here’s no question the cools rule.”
That’s how Pantone Color Institute
executive director Leatrice Eiseman
sized up the top 10 spring color picks
for women’s and men’s. The leaders’
names — Aquamarine, Scuba Blue, Lucite
Green and Classic Blue for women, and
Dusk Blue, Glacier Gray, Treetop and
Classic Blue for men — hail to a
blue-skies mentality. Whether those
palettes are wishful thinking on the
designers’ part really rests in
consumers’ texting, tweeting,
Instagramming hands.
“Being constantly barraged by text
messages, cell phones, e-mail and all
of this technology 24/7, cooler colors
speak to creating a kind of a quiet
zone. They are a place to get away
from it all, an escape button that,
literally, we can push. It’s also kind
of a freeing, open air. It’s just a
natural aftermath for a crazy world,”
Eiseman said. “To have the four top
colors in the cool range spoke to
something everyone is looking for -—
that real cool, relaxing stop-the-
world-I-want-to-get-off kind of
thing.”
The blurred lines between women’s and
men’s preferences for colors was
evident with Classic Blue and Glacier
Gray, which ranked in the top 10 for
both lists, and Toasted Almond, which
wound up in the fifth slot for both
women and men. Like most of the
others, those colors are easy on the
eyes, which may appeal to overworked,
overextended Americans. “Sleep
deprivation is a big deal. There is
nothing in either palette that is so
shockingly bright that it’s
overwhelming.” Eiseman said. “When we
are sleep-deprived, we don’t
necessarily want to be whacked back
into ‘take a look at this’ — you want
to kind of enter it gently.”
Here, a look at Pantone’s top 10
colors for women and men for spring
