Pantone - Pantone LLC (PDF)

Contents
Introduction
1990s
Edwardian Affairs
Arts and Crafts
Jewel Tones
The Charm of Iridescence
Firsts for Women
Poiret Revolution
The Fauves
1910s
Theatrics
Parrish Blues

Wiener Werkstätte
Youthful Pastimes
Cubism
World War I
Coming Home
1920s
Art Deco
Tutmania
Cocktails and Laughter
Destinations
The Leyendecker Man
Bauhaus
Modern Pleasures
A Rose Is a Rose
1930s

Deco Architecture
Illusions
Fantastic Plastic
Diversions
Parks and Recreation
Roseville
The Wizard of Oz
The World of Tomorrow
1940s
Fantasia
Edward Hopper
World War II
Carefree and Casual
The American Dream

Hit Parade
Film Noir
La Mode
1950s
Happy at Home
Teen Angels
Mid-Century Modernists
Movie Goddesses
Cosmetic Superstars
Coast-to-Coast Woolens
Fantasyland
Abstract Expressionists
1960s
Passage to India
A Different Space

Kensington and Carnaby
Black Is Beautiful
Psychedelia
Sesame Street
Warhol
PANTONE
1970s
Colors and Coordinates
Avocado and Harvest Gold
Feathers and Leathers
Provence
Land Art
The Day the World Turned DayGlo

Night Life
Hotel California
1980s
Memphis, Michael, and Philippe
To the Manor Born
Urban Cowboys
Signs and Symbols
Miami Vice
Majorelle and Morocco
Santa Fe
Personal Colors
Japonais
1990s
Grunge and Graffiti
It’s a Good Thing

The Nature of Zen
Out of Africa
Latin Flavors
Chic over Geek
Anime
Conspicuous Consumption
Future Forecasts
Endnotes
Bibliography
Image Credits
Index
Acknowledgments
Copyright

Introduction
We see color with everything we are.
What starts as a signal passing along the
optic nerve quickly develops into an
emotional, social, and spiritual
phenomenon that carries many layers of
vivid meaning. Light with a wavelength
of 650 nanometers or so is seen as red.
But it is experienced as warmth or
danger, romance or revolution, heroism
or evil, depending on the cultural and
personal matrix in which it appears.
Crimson, scarlet, and cerise suggest
nuances of feeling and reaction that

nanometers cannot quantify. And what
red can express is different from the
symbolic potential of greens and blues.
Or yellows and oranges. The resonance
of any shade across the spectrum shifts
and develops according to the context in
which it appears.
The context within which color
unfurls its rainbow of symbolism and
emotion is history itself. Historians look
back in time to explain the intricacies of
people and their societies— the forces
that make crimson an ancient color of
authority and power, scarlet a badge of
sin, and cerise the essence of feminine
seduction. And the forces that, over time,

may well exchange these associations
for others. The evolution of color is
fascinating to watch. PANTONE The
20th Century in Color explores a
hundred years of such evolution.
At more than a decade’s distance,
we are now just far away enough to try
to perceive the era as a whole. We can
look through the lens of history at both
the first and last decades (and all the
decades in between) and discuss with
some objectivity what best expressed the
creative, cultural, and social influences
of the day—or in some cases what
helped create them.
The last century was a remarkably

significant time for color. Revolutionary
changes occurred in every visual
discipline, with rules being broken and
new ones set in their place at every turn.
New materials became available as new
technologies transformed (or indeed
invented) everything from paints to
plastics to powder coatings, and
changed the nature of making with new
manufacturing processes. The nearalchemy of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s
iridescent glazes, Bakelite’s emulation
of expensive natural materials, and the
Day-Glo fluorescents of the latter part of
the century all point to technology’s role
in propelling twentieth-century arts and

