Presentation

Colour is a matter of light and sensation...

Colour is a matter of light and sensation, inner experience and multiple perceptions. Multidisciplinary and multisensorial, the CFC’s research explores all fields to set vibrating the tonalities that reveal sensitive areas or the harmonies that arouse the senses.

Seeing, touching, feeling, tasting and hearing colour… are all ways of enriching our visual vocabulary. As it awakens the senses, colour plays a role in aesthetics and functionality. It catches the eye, but also stimulates touch, hearing, smell and taste. Arousing the senses is a sure way to add soul with colours which speak to our conscious and subconscious selves. Boosting creativity through observation means firing the imagination through feeling.

For over sixty years now, the CFC has been exploring colour and its applications in a wide range of economic sectors: fashion, textiles, beauty care, luxury goods, telephony, the automotive industry, interior design, decoration, domestic arts, gastronomy…

Fashion designers, industrial designers, art directors, plastic artists, researchers, journalists, writers and even “rainbowologists” form a prospective think tank working in the interests of creativity and colour within this original “club”, chaired by Olivier Guillemin since 1993. Together they think about the evolution and expression of colour in relation to lifestyles.

Twice a year, the CFC visualises the changing colour of our environment, publishing a colour range which has a wide audience among trade fairs and member companies. The CFC is well known outside France and carries the “Colours of France” at INTERCOLOR, an international colour group with representatives from some seventeen countries.

The members of the CFC regularly participate in wider investigations of the perception and evolution of colour from a sociological, cultural, historical, industrial or marketing perspective, which focus on topical themes such as: masculine and feminine colours, the colours of luxury, colour and the senses, the flavour and smell of colour… The CFC also develops communication and educational events. This involves organising conferences, seminars and exhibitions for professionals with the idea of reaching out to the general public through spectacular operations, starting with “The Colour Circuit” in Paris in 2004.