Washington - Take a look inside that bottle of Marsala wine sitting in your bar you once bought for that Italian chicken recipe. That earthy, reddish-amber colour is what Pantone has named its 2015 colour of the Year.
Marsala “enriches our mind, body and soul, exuding confidence and stability,” says Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone colour Institute, in the announcement.
Unlike other “Colours of the Year” put out by paint companies, Pantone's colour forecasts are used across many industries besides home design and interiors, whether fashion, consumer products, graphics or packaging. As a major colour authority, Pantone charts corporate colour direction. So what made it go with Marsala? Pantone officials say the colour is already big in clothing, handbags and wearables. And they believe it goes well with warmer taupes and grays, and umber, golden yellow and turquoise.
So what do colour experts think of Marsala?
“It's nice, but it surprises me,” says colour consultant Jean Molesworth Kee, owner of the Painted Room in Alexandria, Virginia. “We have been veering from red or burgundy wall colour now for years. This has a dusky, earthy quality.” Kee says she could see Marsala used in “an ethnic bohemian place.” She added, “It's muted and it reminds me of Morocco or of faded old Oriental rugs. It would go nicely with warm, sandy colours and browns.”
I called another colour expert who hadn't yet heard the news. “This name doesn't sound good,” said Washington designer Annie Elliott, whose firm is called Bossy Colour. She quickly clicked on the Pantone website and called me back. “You can pair it with hunter green and you can be right back in 1987. It is so depressing,” Elliott said “I hate burgundy, and it doesn't even have the guts of burgundy. It looks tired. It already looks like it has been washed too many times. We are in for a rough year.”
Although many of the anointed colours are big in the paint department, Marsala seems to be a strong hue that perhaps will show up more on upholstery, table linens and tableware as well as in fabric prints, rather than on powder room walls.
One of my savvy colleagues said Marsala looked like a cute nail polish colour. I can also imagine it as a lipstick. A bedroom? Not so much. But then, that's why the colour of the Year changes annually. - Washington Post
* Leanne Italie reports that 2014’s colour of the year was radiant orchid, a deep tropical purple. The year before that it was emerald green. Tangerine tango had legs in 2012.
The idea, Eiseman said in a recent interview, is not to choose a colour that will necessarily “overtake the world”. In Marsala’s case, the shade is complex but grounding – brown-red with blue undertones for a dark blush effect.
Eiseman and her team travel the world to observe colour at play. For Marsala, they see an accent wall in a living room or office, a swipe of eye shadow mixed with bronze for a metallic look, a throw pillow, and the exterior of a car or a bit of jewellery evoking the 1950s.
Eiseman noted the versatile shade was among colours Pantone flagged as spring/summer trends for 2015 earlier this year, as evidenced on the runways of Herve Leger by Max Azria, Dennis Basso and Creatures of the Wind, among others.
As they did with radiant orchid, the cosmetics giant Sephora plans a limited-edition collection of beauty products based on Pantone and its latest pick, Eiseman said. Marsala has been widely used in lipstick and hair colour for years.
One of the colour’s strengths, she said, is the ease in combining it with grey, black, beige and other neutrals.
“It’s a colour you can mix with what you already own,” Eiseman said. “You can add just a touch of it. That’s the intent and purpose. It is not the colour that swallows the world.” – Sapa-AP