Pioneer Fashion Colorist. She is known to be America’s first color forecaster or “colorist”. Starting about 1917 and for more than forty years she led the Textile Color Card Association which is known today as The Color Association. This group generated a Standard American color card, which was good for two to three years. The card made semiannual forecasts for ready-to-wear, millinery, leather for shoes and bags, and hosiery. Members of her association, such as American’s largest hat maker Gage Bros. & Company or Sears & Roebuck, knew women were discerning customers. Rorke helped her male colleagues in manufacturing and retailing to understand what women expected of fashion. After salesmen witnessed numerous female shoppers leaving stores in frustration when the ribbons, hats, handbags or lace did not match a new Easter dress, the male retailers were also frustrated. The colors would be off by a shade or two. Purple is not just purple; it is Heliotrope, Orchid, Amethyst, Violet, Aborigine or a Dusty Lavender. There could not be any haphazard guessing as color could make or break a retailer in the 1920’s. In the economic post-war boom, more Americans were buying ready-to-wear clothes and becoming fashion conscious. Her organization eliminated this frustration for the shopper as well as the retailer. The organization’s 2,000 paying members welcomed her monthly newsletters, color bulletins, and published forecasts. Her monthly newsletter, “The Broadcast”, vividly described how the French fashion industry had adopted a certain color for a season. Nothing could force a knitting mill hundreds of miles from New York City to comply with the rayon hosiery color card, but over the years, they found this information to be indispensable as they adjusted their production practices to the new American dyes guidelines. Other members, like the buyers from Sears, John Wanamaker, Sax & Company or other nationwide department store chains, saw the cards as essential tools for keeping up with trends and anticipating the consumer’s demand. Every summer, she traveled to Paris to attend the couture openings, browse the boutiques, watch the fashion runways, visit the fashion houses, and observe the chic Parisians in cafes; she was forever taking notes as she or one of her associates spied around Paris. She returned to her New York office at 200 Madison Avenue invigorated, sharing her ideas as she worked on committees to design shade cards for silk, leather, and hosiery. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on Paris for fashion. “Many Frenchwomen are getting away from black,” she explained in her January 1936 newsletter. “Navy blue, brown and red are the winter colors . . . worn by smart women now.” She dined at the foreign embassies to see the gowns worn by royals from Europe; this helped her to predict what colors would be used in America for the next season. Even the Cutex nail polish company followed her clues in colors after receiving her reports. She would conceive the color, name it and then introduce it to the fashion world. In 1925 with the release of Universal Studio’s “Phantom of the Opera”, a new color was introduced by her named “Phantom Red”; it was named for the phantom’s red cape. This shade of red has continued to be use in all the other remakes of this movie, some in Technicolor, or stage productions. While President Herbert Hoover was in office, she standardized the shades of red, white, and blue to be used in the American flag as well as the shades color to be used for the uniforms of the United States military. From “The New Yorker” magazine, July 4, 1953 issue, an article reported that she introduced a new color, “First Lady Pink”, which was the color of Mrs. Eisenhower's Inaugural Ball gown. Her serious work with color was documented in the article “The Work of the Textile Color Card Association” in “Journal of the Optical Society of America”, Vol. 21, Issue 10, pages 651-653 (1931). Her contributions to fashion were noted in the magazine “Humanities”, March/April 2008, in the article “The Color of Fashion “by Regina Lee Blaszczyk, PhD. Before the fashion industry, she was an actress making her Broadway debut in the 1899 stage presentation of "Romance of Athlone” starring Chauncy Olcott with the song, “My Wild Irish Rose". Many of her roles were uncredited. As an active suffragist, she complied “Letters and Addresses on Woman Suffrage by Catholic Ecclesiastics”, which was published with credit to her in 1914. In today’s world, color trends not only are used in making women’s apparel but men’s apparel, interior décor and even to paint for kitchen appliances to automobiles. Margaret Hayden Rorke could easily be described as a Fashionista or the Champion of Color in the American fashion industry. Her son and actor, William Henry (Hayden) Rorke was interred with her sharing her marker.