Within the Orange Bubble, one color stands out for Kaden Knight ’28, who dresses exclusively in shades of purple. The Daily Princetonian sat down with “The Purple Guy” to find out why.
Daily Princetonian: Why do you wear purple?
Kaden Knight: I just like the color. It reminds me of magic and creativity. It was sometime in kindergarten when I decided I liked the color, so I wore it. I kept liking the color, so I just got more purple clothes.
By third grade, I basically had all purple clothes. I had to take a step back, look at myself and decide I like this, let’s continue doing this.
DP: So since third grade you’ve been wearing purple every single day?
KK: Yeah actually, I remember the moment. It was third grade, doing a theater production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. And for the theater production, everybody had to wear stage black ... I didn’t have a proper black shirt, so instead, I wore this black shirt that was a Minecraft periodic table of elements. I was looking at myself, and I realized, “Hey, this shirt still has purple from the obsidian’s purple flakes.” So [since] I’m still wearing purple even though I’m supposed to be wearing stage black, I should, from this day, onwards, continue to just wear at least one bit of purple in my clothing.
DP: Do you own anything that isn’t purple?
KK: At the start of the year they handed out all those Princeton T-Shirts. I took the white ones. I’m a very lazy person, but once I stop being lazy, I’m gonna go and dye those purple. But right now, they are just shoved in a dresser, two little white shirts. Everything else is purple. Bed sheets are purple. I’ve got my phone cases purple. Probably other stuff is purple, it’s lots of purple. People play a game where they ask me: “Do you have purple this? You have a purple that?”
DP: Do you plan on being purple forever?
KK: I don’t know. I haven’t stopped liking purple yet, so it doesn’t seem to be happening in the future. I wouldn’t mind liking purple forever. Present me has no problems with wearing purple forever. Maybe future me will come to a different decision.
DP: Have you ever found people that do a similar thing?
KK: It hasn’t happened yet. I haven’t found any other purple people. People tell me, “Kaden, did you know that in Seattle there’s a place called The Purple Store where they only sell purple things?” Someday, I want to make a pilgrimage to The Purple Store and meet other purple-obsessed people.
My friends will come tell me, “Oh my goodness, there’s this one guy who wears all purple at Oberlin and he reminds me of you,” or apparently at Stanford there is this child of one of the math professors who wears all purple and goes around Stanford on a unicycle.
I don’t have Fizz, but friends of mine will just be like, “Kaden, you’re on Fizz again.” Somebody took a photo of you and posted it to a bunch of people anonymously. It’s all super sweet. The photo was really funny with the caption “Purple Rain.”
DP: Do you find the posts to be creepy?
KK: I don’t feel like I can really have a problem with it because everybody is being sweet and kind. It does feel a little creepy. But they’re all really nice about it. Everything I have seen, from what people have shown me, is curiosity — well-intentioned and nice.
I’m so ‘train-of-thought-y’ that I have no idea if this interview is going to make any sense to anybody reading it. Hi, people reading this interview! I hope this has some logical coherence to you. Hope you’re enjoying this!
Ark Bunyan is a contributing Data and Features writer for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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