Red
How Pantone got it wrong, but the business of owning colour still makes lots of money
Link to the spanish version
Who owns colour? Is it something that can be bought or sold, something that someone can call their own? There are many instances in popular culture where a particular colour has received a surname, such as shocking (as in Schiaparelli’s) pink, klein blue, or red valentino, the idea being that it is easier for us to locate the exact shade in our imaginations. But actually, many colours are trademarked; like the red in the soles of Louboutin shoes, the purple in Cadbury's wrappers or the blue for Tiffany’s packaging.
The first colour was trademarked in 1985 in the US, effectively banning its use by competitor brands. This is a concept we're all used to today, but I was shocked to find out that Yves Klein registered his shade of blue in 1960 so that other artists weren’t allowed to use it in their work, which to a point I can understand but not agree with -banning its use only talks about his fear that someone might surpass him-, but what really surprised me is that Anish Kapoor did the same with a shade of black so deep that it doesn’t reflect light. I wonder what happened next, once Klein died, was this colour inherited by his family? Does this mean that this shade of blue will belong to them for good? The case for Kapoor’s black is even worse, let’s think about this for a second, colour is not a tangible thing but the way our eye perceives the interaction of a pigment with light, or as Pantone puts it
“Color is defined as the aspect of things that is caused by differing qualities of light being reflected or emitted by them. To see color, you have to have light. When light shines on an object some colors bounce off the object and others are absorbed by it. Our eyes only see the colors that are bounced off or reflected.”
Therefore, it is a sensation, an experience occurring in the eye, but these shades exist in nature, so if Mr Kapoor owns the colour that we imagine a black hole to have, does this mean that he believes the Universe should be paying him royalties?
Turns out that Pantone, the corporation whose definition above states clearly that colour is only a quality we see, but lives off selling its categorisation system, aiming at defining each year which colour is going to rule our lives (sometimes failing as I will later point out), has found a way of owning a big chunk of the colour palette, how? By joining forces with Adobe, another megacorporation that makes its profit by charging every month for the same program. If you are a graphic designer, for example, you now have to pay Pantone to use a whole range of colours on Adobe products such as inDesign or Photoshop. What initially started with a printing company that found a way to classify shades of colour so that brands could use the same one across their products, then evolved into the business of classifying colours and creating guides (which inexplicably change every year) and is now a mega emporium intending to become master of the f*cking universe regarding colour. This is how now we are immersed in a colonial system for colour, as in, ”If I identified it first, then I own it, nevermind that it existed for all to see before”.
Enter Stuart Semple, a British multidisciplinary artist and activist who felt that the idea of owning colour is ridiculous and decided to act on it, determined to give creatives back what has always belonged to them, the ability to use colour. In his online shop, Culture Hustle, he and his team create and sell the pigments that “belong” to those corporations all the while mocking them by changing their names to match the original ones. And so Tiffany’s Blue becomes Tiff Blue, Klein Blue is Easy Klein, and Viva Magenta (Pantene’s 2023 colour of the year) becomes Viva Meh-Genta, hilariously, Anish Kapoor whom he calls his arch nemesis is banned from his website and from buying his products, which are available for everyone else. One of his main kicks to the system was releasing Freetone, a free Adobe plugin that restores the colours no longer included with Adobe unless you pay Pantone.
Coming back to the Color of the Year subject, a few months ago their Viva Magenta reminded me a bit of Gucci’s new deep burgundy red, and I wondered if Pantone had actually nailed it, but when they released the new colour for 2024, called Peach Fuzz, a decidedly boring choice in orangy beige -I loved how Stuart Semple’s version is called Cheap Buzz- it got me thinking about how accurate these predictions truly are and how much they are done in connivance and/or competition with trend prediction companies like WGSN. At the end of the day, they do function as a self-fulfilling prophecy, with Pantone turning themselves into arbiters of taste and shifting the conversation towards what they say will be the trend. This creates media buzz that pushes creatives into using¡those colours, coming therefore full circle and actually transforming this prediction into a reality.
If there’s a colour that has been reigning supreme for the last few months and still is kicking hard (at least in inspiration world), that is red, a bright scarlet hue that seems to be everywhere. This is not a trend for the super young, though, they’re more into a grungy dusty grey; these weeks I have been working most of the time in the shops and it’s definitely a Millennial and older Gen Z fixation. But still, red is the colour that is everywhere. I have noticed as you probably might too, a massive surge of red in all of my feeds, from Instagram, to Pinterest, to the actual word on the street. According to Tagwalk, Red was the hottest colour in terms of searches in the platform during 2023, and according to Highsnobiety, the search for red tights outfits on Pinterest “has seen a rise of 614%”, I have tried to confirm this information on Pinterest but I couldn’t find it anywhere, so we’ll have to take their word for it.
Dear people at Pantone: It makes me incredibly happy to say that you’ve got it wrong, the colour for 2023/24 is not magenta or bleak beige, it’s RED! And most likely, we’ll be moving into burgundy, maroon and blue towards the rest of the year.
Red has never been my favourite colour, except when mixed with pink or burgundy, but I’ve been really enjoying the way people have been interpreting it, how it gets incorporated into looks, editorials and general inspiration. To finish off today, I’m leaving you with a moodboard of my favourite images from these past few months and the upcoming spring.
That’s all from me this week, enjoy your weekend, stay happy, maybe wear something red if you feel like it and love the little things.
Love,
Patty
the Anish Kapoor/Stuart Semple feud over Vantablack is the funniest thing ever, principled pettiness at its finest
I feel like colour predictions do hold some weight, especially when they're primaries or secondary colours commonly found in nature e.g. green is more likely to take off among consumers than, say, lilac and I'd put my money on pink over peach and red over yellow - though that may be just the way influence operates on me (bought a pair of red ballet flats in November 2022 according to my order confirmation email, proceeded to wear them all the way through summer '23, same with wearing existing red-printed clothing). I think you're right and the colours for 2024 will be more burgundy and olive for autumn, with bright blues for summer - though I don't think red will ever truly be 'out' as a colour, given the number of women who wear it as a lipstick shade alone....