purple Sox” in History of the Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science by Prof. Julius Willard 1908.
“The team came out in new Yale grey suits trimmed with purple,” he wrote. “The coats of regular league pattern were provided by Manhattan business men. A complete outfit of cap, jersey, shirt, coat, pants, stockings and shoes cost $32.50.”
White has traditionally been the complementary color used with K-State uniforms. Notable exceptions have involved the men’s basketball uniforms.
During the Cotton Fitzsimmons era (1968-1970), team uniforms incorporated gold into the mix.
The more recognizable deviation occurred under coach Jack Hartman, who used a road uniform of lavender tops and dark purple shorts. The uniforms were featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the March 23, 1981, issue, showing the game-winning shot from Rolando Blackman ’81, ’96 against No. 1 seed Oregon State in the NCAA Tournament.
Coach Hartman came up with the uniforms with his longtime friend Jim Knight, who ran Knight’s Sporting Goods, the team’s primary apparel vendor at the time based out of Salina, Kansas.
The uniforms have recently made a comeback as a throwback jersey used under both former head coach Frank Martin and current head coach Bruce Weber.
Lon Kruger ’75, a former K-State basketball player and coach who is now head coach at the University of Oklahoma, shared his opinion on the jerseys with K-State Sports Extra in 2018.
“Everyone thought of Coach Hartman as being very straight-arrowed, straight forward and not going to deviate very much, but Coach Hartman was proud of them,” Kruger said. “They were greatly received by K-State fans, greatly booed on the road, which made him proud. Players, we were proud to wear them. It was different and a little bit unusual. Today, people will wear uniforms of any color, but back then it was a little bit different.”
Adopting “Purple Pride”
The phrase most commonly used to describe the K-Stater’s connection to the color is “Purple Pride” coined by the late Vince Gibson, who was K-State’s head football coach from 1967-1974. A strong promoter of his vision for what K-State needed at the time, Pride, he rallied the K-State faithful behind the phrase, along with that came clothing.
Sports Illustrated described the phenomenon in its Oct. 30, 1967, issue:
“Purple pride has blossomed all over Kansas, but it flourishes best in Manhattan, of course. Department stores there feature purple dresses in window displays. One dry cleaner began returning freshly cleaned suits with a purple-and-white handkerchief in the breast pocket. Gibson even convinced one haberdasher to risk $4,000 by ordering 20 dozen incredibly purple blazers with a KSU emblem on the pocket. Since purple sport coats are not big with most men and since it is a color notorious for fading to odd hues, the clothier had to get bolts especially dyed and cut to order. So far he has sold more than 200 blazers at $30 apiece.”
K-State also saw large successes in clothing and merchandise in the late 1990s and early 2000s thanks to the success of the football teams led by Bill Snyder. Articles in the Topeka Capital-Journal and Kansas State Collegian note that the school ranked in the top 25 of the nation’s school merchandise sales.
With regard the to university’s image, royal purple is K-State’s brand, Morris said. People, he said, adopt the color with open arms, adding it into their wardrobes, gradually, if not immediately, upon arrival.
“You can tell you’re a real K-State fan, when the lint in your dryer is purple,” he said. “It’s just such a part of the culture. I don’t see that with other schools in the state. The instant recognition, the instant support that we get from a color. We’re really fortunate to have something this strong that people just really love.”
Note: This article originally appeared in the spring 2019 issue of K-Stater magazine.
Credits:
Created with an image by Joanna Kosinska - "untitled image"