Life is better with Stripes

May 27th, 2012

Most Canadians know that when they see these stripes they know it is from Hudson Bay Company aka the Bay. It seems like it all started with the point blanket. The blanket was introduced in 1780 but it wasn’t until around 1800 when the iconic colours were introduced. So what do these colours mean? according to the Bay it was not intentional, the four traditional colours (green, red, yellow and indigo) were simply colours that were popular and easily produced using good colourfast dyes at the time that the multistripe blanket was introduced. However, these colours have always had special significance for aboriginal people, who were, after all, HBC’s original customers. Green is taken to mean “new life”, red often stands for “battle or hunt”, yellow relates to “harvest” and “sunshine” and blue represents “water”. Very cool!

In design magazines I always see the Hermes blankets carefully placed. As gorgeous as these look, they do start at $1300 US. I would much rather look for a bay blanket as it is close to home.

Here are some way you can bring the Bay stripes into your home with the HBC Collections …
Multistripe Point Blanket $275-$475
Tote bag $10 – this is one of my favourties