design into new creative territory.
For most of the century, technology
simply supported the advancement of the
creative disciplines with new materials,
but by the end of the century, technology
had become so deeply embedded in
design that computers themselves
became design objects and generators of
color palettes. Software written to help
designers began to influence what was
created, and once impossible projects
like Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum
in Bilbao became realities. Apple
Computer’s 1998 iMac, which
incorporated bright translucent plastics
into its outer shell, was another link

between color and technology. In many
ways, our book traces the century’s
continuum from handcraft to computer.
And finally, for those of us
fascinated by color—we who routinely
try to name the colors found in any given
sunset or brilliant autumn leaf, every
swatch of paint or complex fabric—how
could we not try to understand, in color
terms, the century in which most of us
were born and acquired our own lexicon
of color symbols? We can trace, with
color, some of the most important social
changes of that century. For example,
women started the twentieth century
wearing the pastels and earnest neutrals

that outfitted them for a set of defined
and constraining social roles. By the
’80s, they were looking for personal,
bespoke colors that brought out their
individual potential.
Our changing feelings about war
found expression in color, too. The
chivalrous and patriotic palette at the
outbreak of World War I gave way to
disillusionment with what war could
achieve and dismay at its aftermath.
World War II’s more somber and dutiful
mood often was leavened by a bit of
lighthearted comedy, but the idealism of
the late teens is absent… and reflected
in the colors of the Forties.

The change across the century in
aesthetics is also impressive. The
seminal color influences of Tiffany,
Fabergé, and Paul Poiret still linger as
visual creatives revisit their work. But
late-century talents Robert
Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Keith
Haring, and Karim Rashid offer up new
visions of color, each of which captures
something essential about the world in
which they operated.
Because color is such a
fundamental element in the human
experience, a book about color ends up
being a book about human experience
itself. Part textbook and part fairy tale,

part biography and part novel, our
history of color is designed to start each
reader on his or her personal and
creative exploration of color.
Even for two self-confessed color
fanatics, looking at a hundred years of
color presents some important
challenges, the greatest of which has to
do with the inherently fugitive nature of
color. We have based our discussion on
objects from each decade of the
twentieth century whose colors tell a
story about the emotions and aspirations
of their creators and their users, and the
societies they lived in. But since the
color of nearly every object changes as

it ages, arriving at an accurate color
specification is not easy.
When we describe the shade of red
in an important Fauve painting as
PANTONE Pompeian Red, have we
chosen the red of the paint on the
painter’s palette? Or the red as it looked
wet on the canvas when the painting was
finished? Or the red of the freshly cured
painting’s first day on a gallery wall? Or
the red as it appears in the painting’s
eventual museum home? As years pass,
materials mature into slightly different
color values.
Since each gently different red was
“accurate” at one time, which red do we

choose in a history of color? Lacking a
time machine for convenient travel back
to early twentieth-century Paris, we
generally chose color values as they
appear today.
But even that has its challenges. In
addition to the almost inevitable shifting
over time of an object’s colors, shifts
come from other sources, too. Let’s
again use our Fauve painting as an
example. At a certain point in the
painting’s career as a museum artifact, it
will have been photographed and
catalogued so that a record of the
museum’s collection is available to
administrators as well as art historians.

Despite all the best efforts of the
photographer, the photograph will never
exactly convey the colors of the actual
painting. Something will shift. So now
there are two ways to perceive the
painting, each with its own slightly
different color values: a viewing of the
actual painting, and a viewing of the
photograph of the painting.
Perhaps at some point, an art
historian will want to include the
painting in a book on the Fauve
movement. The museum’s photograph
will be reproduced by the book’s printer
and, once again, no matter how carefully
the process is managed, some color

shifts will occur. So now there will be
three ways to perceive the painting—or
even more if the colors shift subtly
across the print run of the book. Or
infinitely more if images of the painting
achieve an online presence, because
every computer screen will display a
slightly different color matrix.
In doing our best to sift through the
various pitfalls of specifying a color, we
have referred to actual paintings,
products, textiles, and fashion wherever
possible. Please be patient with any
discrepancies in color identification you
might uncover as you explore the book:
we did our best to negotiate these

