What the world needs now is ... blue. Why Pantone got it right in 2020

From primordial cave sketch to fashion billboard, every culture is shaped by colour. A toolkit of expression, pigments trigger and convey the senses. As light is projected through our optic nerve, we encounter memory, emotion, even taste.

Colour experts track each generation’s palette. Whether mid-war modesty or ’60s psychedelia, hues reflect history. Every object, fashion trend or Star Wars reboot is tinted by the stories of its time. Tones also predict social values; how we’ll feel and what we’ll value moving forward.

This era is no different. As headlines display nurses in surgical turquoise or the patriotic red of Trump’s tie, colour gurus take note, looking to the future while keeping one eye on the past.

Pigment is one of humanity’s oldest fixations. In 1672, Isaac Newton shone iridescent rays through a glass prism. By projecting a rainbow and defining seven primary hues, Newton sparked colour science. He had a monolith of chromatic tradition behind him.

Hunter-gatherers used colour as an indicator of essential survival: danger, food, heat. Locally, we recognise Indigenous use of natural clay for decoration. In the Book of Genesis, God bested Newton to make the colour spectrum on his sixth day.

Model Helena Witte in a Jason Grech dress in Classic Blue. Helena is managed by The Talent Buro. Make-up by Yvonne Borland. CREDIT:SIMON SCHLUTER

From sunburnt skin to rotten bananas, global colour authority Pantone has defined every shade imaginable. The ubiquitous Pantone guide launched with just 10 tones in 1963, but now includes more than 1800 coded shades. The post-Brexit British passport is printed in a charcoal blue: 5395C, to be exact.

By referring to Pantone’s codex, designers are guaranteed an identical palette across any medium. Blockbuster franchise Despicable Me defined its iconic critters as ‘‘Minion yellow’’ in 2015. You’ll find toys, cartoons, T-shirts, toothbrushes and bedsheets in the sunny tone.

Pantone have proclaimed a Colour of the Year since 2000. After a 12-month search, the New Jersey outfit heralds a pigment for the zeitgeist. This year’s pick was Classic Blue. Offering tranquility and focus, the dependendable hue evokes solace during uncertainty. Trend-setters pay close attention to the annual announcement: Kanye West adopted Classic Blue on the cover of Jesus Is King and Virgil Abloh chose the azure trim on his LV408 sneaker.

Pantone vice-president Laurie Pressman described Classic Blue as a tourniquet for a new era, suggesting trustworthiness and credibility. Announced in December, Classic Blue’s values have an uncanny relevance to now. Australia’s COVID-19 health announcements are branded in the reassuring tone.

Illustration of a girl wearing a Pantone colour swatch.CREDIT:JUDY GREEN

Expressing a moment’s ethos with a singular colour is a gargantuan task. One pigment can’t convey the total human condition, but trends do emerge. In an act of listening rather than dictating, Pantone appoints experts to comb the globe. They meet twice annually to debate and forecast, with the final decision made by senior officials.

Writer and colourist Keith Recker proudly shares the responsibility of defining a generational spectrum. He has consulted with Pantone for 16 years, as well as for trend forecasters such as London’s WGSN.

Recker analyses anything of cultural calibre, but pays particular attention to the news, fashion and art. The Pennsylvanian cites up-and-coming artists as barometers of cultural insight, their work being least tainted by commercial constraint.

Originally an aspiring poet, Recker talks about colour like a chef reciting your night’s menu. Pigments take on a philosophical vigour. Reflecting on the 2020 choice of Classic Blue, he says: “There is a metaphysical quality to blue, a yearning that I find terribly meaningful. Somewhere folded into the metaphors I’ve explored in my years-long preoccupation with blue, is an observation from the science of physics. Objects that are coming towards us take on a blue shift, as opposed to objects moving away from us, which take on a red shift. Because it is the colour of what’s coming towards us, blue is the colour of the future, of what we’re about to encounter, with wide-eyed awe.’’

Bathed in neon blue light, a woman embraces Pantone's choice for 2020.CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES

You wish you knew as much about anything as Recker knows about tone. He can describe the eyes of ancient Sumerian statuettes when referencing blue, as easily as conjuring ancient Peruvian dyeing techniques or explaining why extreme sports are associated with neon. His favourite colour at present is green, in case you’re wondering.

‘‘I find there’s so much possibility in green. You go all the way from that sort of primordial forest floor or bottom of the ocean kind of green, to idiosyncratic chartreuse or hallucinogenic absinthe, and I think we need all of that bandwidth at our disposal today.’’

