Pantone Colour of the Year 2020

Words Dan Toye

Pan­tone has announced that the 2020 colour of the year is ‘Clas­sic Blue’. Leatrice Eis­man, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Pan­tone, stat­ed they choose the colours based on “what is tak­ing place in our glob­al cul­ture” and so, clas­sic blue was cho­sen as in these con­flict­ing times we need a colour which “pro­vides an anchor­ing foun­da­tion” and it is a “sol­id and depend­able hue we can always rely on”. Blue has always been a very pop­u­lar colour: Picas­so had a three-year blue peri­od, blue was one of the most expen­sive colours dur­ing the Renais­sance, it is the cen­tral colour in the flag of the unit­ed nations, Pan­tone has cho­sen blue six oth­er times and even Miran­da Priest­ly in The Dev­il Wears Pra­da rants to Andy Sachs about the impor­tance of blue and its dif­fer­ent hues. 

In the world of the red car­pet, blue has been fea­tured at many of the major events this year. At the Oscars; Octavia Spencer used the clas­sic blue to look clas­si­cal­ly beau­ti­ful in a ball­room style dress by Chrisi­tan Sir­a­no while Tina Fey exud­ed ele­gance in her blue tulle dress by Vera Wang with a match­ing clutch. Mean­while on the street, celebri­ties showed that blue can be worn casu­al­ly. Hai­ley Bald­win wears a mag­nif­i­cent blue coat exem­pli­fied by a white shirt and paired with a belt, trousers, and boots to match while Bel­la Hadid wears a more casu­al blue jack­et and a pair of trousers made out of a col­lage pat­tern with a blue theme run­ning through with pops of yel­low and red. The blue has even been worn by Kate Mid­dle­ton this year as she radi­at­ed roy­al­ty in a min­i­mal­is­tic dress. 

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The Spring/Summer sea­son of 2020 was full of blue from the crazy and fab­u­lous wigs in Jere­my Scott’s show to the cre­ative appli­ca­tions of make-up in Libertine’s and Sal­va­tore Ferragamo’s shows. Balen­ci­a­ga, as part of one of their final three gowns, made one pure­ly out of vel­vet blue and con­trast­ed the soft­ness of the fab­ric with the severe struc­ture of the bon­ing. Richard Quinn used a black fab­ric imprint­ed with ros­es in dif­fer­ent shades of dark blue paired with a blue shad­ow to com­plete this chic look. 

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If you wish to pur­chase items of cloth­ing for your­self to be trendy for next year, I have hand-picked a range of fash­ion­able items. For instance, this Dior jumper can be paired with near­ly any­thing but has a nice cute design ele­ment with the asym­met­ri­cal zip and will sure­ly be com­fy being made out of 100% wool. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can look trendy while at the gym or while jog­ging with these Nike train­ers which will soon be released. If you do not have one of Alexan­der McQueen’s icon­ic clutch­es inspired by knuck­le busters one has been released this year in a gor­geous blue. Also from Alexan­der McQueen, if you are look­ing for a dress for a cock­tail par­ty, look no far­ther than this knit blue mini dress jux­ta­posed with ruf­fles on the bot­tom. Final­ly if you are look­ing for a com­plete look con­sid­er the trousers and top from Roland Mouret util­is­ing asym­me­try, com­pli­cat­ed pan­els pos­i­tive­ly con­flict­ing with the ruf­fles on the trousers. 

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Alter­na­tive to fash­ion here is an exam­ple of how to use blue in your home. Anne-Lau­re Dubois ren­o­vat­ed a flat by mod­ernising it in a very com­mon style of being both min­i­mal­is­tic and white but the spe­cial twist in this flat has pops of beau­ti­ful clas­sic blue ele­vat­ing the look of the flat to some­thing won­der­ful. Such as this kitchen counter-top and floor which gives the room more flavour and more fun, and this can be seen in the bath­room where the blue illu­mi­nates the room’s sim­plic­i­ty and the geom­e­try pat­tern in the toi­let makes the room live­li­er. Last­ly, the bed­room wall’s blue gives an over­all sense of calm and tran­quil­li­ty, exact­ly what one needs in a bed­room. 

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Anne-Lau­re Dubois

Instead of ren­o­vat­ing an entire flat, here are some options to add some blue to your house with­out com­plete­ly re-doing your home; such as this won­der­ful, mod­ern chair which is avail­able in coloured ash or lac­quer. The AJ lamp has been, for its fifti­eth anniver­sary, put back into pro­duc­tion with five new colours includ­ing blue. These pil­lows, like the bed­room in the flat above, have this calm­ing feel­ing due to the blue and their appro­pri­ate name: Moon Pil­lows, due to the white cir­cle in the blue resem­bling the moon. If you are miss­ing a sofa and will­ing to exper­i­ment with some­thing slight­ly strange this sofa is per­fect and it is promised to be extreme­ly com­fy and the blue com­pli­ments the tex­ture of the fab­ric. Anoth­er item which fits the same brief as the sofa (will­ing to exper­i­ment) but you are not will­ing to spend so much are these recy­cled rub­ber bas­kets which have bronze detail­ing in the over­all blue design. 

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