User blog comment:PisceanWaterbender/In Depth Analysis On Existing RWBY Color Palettes and What They Mean/@comment-13593058-20170517053347

I'd also like to add that colours in reference to RWBY are more a world building factor than anything else. However, you CAN interpret colours as you like. The most interesting is perhaps Ruby's colour pallet and design as a whole, at least before they decided to throw the whole thing out the window.

While Ruby is a reference to The Little Red Riding Hood with red hood and all, it is perhaps the style of dress which implies a loss or eventual loss of innocence. What we, and Rooster Teeth, seem to forget is that Remnant as a world is not a nice place to be in and neither are the jobs associated with this world.

Ruby's design and choice of the colour black reflects that of Gothic culture when death and disease were an everyday fact much like how Grimm are proposed to be. Even Ruby's Slayer outfit reflects immaturity as it looks like a child's play suit with it's longsleeve sweater, cloth skirt, and overalls. However, the outfit seems infected or bastardized by the colour black, a colour not associated with young youth as it pertains too much to death.

As we see, this whole dynamic was thrown out the window starting Volume 4 as her outfit and colour pallet changes to a lighter tone and that of a literal milk maid. Ruby's Volume 4 outfit reflects that of a stereotypical fairytale, whimsical. While it still sports the colour black, it is by far offset by the beige of her tunic making ti less impactful. They seemed to have fully embraced the fairytale reference without regard.

And while one could argue that Ruby is the naive fairytale-styled main character put into a world where not everyone lives happily ever after, they sure made it hard for one to really care about the bad things that happen to everyone EXCEPT Ruby.