''Objects that are coming towards us take on a blue shift ... blue is the colour of ... what we’re about to encounter, with wide-eyed awe.’’

It also doesn’t hurt that Recker has mild synesthesia, a condition allowing people to perceive singular senses in multiple ways. In some, words might trigger a taste, or music a visual projection.

‘‘As a kid, that was a pretty puzzling experience: realising that I not only saw colour, but I smelled it and heard it as well,’’ he says. ‘‘Really my fascination with colour, I think, comes from that sort of broadband perception of what was coming at me. It’s never quite left.’’

The self-dubbed ‘‘chromosapien’’ has experienced synesthesia since earliest memory. As a teenager, he was particularly dazzled by the violet shades of 1800s novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. Until recently, Recker didn’t often talk about synesthesia. It seemed ‘‘a little crazy’’. Though his sensations have now dimmed, Recker still encounters sound and taste alongside shade.

Recker has published three books including the expansive compendium Pantone: The 20th Century in Colour, with director Leatrice Eiseman. The work recalls historical palettes and their interaction with society. Recker says he thinks about colour from a writer’s perspective, focusing on the narrative it creates.

‘‘For me, it’s always about where are we now? What hungers and thirsts will this particular position we are holding right now, today, engender two, three or five years in the future?’’

While safely quarantined with his partner in their Pittsburgh home, he’s monitoring current events closely. Although predicting trends isn’t bulletproof, Recker is well equipped to offer insight. He mentions the 1918 Spanish influenza, 1955’s polio vaccination, the 1980s AIDS epidemic, and 9/11 as touchpoints for today’s mood. He notes tones that define control, hygiene and predictability as essential values during the Spanish flu.

‘‘From a colour point of view, you do see a good bit of white, off-white, things that were easy to throw in the laundry. Bleach; that was perceived as hygienic. Think of old women’s dresses,’’ he says. ‘‘This sense of crispness and hygiene, and the ability to have regularity and control, was all part of the sense of order at that point.’’

A model wears a Balenciaga dress in Classic Blue, Pantone's colour of 2020.CREDIT:NEW YORK TIMES

Recker also sees earthy tones arising to reflect our need for solidarity and collaboration. A similar aesthetic rose to prominence after the HIV crisis.

‘‘I think we do well to remember how popular khakis and white T-shirts were. Simple, crisp, universal, easy, not class-divided, very accessible, and you have to get together to survive.’’ Khaki also popped up after World War II’s traumatic end. Warm, earthy tones can be psychologically grounding. In paler values, they can even be uplifting, Recker notes. Economic uncertainty is another factor to consider when looking at this era’s mood.

‘‘If you go back to the Great Depression, you certainly see that blend of purposeful, serious toughness. You see a bit of an impulse to universal, long-lived neutrals ... in the Depression, the colours are actually rather beautiful; the purposeful ones. Think of Amish clothing. Those beautiful blue shirts and the dark blue, dark black and dark brown clothing,’’ he says.

Simply put, colours worn in crisis reflect strength, a sense of unity and simplicity. As society weathers traumatic events, it also looks to vibrance for much-needed diversion. Recker describes this as an ‘‘exhale of expression’’, often ushering in a new era of colour. Revlon’s Fire and Ice campaign arrived in full crimson glory the same year Jonas Salk developed his game-changing polio vaccine. The Great Depression preludes a splendid tonal array: Crayola Crayons, technicolour film and Monopoly’s multi-hued board.

Recker points out that in the wake of the Spanish flu epidemic, the Roaring 20s ushered in ‘‘some great colours’’.

‘‘It was a far brighter and more peacocky time than perhaps the photographs would lead us to believe. We don’t really have a colour document of that time, except for paintings and things like that. The textiles that survived ... are certainly gorgeous.’’

In this image from Keith Recker's True Colors, Nitin Gupta, a member of a non-profit Indian textiles venture called Avani, hangs silks dyed using an invasive weed. CREDIT:DIDIER BINETRUY FOR THRUMS BOOKS

Looking ahead, Recker thinks 2020 will magnify consumer morals. His latest work, True Colors: World Masters of Natural Dyes and Pigments, celebrates those who create colour from more sustainable earthly substances.

‘‘I see all of this coming down the pike, in terms of creating less of a footprint. Serious consumer interest in reinvestigating natural resources, which is all we had before the 1856 invention of synthetic dyes. We had millennia of colour involvement prior to 1856,’’ he says.

Our current enforced slowdown might increase the demand for more transparency from suppliers, durability in material and simplicity in design. Maybe a journey back to our roots is exactly what we need.