Pantone announces 2025 color of the year (no, it's not Brat green)
In a harsh departure from the "dopamine brights" that ruled some of pop culture, "Mocha Mousse" offers a more demure interpretation of the year.
Color us shocked. Pantone's shade of the year has been announced and it's ... brown?
That's right: Brat Summer's neon green and "Wicked's" watermelon-chic aesthetic are so 2024, with the color company announcing Thursday morning that the shade for 2025 is a more demure Mocha Mousse.
PANTONE 17-1230 (Mocha Mousse's government name), is a serene, lightly pigmented color. It's "a mellow brown infused with a sensorial and comforting warmth," Pantone Color Institute vice president Laurie Pressman tells Paste BN.
Meant to engage multiple senses, the color should evoke a desire to dip your spoon into it, Pressman says. Inspired in part by "little treat culture" − a growing trend in which people punctuate their day with small pleasures like a store-bought coffee − Pressman encourages fans to "find your mocha moment."
"Little treat culture really goes back to boosting our sense of personal comfort and wellness," she says. That the color reflects a cup of coffee with one-too-many dashes of cream or a smooth milk chocolate is intentional. The name too is meant to tickle your tastebuds.
Why Mocha Mousse?
Aside from the more obvious chocolate connection, Pressman and Leatrice Eiseman, the Pantone Color Institute's executive director, tell Paste BN that the shade creates a sense of harmony and warmth.
In 2023 and 2024 Pantone selected shades of magenta and peach, respectively, reflecting a desire to be celebratory after prolonged COVID lockdowns. Now, with the pandemic firmly in the collective rearview, the world is ready to embrace a softer, quieter joy Pressman and Eiseman say.
"The overriding theme as we went into looking for this year's color was this whole idea of harmony," Pressman says. As the world becomes more complex, consumers are searching for inner peace and balance, she says. A "versatile" light brown that can reflect both luxury and an alignment with the natural world is the perfect shade to communicate that desire.
"We have enough going on outside of us we're looking for things that are softer and things that are lighter," Pressman says. As for those "dopamine brights" (read: Barbie pink and Brat green), there's a place for those as well, but mocha mousse reflects a mood much larger than any fleeting zeitgeisty trend, she says.
How does Pantone decide color of the year?
The color of the year has been around since 1999 and, contrary to what some may believe, is not just a handful of people at Pantone looking at swatches and placing their bets. Selected by an international team, the color of the year draws upon a large body of consumer data across the fashion, design, culinary and auto industries.
It's actually "a very detached exercise," Pressman says. However, our reaction to it does not have to be.
Part of the joy of the annual reveal, Eiseman says is that it unleashes a "necessity to talk about color." In sparking that conversation another more subtle one emerges alongside it − a dialogue about how we feel our years went and what mood we want to represent this chapter at both a communal and individual level.
"Our reaction to color is very personal, isn't it?" Eiseman says. "It brings back childhood memories – our first tricycle (or) the time you got sick when you ate too much cotton candy.”
Whether the whole world nods its head, or cocks it to the side in confusion instead, over this morning's reveal, it will have sparked a debate with cultural implications that stretches beyond "mocha mousse."
Bringing color to life
For the first time, Pantone will also bring its color choice to in real-world installations. In major cities like New York, Shanghai and Mumbai, Mocha Mousse will come to life.The first such installation will be at the London Eye. The tourist attracting in the heart of the city will light up the skyline in the shade Mocha Mousse.
Pantone also works with commercial partners for tactile applications of the color of the year. Post-it, for example, will offer sticky notes in a range of hues inspired by Mocha Mouse, and online retailer Society 6 will offer art inspired by the color palette.