dangerous territories.
Another challenge comes from the
vast scope of the project. Because color
evolves in a unique way in every culture
across the globe, tracing color across all
cultures in the twentieth century would
be not a book project, but a lifetime’s
work. Perhaps even more than one
lifetime and one set of co-authors would
be required! As a result, our account of
color in the twentieth century is
admittedly U.S.–centric. Both co-authors
are American, and our cultural lens has
certainly shaped the focus of the book.
However, other influences are an
important part of our message, and

readers from other countries will
certainly find interest in the book.
Europe’s presence here is undeniable—
particularly at the beginning, but also
throughout the century. Asia, Africa, and
Latin America also play roles in the
book, particularly in the second half of
the century, when a hunger for new and
diverse cultural references infused many
creative efforts.
Even after admitting that our
choices are affected by our own cultural
formation, the challenge of breadth still
remains. The single greatest challenge of
putting the book together came from the
necessity to edit down a century of

culture and creativity into, on the
average, eight color palettes per decade,
each of which is captured in a handful of
images and approximately eight colors.
Winnowing potential content into the
final choices for each decade was many
times downright painful, particularly as
we tried to balance popular culture’s
broad trends with the innovations of
individuals.
Who was left behind? Jack Lenor
Larsen, whose brilliant career as a
textile designer spanned several decades
and touched every corner of the globe.
Also the elegant exuberance of Emilio
Pucci, Jamie Drake, and Tricia Guild,

the chic shock of Missoni yarn colors,
the intriguing combinations of secondary
and tertiary colors of Sherri Donghia’s
textile work… and a daunting list of
talented painters; fashion, industrial,
graphic, and interior designers;
architects; master artisans;
photographers, film directors, and the
like. Please forgive us for the terribly
tough choices made out of necessity
rather than lack of appreciation.
We hope that the book is useful to
educators, designers, and visual artists
of all kinds. The eighty color palettes
chosen to represent the twentieth century
can serve anyone interested in informing

their work or their teaching with
historical perspective. But the careful
balance of values makes each palette
usable in its own right. For example, the
interaction between the complex colors
of the Future Forecasts palette of the
1990s is still relevant today: the layered
neutral Lark vibrates gently against its
green-inflected sister color Oasis, and
takes structure from Midnight Navy and
Marron. Rust and Ketchup take the
central values of the palette in one lively
direction, and Tourmaline and Lyons
Blue in another more contemplative
direction. Looking closely at earlier
palettes such as Illusions of the 1930s

and Edwardian Affairs of the 1900s
reveals similarly intriguing color
relationships, all ready to be adapted
and tweaked by readers to suit their own
purposes.
We also invite readers to linger
over the palettes and the imagery that
supports them to draw historic parallels.
No color (or palette) ever disappears
from the face of the earth forever, and it
is fascinating to see revivals and
transformations unfold. Is the bling of the
1990s as described in the Conspicuous
Consumption palette related to the
Fabergé-inspired Jewel Tones palette
from the 1900s? We think so: the urge to

declare one’s status in precious (or at
least precious-looking) materials is a
hallmark of the twentieth century. And
what about the surprising affinities
between the 1910s’ palette Theatrics
and 1980s’ Miami Vice? What would
the Ballets Russes’s genius designer
Leon Bakst have thought of Crockett and
Tubbs? He might have enjoyed the
similarities between his colors of
Mauvewood, Faded Rose, and Dazzling
Blue with the more recent palette of
Radiant Orchid, Lantana, and Deep
Ultramarine. Perhaps he would have
rolled up the sleeves of his jacket and
donned a lavender T-shirt.

