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| Twinkle, twinkle little periwinkle! |
Now that we're firmly in 2022 ... You know, we still may not know what we're doing, or where we're going, but we've kicked the tires, and adjusted the mirrors ... Or at the very least, stopped writing "2021" on our checks (this is a reference for all of us Olds out here still using paper checks) is it time to talk about the color of the year as crowned by Pantone?
If you're a frequent reader around here, then you may already be familiar with my fascination and revulsion of this annual event. I love, and hate it in equal measure, and I really have no better way to put it than that. The yearly unveiling of the hue that may (or may not) dominate the next 365 days of our purchasing, and designing lives is my absolute favorite most not-a-thing, thing, that's actually a thing that there is, besides, maybe, NFTs. What do I mean by that? Color forecasting is a thing, of course, and the color of the year is a very real concept, based on data (with a soft "d") that color think-tanks land on through consensus, but its importance is also exaggerated and over-hyped to the edge of comedy at this point, and it's with that in mind that I sit in anticipation to read the press release associated with this phenomenon every December:
"For 23 years, Pantone’s Color of the Year has influenced product development and purchasing decisions in multiple industries, including fashion, home furnishings, and industrial design, as well as product packaging and graphic design."The color of the year has become such a farce (especially when you factor in how colors are being assigned to entire generations of people now) that I don't even know how these companies stand behind the tradition with a straight face. The sheer absurdity is almost too incredible to fit you mind around. First of all, let's look back to the last time we had a frosty purple, it wasn't even all that long ago when 2018 gave us Ultra Violet. Now read this:
"We have been collaborating with Pantone for the past two years," Vanessa Paparella, associate PR and influencer manager for Butter London, says via email. "We began development on the color of the year 2018 collection in May 2017, seven months prior to the official Pantone color of the year 2018 announcement." That timeline ensured Butter London's products were in stores to coincide with Ultra Violet's unveiling.
Like... Pantone isn't wrong in saying they've influenced industries, and consumers alike, in that they exert power, and sway the masses, but I get hung up here:
influenceĭn′floo͞-ənsnoun
- A power affecting a person, thing, or course of events, especially one that operates without any direct or apparent effort. (emphasis my own)
Surely, contracting with companies to produce goods in the color you're "predicting" will be popular is both direct, and apparent, no? It's just wild to me that a company makes a deal with myriad companies to make products in one very specific color, and those companies distribute them to their influencers, to punt the trend to their followers, while store shelves are saturated with it to the point of limiting consumers' options, and they all still want to act like this is just organically happening; that they've tracked down the next big thing, and just got ahead of it in order to provide what the people already want. And I'd be inclined to believe that if I'd never stepped foot inside any shopping establishments in America for the duration of my entire life thus far.
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| Tibi Spring 2016 |
much more than just your typical fashion moment (it may have started that way, but even then it wasn't so typical - it had a few notable pieces going into the new year, but not nearly enough to write home about), and it did make it into the top 10 of Pantone's 2016 Spring / Summer Color Report, so that means someone, or several someones were using it enough to get on the radar. But first, let's take a moment to consider that the oldest Millennials are currently pushing 40 years of age, and why that matters. Well, when you take into account that the economic landscape is dramatically different from 20, and 30 years ago, it means that a lot of folks are first-time home buyers at a later age, or they're just now getting stable enough to move from their parents' houses. Joke all you want, but the struggle was very real for the "kids" coming up just behind me, and with American wages being stagnant for the last 40 years, while rent and mortgages sky-rocketed, it's taken a lot longer for folks to get homes of their own, and what is one of the very first traps nearly everyone falls into when they get out on their own for the first time? Decorating has to be super-duper serious.
One must eschew all color to prove their maturity, because being a grown-up means everything is beige, apparently, thanks in large part to the 1990s Tuscan-inspired interiors that punched through the suburbs of the American middle class faster, and harder than Tae Bo VHS tapes.
