14 Dec 2023 Peach Fuzz is Pantone’s Colour of the Year for 2024
The gentle, pinkish-orange hue was chosen to reflect a collective desire for respite…
A soft, pinkish-orange hue called “Peach Fuzz” is Pantone’s pick for the 2024 colour of the year, the company has announced.
Officially called “Pantone 13-1023 Peach Fuzz,” the colour is “velvety,” “gentle” and “subtly sensual,” according to the design and colour authority.
Pantone is best known for its colour-matching system, created in the 1960s, that numbers and organizes hues with a distinct chip format. The company also runs the Pantone Color Institute, which selects the colour of the year and conducts colour trend forecasting research.
This year’s choice “echoes our innate yearning for closeness and connection,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, in a statement.
“We chose a colour radiant with warmth and modern elegance,” she adds. “A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless.”
Peach Fuzz is Pantone’s 25th colour of the year. The annual announcements began in 1999 to “engage the design community and colour enthusiasts around the world in a conversation around colour,” per a statement from Laurie Pressman, the Pantone Color Institute’s vice president.
Every year, a team of colour experts examines movies, art, fashion, design, travel destinations, technologies and more to figure out which colours are influencing the world in the current moment. They also use forecasting tools, colour psychology research and other sources to predict upcoming trends. From all that research, they narrow down the options to just one colour that they feel sets the tone for the year ahead.
Peach Fuzz is less bold than last year’s choice, a bright, pink-red shade called “Viva Magenta.” But the world felt different in 2023, when Pantone “celebrated coming out of the malaise of the last year,” as Eiseman tells CNN’s Leah Dolan.
Viva Magenta was intended to evoke verve, power and grace as the world emerged from the pandemic and continued to grapple with social unrest, as NPR’s Rachel Treisman wrote last year.
Heading into 2024, however, Peach Fuzz “arrives at a dark time amid a tumultuous war and a tense election year,” as Angelica Villa writes for ARTnews. The more muted hue is meant to reflect the “need for some quiet, some peace, some respite,” Eiseman tells CNN.
Where will Peach Fuzz show up in 2024? Rugs, wallpaper, fabric, makeup, tea and more — which are all examples of products released in conjunction with Pantone’s announcement.
Source: Pantone, SmithsonianMagazine.com