Fashionclick^®  Style Interview

them and they see her choosing colors very carefully, and so they do what their mothers did. But boys rarely go shopping with their mothers. They are not encouraged to be creative about color.

One is the emotional aspect of color. I ask them to take a quiz and write down their responses to colors to see if it is positive or negative and why. I ask them for a word that describes color and to think about that word. Does it really have meaning in your life today? Is it something that you learned a long time ago? Is it because your mother didn’t love that color and therefore you don’t love it? I make them think about colors, to really unleash their creativity on a very emotional level.

Second is the practical aspect. There are certain practical guidelines that I give that will make color choices easier. People won’t have to think as hard.

Generally speaking, no matter where you go in the world, people seem to have the same questions about color. How to use it? How to put it together? What I try to do is give them practical answers.

As director of Pantone, and because I have other clients in the industrial world, that is exactly what my work is. It is very important for manufacturers to know what colors to develop their products in. If they don’t make the right colors, they are going to lose a lot of money. So I give advice and counsel in that area.

You really have to be a futurist in the world of color. You have to be a sociologist as well as a psychologist and a trend analyst. You have to look ahead to at least two years from now. For example, one of the great influences in the world of color might be an art collection that is traveling around the world. The Tutankhamen exhibit in the 70’s had a huge effect on many different industries, particularly fashion, because Tutankhamen is associated with gilt. That is the first time metallic finishes appeared on a mass market level, on women’s shoes, handbags, clothing, buttons... and the pearled or metallic influence started to come into automobiles as well. It started with this exhibition because so many people were going into museums and seeing these beautiful finishes.

A popular TV show or a hit movie can also be a great influence on fashion, but we have to know about them ahead of time. Two years ago when I first read that "Shakespeare in Love" and "Elizabeth" were in production, I knew they would have a tremendous influence on the fashion world. Both pictures delve back into history with the color palettes and designs of that era. If you notice in many of the fall fashion shows, we have a trend called "medieval modernism." Designers are tapping into that history and yet looking ahead at the future too. So films and television have a tremendous influence, and you simply have to stay on top of what is happening in the entertainment industry.

Also socioeconomic situations like a war can bring a change in color that no one predicted. For example, in 1988 – 89, the movie "Dick Tracy" was getting a tremendous amount of publicity. We heard that Newsweek and Time Magazine were going to put Warren Beatty on the cover in the famous yellow raincoat and matching hat, so we knew that yellow was going to get a lot of attention. But in 1991, just as designers were starting to use yellow, the Persian Gulf War broke out. And in the USA, people were putting yellow, which is considered the color of hope and optimism in this country, on their front doors, mailboxes, and tying it around trees. It 

became the symbolic color for a quick end to the war. So before you knew it, yellow had come back into the consumer’s awareness. Ralph Lauren and many other big designers started to work with it and you just could not keep enough yellow in stock.

The music industry has been a front runner as far as trends are concerned, and we are not looking only at today but all of the 90’s. Environmental issues became very important at the end of 1989. People all over the world were concerned about the decimation of the rain forest and preserving the environment. If you give word association studies, as I have for a number of years, asking what color is nature? Invariably the answer is green.

Many great artists did concerts to raise money for environmental issues and of course green became the color that was used on all of their advertising copy. That is one of the reasons why it became such a big color in the 90’s.