It exists between blue and red, warm and cool, to be found on a spectrum all its own. It is 150 years old yet still future-facing, at once digital and primordial. It is \u2013 to quote its creators \u2013 \u201cbrave, fearless and pulsating\u201d. It is Viva Magenta, Pantone\u2019s colour of 2023.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve never heard of this colour, that\u2019s quite deliberate. For almost 25 years, the colour-matching company has tasked itself with choosing a shade that \u2013 according to its extensive cross-disciplinary analysis of prominent hues within art, fashion, design and beyond \u2013 not simply captures the zeitgeist, but sets the tone for the year to come.<\/p>\n
After 2020\u2019s muted evening blue, the 2021 joint winner of pebble grey and hazard-warning yellow, and this year\u2019s bright periwinkle hue, Pantone have settled on this \u201caudacious\u201d shade of carmine red for 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s brave, it\u2019s fearless, it depicts optimism and joy \u2013 and we know that we are all greatly in need of that,\u201d says Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute.<\/p>\n
In popular culture at least, shades of magenta are everywhere, from the signature berry-coloured smokey-eye makeup of Charlize Theron\u2019s Marvel heroine Clea, to Emily Blunt\u2019s plum-coloured aristocratic-western getup in The English.<\/p>\n
Harry Styles \u2013 ever at the vanguard of fashion \u2013 chose a Gucci magenta blazer to announce his arrival in Venice for the premiere of Don\u2019t Worry Darling, while, just last week, the Princess of Wales wore an Emilia Wickstead coat dress and matching hat in this jewel tone to receive South Africa\u2019s President Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the easiest colour to wear but it can send a message. See Lewis Hamilton\u2019s defiant layering of the shade after his outburst at the Dutch Grand Prix. The US paint company Benjamin Moore earlier forecast the return of red interior walls, naming the similar \u2013 but even more striking \u2013 \u201cRaspberry Crush\u201d as its own colour of the year.<\/p>\n
Ever since its inaugural selection of cerulean for the new millennium in 2000, Pantone\u2019s colour of the year has been a conversation starter \u2013 and a prompt to reflect on this current moment. But the company has greater ambitions than identifying trends.<\/p>\n
As we stare down 2023, we are no longer reeling from the shock of the coronavirus pandemic; instead, Pantone suggests, we are turned towards the future. Laurie Pressman, Pantone\u2019s vice president, says Viva Magenta represents a prevailing desire for optimism, resilience, outside-the-box thinking and technological innovation so as to create a better world.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re living in a time where so many people have been aggressive; that\u2019s what\u2019s needed to go forward,\u201d she says. \u201cWe need courage, bravery, but we\u2019re looking for something that promotes joy and is fun. Life right now is unconventional and challenging in many ways \u2013 I think we\u2019re looking for things that help us escape.\u201d<\/p>\n
If it seems like purple prose, it is worth remembering that colour is central to the human experience as a means of storytelling, communication and connection, points out James Fox, the Cambridge art historian and author of The World According to Colour.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems like a good and apposite choice for a period when everything feels very grey, dark and murky, and lots of people have lost hope. Essentially it\u2019s a colour about the resilience of the human spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n
For all its unnatural, even digital-seeming appearance, magenta is evocative of clays, cave paintings, even the colours of the galaxy; the earliest plant life on Earth, predating chlorophyll, was believed to be a similar purplish shade. \u201cIt\u2019s this colour that kind of fizzes on the retina, that vibrates \u2013 you can\u2019t quite pin it down,\u201d says Fox.<\/p>\n
Indeed, he says, magenta is a manmade \u201cconcoction\u201d that emerged in the mid-19th century following the serendipitous invention of mauveine, the first synthetic aniline dye. Its huge commercial success inspired others in Europe to chase after more.<\/p>\n
In 1859, after concurrent discoveries by chemists in France and south London, a reddish-purple dye started to be produced on both sides of the Channel as \u201cfuchsine\u201d or \u201croseine\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was renamed the following year for the battle fought by France and Sardinia against Austria in the town of Magenta, Lombardy \u2013 not for soldiers\u2019 bloody uniforms, as is often thought, but in a show of solidarity with Italy, fighting for its independence.<\/p>\n
Fox makes a parallel with the Ukraine war today. \u201cA year ago, many people had never heard of Mariupol; now it is not only a household name, it\u2019s associated with a cause that most people feel strongly about.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust as most British people support Ukraine in its battle today, in the 19th century most supported the Italian war of independence \u2026 The moment magenta emerged from was in some ways similar to our own.\u201d<\/p>\n
But its resurrection may be a shock to the system in the modern world of 50 shades of grey. After the sunny Mediterranean shades of the 90s, the prevailing interior design trend of the past 15 years has been \u201cgreige\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ikea, Apple and others have likewise exported and extended their monochrome, minimalist aesthetic globally. Even films and television are increasingly desaturated, leading some to suggest \u2013 as in a viral TikTok from August \u2013 that \u201ccolour is disappearing from the world\u201d.<\/p>\n
Those that have managed to assert themselves, against this muted backdrop, have had to shout: think the highlighter-yellow messaging through the pandemic, or the flaming Maga-hat red.<\/p>\n
Magenta, straddling the line between red and blue, is not only apolitical; it is essentially unifying, says Fox. Partly ultraviolet, partly infrared, it \u201cdoesn\u2019t exist on the spectrum \u2026 but it somehow encapsulates the whole range of colours that we can see \u2013 and also some that we can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
It might make Viva Magenta Pantone\u2019s most self-referential colour of the year yet: slippery yet undeniable, just like the passage of time, and its corresponding shades. \u201cHow do you ignore this colour?\u201d says Eiseman. \u201cYou can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The design company calls it an empowering shade that drives innovation \u2013 and its storied history suggests it might be rightIt exists between blue and red, warm and cool, to be found on a spectrum all its own. It is 150 years old yet still future-facing, at on\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/image-125.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":888,"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883\/revisions\/888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautybyneature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}