True Colors Fort Pouvoir Couvrant, Bordeaux Rot Glanz [Burgundy], late 1990s: formerly owned by Lady Pink

As the quality of their favorite brands of American spray paint declined in the late 1970s and 1980s by becoming thinner, graffiti writers experimented with other brands and adopted some European favorites.  True Colors is a brand of spray paint manufactured in Germany that graffiti writers have used.  Writers have found that it is also too thin to last a long time or to endure the sort of chemical baths that transit system workers use to eliminate graffiti on trains. Street art and graffiti hold cultural significance in the way they help artists express their individuality and critique political, cultural, social, and economic issues, as a subculture with a message.

Lady Pink (Sandra Fabara, b. 1964), is an Ecuadorian-American graffiti and mural artist. Her career focused on using graffiti and murals as acts of rebellion, empowering women and self-expression. Lady Pink’s name was chosen for her aesthetics because the name “Pink” is feminine and she wanted other artists to know that she was a girl. She started calling herself Lady Pink because of her love of historical romances, England, the Victorian period, and the aristocracy. Lady Pink was nicknamed the "first lady of graffiti," because she was one of the first active women in the early 1980s New York City subway graffiti subculture.