Pantone Color of the Year 2010: Turquoise

Pantone, the company which business is to know everything there is to know about colors, has just unveiled Color of the Year for 2010 (drumroll, please): turquoise!

"Turquoise is universally appealing. It puts everyone in the same state of mind — on vacation," says Jane Schoenborn, design director at Lilly Pulitzer. "Turquoise for us is a really big color. A lot of times it’s transporting, whether you’re actually going to a resort destination or not."

Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, says there was no runner-up to turquoise in her mind because people crave escapism and freshness after a tough year. The shade is on the cusp of blue and green, which makes it both inviting and serene — characteristics associated with blues — and invigorating and luminous, which comes from green, she says.

"Transporting" was a word many used for turquoise, a shade that takes designer Tommy Hilfiger to the beach, especially the Caribbean, St. Tropez, France, or Southern California, which served as the inspiration for his newest collection. In jewelry, he thinks of the American Southwest, or Central or South America.

Well, that’s better than the Color of the Year 2009, which was Mimosa Yellow: Link | Official Pantone web page about the announcement