While it is something of a cliché to
say that history is a tool for
understanding the future, the idea
represents an important way in which
this book can be useful. Tracing color
evolution from decade to decade
provides fascinating perspectives on
what may be next in our own time. Take
the memorable Avocado green of the
1970s, for example. Avocado (and its
kissing cousins Harvest Gold and Burnt
Orange) disappeared in the 1980s in a
wave of Santa Fe mauves and lavenders.
Both were meant to embrace colors from
the natural world…and thereby provide
a certain amount of psychic refuge from

the goings-on of the “unnatural” world.
But Avocado green was so overdone
and overused that designers fled all the
way across the color wheel to mauve for
fresh access to nature and the refuge it
promises. The 1980s’ ubiquity of mauve,
of course, also became a problem, and
alternatives had to be found in the ’90s
in the form of hushed Zen greens and
lively yellow-greens.
Observing such transitions invites
us to look at the overindulgences of our
own time, and what may follow as a
reaction. Just as most of our fellow
color fanatics will enjoy seeing the past
in glorious color, we think readers of

this book will also be intrigued by
looking forward into the future through a
well-informed lens of color.

1990s
The New Era
The year 1900 was, to some degree, also
the last year of the nineteenth century.
Paris’s Universal Exposition of that year
can be described as a catalogue of the
previous century’s most vibrant thinking
about art, craft, design, and technology
—and as a glimpse of changes to come.
Fifty million visitors came to experience
sumptuous Belle époque tastes (as well
as more modern offerings) as presented
by seventy-six thousand exhibitors from
forty-seven countries. The ideas and

colors they saw were as varied as the
exhibits.
Official French committees stocked
the fair’s fine arts pavilions with tasteful
still lifes and refined statues, while
independent exhibitors like Siegfried
Bing pushed into the future with his
Maison de l’Art Nouveau. Not content
with academic tastes, Bing was a
devotee first of Japonisme and then, as
the twentieth century drew closer, of Art
Nouveau. He promoted French talents
such as painter Edouard Vuillard, glass
artist émile Gallé, and sculptor Camille
Claudel, but he also championed
international innovators like Louis

Comfort Tiffany. Tiffany’s iridescent
Favrile glass blended gold hues with Art
Nouveau’s vivid take on natural
inspirations to create one of the
outstanding palettes of the decade.
Established tastemakers of the day
like fashion designer Jeanne Paquin
chaired various committees. As
president of the Fashion Section of the
Exhibition, she helped create an
atmosphere of luxury without excess,
and invention without vulgarity. In a
world where royal families still sat at
the top of well-defined social
hierarchies in most Old World countries,
a sense of propriety was to be

maintained in public places. Paquin’s
elaborately draped creations of lace and
pleats were modest and correct, but as
the pastel colors of Edwardian-era
women’s fashions suggest, propriety
was not without its gently seductive
side.
The influence of Old World
monarchies was not limited to propriety
or parties. Then as now, fashionable
royals wielded considerable influence
over public tastes. Tsar Nikolai II’s
patronage of Carl Fabergé created a
vogue for gifts and accessories crafted
of fine metals and gems, and finished
with enamel. René Lalique offered a

more innovative vocabulary of less
expensive materials—but with just as
much visual impact as his costlier rivals.
With such creativity emanating from the
world of jewelry, the deep tones of
precious materials emerged as an
influential color range.
Controversial ideas that would
later blossom into powerful influences
in the next century were present, too. For
example, women competed in the second
Olympic Games, which were held as
part of the Exposition. This new
development represented a step along
the way towards full rights for women in
all aspects of life. Early sportswear

developed to accommodate expanding
freedoms and embraced a palette that
expressed an unfussy and more liberated
approach to life.
While the Universal Exposition
suggested that technology was on the
rise, with its palaces devoted to
electricity and metallurgy and its
showcasing of the first movies with
sound and the first escalator, application
of modern technology in the visual realm
was not yet broad. The potential of
industrial technology to transform the
domestic environment had been explored
by C. F. A. Voysey, a proponent of
England’s Arts and Crafts movement.

