Purple is 2018's 'color of optimism'

The Pantone Color Institute says that whatever the world needs next year will come in the deep purple hue of “Ultra Violet,” its color of the year that it unveiled on Thursday.

The color was not chosen because it was regal, although it resembled a majestic shade. It was chosen to evoke a counterculture flair, a grab for originality, ingenuity and visionary thinking, said Pantone Vice President Laurie Pressman. “We are living in complex times,” she said. “We’re seeing the fear of going forward and how people are reacting to that fear.”

Pressman was not keen on discussing politics. The color, she said — played out in home design, industrial spaces and products, fashion, art and food — reflected the idea of living not inside the box or outside the box, but with no box at all. 

She called the color “that complexity, that marriage, between the passionate red violets and the strong indigo purples.”

Ultra Violet leaned more to blue than red and that, Pressman said. 

“It speaks to thoughtfulness, a mystical quality, a spiritual quality,” she said. “There’s still a passionate heat from enough red undertones, and a touch of periwinkle, but it’s really the cool that prevails.”

The 2018 color of the year follows this year’s “Greenery,” a grassy fresh, revitalizing shade that reflected new beginnings.on Thursday

The choice of purple — a color that recalls the pop singer Prince and the glam rock of David Bowie — spoke of rebellion, finding new ways to interpret our lives and surroundings, Pressman said. It also spoke to the pleasing calm of Provence and its purple flower fields.

“I see this as very much an optimistic color, an empowering color,” she said.