Color Me Confused

Well, the  votes have been counted and the decision has been made, and if you didn't vote, then you have given up the chance, indeed the right, to grouse about the selection.  No matter how you wanted the election to come out, we will all live with the decision that Marsala is the color of the year for 2015, a year that has not even begun.

And none of us has ever heard of Marsala, outside of Veal Marsala, and Louie Marsala, the guy who lived down the street from your grandmother and drove a green Buick with fender skirts.

There is a group of people called Pantone, and they are "the authority on color, provider of color systems and leading technology for accurate communication of color,"  according to Wikipedia, and, probably, themselves. We need this in our lives, people to say, "Oh no, that's not a beige Ford Pinto, that color is "Chamois Tan."   That is an actual sentence once said to me by someone I used to talk with.

As a youth, I remember getting the big 64-pack of Crayola Crayons, and using the "burnt sienna" down to its little brown nub. And while I was in school, we learned the colors of the spectrum from Mr. Roy G. Biv: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

And that would be quite enough colors and names for colors for most of us, but the good people at Pantone will be glad to help. Last year's, or should we say, "2014's" Color Of The Year was Radiant Orchid.  And I have several Tshirts and a hoodie, none of them in that color.


Pantone takes those 7 colors and breaks them into 2100 colors, each with its own number, meaning that you can't tell your printer that you want your logo to be "orange" in the brochure for your new delicatessen. At left are the choices, and you can have your choice, but please be specific!  There is a world of difference between Pumpkin Orange(Pantone 158) and Goldfish Orange (Pantone 166), especially when it comes to pie.

So here, for your shirt and dress-picking pleasure, we proudly unveil to you, your Pantone Color Of The Year.  Ladies and Gentlemen, Marsala!  Wear it in good health - you know, until you're "in the pink"! (Pantone 691-U)