What we have here in 2017 is a heap of chaos and disruption.
What we need in 2018? Well, The Pantone Color Institute has thoughts about that.
"Ultra Violet" wasn't chosen Thursday because it's regal, though it resembles a majestic shade. It was chosen to evoke a counterculture flair, a grab for originality, ingenuity and visionary thinking, Pantone Vice President Laurie Pressman said.
Makes us think of Grimace. And now we want a milkshake. Dammit.
"We are living in complex times," she said. "We're seeing the fear of going forward and how people are reacting to that fear."
Pressman wasn't keen on talking politics. The color, she said, playing out in home design, industrial spaces and products, fashion, art and food, reflects the idea of living not inside the box or outside the box but with no box at all. Specifically, she called the color "that complexity, that marriage, between the passionate red violets and the strong indigo purples."
Ultra Violet leans more to blue than red and that, Pressman said, "speaks to thoughtfulness, a mystical quality, a spiritual quality." There's still a passionate heat from enough red undertones, and a touch of periwinkle, but "it's really the cool that prevails."
The 2018 color of the year follows 2017's "Greenery," a grassy fresh, revitalizing shade that reflected new beginnings.
The purple choice, a la Prince and the glam rock of David Bowie — both of whom died in 2016 — speaks to rebellion, finding new ways to interpret our lives and surroundings, Pressman said. It also speaks to the pleasing calm of Provence and its purple flower fields.
"I see this as very much an optimistic color, an empowering color," she said. "We want to find some peace and calm within ourselves."
(h/t Associated Press)