{"id":425772,"date":"2025-12-05T05:32:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T05:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/425772\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T05:32:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T05:32:17","slug":"pantones-2026-color-of-the-year-a-shade-of-white-is-tone-deaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/425772\/","title":{"rendered":"Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year, a Shade of White, Is Tone Deaf"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAt a time when the political significance of whiteness has been at the center of debates across United States and Europe, Pantone<\/a> has named \u201cCloud Dancer,\u201d a shade of white, as its 2026 Color the Year.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Pantone\u2019s gushy press release about the hue, Cloud Dancer is \u201ca billowy white imbued with a feeling of serenity\u201d and \u201ca symbol of calming influence in a frenetic society rediscovering the value of measured consideration and quiet reflection\u201d\u2014heavy stuff, indeed.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo heavy, in fact, that you might forget that white is not technically a color. \u201cIn a technical sense, black and white are not colors, they\u2019re shades,\u201d Adobe says on its website. And it isn\u2019t just Adobe: the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines white as \u201cfree from color.\u201d But enough from the world\u2019s most widely consulted English-language dictionary.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Color<\/p>\n

\n\tHere is Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, explaining why Cloud Dancer is the 2026 Pantone Color of the Year in a statement issued by Pantone: \u201cAt this time of transformation, when we are reimagining our future and our place in the world, PANTONE 11-4201 Cloud Dancer is a discrete white hue offering a promise of clarity. The cacophony that surrounds us has become overwhelming, making it harder to hear the voices of our inner selves. A conscious statement of simplification, Cloud Dancer enhances our focus, providing release from the distraction of external influences.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMight those external influences include the conservative turn in the US and parts of Europe; the wars in Sudan, Ukraine, and Gaza; and the widespread fears of censorship? Pantone, a taste-making company whose pronouncements about color influence artists, graphic designers, and more, does not say in its release, which essentially implies that Cloud Dancer reigns supreme above all the other hues. I don\u2019t think the company means for its Color of the Year to become another flashpoint in the ongoing discussion around white supremacy with its 2026 Color of the Year, of course, though the evasiveness seems to be part of the point here.<\/p>\n

\n\tCertainly, Pantone has gone a less political route. In its article about Cloud Dancer today, Vogue wrote<\/a> that white \u201cdoes not disturb, does not rock the boat.\u201d Eiseman pointed out to Vogue that Cloud Dancer is \u201cnot a stark white, it\u2019s specifically a natural shade of white,\u201d supposedly in proof that this tone is not so aggressive. Laurie Pressman, vice president of the Pantone Color Institute, moreover said the choice was about \u201cencouraging you to use your imagination and bring this [color] in a way that suits who you are and how you want others to see you and how you want to feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis suggests whiteness as a baseline\u2014the color, if it is indeed a color, to which everyone must compare themselves. And it is certainly a choice at a time when the US has a President who, in 2020, reposted a tweet from a conservative publication that read, \u201cSorry liberals! How to be Anti-White 101 is permanently cancelled!\u201d In his second term, he\u2019s made good on that promise, calling for an end to government-funded DEI programs and denouncing a Smithsonian museum whose wall texts included a mention of \u201cWhite culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps it is too much to beg Pantone to take things a little more seriously. In 2025, Pantone went with Mocha Mousse, a brown shade that tickles \u201cour desire for comfort\u201d because of its associations with chocolate and coffee. Two years earlier, during a time of Barbiecore, Pantone picked a shade of pinkish shade (technically, a magenta) because it was \u201cbrave and fearless.\u201d But in an era of high stakes and higher tension, one wishes Pantone went in a more sensitive direction.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlready, some have taken notice. Vanessa Friedman, the New York Times\u2019s fashion correspondent, said<\/a> the choice made \u201cless salubrious associations also leap to my mind.\u201d Those associations were shaken off by Pressman, who told the Washington Post<\/a>, \u201cSkin tones did not factor into this at all.\u201d That\u2019s a remark that may itself be telling, given that it implies a kind of racial colorblindness that is odd, coming from an entity that bills itself as the \u201cleading source of color expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPantone\u2019s announcement brought back memories of an art exhibition I saw in 2018 at the Kitchen in New York: \u201cOn Whiteness<\/a>,\u201d curated in collaboration with the Claudia Rankine\u2013founded Racial Imaginary Institute. That show took as its jumping-off point a 2007 Sara Ahmed essay in which she asked: \u201cIf whiteness gains currency by being unnoticed, then what does it mean to notice whiteness?\u201d Among the artists in the exhibition was Charlotte Lagarde, whose 2018 project Colonial White, in which the artist provided participants with a paint chip for a tone labeled Colonial White and asked them to send back a picture comparing the chip to sights seen in the wild. Images of napkins, coffee shops, and the US Capitol came back to her<\/a>, continuing what the artist has called a \u201cconversation about structural racism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat might happen if one repeated Lagarde\u2019s project with Cloud Dancer? I encourage someone to try, and to keep her conversation going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a time when the political significance of whiteness has been at the center of debates across United…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":425773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,198251,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-425772","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-pantone","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115665328606169971","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}