So I'm a fair-weather friend to the fashion industry. I love the fabulous, rotating outfits on Emily in Paris and I dutifully watched every episode of Project Runway—marveling at the sartorial wizardry over a one or two-day challenge. But I'm no label queen nor close monitor of Anna Wintour's latest career moves. But even being a casual rubberneck to the industry, one simply must gasp when there's an egregious spill on the catwalk. So the question I pose to the brains at Pantone: Have y'all lost your damn mind?
The colour for 2026, according to these flavor gurus, is to be (drum roll please) some hippie form of ivory white called Cloud Dancer.
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| Panatone Color of the Year 2026 |
There's only one person who can pull off Cloud Dancer and that is the legendary Stevie Nicks because she practically invented the hue. While we all would like 2026 to be soft cotton clouds and virginal innocence, it seems horribly misaligned and mis-timed and frankly, washed-out and giving me nostalgic near-win vibes for Hillary Clinton and her flawless pantsuits. For the love of Mary, we have been trapped for the last decade in a matrix of sad neutrals whose sole existence is to make sure that no one gets offended nor excited. When will colours, true, vibrant colours, be making a comeback? Or are we waiting for Godot?
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| Credit to Herbert Worthington III, 1981 |
I can't be the only one screaming into the void. Is anyone else sick to death of grey and white interior and exteriors of modern homes and the black uniforms of Doordash motorcyclists? Even the fiery and difficult Megan Markle somehow ruined Christmas by making everything beige and boring. Don't get me wrong: there's a place for neutrals. They can be classy and classic but the pendulum needs to swing back so we can finally taste the rainbow again. The Culturist, who wrote a much more detailed and comprehensive Substack than me on this topic, delves into some of the stats of chromophobia. The phenomenon first started to vex me with that middling, queer television series, Looking (2014-2016), where everything was shot in sad pavement greys with all the colours of San Francisco bleached away like a mistaken wash. If storytellers can't even capture San Francisco in its resplendent rainbow variety, then we really are doomed full stop.
So I ask you, dear readers, when will colours return or have we lost them forever? Cloud Dancer sounds like a lovely indigenous healer that you would go to for an acupuncture treatment but for the Pantone colour of the year, I'd rather poke my eyes out.
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Listed References
Chelsea Sanchez (2024) 'The 20 Most Ridiculous Outfits in Emily in Paris, Ranked', Harper's Bazaar, 15 August 2024. Available at: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/g61817540/emily-in-paris-outfits-ranked/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=mgu_ga_har_md_dsa_hybd_mix_us_20779365508&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20779365508&gbraid=0AAAAADA2MkJ638mzitLSuzf9jmbNC856A&gclid=CjwKCAiA09jKBhB9EiwAgB8l-D8Xq1YDRbcyJwGaKA-TfwBw9S4MnIq6V9_ysAHrXrWAFtqwa48HuRoCNLAQAvD_BwE (Accessed 1 January 2026).
