Inside the mysterious art - and big business - of color forecasting.
Last spring, a dozen people filtered into a sunny, whitewashed conference room on the seventh floor of the Royal College of Art, overlooking London's Hyde Park. Mostly Western Europeans from different precincts of the fashion industry, they had been called together by a British man named David Shah, editor and publisher of the "Pantone View Colour Planner." The book, issued each February and August, is a four-ring binder containing pigment and textile standards of 64 colors arranged into nine distinct palettes. Geared primarily toward designers and manufacturers, the book forecasts color trends (whether consumers are expected to gravitate more toward brights or neutrals, jewel tones or pastels) two years in advance. Each edition is centered on some forgivingly abstract theme; recent volumes have investigated the chromatic possibilities of "disguise," "time" and "muse," for example.
That day, as the team decided on colors for Spring/Summer 2019, the theme was love. It was a balmy May morning, but Shah, with thin graying hair and glasses, was dressed in a navy blue buttoned sweater with a thick scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. He frequently interrupted with questions as the handpicked members of his team took turns presenting "mood boards" they had brought with them. Like oversize pages from a scrapbook, these displays included photographs, drawings, artworks, ribbons, textiles, paint samples, bits of plastic, lengths of rope, tourist tchotchkes and, in one instance, a piece of frilly lingerie.
There were spirited, far-ranging discussions of art, film, music, theater, books, fashion, museum exhibitions and advertising - anything that might hint, even remotely, at where color was headed. Amid the clamor of voices, Shah asked an American forecaster in the room to give the view from across the Atlantic. "What is the zeitgeist going on in the United States about color?" Shah asked. "Are they big colors? Are they strong colors? Prime colors?"