My Rework Trends journey started when I discovered the colour institute, Pantone, had formally declared Living Coral as the Colour of the Year. I was aware of the sharp decline of the world’s coral population under global warming and began thinking that colour association might help promote awareness.
Reading Style At Home, my assumption was reinforced. Apparently, the living coral choice was intended to “raise awareness of environmental concerns, much like Pantone’s 2017 Colour of the Year, Greenery”.
Pantone Executive Director, Leatrice Eiseman, reflects on how “Living Coral reinforces how colors can embody our collective experience and reflect what is taking place in our global culture at a moment in time”. A further need for reflection is due. Apparently, this colour was also chosen to help counteract the “onslaught of digital technology and social media increasingly embedding into daily life,” and the fact that “we are seeking authentic and immersive experiences that enable connection and intimacy.”*
With consumers craving human interaction and social connection, the humanizing and heartening qualities displayed by the convivial Pantone Living Coral hit a responsive chord
Leatrice Eiseman, Pantone Colour Institute
Footnote: * Style at Home, Colour, on-line, accessed 28/09/2019: at https://www.styleathome.com/decorating-design/colour/article/pantone-s-2019-color-of-the-year-makes-so-much-sense
I began looking for this trendy colour everywhere: in fashion and decorating magazines, in retail stores, on the street .. in all manner of products varying from metal and plastics, to natural (cotton, linen) to synthetics (polyester, nylon), in coated and uncoated variations, in glossy or matte finish. I was looking for any association at all with the natural world and its situation.
I had been aware of Pantone’s long-term colour authority leadership. The company had its roots in the 1950s, when primary colours became common in plastics and manufacturing everywhere, most noticeably (for me) in baby toys. As a baby-boomer child of 1955, my early experience saw colours and culture first imposed top-down, with all things new and bright promoted during a Mad Men post-war period of sharply increased consumerism.
A counter-culture shift occurred in the early 1960s. Its origins were multi-faceted but marked by Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring (1962), which led a new ecological awareness. Primary colours were less evident in all things household and seemed relegated to psychedelic imagery. The demographics drove a bottom-up cultural movement; it idealized a closer relationship to Nature, with fashion and décor shifting to earthy, often subdued tones more compatible with indoor plants and natural products.
Clever manufacturing choices were made with ads soon promoting jeans and T-shirts as universal uniforms (along with Coke), unisex economies of scale, and a new individualism. Most striking was the reverence for indigo blue denim or better yet, faded denim. Emerging from predominantly blue collar use, Levi Strauss 501 “shrink to fit” jeans became a counter-culture symbol of more enduring, purposeful consumerism. Before stone-washing was invented, older jeans became individualized, cherished accessories over time. Long forgotten was their association with the war (when jeans were then declared an essential commodity) and clear association with recurrent rebellious periods (i.e. prior immortalized by James Dean).
That baseline, with industry leader Pantone selecting Living Coral for our modern material choices, along this backstory on colour association observed during cultural shifts, will lead me to more investigation. More to come…
