Could the variations in coloring be a result of subsequent painting by the prints' owners? There was only one magazine I am aware of that issued fashion prints in black and white. That was La Belle Assemblée, which offered issues with either colored or uncolored prints during its first few years of publication. So, any notion of subsequent coloring could only be true with those early black and white LBA prints. In other magazines, like Ackermann's Repository of Arts, all prints were issued in color, so when we find wide variation in the use of color, it poses several questions.

I began to wonder about the colorists who painted the prints, most of whom were most likely young women paid a pittance to color hundreds of prints. Were they simply asserting their own style and opinion in the choice of colors? Were they given no particular instructions as to color in certain prints, and therefore made the decisions on their own? Or were they perhaps illiterate and unable to read the accompanying descriptions?

For the sake of the story, I decided it would be more interresting if the differences in coloring were a result of illiteracy. Taking the idea a step further, what if the colorists were not only illiterate, but horribly tacky, with no sense of style or color? (Not a far-fetched notion, when one looks at some of the coarse hand-coloring often found in The Lady's Magazine.) And so the Crimson Ladies were born. The hand colorists in Once a Scoundrel are street prostitutes brought in by the notorious new fashion editor. The Crimson Ladies' somewhat vulgar notion of color produces wildy varying and boldy colored prints. In more ways than one, they bring a bit of color into the production of the magazine. I hope you'll enjoy reading about them.

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