“No one’s fun anymore! What ever happened to fun? God. I’m so bored I could die.” Seeing that Pantone had announced...brown as its colour of the year — or, sorry, Mocha Mousse —made me relate to Sex and the City’s Lexi like never before. Admittedly not to the extent that I hope to fall backwards out of a high-rise apartment block, but I feel she had a point, and Pantone has only proved it with their selection of the official colour of 2025.
The self-proclaimed “world-renowned authority on colour” selects an annual shade which is supposed to represent the vibe of the coming year and dictate the tonal zeitgeist, used to inspire fashion, interiors and food trends. The 2024 shade of the year — Peach Fuzz — which was hand picked by the experts in recognition of our need to seek comfort, was equally as tepid. But at least it had a twang of fruity positivity and a button-cute name.
Now, just as we leave another challenging year behind (beset by international conflict, economic crisis and the looming return of a twice impeached president to the White House — hey, there were some peaches this year!), we have been lumbered with a shade less inspiring than any other. Did we bring this misery upon ourselves?
Pantone Colour Institute Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman sees it differently. Announcing the shade, she described it as “an evocative soft brown that transports our senses into the pleasure and deliciousness it inspires,” a colour that “nurtures with its suggestion of the delectable quality of cacao, chocolate and coffee, appealing to our desire for comfort.”
While I won’t deny that the mousse element (and accompanying press imagery) whet my appetite to whip out the Velvetiser a little early, in reality when seen on the notebooks, mugs and accessories Pantone has launched to celebrate the shade, all I see is… sludge, and the idea of starting another year defined by drab does not appeal to me.
It’s not totally left field. In fact Pantone has been known to be on the money with their annual shades which, much like the oversaturated Word of the Year announcements, are often awaited with bated breath. In 2016 when Pantone announced Pale Dogwood as their colour of the year, it launched a thousand trends and interiors aesthetics which many of us (Millennials) have yet to overcome. What soon became dubbed Millennial Pink, has reigned supreme ever since, if no longer dominating, still impeccably chic.
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Thanks to the Kardashian-ification of our social media feeds, taupe, caramel, oat and tan have dominated the contemporary aesthetic, washing colour from our walls and clothes and replacing it with a hazelnut latte. From activewear to interiors and baby clothes, the lack of colour in recent years has been noticeable, our Instagram feeds beset by beige.
Even childrenswear has not been immune, no longer pops of bright, uplifting primary colours, nurseries across social media are now drenched in sepia and decorated with neutral-toned boucle and rattan. Thinking back to my own colourful upbringing in the Nineties, I can’t help but feel somewhat sad for the lack of joyful patterns and animal prints forming the backdrop to today’s babies.
Pantone describes Mocha Mousse as able to “extend our perceptions of the browns from being humble and grounded to embrace aspirational and luxe.” I certainly applied this when I spent an inordinate amount of money on a taupe pram on Black Friday, because the alternative of black felt less exciting still, and I do believe there is nothing chicer than a camel coat. Neutrals certainly have their place, but brown as the colour to define an entire mood for an entire year? Mon dieu! It's less chic, more...merde.
And while Pantone might see brown as aspirational, it’s difficult not to see them as out of touch, branding a drab shade as affluent at a time when affluence escapes so many.
The colour brand also touched upon brown referencing our desire to more closely align ourselves with the natural world, our need for harmony during a time of instability, a genderless theme and a reference to our “little treat culture.” Encompassing food, the environment, gender and world peace? It’s a lot for one colour to shoulder. Is brown really the tone that can take it all on? All I see is the chocolate so few are eating any longer due to spending too much time injecting themselves with semaglutide.
Some five years on from the pandemic, where comfort was all we sought, is now not the time to step out of our biscuit-hued loungewear and into the discomfort required for change? If the memes on social media declaring 2025 begins with “WTF” (due to it starting on a Wednesday) are anything to go by, we will need all the help we can get.
We can only hope that we aren’t now resigned to a new year commencing with a Trump presidency and an uncertain economic forecast all while being surrounded by mulch. Because what we really need are shoots of tonal positivity to shake us out of our misery and ignite change.
Thankfully, we could still get it. After all, despite Peach Fuzz’s promised reign, the colour of 2024 was undoubtedly green: for Brat, for the party’s remarkable gains in the July election and for Elpheba’s skin in Wicked. Likewise, 2023 was dominated by Barbie pink, despite Pantone declaring a much darker Viva Magenta as the year’s shade (though, at least it was ballpark.) We can only hope pop culture pulls us out of this lacklustre quagmire and into a much brighter future.
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Harriet Hall is an award-winning journalist and the Features Director at Cosmopolitan. Most recently she was awarded Best Feature for her investigation into Andrew Tate and online misogyny at the 2023 Write to End Violence Against Women awards and the BSME for Best Lifestyle Journalist in 2022 for her work covering women’s safety, women's health, politics and pop culture. As a journalist of over a decade, her work has seen her interview celebrities from Zendaya to Zac Effron and politicians including Jeremy Corbyn (just five days before the 2017 general election); report on fashion weeks and take on stunts in the name of feminism. She has written for a range of publications including The Independent where she ran the lifestyle desk for four years, Evening Standard, Vogue, BBC News and Stylist. Harriet also regularly appears across numerous platforms to discuss her work, from Sky News to Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and on panels such as at the prestigious Woman of the World Festival. Her first book ‘She: A Celebration of 100 Renegade Women’ was published by Headline Home in 2018 and you can find her Tweeting, Instagramming and on Linkedin when she isn’t curled up on the sofa with a good book and the smallest dog in the world.
