CULTURE WATCH : Just Don’t Call the Car <i> Purple</i>

“The word purple itself (connotes) something a little bit outrageous,” said Patricia Verlodt, a color consultant based in Hanover Park, Ill.

That’s why car companies--even though they’re suddenly selling purple cars for the first time in decades--are in denial. There are purple Hondas, Oldsmobiles, Chevrolets, Geos and Lexuses (Lexi?). But the colors, officially, are amethyst, camellia red pearl, fresco blue pearl and mystic magenta.

Cars are catching up with fashion, where purple came back about 10 years ago, says Margaret Walch of the Color Assn. of the United States, a color-forecasting group. But another element, she says, is a tribute to the ecological spirit of the ‘90s.

Purple is orchids and rain forests and “south of the Equator,” Walch says, as contrasted with the black-white-gray “colors of high tech” that dominated the ‘80s.

Verlodt has a different angle: There’s been a five-year male trend toward acceptance of colors that were once considered exclusively feminine. The old gender biases about color are breaking down, she says. If there can be a female attorney general, there can be a purple Lexus.