By Hayden Wright
Prince earned a number of nicknames through his decades of superstardom, but “The Purple One” really stuck: Purple Rain was such a career-defining career moment that his fans forever see Prince through purple-colored glasses. It didn’t hurt that in stage design, costumes, merchandise and some of his album covers, Prince used violet hues to solidify his brand. It seemed he had a favorite color…and it was purple.
Photo: Kevin Winter / Getty Images
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According to the late musician’s sister Tyka Nelson, Prince did have a favorite color: Orange? Discussing an upcoming memorabilia auction with London’s Evening Standard newspaper, Nelson dropped the surprising piece of Prince intel.
“The stand out piece [in the auction] for me is his orange Cloud guitar,” she said. “It is strange because people always associate the color purple with Prince, but his favorite color was actually orange.”
To test Tyka’s bold claim, Spin dug into the Google Image vault and found evidence that in Prince’s final decade, the pop icon wore plenty of orange get-ups. It seems that as he got older, Prince felt more comfortable embracing his favorite hue and shedding the Prince color scheme fans knew and loved. The more you know!
