A web search revealed this explanation:
isabella
(iz-uh-BELL-uh)
Grayish-yellow; light buff in color.
It was 1601, and the Austrian Archduke Albert was determined to capture
Ostend, a coastal city in northern Belgium.
The story goes that the archduke's wife, Isabella, came up with a most
unusual motivational technique to assist her husband's military efforts: She
declared that she wouldn't remove her underwear -- even on laundry day -- until
he took the city. Unfortunately for the couple, Ostend's defenders held out for
three long years before falling to invaders.
Thus the color name isabella and its offspring, isabelline,
came to describe anything having, well, the color of underwear subjected to
over-wear. That's the story, anyway.
Alas, however, this proposed etymology doesn't quite wash with the Oxford
English Dictionary, which points out that the first recorded use of
isabella to describe such a color occurred in 1600, referring to "one
rounde gowne of Isabella-colour satten . . . set with silver spangles." That's
fully one year before the siege of Ostend began, which sort of shoots holes in
the underwear theory.
It may be that the real story behind this word will remain lost forever in
the mists of history. But at any rate, isabella and isabelline
often describe the color of various animals (such as the bird called an
isabelline shrike, and the isabelline bear, a yellowish-brown bear
of the Himalayas, and the isabella moth), as well as fruits, such as
the Isabella peach.
"Really, Marvin, we must do something about this depressing apartment of
yours, and we should start by getting rid of this dreadful isabella
wallpaper."
AES Applied Ecology Solutions Pty Ltd.
59 Joan Avenue
Ferntree
Gully
Melbourne
Victoria 3156
AUSTRALIA
