Will White Be the 2026 Color of the Year?

Media racist anti-white animus is on display again in the fashion pages.

Remember just 16 months ago when Kamala Harris was going to be elected President because her campaign had adopted a really ugly shade of green? (Also, a low-resolution typeface?) From The Guardian:

‘Kamala IS brat’: Harris campaign goes lime-green to embrace the meme of the summer

Charli xcx’s album has taken pop culture by storm. Now the vice-president is joining the party

Alaina Demopoulos

Tue 23 Jul 2024 13.43 EDT

After Kamala Harris announced her bid for president, she reportedly raised a record-breaking $81m donations in just a day – but her most culturally powerful endorsement may have come from a single tweet.

As nearly all Democrats rallied behind the vice-president offering support in tweets and TV interviews, a perhaps unlikely voice weighed in: the British pop singer Charli xcx, who tweeted, “kamala IS brat.” …

Perhaps most importantly, Charli chose a neon lime backdrop for her album cover, one that’s sickeningly sweet, representing both the highs of a long night out and the impending crash of a hangover. …

Soon after receiving Charli’s apparent approval, the Harris campaign’s official Twitter page (@kamalahq) changed its backdrop to brat green.

Well, now … From the New York Times:

Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year Is ‘Cloud Dancer’

A shade of white will be the defining color of the next year. Get those stain-removing pens ready.

By The Styles Desk

Dec. 4, 2025

Pantone, the self-styled color experts, have been predicting a “color of the year” since 1999.

Pantone is a New Jersey “color standardization” company that markets the Pantone Color Matching System that provides names and numbers for 2,161 colors. (For example, the giant Los Angeles Dodgers traveling fan club that invades other ballparks calls itself Pantone 294 after the “Dodger Blue” color used in Dodger baseball caps.)

As an annual publicity stunt, Pantone announces what it foresees to be next year’s most fashionable color.

This usually gets a lot of publicity at the time each year, but I have no idea if anybody has ever calculated how accurate Pantone’s predictions turn out to be.

However, I don’t doubt that some people can forecast fashion trends. Meryl Streep’s performance as the Anna Wintour Vogue editor character in The Devil Wears Prada was pretty persuasive that some discerning people do work awfully hard to stay on top of which way the winds of fashion are blowing:

Whether the Pantone seers can is of course another question. If other people in aesthetic industries assume that Pantone’s confident tone indicates actual insight, then this could well be.

On the other hand, over my many years of reading the news, I’ve seen many articles about what Pantone is predicting for next year. (Pantone’s press releases are awfully easy to turn into copy.) I can’t recall, however, ever seeing an article headlined: “Last Year’s Pantone Color Prediction Proves On the Money Once Again” or “Pantone Was Colorblind Last Year.” Most journalism is more interested in confident predictions of the future than in assessing who got the past right, but fashion journalism is exceptionally credulous.

Their pick for what everyone will be wearing, wanting, eating and otherwise consuming in 2026:

Paywall here.