Black T-shirts

Written by DeeNiceGodmother of the Klitty Crew · her colours: black, white & pink

BlackDarlings, let's talk about black

It's the colour of night walks, spray-can stencils and, yes, of lucky cats. Here's everything I love about black, from a Scottish fairy cat to Goya's darkest walls. Our black tees are right above, so scroll back up whenever you're ready.

CatsWhy black cats are secretly striped

Every black kitten keeps a secret: underneath, it's a tabby. Black cats carry two copies of a switched-off agouti gene, so the colour runs all over. Look at a young one in the light and you can still see "ghost stripes". Leave a black cat in the sun long enough and the coat even turns rusty brown.¹

Big cats know the trick too. A black panther is a leopard or jaguar with melanism, and black has appeared in wild cats at least four separate times in evolution.² Nikki Horner in Louisville wanted that look in a house cat. Her Bombay breed took off from 1965 and was recognised in 1970: black fur, copper-gold eyes.³

Some black cats I admire: Trim, who sailed with explorer Matthew Flinders in 1801–1803, Hodge, who lived with Samuel Johnson, and Gladstone, today's Chief Mouser at the British Treasury. Celebrate them twice a year: 27 October in the UK and 17 August in the US.¹

Black fur, gold eyes, red graffiti. A black KC tee is basically a Bombay in cotton.

LegendsThe fairy cat and our nine lives

In the Scottish Highlands they tell of the Cat sìth, a black fairy cat as big as a dog, with one white spot on its chest. People kept watch over the dead so it couldn't steal their souls, and left out milk for it at Samhain. Some said it was a witch who could change shape nine times, and that's where our nine lives come from.⁴ As a white witch myself, I like that version very much.

Bad luck? Only in some places. In Scotland, Japan, Germany and Italy a black cat brings good luck. In Germany it has to walk from left to right, so please let us pass in the right direction.¹ In China, black belongs to water and the north.⁵

The wordWhere "black" comes from

English "black" comes from Old English blæc, which also meant ink. The Romans had two words: ater for dull black and niger for shiny black.⁵

Street artBlack is the colour of the stencil

Most street art starts with a black can. From 1981 Blek le Rat sprayed stencilled rats all over Paris, "rat" being an anagram of "art". Banksy came later, and the two painted together in San Francisco in 2011.⁶ Graffiti writers use black outlines to make every colour inside pop, which is exactly what the black line around our KC stickers does.

Ask any old-school writer: black is the backbone of graffiti. For years it came in two forms, the marker and the can. Black markers wrote the tags, and black spray drew the outlines. A throw-up, those quick bubble letters done in a few minutes, lives from its black outline around a simple fill. The classic "silver" (writers say silverstyle or chrome) is the same idea at its best: silver letters with a hard black outline that makes them shine. And the 3D, the block of depth that makes the letters jump off the wall, was black more often than any other colour, at least in the early days.

Silver fill, black line, black 3D. Some of the best graffiti ever painted used just two colours.

ArtPaintings that went all the way to black

• Kazimir Malevich, Black Square (1915). Shown in Petrograd, hung high in the corner where an icon would normally go.⁷
• Francisco de Goya, the Black Paintings (c. 1820–1823). Fourteen murals on the walls of his own house near Madrid, in the Prado since 1881.⁸
• Pierre Soulages (1919–2022), Outrenoir. "Beyond black": his subject was the light that bounces off black paint.⁹

Advertising & buildingsBlack cats that sold things

Felix the Cat first appeared in 1919. Otto Messmer made him black because black was easier to animate, and Felix became one of the first cartoon stars.¹⁰ In London, the Carreras cigarette factory (1926–1928) was built like a temple to the cat goddess Bastet, with two black bronze cats 2.6 metres tall at the entrance. Replicas stand there today.¹¹

And fashion: in October 1926 Vogue showed Chanel's little black dress and compared it to Ford's Model T.¹²

NatureBlack flowers and stones

• Black bat flower (Tacca chantrieri): dark purple-black blooms with long threads that English speakers call "cat whiskers".¹³
• Obsidian is volcanic glass. The Aztecs worshipped Tezcatlipoca, the "Smoking Mirror", and their priests looked into obsidian mirrors.¹⁴
• Jet is fossilised driftwood. Whitby jet became Victorian mourning jewellery after Prince Albert died in 1861.¹⁵

Crystals & AstrocatsBlack stones in crystal lore

In crystal lore, black tourmaline and onyx are "protection stones" said to keep bad vibes away. Older traditions were less kind to onyx and called it a stone of sorrow.¹⁸ Ask our astro advisor Rosiers7, she knows her stones. Just remember: these are traditions, not medicine. In a well-known study, people felt the same "crystal effects" with real quartz and with glass fakes.¹⁹

DyesHow black is made

No plant gives a true black on its own. Dyers simmer walnut husks or oak galls into a brown bath and then add iron, which turns the brown almost black.¹⁶ Logwood from southern Mexico was one of the great black dyes of the 17th to 19th centuries, and the logwood cutters' camps later became Belize.¹⁷

Books, films, songsMy black playlist

• Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat (1843). The cat is called Pluto, after the god of the underworld.²⁰
• Janet Jackson, "Black Cat" (1990). A hard-rock song she wrote on her own, and a US number one.²¹
• The Rolling Stones, "Paint It Black" (1966). Number one in the US and the UK.²²

StyleHow I'd wear a black KC tee

• All black: black jeans, black boots. Let the cat be the only colour.
• With denim: mid-blue jeans and white sneakers for every day.
• Layered: under an open jacket or flannel shirt.

Sharing is caring, so send this page to the black cat lover you know.

Love, DeeNice