Colors
 

Every Greek org has certain colors right? Like black and gold for instance. Now, NPHC groups take these colors pretty seriously and you would never see Alpha Phi Alpha in like red or blue or something like that, but with NPC and NIC groups I see people walking around campus with letters that are multicolored or have different designs or something (like plaid). Are colors not that big of a deal to NPC and NIC? Can someone enlighten me? Thanks.

Colors are a big deal, and so are what they stand for. In the NPC, though, many groups have "family colors" in their family trees. (i.e. I'm Phi Mu. My big sister gave me my first pair of letters, which was a black shirt with animal-print letters. Her great-great-great big selected them. So when we have get togethers, I wear my family letters, so does she, so does her big, so does her big's big, etc. It's just another way to feel included within the group.)

It's less of a faux pas, though, to wear non-pink Phi Mu letters. Sounds like in the NPHC it's kind of a no-no.

Well considering Beta's official colors are "delicate shades of pink and blue" you can guess that we don't make to big of deal out our colors or trying to wear them exclusively.

In NIC and NPC orgs, I think that most people don't really care or identify groups by color...part of that may be due to the fact that those GLO's aren't so well recognized by the general non-greek community compared to what I see and hear about NPHC groups and the African-American community.

At best, I think that for NIC and NPC group colors are special to the members for their significance, but don't serve any purpose in identity...

that's my $.02

{edit} Also I think another reason is that many orgs share the same colors further complicating the issue.

My Problem is that LXA guys and for the most part all of the Greek Orgs. do not wear Colors, Badges or anything for recognition!!:(

This has always Pissed me off! When I was there, we wore our Names/Colors, and Badges Proudly as well we should. This helps Promote not only LXA but all Greek Orgs and hell we all know we can use all of the help we can get!:)

Ditto what Betarulz! said. I think it'd be kind of difficult to get offended by someone else wearing 'your' colors when 'your' colors also belong to the 4 houses down the street from you.

My chapter definitely has a lot of shirts with silver and bordeaux, but we also like to make fun shirts in other colors. For instance I have a yellow shirt (because it's my favorite color) with a blue star pattern (because I'm a geek). I made my little sister a pair of orange shorts with flame colored letters because she's obsessed with orange.

For events where we want to look unified or extra nice, we definitely all whip out the silver and bordeaux. But sometimes it's fun to express your creativity and uniqueness with your own individual shirts. It also gets PNMs attention that we have all of these crazy shirts floating around and have fun making them.

While I did (do) own letter sweatshirts in non-Delta Zeta color combinations, I wouldn't buy, for example, a red shirt with yellow letters.

Oddly enough, one of the few sweatshirts available in our DZ DeZigns catalog is orange with navy blue letters. I've never understood why they have that; maybe there was a sale on orange material??

Our chapter letters are black shirts with turquoise and shiny silver letters. I don't own a set, but I wish I did. I do, however, have a tote with the turquoise and gray letters on them. I also own several sets of brightly colored letters. I try to get a variety of the strawberry patterns, since it's one of our symbols.

I used to buy a couple of things in different colors but that stopped when some girl asked me if I was in Delta Sigma Theta because the black tote I was carrying had my letters in shimmery red embroidery (all she could see was red). So I explained to her what sorority I am in and what we believe, and she was intrigued. But from now on I'm only buying para. when it's in my colors, I don't want some any org. feeling that I'm disrespecting them by stealing their colors. :)

For us and the other sororities on campus, wearing letters in another color isn't a big deal. KLP colors are navy blue and gray and our unity letters are silver on a black long sleeve shirt. AST has red on a black shirt. Only thing is that when we write our letters and for stuff like AOL/AIM profiles etc, they're supposed to be in the proper colors so I like wouldn't write them in red, for instance. I think we were supposed to do that when we made our paddles too, but we weren't told about that and so we just painted the wooden letters whatever colors we wanted to.b

When I was in college, I wouldn't think of getting a maroon/bordeaux sweatshirt since that was Alpha Phi's color. It is a distinctive color. Some of my sisters and I did however get blue (AZD and Phi Sig), green (AEPhi and AKA) or red which SDT used. Those colors are more common. Our standard chapter sweatshirt wasn't even purple which I will never understand, but that's another story. ;)

Aahhh Greekchat....the bastion of inter-Greek knowledge

Hahaha that's great :p
So like are you not allowed to wear red, for instance, because it's one of the colors for Kappa Alpha Psi?

HI There,

We have actually been asked this because we are the only sorority on campus that is able to wear whatever colors, etc that we want. All the other groups are NPC or NALFO and traditionally can only wear their letters in their colors. We asked our advisor about how we're able to wear our letters in whatever color or pattern we want. PhiSigCloud could probably explain this better but here's what our chapter was told: Because one of Phi Sigma Sigma's Core Values is inclusiveness we embrace the diversity/differences/individuality, etc of all women. One way that we express our individual personalities is by wearing sweatshirts/tshirts with whatever colors we like.

However, many Phi Sig chapters have "Chapter/House letters" that every member of the chapter has. In our chapter some of the sapphire families have started the tradition of certain material for shirts that all their family members use ie. I'm part of the star family and we are all slowly getting sweatshirts made with the same blue and yellow star material.

Interesting question. I can wear whatever I want, but say, you'd never see Alpha Phi Alpha in red on a blue background or even on a red background. Only black and gold (well sometimes people have different interpretations of gold so it ends up looking from yellow to orange).