Who influences annual color forecasts?

If you love the color green, you’ll be awash in it in Paris. I was there last week, and after I’d done the requisite number of museums (and there are some fabulous exhibits on currently) I dedicated two days to shopping. I love green, almost all shades, so I was thrilled to find so much clothing dedicated to that color. I assumed green was the color for 2022, or at the very least, fall of 2022. Imagine my surprise when I returned home and discovered that Pantone’s color for 2022 is called Very Peri and is described as a new color that “encompasses the qualities of the blues but with a violet-red undertone”. Not green!

Here are three storefronts I walked by within two blocks in Paris which convinced me that green was the IT fashion color of the year.

I have always thought that the Pantone Color Institute and the AkzoNobel Global Aesthetic Center had the last word in color and color trends. They forecast which colors will be fashionable in the coming seasons. It appears that Pantone guides the fashion industry more than AkzoNobel, which guides the interior design and architecture industries. Major paint companies like Benjamin Moore and Farrow and Ball also weigh in, often with different color options. In 2022, the paint companies were at odds with Pantone and chose shades of green.

Color is a fast-moving target for the fashion industry, which needs a fresh color palette for each season. An article in Women’s Wear Daily says that the industries look to each other for color inspiration. Fashion comes first and the colors shown there will influence the colors used to paint and decorate homes and offices which will in turn influence the colors we see for home goods and beauty product packaging. In what is appearing to be an increasingly chaotic and competitive area of color trends, social media has rendered color anyone’s guess for fashion. Color trends might start out with Very Peri but global Instagram and TikTok platforms and their users can influence color trends anywhere at any time. Green certainly did not disappear in the fashion world when Spring 2022 was over.

Do we dare invest in fashion items in the colors forecast for 2023? If you like the colors, new clothes in current colors are a fast way to boost your mood, especially going into winter.

2023 color forecast:

The AkzoNobel Global Aesthetic Center, 2023’s color will be “Wild Wonder”. It is a color inspired by “the warm tones of harvested crops”.

From the AkzoNobel Global Aesthetic Center “As people search for support, connection, inspiration and balance in the world today, they’re diving into the wonders of the natural world to find it”.