This year, Pantone Color of the Year has genuinely surprised me. Baffled me, even.
For the first time in a very long time, the company has chosen a true neutral. Sure, it picked Ultimate Gray in 2021, but it was paired with a searingly bright highlighter yellow, making the combination virtually unwearable (and, for me, unbearable). In 2015, it chose brown-leaning Marsala, but even that had enough red to take it from neutral to jewel tone-adjacent.
By my count, it’s been 25 years since Pantone selected a color this plain. Because it’s true: Mocha Mousse is as ordinary as a pancake, as quiet as a mouse, as timeless as a cherrywood clock — a no-bones-about-it brown. I love it.
It’s not the fact that the company chose a member of the brown family for COTY that shocked me. After all, dark brown has been trending for months, both on the runway and off. Mocha Mousse is quite different though. Unlike the rich, deep browns of early autumn, Pantone is forecasting a teddy bear-esque ’70s shade to take center stage. It’s distinctly not a chocolate brown, nor is it a walnut. It’s warmer and lighter, with more white in the mix (or, at its prettiest, more translucency). It’s unapologetically a food color — it’s right there in the name, a purposeful choice, intended to evoke a sense of satisfaction. (While there are plenty of shades that remind us of food, many don’t really make us think of the edible corollary at all. Orange doesn’t always call to mind oranges, nor does lime green make us salivate for bitter citrus or burgundy for astringent wine.)
“This color is about filling ourselves back up,” said Laurie Pressman, VP of the Pantone Color Institute, during a Zoom call. “Since COVID, as we work through this whole work-life balance, we’ve been thinking a lot about what’s important. The concept of harmony keeps coming up. Being tuned into the world around us. We’re not running on empty.” The intention, according to Pantone, is to reflect our shared cultural desire to consume — but to do so mindfully. “It’s understanding the importance of health, more than anything else,” added Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute.
This is a lot to ask from a brown. Then again, I can’t think of a better color to stoke the appetite. So much of our food is naturally brown, from our great grains to our best breads. (My husband likes to joke that his favorite meal is “tasty brown mush,” referring to roasted vegetables and couscous. This color is very much in line with that.) Mocha Mousse isn’t meaty but rather a plant-based hue, one that mainly calls to mind sweet rather than savory dishes. It’s a nutty brown, the color of flaky almond pastries and warm, wintry drinks — almost the exact match for a cup of Swiss Miss.
“Rich is another keyword,” explained Eiseman, adding that Pantone hopes the color will “nurture us” with its “delectable qualities.” She said: “It’s underpinned by our desire for small, everyday pleasures.”
When I expressed surprise at the selection, Pressman and Eiseman laughed, pointing out that historically, brown may not have been thought of as “luxurious” but this perception has changed. There’s a “new elegance” in the mid-range neutrals, they argued.
It’s certainly a color that fits with the quiet luxury trend, and it wouldn’t go amiss in a mob wife-inspired getup. If there’s any reason to think this color is luxurious or elegant, it’s because it reminds us of soft fabrics and furry textures. It’s a doe brown, a minky shade — I could see myself buying a fluffy alpaca sweater from Lauren Manoogian and wearing it for decades, or investing in a mocha-colored cashmere coat from The Row. Either way, it wouldn’t go out of style quickly, because natural hues rarely do.
At its best, Mocha Mousse reminds me of Miu Miu’s quirky fall/winter 2023 collection, filled with pantyhose-as-pants and jaunty little cardigans. The one place I really loathe seeing Mocha Mousse is in athleisure: It reminds me too much of the militaristic, drab Yeezy shows of the 2010s. While Pantone’s slides did show a few examples of sneakers and leggings, it seemed that, for the most part, the color-forecasting company is leaning away from that particular reference. Good riddance. The head-to-toe beige spandex look is done and gone. Long live the fuzzy, cocoa-swilling libertine.
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