We all did it— exceptions do exist, I'm aware, but it was a very real rite of passage to roll up your old posters, and replace them with prints of landscapes (or whatever) in muted, or neutral tones ... This is also what I like to refer to as the infancy of the Live, Laugh, Love era. It was like walking through a nightmare-ish sepia toned Pleasantville where every one of us had the same tile, the same wall color (accent walls optional to show that we hadn't completely suffocated what was left of our personalities), the same carpet, and a variation of the same damn microsuede tan/beige/taupe/khaki/ couch. Now, I don't mean to bash all you folks out there who truly love neutrals, and find a monochrome environment to be the ultimate soothing experience for you, even though that's exactly what it sounds like I'm doing. It's perfectly wonderful to decorate your home in subdued colors you find comforting, especially for those of you with high-stress jobs, the last thing a lot of folks want to do is come home after a long day to a house that feels like it's screaming at them. See, that's you being true to yourself and your personal taste. That's authentic. What I'm touching on is this anomaly that many people experience, typically in early adulthood, where in order to achieve the appearance of maturity, not only among peers, but with their elders as well -- seeking approval, and a modicum of respect as the newly initiated adults that they are -- they must forgo radical individuality, and embrace conformity to one degree or another. I view our beige houses as our version of the gray flannel suit the boys coming back from WWII adopted as they re-entered the workforce; a new type of uniform accepted by polite society that made us feel sharp, smart, and refined, as well as having given us a sense of camaraderie in our new roles.
The first batch of Millennials to hit adulthood were between 26 and 36 years old in 2016, and do you know what the "predicted" color of the year was for that year?
I say "predicted" because the color of the year is announced the December before the year starts, it's not declared at the end of the year in December as a look-back at what color had organically become popular and dominant, which to me would be so much more interesting. Don't tell me at the end of 2021 what we're going to do next year, tell me at the end of 2021 what we did do this year, and why that trend resonated so deeply with people, and what that means moving forward. I mean, we'd still be at the mercy of advertising, and marketing, but it would be far more fascinating to me to see what campaigns had actually worked on their own merit, instead of the self-fulfilling prophecy that Pantone creates with its color of the year shenanigans, but I digress. The color of the year for 2016 was actually two colors pulled directly from the color trend report from the same year, but the one that took off was Rose Quartz. It came on the heels of the huge rose gold trend that exploded in jewelry, fashion, and home fixtures, and it looked great with neutrals; it was an accent color you could put in your home without your taste looking garish, it was playful without being silly and childish, and it was just neutral enough where it didn't look too trendy, or like too much of a fad - you could actually get some mileage out of it, which was good news to the folks that had significantly less to spend on home furnishings than their parents before them - making that dollar stretch was very important, and this my friends, created a perfect storm for pinning an entire generation to a single color.
What do Pale Rosette, and Gossamer Pink look like to you?
Millennial Pink was absolutely guaranteed to be stocked right through the fall and winter seasons, and we can count on it holding steady all the way through the end of Summer. Still doubt its staying power? Check in with your local flower farmers, cut flower, and bouquet trends. Long after Millennial pink has faded from our closets, and living spaces, we'll still be seeing it sauntered down wedding aisles for years (decades?) to come. For many reasons most of us don't even fully understand, this color has been like catching lightning in a bottle for the co-conspirators that thrust it upon us. What's gross though, is watching them try to recreate the part purposeful, part accidentally viral "magic" of Millennial Pink with other colors and generations with attempts like "Gen Z yellow," and "Zoomer Green." Thankfully, folks seem to be having NONE of it. I mean those very well are colors that either have recently, or are currently trending, and in kind of specific demographics...
... But to me (and I'm sure I'm dating myself here) it's a little embarrassing watching the media, corporations, and color forecasters trying to make "Fetch" happen.
This is why we can't have nice things. Industries, sycophants, and the poor freelancers just trying to make ends meet refuse to let things like Millennial Pink be its own sensation, leave it alone, and let the concept of a massive color episode die a natural death. They just keep trying to plug new variables into the formula and hoping it works again like it did the last time when it's really not likely to. The thing is, a lot of moving parts had to align for Millennial Pink to have the moment it did, and certainly not least of all is the fact that novelties are novel because they're actually new. I just hope when it's discussed in the future that folks will be willing to dive deeper into the topic to find out why this color has been such an event in the particular moment in time, and not be satisfied thinking that an entire generation just decided one day that this was their absolute favorite color that everyone HAD to have, and in copious amounts.
What does all of this mean for our little friend Very Peri? Not much, I'm afraid. Sure it'll be plastered everywhere for the next 10 months (it's already on an iPhone, so it's not like it's not going to be a thing, that's for sure!) and we'll buy it, and then it'll swim in bargain bins for a fiscal quarter or two after that before it's shipped off to where all the other unused products go to die, but I don't see it having the longevity that Notorious MP has had. Purple / violet just doesn't have staying power, which seems weird right? It's the color of royalty, creativity, harmony, and spirituality after all, so what gives? It's a big color. Even as a pastel I don't consider it something that can really fly under the radar or blend in with neutrals the way a dusty pink can. It's a powerful color. It has presence, which means it's also easy to get sick of, so I don't see this as the thing that puts our design choices in a choke-hold for the next decade, and I don't think it was ever meant to.
