COLOR TRENDS 2013

2013 Color Trends

Pantone View Colour Planner Spring Summer 2013: Unity and Connectedness Through Color

Pantone View Colour Planner Spring Summer 2013, a multi-discipline color forecast titled unity&CO, highlights the key color palettes for women's wear, menswear, active wear, cosmetics, lifestyle and industrial, and graphic design.

Pantone View Colour Planner Spring/Summer 2013 pushes individuals to unite with one another again by rediscovering the power in numbers and embracing a new culture of unity. The power of one can be great, but the power of many is even more formidable as heritage and traditions are rediscovered in a modern, digitized manner.

The same applies to color, as it too evolves from creating an awestruck response by its power and brightness alone. As the use of color increases, it becomes more connected to material, shape and form in an integral way.

"Recent color block stories on the catwalk have paved the way for a new sense of color confidence among consumers," said Laurie Pressman, vice president of fashion, home and interiors at Pantone. "For some time, color alone has been a significant factor in purchasing decisions. Today, equally important is the context of those color statements - the finish, fabric and form in which it is used."

Color Trends 2013

Pantone View Colour Planner Spring/Summer 2013 contains the following eight palettes:

CO-nversation : Includes white, mauve, fuchsia, and sand
Slowly emerging from white, mauve and fuchsia develop into delicate hues, while a warm sand tone forms a stable base for the more ethereal pink. The resulting range is subtle and delicate, infusing a sense of calm and serenity.

CO-llaboration : Includes dusted pink, greeny-blue, and burnt yellows
A new approach to neutrals, dusted pink, greeny-blue and burnt yellows create a family of easy base colors for outerwear and interiors alike.

CO-nnected : Includes yellow and white
Connected is a color range for celebrating enthusiasm and the vitality of life, as yellow emerges from pure white, diluted and matte at first then gaining energy to end up reflecting the sun.

CO-mmunity : Includes dry browns, watered browns, wood browns, and earth browns
A new level of natural colors which are easy to mix and use, replacing black for a far more exotic approach - dry browns, watered browns, wood browns and earth browns.

CO-ntain : Includes eggshell flesh tones, deep navy, and duck-egg blue
Based on naturals; simple, refined whites like eggshell; flesh tones, which reinforce the belief that neutrals are becoming more colored; warm and static black with deep navy and duck-egg blue.

CO-mpanion : Includes blues
A monumental simplicity of colors with their feet in nature suggests combinations of confident opposites or intimate tonalities. It is a core baseline palette of blues that frames and sets all the key accents.

CO-llective : Includes strong fluorescents and sweetened pastels
Brights move from the primary spectrum of past seasons into a new fluorescent range. These super strong colors are paired with a family of soft sisters: five sweetened pastel tones.

CO-nvivial : Includes brights with personality
Satisfying a demand for brighter color, but framed in more tasteful tones, the conviviality palette has all the personality one would expect from a family of brights, but allows for a more practical color application.

unity&CO also looks at how color has evolved and become more connected to one another:

* Blues are turning away from the watery hues of the past and becoming more of a basic building block, assuming the role that black used to play.

* Color seems to be touching everything - even eternal neutrals like sand and beige. Neutrals have transformed and the new calling is for basic tones that are shaded and imbued with peaceful and beautiful color.

* Brights continue to evolve as they are paired together or weaved into larger groups, exuding drama and newness.

* Metallics have moved away from all-over surface coatings to integrated and broken effects worked within structures and materials.

* Blacks have no beginning and no end - it has been reborn not as one single black but transformed into many different disguises, intensities, and militant options as a result of its marriage to light, texture, material and depth.

* The importance of Brown remains - not just in their own right, but as alternative base colors and companion tones in harmonies.

--Pantone is a company known for its focus on color, of course, and for years now, Pantone has branched out from the chip books so familiar to graphic designers to issue a Colour Planner twice a year. This planner forecasts colors that the company believes should be prominent in several industries, including fashion, industrial design, and graphic design.