Painting aluminum for durability and beauty?

In a few months, I hope to repaint an aluminum sewing machine.  I need to find something that can hold on to metal, is durable, chip and scratch resistant.  

If that was all I wanted, automotive paint would be perfect.

But I want MORE.  

I want to create a base colour, then hand paint on top, then add a finish.  

I also want something with a bit more depth of colour than auto paint.  I'm hoping for a rich dark indigo blue - possibly done in layers to get the richness and the way the different colours sheen through.  True Indigo often has undertones of black and red when seen from different angles.  I wish I could find a way to reproduce this as my base colour.

Any ideas what kind of paint can do all this and still be able to paint on top before the final finishing layers?  

Dupli-color Mirage paint is kinda neat, a color changing pearl paint that changes depending on the angle you look at it. I've also seen their Metalcast paint that gives an anodized look that has been feathered from one color to the next. Those deep candy apple paint jobs with that depth would look nice with pinstripes/lettering.

Pretty.
That's close, but a bit vibrent for what I'm going for.  

I don't even know how to describe the colour I want or even if I know yet the specific colour.  I'm going for a feel.  Something that honours the age of the machine while revitalizing it.  Something that gives a lot of depth rather than vibrancy.

Usually, these machines are painted black.  But since it needs so much repair, I don't want to reproduce the factory finish.  We don't have the technology to do that kind of japanning anymore anyway.  But the Japaning they used to use, had a rich, warm brown undertone to the black colour.  

One industrial (and I think it was affordable) coating was anodizing.  We'd send aluminum parts out for that and they'd come back any color we wanted.  It was a kinda shiny and very slightly translucent so I think a tiny hint of the aluminum color came through.  Do a Duckduckgo image search for "anodized aluminum" and you'll see what the possibilities are.  Each part would need to be disassembled fully before it's coated.  It adds something like a thousandth of an inch of thickness to the piece.