Mardi Gras Colors

The three traditional colors of Mardi Gras are purple, yellow and green. Purple represents justice, green represents faith and yellow represents power. The story behind the choice of these three colors is that they were chosen by Grand Duke Alexis Alexandrovitch Romanoff of Russia when he visited New Orleans in 1872. While in the city, the Krewe of Rex granted him the honor of choosing the official colors of Mardi Gras and the colors also became the official colors of the House of Romanoff.  The colors chosen for the holiday also affected the choice of colors for new universities that sprang up in the city. Louisiana State University chose purple and gold due to the large amount of fabric of that color in the city and Tulane purchased much of the remaining color, green.