In a Universe Where Pantone Means NOTHING

: Image by PeterForret via Flickr

A few times since I began fashion blogging, my qualifications being that I’m size 28, I have a stuffed closet and I like shoes, I’ve had a few people intending to help – or maybe self-promote, who knows – launch the “Pantone color” announcements at me.

I guess it makes sense. Retailers still rely on the Pantone scale seasonal announcement and I have it from a girlfriend who sells jewelry that private boutiques – at least in Minneapolis – still wait to make purchases from their indie vendors until they know what the grand color scheme is to be from their big suppliers.

Pantone isn’t a consumer decision. Someone in the fashion industry somewhere picks the palette of a season – arguably the one thing we all get out of those season runway fashion shows – and that color palette becomes the defining shades of a season and sometimes a decade. It’s a byproduct of mass production: when you’re purchasing clothing en masse for a customer base ranging from a few thousand to a few hundred million, you’ve got an expensive question on your hand, especially in the race to outsell any competition. Dying fabric can be done somewhat in bulk – and so that Pantone scale becomes the first place to distinguish.

For someone who mass produces or retails clothing, the Pantone scale is absolutely relevant.

However, for the rest of us – the end consumers – the Pantone scale isn’t at all. If we’re picking through mass-produced clothing, the thought process these days is very rarely “Ooh, pink – pink is in!” “Orange is the new black.” Despite assumptions otherwise, the consumer herd is only as herdlike as it wants to be, and color is a low-effort area to differ from big business marketing.

It also doesn’t take all that much effort to alter a piece once you’ve purchased it. Now that DIY and repurposing has become the norm, clothing alteration – even drastic alteration – is on its way to becoming just as common. You can pound away at the Pantone, but that won’t stop a buyer from Rit-dying your palette to a different side of the rainbow.