I always feel purple is selected for color of the year, or major trend moments because it's meant to be fleeting. It's often chosen during times of great uncertainty, upheaval, or change, I think, to provoke, and stimulate us; to keep us reaching into the unknown of the "future," and at times distract us, with its dreamy quality, and blur the lines between the far off utopia that doesn't exist, and the ofttimes much harsher realities that are much closer to home. I also, personally find it a lazy choice. Don't have anything interesting to say about the current zeitgeist? It's okay, just roll out another purple!
...our physical and digital lives have merged in new ways. Digital design helps us to stretch the limits of reality, opening the door to a dynamic virtual world where we can explore and create new color possibilities. With trends in gaming, the expanding popularity of the metaverse and rising artistic community in the digital space ... Very Peri illustrates the fusion of modern life and how color trends in the digital world are being manifested in the physical world and vice versa.
I remember a time when a statement like that would've seemed so cool, and fresh, and exhilarating! However, 22 years down the road the sentiment just doesn't sound as cute. The idea of my real, physical, tangible, material life being any MORE entangled with with digital world makes me experience a violent, full-body gag. I am not a Luddite. I know technology is here to stay, and I appreciate it for all of the good it has contributed to. I just see the metaverse, NFTs, and cryptocurrency as three failsons from the same family, and find it audibly laughable (but also wildly appropriate?) when an outfit like Pantone takes them seriously enough to reference them in a press release like these things are going to have major cultural importance that lasts longer than the digital address book, and zip drives of yesteryear. The idea of becoming more entwined with a fake world while the real one burns, both literally, and figuratively just feels so gross. Be sure to turn on your air purifier, kids, before you slip into your headset so the smell of global destruction doesn't disrupt your make-believe time! The encouragement of this kind of avoidance feels so much more
sinister, and dys-topian this time around. But I can't pretend like we were all delighted by the idea of curating our own virtual realities back then either, and I'm reminded of something a very wise prophet told us at the time,
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| Lisa Left Eye Lopes |
When I first saw this year's selection, I was instantly transported back to Y2K, and thought to myself that they're trying to recapture the wide-eyed excitement many of us had for what was to come. The "official" color of the year at the turn of the century was a sad looking, faded-blue that was supposed to make us feel optimistic, and keep us calm ... Or, something? And it did have a certain popularity, though my memories of its height were a few years prior, what I distinctly recall is a fan favorite emerging as we entered the Millennium, and a significant amount of purple, lavender specifically, used on, and for things that were supposed to communicate forward motion, and innovation. It was fresh, and lively, and invigorating, and we ate it up, whether we combined a shimmery lavender eye shadow, silver tinged cheek highlighter, glitter, glitter, and
more body glitter, translucent violet plastic sunglasses, cropped lilac chenille sweater with white
vinyl pants, and a silver— any and everything really, but specifically— faux leather jacket, with frosty lip gloss, or were just watching Jennifer Lopez bop around in periwinkle pants as a webcam girl in her music video, we felt like time travelers sent from the future, and eager to get back (ok, so I didn't have the silver jacket, but I didn't need it, I was a cosmic girl sent here from another galaxy, obviously). What you have to understand is that by the end of the 1990s, most of us dressed like grubby extras from Dawson's Creek covered in extreme amounts of bulky, dull-colored fabric in our day-to-day lives, so to see something like ol' Left Eye up there? It was like looking face-to-face with a gorgeous space alien, and it was absolutely electrifying adopting the new styles.
I'm curious to see how the youngsters adopt this color into their lives; if they embrace it the way we did, or if it evokes the same kinds of feelings for them, or if it just, you know, doesn't? As far back as April 2021 people were predicting "Digital Lavender" as the hot color all the way into 2023 ... Can it get there without the push of manufacturing a relationship between it, and Gen Z, and if not how will it be marketed to them? These whipper snappers are a completely different breed of realists, and can see you coming from a mile away, so frankly I don't see the same old tricks working on them the way industries may expect, or hope. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I don't like to sign off without a conclusion, but I guess only time will tell. So, I'll leave it here for now, and see you in 2023...
xoxo
