COLOR TRENDS, ANYBODY?

Mocca Mousse has recently been presented as “color of the year”. This, to many people seems like just nonsense. But most of us do not realize how much it influences us – and how much money is involved. The color forcasting gurus have been around  for some 30 odd years now.

In1994, Chanel launches nail polish Rouge Noir, later known as Vamp in America. It's often compared to the color of dried blood and gained popularity after being worn by models and Uma Thurman in 'Pulp Fiction.'

In1998, while working at Benjamin Moore, the color consultant Leslie Harrington promotes a light shade of green called Wasabi as the next hot hue. The shade is soon everywhere, appearing on cars, furniture and stationery

 And did you ever wonder why and how color theory can be made into big business ? Well, here is an interesting insight into how it all happens, from an article by  BRUCE FALCONER a couple of years ago in New York Times:

What Is the Perfect Color Worth?*

A dozen people filtered into a sunny, whitewashed conference room on the seventh floor of the Royal College of Art, overlooking London’s Hyde Park. Mostly Western Europeans from different precincts of the fashion industry, they had been called together by a British man named David Shah, editor and publisher of the “Pantone View Colour Planner.” The book, issued each February and August, is a four-ring binder containing pigment and textile standards of 64 colors arranged into nine distinct palettes. Geared primarily toward designers and manufacturers, the book forecasts color trends (whether consumers are expected to gravitate more toward brights or neutrals, jewel tones or pastels) two years in advance. Each edition is centered on some forgivingly abstract theme such as of “disguise,” “time” and “muse”. This time it was “love”.

Shah, with thin graying hair and glasses, was dressed in a navy blue buttoned sweater with a thick scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. He frequently interrupted with questions as the handpicked members of his team took turns presenting “mood boards” they had brought with them. Like oversize pages from a scrapbook, these displays included photographs, drawings, artworks, ribbons, textiles, paint samples, bits of plastic, lengths of rope, tourist tchotchkes and, in one instance, a piece of frilly lingerie.

There were spirited, far-ranging discussions of art, film, music, theatre, books, fashion, museum exhibitions and advertising — anything that might hint, even remotely, at where color was headed. Amid the clamor of voices, Shah asked an American forecaster in the room to give the view from across the Atlantic.

“What is the zeitgeist going on in the United States about color?” Shah asked. “Are they big colors? Are they strong colors? Prime colors?”

“I think what’s going on in the United States now is that it’s all happening,” the woman replied. “It’s almost reflective of the conflict going on around us — where you’re not having one definite color correction, but you’re seeing examples in various areas. I think it’s mostly about mixes.

 “So it’s not about solids,” Shah said. “It’s about how you put colors together?”

“Exactly, and different from what it’s been before,” the woman said. “It’s almost like a counterculture type of a feeling — you deliberately use colors that would not ordinarily work together.”

“Accidental colors,” Shah said, coining a phrase.

“That’s a good way of putting it, yes,” the woman agreed.

The conclave broke for lunch, and Shah walked around the table alone, scratching his chin and muttering to himself while sorting mood boards into piles of similar colors — “editing,” he said. Occasionally he would wince at having mislaid a board, then pick it up again and set it down someplace else. He worked hurriedly, and by the time the others returned from their meals, he was finished, having arranged the materials into precise groups from which the winning shades could be selected. That afternoon, he and his collaborators finalized the palettes. In six weeks, the forecast would be available to anyone interested enough to part with $795.

Color forecasters like Shah and his team at Pantone have tremendous influence over the visible elements of the global economy — the parts of it that are designed, manufactured and purchased — though their profession itself is all but invisible. If you’re familiar with color forecasting at all, it’s most likely thanks to a scene in the 2006 film “The Devil Wears Prada,” in which the fashion-magazine mandarin Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep, explains to her young, fashion-skeptical assistant why the assistant, played by Anne Hathaway, happens to be wearing a sweater in a very particular shade of blue known as cerulean. Cerulean, Priestly explains, first showed itself a few years earlier in a collection by Oscar de la Renta and was soon adopted by a number of other influential designers before it “filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner, where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin,” she says.

In 1999, Pantone issues its first color forecast, naming Cerulean Blue the color of the millenium, a landmark moment referenced in Meryl Streep´s famous cerulean speech in "The Devil wears Prada"

“That blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs,” she says. “And it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.” In reality, it was selected by Pantone. Six years before the release of “The Devil Wears Prada,” Pantone’s forecasters named cerulean the company’s first-ever Color of the Year.

Digital color design

Since then, as digital design and social media have expanded the ranks of color obsessives, Pantone has become not just a company but a sensation, its brand bestriding the globe like a behemoth. Its color forecasts, too, have retained their reputation as some of the most influential in the world, even as the field of competitors has grown crowded — not just with other companies but, thanks to the internet, with people on social-networking sites like Tumblr and Pinterest who have a knack for spotting color trends and enough followers to matter. For the class of fashion and industrial designers who make up Pantone’s customer base, picking the right color — and exactly the right shade of that color — can feel like one of the most important decisions they’ll make all year. Companies will pay almost anything to get it right, and the rarefied, vaguely mystical art of doing just that happens to be Pantone’s business.

In 2009, Google tests 41 shades of blue for the sponsored links that appear in its toolbar before settling on one — a decision, a company executive claims, that increased revenue by $200 million.

……. And it goes on and on…. I have attended one such global color forecasting workshop.  I can testify that the article above describes pretty well what happens. It was difficult to take it seriously, and not very impressive, other than being the basis for what the whole world will focus upon some time later……

If you want to have a look at the latest “color of the year”, like Mocca Mousse, you can look it up. As a small protest against the silliness of it all, there are no photos from the last couple of years here……

Nicoline

In 2013, “Orange Is the New Black” premieres on Netflix. The next year, a Michigan jail changes the color of its uniforms out of fear that the prisoners might be mistaken for trend-conscious civilians