The official colors of 2016 could help redefine gender

Every December, Pantone selects a Color of the Year.

The company's latest selection is actually a pair of colors: Serenity and Rose Quartz, muted shades of blue and pink, respectively.

"Having both a pale shade of blue and pink together is significant," says Debbie Millman, head of the branding department at the School of Visual Arts and the author of "Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits." 

"We're now living in a day and age where gender fluidity and what it means to be 'feminine' and 'masculine' have not only evolved," she adds. "They have been turned upside down and inside out."

As Vice President of Consumer Licensing Lisa Herbert told Business Insider in 2014, Pantone's power as a taste-maker is self-fulfilling. Each year the company predicts which colors will become popular among shoppers, and businesses make it so, driving sales precisely as Pantone foretold.

But landing on two colors instead of just one is uncharted territory for Pantone, which started the Color of the Year tradition in 2000 with Cerulean Blue. The company that has set the gold-standard for how we talk about color, basically since the middle of the 20th century, could now be focusing its attention on social issues.

Millman expects to see the new colors pop up in fashion, home decor, and maybe even automobiles, whose color schemes "have traditionally trended towards more masculine of center," she says.

"In a time when there is still quite a bit of prejudice and violence against any non-hetero-normative presentation," Millman explains, "Pantone's embrace of this spectrum not only supports this cultural evolution, it also makes it trendy."

The process that goes into determining Pantone's trends is an arduous one.

A committee of color experts travels the globe looking for the colors that are just starting to get big in fashion and art. Once they make their decision, representatives bring the colors in secrecy to the partner companies that have exclusive access.

"Globally, we are experiencing gender blur as it relates to fashion," Pantone said in a statement, "which has in turn impacted color trends throughout all other areas of design."

Around the world, the same color schemes have been associated with boys and girls, males and female, for decades. Over the coming years, those walls could come crumbling down — or at least get a fresh coat of paint.

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