Pantone and "a win for quiet luxury"

The insidious blah-ness of beige.

Pantone has been announcing its Colour of the Year since 1999, which somehow feels just right. 1999 is exactly the year that we as a country were feeling rich and optimistic enough to think about interior design as a middle-class hobby, rather than an aspiration. And the 2000 Colour of the Year—Cerulean Blue—looks like the most popular eyeshadow of the Willennium, even if it doesn’t look like I or Miranda Priestley would call cerulean (I would call it powder blue). Since then, the colours tend to swing between “passionate” and “calming.” I particularly love that 2006’s Sand Dollar was “considered to express concerns about the 2006 economy,” while 2008’s Blue Iris “satisfie[d] the need for reassurance in a complex world,” and 2009’s Mimosa saw the need for “optimism…in a time of economic uncertainty and political change.” Pantone wants you to know that they know the times have been turbulent.

With all that in mind, here’s Pantone’s description for 2025’s Colour of the Year, Mocha Mousse:

A warming rich brown, Mocha Mousse is a sophisticated, nurturing shade that challenges perceptions of the colour brown from being humble and grounded to more aspirational and luxe. Its name makes a nod to the delectable quality of cacao, chocolate, and coffee, thus appealing to a desire for comfort.

And here is my description:

that’s shit from a butt.

I really want to focus in on that “aspiration and luxe” descriptor here. The Washington Post called this Colour of the Year “a win for quiet luxury,” which makes sense to the terminally online fashion girlies like me and possibly nobody else. “Quiet luxury” is just the latest iteration of trying to look expensive. It’s characterized by minimalist silhouettes in beiges, creams, and taupes. Its fans will use words like “timeless,” “understated,” and “elegant.” It’s the costume design of a Nancy Meyers film, or Natasha from Sex and the City. It eschews big, noticeable logos in favour of “if you have to ask” branding—the girls that get it, get it. Most importantly, quiet luxury is meant to signal to rich people that you too are rich, sophisticated, and in the know.

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To call the language surrounding quiet luxury “class-coded” would be redundant; class signaling is the entire point. Acolytes will also describe the opposite of quiet luxury as “tacky.” Big and/or ostentatious logos are gauche, very “new money.” You want to avoid clothes that are “too” tight or baggy, bright colours, and animal print. (All the things I live in, essentially.) That’s the “aspirational and luxe” that Pantone is talking about. In your elegantly oversized $50 Quince cashmere crewneck, you can taste the luxurious life. The wealthy will recognize you as one of their own, if not by your un-luxurious bank account, then at least by your high-class taste. A new cashmere sweater shouldn’t cost $50—and if it does, that’s coming at the great expense of someone much poorer than you—but these are class aspirations we’re talking about!

So, not class-coded so much as class-explicit. But definitely thin-coded (what counts as too tight or baggy depends a lot on the size and shape of the body wearing the clothes), and definitely racially coded (the stereotypical wearer of flashy logos, bright colours, and animal print being Black or brown).

So much Gwyneth. So much Shiv.

And look: I absolutely get the appeal. I have a couple of cream-coloured loungwear sets from Skims, one of the worst perpetrators of the Great Beige-ening of the 2020s. I love the look of cream-coloured loungewear in general. When I bought those sets, I was shopping for a version of myself whose food containers aren’t all stained with tomato stew and turmeric, and who doesn’t have to scoop two litter boxes every day.¹ Alas, that version of me doesn’t and can’t exist; and even if she could, buying beige isn’t what would make her possible. Despite the fervent wishes of my Taurus placements, you can’t reverse engineer a life of luxury. Consumerism is set up to make you believe it’s possible, but capitalism is set up to make sure that it isn’t.

RIP Mr. Big, you would have hated the 2020s fr

Cloaking your home and body in beige and mocha mousse won’t make the wealthy accept you into their ranks. They are not in solidarity with you. They don’t want to be in solidarity with you. So why are you aspiring to be in solidarity with them? Our solidarity should be with the people making the $50 cashmere sweater and the North Face X Skims collaboration.

And I do have to disagree with the Washington Post on this one. (And on this one…) I don’t know if quiet luxury in its current iteration has very long legs. Billionaires are starting to dress like hypebeasts to seem less threatening. Even the phrase “quiet luxury” is trending down. What it means to look “expensive” might be due for yet another rebrand.

1. Speaking of shit from a butt lol