My husband, who is from Sevilla & always lived alongside Flamenco, often talks about it with me. Polka dots have always been traditional for Flamenco dresses, and black or dark colours for the more serious song styles, or "cante jondo".

While we're at it, I once called a Flamenco dress a "costume" as a slip of the tongue and got told off! What you wear on stage is sacred to the performer, it's like a ritual to carefully look after and get changed into your Flamenco dress, far away from anything associated to a "costume", which sounds like fancy dress.

Cacho and I often wonder if the Flamenco dancer icon on WhatsApp, dressed in red, is what has made the world think that Flamenco means red. Or that it made red come into fashion. Because these days, as I scroll through my social media, EVERY Flamenco dancer is wearing a red dress and I just don't know what happened. Red accessories like a flower or "mantoncillo" (small shawl worn over your dress) were never untypical. But this red phenomenon I'm seeing everywhere I look, to me feels distasteful, like when people who don't know about Flamenco think it's salsa but with a mexican sombrero danced in pairs.

I know Flamenco is associated with passion, which makes people think red. But that never made dancers wear it from top to bottom before. I also wonder if it's because Flamenco has become so much more international in recent decades and abroad they think Flamenco means red, which eventually made it a trend.

Whatever the reason, red is not the colour of Flamenco.