Lamy - Vibrant Pink

I have been thinking about hot pink a lot lately , whoops sorry should be vibrant pink as that is what Lamy call it.    I am not sure what has been driving it but it’s as good a time as any to look at Lamys ink of the year to go with the limited edition vibrant pink al-star.

The pen itself is like all Lamy pens – a solid workhorse.  The al-star and the safari tend to suit everyone irrespective of whether you like a big pen or a small pen.  I have them with fine, medium and stub nibs and like all of them.  The al-star and safari really are a great starter fountain pens for anyone.  My only complaint about the pen is it isn’t vibrant pink I think it is fuschia.  It doesn’t match the ink but as I started to the review I began to think the ink was also fuschia rather than pink – the two still don’t match though.

The pen - direct sunlight

Pen and ink - very different shades

It did get me thinking about what is fuschia and what is hot pink and I soon began to realise it depends on what the picture is and with whom you are talking.
Apparently hot pink began a ‘happening colour’ colour again due to Cate Blanchett and Solange Knowles wearing hot pink suits.  However, some writers have also called them fuschia suits.

Courtesy of the Miriam Webster dictionary online I discovered the following, (quoted directly)
Hot pink is the name of a searingly bright pink that most of us associate with the fashion of the early 1980s. But hot pink made its debut long before that:

Choice of 21 new shades, including ‘Hot Pink’, a new color success for Spring.
—advertisement, San Antonio (TX) Express, 4 Feb. 1940 

In fact the same entry revealed hot pink had first been mentioned in the 1840’s.

Everything else I read told me fuschia was somewhere between pink and purple.  Apparently if you take blue, violet or brown and add them to pink it will become ‘hot’ then fuschia and then magenta.  All very confusing especially when you discover there are also whole web forums devoted to whether it should be called hot or shocking pink let alone whether it is X-pink or fuschia.
In addition Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to discussing 49 various shades of pink.
So back to the ink that's called vibrant pink, I thought it was more ‘hot’ pink until now.  I kept comparing it to the pink in a pilot varsity pen which led to the change – I think the pilot ink is  hot and in comparison makes the Lamy ink look like fuschia.

I started by using a kitchen towel to get the ink to spread and break into its component colours.  As you can see the from the picture it is pink in the centre with a fuschia or more purply rim.  Interestingly it seems there may be shimmer or I haven’t cleaned my pen as well as I thought which surprises me as I am somewhat obsessive about cleaning after using a shimmer ink..  There is no mixing of colour from another ink but there are some specks of ??glitter you can see in the very centre of the ink blob – I have looked at these closely under a bright light and they definitely sparkle.

 I then tested the ink on three different paper qualities.  The first is a cheap spirax notebook, there isn't much feathering but it doesn’t really bring out the shading.  I used the pilot pink as a comparison, that is more hot or shocking vis-à-vis the vibrant pink.

​The second is Tomoe river paper which really brings out the shading qualities of the ink and against the pilot pink the fuschia, hot pink difference becomes more apparent.  In fact it beginning to look more and more like Pilot yama-budo - which many consider to be a magenta ink.

Finally I actually tested the ink for drying and water resistance using rhodia paper.

All in all the vibrant pink is whatever you want to call it, hot or vibrant pink, fuchsia or even magenta. It does have some pretty shading properties which are best brought out on the Tomoe river paper.
I haven't provided any information about the cost and where to buy Lamy ink, it's ubiquitous and the prices are very similar wherever its purchased.