Titanic Sinks Because Orange Is a Goddamn Horrible Colour

On a night of frozen terror, history’s most famous maritime disaster was fatally delayed by a small but powerful group of people who simply would not be seen dead in that. Picture the scene: April 14th, 1912. The RMS Titanic, that big, unsinkable bastard, has just had a rather unfortunate threesome with the North Atlantic and a block of ice the size of Delaware. Panic is, as they say, on the menu. Up in First Class, however, the Honourable Beatrice “Bibi” Hollingsworth-Smythe had a more pressing crisis on her hands than the water currently turning the Grand Staircase into a fucking water park. A harried-looking steward, bless his cotton socks, shoves a bulky, cork-filled life vest at her. It is a shade of orange so aggressive it could start a land war in Asia. Bibi, draped in a bespoke Worth gown of midnight silk and diamonds that cost more than a small town in Ohio, looked from the vest to the steward, and back to the vest. “Absolutely not,” she declared, her voice cutting through the screams like a diamond-edged butter knife. “Do you have any idea what this colour would do to my complexion? I’d look jaundiced. I’d rather be fish food, thank you very much.” The steward, a man whose job description did not include “part-time stylist to the terminally vain,” could only stare. But Bibi’s stand, a glorious, glittering monument to giving precisely zero fucks in the face of oblivion, was infectious. Lord Ashworth, a man whose chin was in a bitter, decades-long rivalry with his neck, lowered his monocle. “By Jove, the girl’s right,” he harrumphed, looking at his own offered vest with the disdain one usually reserves for a warm oyster. “This canvas is dreadfully coarse. And is this… *jute*? I’m not a goddamn potato, man!” What followed, according to the *Secretly Salacious Diaries of Third-Class Scullery Maid Agnes O’Malley*, was a full-blown aesthetic mutiny. While the string quartet was allegedly playing on (horny bastards, the lot of ’em), the a-deck dandies were forming an impromptu committee on maritime safety fashion. Proposals were floated. “What if we just wore the seat cushions? The flocking is much more flattering.” “Could we not find some darker ones? Perhaps in a tasteful navy?” They were, in essence, trying to re-decorate the deck chairs as the ship itself was turning into a submarine. The delay was catastrophic, turning the lifeboat loading process into the world’s most poorly-managed red carpet event. Of course, we all know how it ends. The ship went down, taking with it hundreds of people, including a significant number of very well-dressed, very stubborn jackasses who died for their principles. Bibi was last seen refusing to board Lifeboat 6 because she felt the other occupants were “terribly drab.” Historians — the boring ones, not us — will tell you it was about class division and a shortage of lifeboats. But we know the truth, documented in the lost shipping manifest under “Cargo: Big Fucking Egos.” The Titanic didn’t sink because of an iceberg; it sank because a handful of rich dipshits thought survival was déclassé. And honestly? Goddamn iconic.