Between the 19th and 20th centuries in the island of Sardinia there were as many as 400 different traditional costumes. Nearly every village had its own typical outfit, which was worn with pride as this was part of people’s local heritage and also reflected people’s place in society. Although individual costumes varied greatly, they had certain features in common: women wore a veil, a shawl, long pleated skirts and embroidered blouses, whilst men wore a knit wool cap with a long tail, a close-fitted jacket and loose white trousers. Traditional Sardinian garb is extremely colourful and features elaborate embroidery. Embroidery is still a thriving craft that is evident in the beautiful traditional shawls boasting different flower patterns.
These days, Sardinian traditional clothes are worn during folk festivals and major religious holidays but you can admire them all year round in the many ethnographic museums.

Literature in Italy is often associated with different colours depending on the genre. The most striking example is that of the "Libri Gialli" or "Yellow Books". When, in 1929, the publishing house Mondadori started turning out mystery stories, the books had a striking yellow cover. Thereon, the term "Giallo" or "Yellow" became widely used to describe detective novels and later expanded to also mean thrillers and suspense literature.
Then we have the "romanzi neri" or "noir novels" a subcategory of the above, which is a darker story, usually more violent and sometimes narrated from the point of view of the killer.
The colour pink was linked to romantic novels and white was connected to science fiction when in 1952 Mondadori published its first science fiction series, Urania. Then we often have Brown for historical novels, green for the adventure genre and blue for travel books.