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Comment by bulletsvshumans | Hacker News Reader

> There is no "fashion cabal" where designers get together for drinks and to anoint "cerulean blue" as the color of 2023 and then pull their customers by the nose ring into purchasing.

"Twice a year Pantone hosts, in a European capital, a secret meeting of representatives from various nations' color standards groups. After two days of presentations and debate, they choose a color for the following year."

"OVER 20 YEARS OF INFLUENCING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND PURCHASING DECISIONS"

https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-archive

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Not that I'm paying much attention to these things, but I've not seen much to support that "ultimate grey" and "Illuminating" yellow are the dominating colors this year? (https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-2021)

It takes a few cycles to hit if you're not on the forefront of fashion. But perhaps you can see how the colors from a few years back have come and gone even among fashion 'normies'?

https://www.pantone.com/articles/color-of-the-year/color-of-...

http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/macos-cat...

HA! The same colors I tend to see in hipster software design and vaporwave music from that era.

Cars in my neighborhood have started popping up that are painted it what appears to be primer with a coating.

I was kind of wondering why that was suddenly a thing. I don't know if that was somehow directly or indirectly motivated by pantone, but it certainly has been a headscratcher for me for some time and this could answer why that is happening.

Pantone was the reference intended by my parenthetical.

There are some downstream effects, but they are overwhelmingly not relevant to fashion design, no matter what their marketing material claims.

And, amazingly, in the year 2000, the color they chose was cerulean blue.

That is exactly why I chose that example. It was the last one I remembered.

Pantone sells color chips. They are not designers, and they do not make or sell fashion.

The color of the year is just a marketing stunt which the media laps up, but the fashion industry completely ignores.

Is the cerulean scene from The Devil Wears Prada based somewhere in reality then?

Wow... this is maybe the best counterpoint I've ever seen on HN.

Did you buy anything this year in response to Pantone's color of the year?

Well since it's not a direct response advertising campaign, of course no one buys anything "in response to" it.

I did repaint my bedroom with an accent wall that's just about the exact shade of blue that is their 2020 color of the year. Not because Pantone told me to, but maybe because their selection of that color led it to be more prominently placed/advertised when I started picking new paint colors.

Tough to say, and your question is too oversimplistic to make sense as part of the discussion.

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