The Complete Color Harmony

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Color Trends

The evolution of color trends occurs

for one reason: People want change. We

all eventually get bored with the status

quo and feel like moving on to something

new. But what? That’s the billion-dollar

question.

Color-trend forecasters around the

globe are constantly on the lookout for

the next big thing. What will consumers

want next month, in six months, in six

years? Arriving at the answers to these

questions is more complicated today

than at any other time in our history.

We live in an instantaneous-results

culture. The Internet and technological

advances in the transmission of informa-

tion provide immediate access to news

of world events. Email and portable cell

phones mean we’re never out of touch.

Consumers have also gotten used to cus-

tomization. We get what we want when

we want it.

That is a far cry from the early, more

dictatorial days of trend forecasting, when

designers had the upper hand. The fashion

industry selected a color palette each season

and consumers bought it. After the public

grew accustomed to the new shades, the

colors would begin to appear in home

design and product packaging, where they

were readily accepted.

In retrospect, it’s amazing how easily

the public was manipulated. Following

World War II, for example, the United

States government was looking for a return

to “normalcy,” which required women to

abandon their wartime factory jobs and

go home to raise children. The fashion

industry silently colluded by replacing

neutral-colored menswear-like suits with

hourglass-shaped dresses in feminine pas-

tels. Returning soldiers wanted women to

look like women again, and fashion design-

ers happily obliged.

Brilliant marketers could also influ-

ence the public’s taste in colors. “In 1934,”

writes Garry Trudeau in

Time magazine,

“the American Tobacco Co. found that

women wouldn’t buy Lucky Strikes because

the then green box clashed with their

clothes. The solution: make green hot. In

short order, the company set up a ‘color-

fashion bureau,’ underwrote a green-themed

society ball, enlisted magazine editors and

bought off French couture houses. By year’s

end hordes of newly sensitized women

started buying Lucky Strike packs as fash-

ion accessories.”

Though the thought of Philip Morris

dictating color trends to the haute couture

might seem far-fetched today, there was a

reason the French fashion industry was

more susceptible in the 1930s. Prior to

World War I, Paris had been the

dernier

cri

in color-trend pronouncements, along

with European fabric mills. But in 1915,

concerned about the lack of trans-Atlantic

fashion communication during the war,

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the Color Association of the United States

(CAUS) was founded to coordinate and

publicize color palettes for a variety of

American industries.

Designers also looked to Hollywood

and glamorously dressed stars for their

inspiration, usurping Paris’s hold as trend

arbiter. While Europe regained much influ-

ence after the war, the United States never

relinquished its role as a player on the

world fashion stage.

CAUS continues to provide invaluable

color forecasts to this day, but its job is much

more complicated than that. A whole net-

work of color-forecasting groups now works

to anticipate and predict changing consumer

color preferences. The largest of these organ-

izations is the Color Marketing Group

(CMG), an international, not-for-profit

association of 1,700 color designers. As with

most trend-forecasting companies, the CMG

consults with style experts in a wide variety of

fields to build a consensus on where color

trends seem to be headed and why.

When writing about trend predictions,

the news media often focus on the so-called

Cool Hunters, a group of youthful trend

watchers who travel to urban areas around

the world, shopping at high-end boutiques

and flea markets while documenting street

fashion and new design directions.

However valuable this information

might be, it must be combined with

lifestyle, cultural, political, and economic

research to get an accurate picture of

future color trends.

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For example, what are people doing in

their spare time?

In the 1990s, gardening was the num-

ber one adult hobby in the United States.

Combined with a renewed interest in

environmental concerns, this love of the

outdoors translated into a green-dominated

color palette.

What are the hot restaurants and

which country inspires the cuisine? When

the Mediterranean diet of fresh produce

became popular, the rich, saturated colors

of ripe fruits and vegetables affected color

trends. Japanese sushi opened the door

to black, white, and red, while Tex-Mex

brought in warm, sun-baked shades.

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