For colors rather than going with common linguistic terms you should identify hues from oklab. Using pictures you have the problem that inferring brightness is hard because it's so dependent on lighting, and because the pictures are still in sRGB the saturation is garbage and not even vaguely representing the highly saturated colors which often happen in fashion. The red-green part of the spectrum is represented okay, as is very narrowly as specific shade of blue, but basically everything from true green to purple going the long way looks extremely faded on computer screens to this day.
I laughed out loud when the day I read your excellent post, Benjamin Moore chose a Gray(!) as color of the year for 2026 (https://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-colors/color-of-the-year-2026 ) I am keeping a close eye for Pantone's choice in Nov/Dec. I build a remote roadside Free Library in Northern California - and I intend to paint it the "Color of the Year" each year - and now I have your input to consider - which is fun.
i like that you emphasize not running away from the problems of the world. We've got to keep hope alive, yes, but we've also got to keep fighting. Delightful color of the year, i hope 2026 is good to all of us :)
Great read! I agree with your pick for color of the year. Ive see a lot of buttery yellow inspired pieces lately including the Nike x Jacquemus moon shoe.
Yellow, and pastel yellow at that, is an interesting pick for other reasons: that's about as close as you would get in fashion to the infamous ChatGPT-4o sepia-yellow bias. If you've noticed suddenly seeing a lot of cat-urine yellow images on Substack or LinkedIn or Twitter, that's why. I can't help but wonder if that's related here. Biases in ideation or mocking up? Just generally primed for yellow?
For colors rather than going with common linguistic terms you should identify hues from oklab. Using pictures you have the problem that inferring brightness is hard because it's so dependent on lighting, and because the pictures are still in sRGB the saturation is garbage and not even vaguely representing the highly saturated colors which often happen in fashion. The red-green part of the spectrum is represented okay, as is very narrowly as specific shade of blue, but basically everything from true green to purple going the long way looks extremely faded on computer screens to this day.
I laughed out loud when the day I read your excellent post, Benjamin Moore chose a Gray(!) as color of the year for 2026 (https://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-colors/color-of-the-year-2026 ) I am keeping a close eye for Pantone's choice in Nov/Dec. I build a remote roadside Free Library in Northern California - and I intend to paint it the "Color of the Year" each year - and now I have your input to consider - which is fun.
Fantastic! So much work went into this. Thank you.
i like that you emphasize not running away from the problems of the world. We've got to keep hope alive, yes, but we've also got to keep fighting. Delightful color of the year, i hope 2026 is good to all of us :)
Amazing job! Thank you!
Another example of this being the color of the season
https://substack.com/@chrisdanton/note/c-166764331?r=f8id0
Great read! I agree with your pick for color of the year. Ive see a lot of buttery yellow inspired pieces lately including the Nike x Jacquemus moon shoe.
Yellow, and pastel yellow at that, is an interesting pick for other reasons: that's about as close as you would get in fashion to the infamous ChatGPT-4o sepia-yellow bias. If you've noticed suddenly seeing a lot of cat-urine yellow images on Substack or LinkedIn or Twitter, that's why. I can't help but wonder if that's related here. Biases in ideation or mocking up? Just generally primed for yellow?