COLOURS
A Perception of Reality or Fashion’s Nature?
Are colours real? Do colours actually exist, or are mere individual
perceptions of light waves? Although they’re not real in a physi-
cal, 3-dimensional way, it’s very difficult to argue their existence.
In fact, we, as individuals, tend to perceive colours in rather dif-
ferent ways due to the nature of our brain activity and percep-
tion. For example, the dress challenge. Remember that striped
black and blue / gold and white social media challenge? That’s
probably the best example we could think regarding the nature
of the unique way people see colour. The real question is, does
this have any significant impact on the fashion industry?
Some people see colours lighter than other, some darker, or even
in different other shades. There’s an old Portuguese saying ‘’Á
noite todos os gatos são pardos’’, which translates to something
like ‘’At night, every cat is black’’, meaning that when is dark,
things are harder to tell apart. Colours change when the light
change, as the width of the light waves enlarges or shortens,
changing the deepness of the shade. That’s why we have several
different outfits for the various stages of the day. We have cock-
tail dresses, we have working outfits, we have brunch outfits,
we have rainy days outfits, we have it all. Even the seasons have
completely different tones. The same ones we wear in Spring/
Summer aren’t the same ones we use in Fall/Winter. The impor-
tance of colour in fashion is quite inexplicable. One cannot exist
without the other. Fashion without colour is like a ship without
the captain. It simply doesn’t work.
The importance of colour in fashion is so big, so deep and so in-
tricate that they dictate what to wear. As usual, Pantone, based
on the New York Fashion Week, forecasted the colours that will
be massive trends in upcoming Spring/Summer. By analyzing
the presenting designers’ choices, the Colour Institute can indeed
predict the colours that will be trending for the upcoming sea-
sons. Well, according to the grand masters of colour, we’ll have
some party-worthy comebacks that will most certainly worm
up the season.
TROPICAL TONES
This will be a major trend in 2019. The good thing about
trends is that they come and go, and come again. This is the
case for the tropical hues. They were a major trend in the
previous year, and they’ll make a huge comeback thanks to
shades such as Pink Peacock, Living Coral and Mango Mojito.
