Remember the gold, olive, and orange of the 70's? It took 30 years for variations of those colors to circulate back into our palettes without people running, screaming in the other direction. Or take mauve, turquoise and grey from the 80's. I bet we'll see some of that coming back...eventually. The colors in of themselves aren't terrible, it's their over-use that seals their doom.
My take on trends is this: manufacturers like them because they help push a product by giving it a new life. You might already have 2 perfectly good carrot peelers in your kitchen. But now, you can have one in this fantastic new shade of purple! Trends add a sense of timeliness to things. With styles coming and going as quickly as they do, the fashion industry is highly suceptible to the folies of color trends.
"Because consumer tastes and values are under a variety of influences — economic, environmental, global — anointing one color isn’t all that meaningful," the article argues.
I once attended a talk given to a room full of interior designers by a color forecaster. The biggest question in the room was, "What's the hot new color?", followed closely by "Is green the new black?"
I shy away from trends, instead, preferring to take each product, interior, or brand on a case by case basis. After all, how can any one limited palette of colors solve every solution? The biggest issue I see lately is how companies will learn to define themselves as "green" in creative ways that use something other than the color green to denote their environmental consciousness. Eventually, the backlash of that over-use will kill the effectiveness of their approach.What are your thoughts on this? Do you agree or disagree? I'd love to know what you think!