Systems and methods for image retrieval are described. Embodiments of the present disclosure receive a search query from a user; extract an entity and a color phrase describing the entity from the search query; generate an entity color embedding in a color embedding space from the color phrase using a multi-modal color encoder; identify an image in a database based on metadata for the image including an object label corresponding to the extracted entity and an object color embedding in the color embedding space corresponding to the object label; and provide image information for the image to the user based on the metadata.