Women of Color: 1924

I know what you mean about the accuracy of the colors. Unless the colorizer takes the time to do a lot of research on the colors of clothes, signs, and so on, colorization is all guesswork. On the woman with the yellow trim on her swimsuit, I remember that I chose those colors because the style of the suit looked rather goofy and I couldn't picture the colors being anything but kind of weird, too, and faded. Considering the way people laundered clothes in those days, I believe most colors faded after a few washings, so I try to mute them when colorizing a picture.

One can't wondering how accurate the colorization is. We who haunt the Shorpy site are so used to viewing black-and-white photos that if we could travel back to the 1920s or earlier, we might be shocked by the vividness of people's dress, signs, etc. Still, we should not be - no doubt the people of that time did not live in a world of varying gray tones any more than we do.