Pantone Colour of the Year: 2022.

‘Displaying a carefree confidence and a daring curiosity that animates our creative spirit’.

As we emerge from an intense period of isolation, our notions and standards are changing, and our physical and digital lives have merged in new ways. With trends in gaming, the expanding popularity of the metaverse and rising artistic community in the digital space PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri illustrates the fusion of modern life and how colour trends in the digital world are being manifested in the physical world and vice versa.

- Pantone

Pantone Colour of the Year 2022, ‘Very Peri’ is just so perfect! I absolutely agree and totally ‘get’ it. After looking through the SS22 runway shows, this lavender shade was extremely dominant across a variety of tones. I also felt like I’d seen it in fashion editorials from the 1970s such as this Givenchy one and also 90s runway such as Anna Sui, Christian Lacroix, Versace, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.

‘Very Peri’ reminds me of a grown up version of ‘Millennial Lilac/Purple’ which was popular around 2018-2020 when it had taken over from ‘Millennial Pink’.

It also took me back to my university days at Westminster, where we had to team up with our classmates and create a collection for Firetrap, who was going to come in and critique it! My group wanted to use this purple knitted fabric, but everyone was calling it blue, but all I could see was purple! We arrived to the conclusion that I was a little colour blind and I did chuckle when I first saw ‘Very Peri’ as I saw it as ‘purple’, but Pantone clearly describe it as ‘Encompassing the qualities of the blues, yet at the same time possessing a violet-red undertone’.

Although I like Pantone’s reasoning behind the colour (and the fact that it is newly created!), referencing gaming, the metaverse and ‘the rising artistic community within the digital space’, the latter which I can very much relate to, I had hoped that there would be more focus on sustainability and ‘conscious consumption’ especially since the pandemic, which has highlighted several environmental and sustainability issues. In addition, the new book by Ellen MacArthur on ‘Circular Design for Fashion’ is in a very similar shade!

Nevertheless, I’m excited to embrace this shade and to see how it is translated through fashion, interior design, the automotive industry, everywhere!

SS22 Runway Images from Vogue.com