The Search for Our Missing Colors

Each year, a group of experts at Pantone, the company best known for its exacting color-matching system, chooses and promotes a Color of the Year that aims to set the world’s fashion agenda—“a color snapshot of what we see taking place in our culture that serves as an expression of a mood and an attitude,” their Web site proclaims. In 2013, for instance, the company chose Pantone No. 17-5641, a bright-green hue that they labelled Emerald. (This year they picked two: Rose Quartz, No. 13-1520, and Serenity, No. 15-3919.) The Web site also offered examples of how Emerald could spruce up your personal style and home décor, and it advertised Emerald coffee mugs and iPhone cases. The selections were covered in countless online and television news outlets.