GoKawiilFashionistas of a certain age no doubt remember the late designer Stephen Sprouse, who gave Blondie’s Debbie Harry her distinctive Bowery punk style. Sprouse’s first collections in the mid-1980s made a major splash, melding graffiti prints, a playful ’60s aesthetic, and bright Day-Glo colors that won admirers such as Andy Warhol.
Several examples of Sprouse’s work are preserved in the textiles collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, where conservationists are trying to learn more about the phosphorescent and fluorescent pigments the designer used in his creations in order to keep the colors from dulling over time. They described recent advances in that research at a meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) held this week in Chicago.
Scientists began describing minerals that glowed in the dark as phosphors in the Middle Ages. Typically such materials take on a charge when exposed to light, storing the absorbed energy and releasing it gradually as re-emitted light. Henri Becquerel discovered radioactive decay in 1896 because of his work with phosphorescent uranium salts: He left the salts in a closed drawer with photographic plates, which fogged up even without a light source. DayGlo paints and similar materials exploit the related phenomenon of fluorescence. DayGlo pigments fluoresce in daylight by essentially converting UV light into visible light to produce brighter, more vibrant colors.
Sprouse is not the only one to find inspiration in DayGlo and similar phosphorescent and fluorescent materials. All glow-in-the-dark toys, stickers, paint, coatings in fluorescent lamps, cathode-ray tube TVs, and some clock dials rely on phosphorescence. (By contrast, glow sticks rely on a chemiluminescent process.) They’re also commonly used for traffic signage and on safety gear.
DayGlo pigments were used extensively during World War II to make fluorescent fabric panels for US ground troops, while DayGlo’s black light paints were used on Navy aircraft carriers to enable planes to land at night. And artists have used both phosphorescent and fluorescence materials extensively from the mid-20th century on, most notably for psychedelic art and Sprouse’s designs.