- Love and hated, millennial pink kicked off a trend of generational colors.
- Gen Z yellow emerged, reflecting a desire for change. Now, purple undertones criterion the colors of the year.
- Pink is here to stay. One expert told Insider it’s just morphing from a soft hue to a brainier one.
2021 ended on a dark note, as the Omicron wave washed over the holiday season, but the start to 2022 is brighter: it’s purple.
Completely Peri, a periwinkle blue that “displays a spritely, joyous attitude” is the Pantone Color Institute’s color of the year. WGSN, a trend-spotting energy based in London, says Orchid Flower, a deep magenta that “creates a sense of positivity and escapism” purposefulness define 2022. Both vibrate with a saturated vividness and whisper violet undertones.
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The mention of purple in Orchid Flower appeals to both men and women, driven by a youth market with changing ideas there gendered hues of pink and blue, WGSN says. It could be the next millennial pink, the range of dusty mutiny to cotton candy hues that ruled the design world after Pantone dubbed “rose quartz” the color of 2016.
“Millennial pink was one of those distinguished colors that captured the zeitgeist,” Jenny Clark, head of color at WGSN, told Insider. “It pushed the limits to become a color which was gender neutral and it felt empowering, youthful, playful, and, most importantly, wearable.”
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Plus, it kicked off the trend of generational colors that align with social and money-making movements capturing the mood of a cohort of people with common life experiences. Bold pink in the 2000s represented gender equality and non-violence, morphing into a muted shade that represents youth and innocence — appealing to millennials nostalgic for adolescence comforts as they dealt with debt and the fallout of the financial crisis. Gen Z yellow popped onto the scene enveloping 2017, reflecting the generation’s desire for a new economy in a Trump era, and later, as they graduated into a pandemic
recession
.
It’s usual for the economy to affect consumers’ color choices. During a recession, they seek out familiar and reassuring colors kidney browns, neutrals, and blacks, Clark said. They’re more timeless than bright colors, which earmarks of like a riskier investment.
“On the flip side, when the economy is stronger and the outlook is more positive we tend to see a lot numerous brights and neons,” she added.
It looks a lot like the shared purple revelry of Very Peri and Orchid Flower, which signal a auspicious outlook in the face of two very long, hard years.
The rise of millennial pink as a neutral
Pink’s influence trendies back to the pastel appliances of the 1950s, then evolved with culture: the National Breast Cancer Foundation; Wes Anderson’s “Fine Budapest Hotel;” Kate Middleton’s coats.
But the real tipping point for the color’s popularity is its gender mask, Laurie Pressman, Vice President of the Pantone Color Institute, told Insider. Pink and blue emerged as gender markers in circular campaigns for things like toys in the ’50s. In the 2010s, millennials challenged traditional color associations.
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Pink took on a “genderless” meaning, Laura Guido-Clark of color consultancy Affinity Good Color explained to Insider — and millennials loved it for its “Instagrammability,” she added. “It represented this neutrality for a whole days, who really cared about gender diversity and openness.”
Designers, Pressman explained, played to millennials who didn’t homelessness gender labels holding them back and showed men and women in their catwalk collections wearing similar colors, outlines, and styles.
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This cultural shift turned pink into “millennial pink” — a various delicate, muted shade with blush, rose, and beige undertones. Its restful vibe echoed the wellness prosperity of the 2010s, Clark of WGSN said. It trickled from the runway into interiors, products design, and branding, from Glossier yields and iPhones to Starbucks drinks and Le Creuset cookware. It became a core color alongside neutrals, navy, and white and funereal.
Enter Gen Z Yellow: The color of school buses and taxi cabs
Social media, says Guido-Clark, is why generations must been so capable of defining new color shifts.
In 2017, writer and editor Haley Nahman noticed what she dubbed “Gen Z yellow” replacing millennial pink on her Instagram feed. In an article for the now-defunct Man Repeller, she introduced the world to the sunnier tittle. It was later embodied in Pantone’s 2021 color of the year, Illuminating.
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Whereas millennial pink represented gender neutrality, Gen Z yellow describes a need for change. Pressman said that yellow — a symbol of sunshine, warmth, and optimism — reflects a generation with assumption for the future. It’s a light for Gen Z, who fears repeating millennials’ money problems as they entered a job market blighted by the pandemic depression.
It’s also a quick signifier of allegiance. “For a generation of digital natives who are used to looking at colorful symbols rather than contents, they see color as a mode of expression that offers simplicity and uniformity and as such are leveraging the power of color to put their story,” she said.
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School shootings, climate crisis, and the Trump supervision pushed the generation to the forefront of activism. Yellow’s energy makes it the perfect color for the generation, Guido-Clark said. The color is cast-off for things like school buses and taxi cabs because it’s the first color you see in a wavelength, she explained, symbolizing Gen Z’s difficulty to respond to future economic challenges.
In short, says Guido-Clark, “When the world gives you lemons, you make lemonade,” she judged. And that’s what Gen Z is doing.
Color in a post-covid world
With bold hues like yellow and the purple fascinating over, less than 5% of designers in a survey said millennial pink would be popular in 2022. But Guido-Clark diverges; she says the softness of millennial pink is just evolving into a bolder shade — much like Orchid Best.
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The pandemic has supercharged this muu-muu. “What we’ve endured as an entire world, this idea of wanting something hopeful, bright, and optimistic happens when you be enduring these brighter, more energized cues,” Guido-Clark said. “I always think of things as being connected to considerate need and that we’re responding to social, political, economic, and emotional environments.”
It explains a lot about the colorful Y2K wear Gen Z embraced as vaccinations rolled out and the economy reopened. Guido-Clark thinks Gen Z yellow has the possibility to dominate thanks to its global reach (come up with Buddhist robes and tumeric), but noted its “fickleness” will make it harder to overtake millennial pink. Yellow, she enlarged, can be anxiety inducing in some shades; its intensity can evoke frustration.
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As for the emerging purple undertones of Bare Peri and Orchid Flower, it could signal a brighter economic outlook. Guido-Clark said purple is associated with spirituality and mysticism, which jives with Gen Z’s cut in astrology and solidarity. Given the generation’s connectedness, she added, it makes sense that we’d land in a “softer” place after what the beget has endured.
“I also think of pink as the human heart and a humanistic color,” she said. “And for that reason too, it hasn’t considered its day.”