But it took an American like Gustav
Stickley (in the years following the
Exhibition) to make an empire out of
streamlined Arts and Crafts design
combined with modern manufacturing
techniques. As Stickley was busy
perfecting his business, two of his
American contemporaries, brothers
Charles and Henry Greene, focused on
perfecting a new, refined, modern vision
for domestic life. Subsequent designers
and architects were highly influenced by
both the accessibility offered by mass
manufacturing and the idea that
residential life could be made more
beautiful for a larger number of families.

An Arts and Crafts palette emerges in
the first decade of the twentieth century
as a stable, earthy color range that
continues to be relevant today.
Other influential voices emerged in
the decade after the Exposition, as well.
A small group of European painters
briefly explored the wild use of
saturated, unnatural color—and were
labeled beasts for their efforts. But
history sees the Fauves, active as a
group only from 1905 to 1907, as the
first art revolutionaries of the twentieth
century. At about the same time, fashion
designer Paul Poiret was also exploring
a departure from tradition. He freed

women from the corset and re-imagined
fashion as the expression of
individuality and fantasy rather than a
straightjacket of conformity. His
inventive, flowing shapes and bold,
Orientalist color palette capture a
feeling just as revolutionary as the
Fauves.
In Poiret’s forms and the Fauves’
colors we see a departure from
nineteenth-century forms and ideas, and
hints of the allencompassing changes to
come.

Edwardian Affairs
King Edward VII reigned over the
United Kingdom. Nikolai II was
emperor and autocrat of all the Russias,
and Wilhelm II was German emperor
and king of Prussia. France’s Third
Republic had been declared, and the
luxury of the Belle époque infused the
arts and design of the Western world.
The politically stable, prosperous years
prior to World War I have been called
“the last good time of the upper
classes.”[1]
The life of the upper crust’s long
party was Edward VII himself. His easy

charm and love of fun fueled dozens of
affairs with beautiful women before and
after his marriage to Princess Alexandra
of Denmark—who seemed to accept her
husband’s roving eye. Edward loved
food, drink, foreign travel, and a good
late-night party. European society
followed his example. As historian
Virginia Cowles puts it, “Edwardian
society modeled itself to suit the King’s
personal demands. Everything was
larger than life size. There was an
avalanche of balls and dinners and
country house parties. More money was
spent on clothes, more food was
consumed, more horses were raced,

more infidelities were committed, more
birds were shot, more yachts were
commissioned, more late hours kept than
ever before.”[2]
Perhaps as a counterbalance to its
excesses, appropriateness rather than
ostentation was a criterion for
Edwardian style. Both Edward and
Alexandra expertly coordinated their
apparel and emphasized finesse over
extravagance. This was also the time
when the English country house was the
epitome of fine living. The penchant of
country house style for comfort and the
grounded pleasures of garden, hunt, and
horses, kept tastes of the day from being

too rarified.
White Swan, Gray Dawn, Jojoba,
Deauville Mauve, and Wild Rose
express the decorum required by
Edwardian standards, while Shale
Green, Prune, and Faded Rose recall the
pleasures of an Edwardian party.

Left: Queen Alexandra s ostrich feather
fan 1901
Right: Illustration A Summer
Toilette for a pattern in Fashions for
All 1909

Left: Cinq Heures chez le Couturier
Paquin 1906, Henri Gervex
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) White Swan 12-0000; Gray Dawn
14-4106; Jojoba 14-0935; Deauville Mauve 16-

1707; Wild Rose 16-1715; Shale Green 166116; Prune 19-2014; Faded Rose 18-1629

Arts and Crafts
The Arts and Crafts movement arose in
England in the 1880s, inspired by the
designs of William Morris and the
writings of John Ruskin. Both advocated
truth in materials and fine hand
craftsmanship, to which the Arts and
Crafts movement added an antimanufacturing philosophy and economic
populism. Aesthetically, Arts and Crafts
offered a simplification of pattern and
color that represented a departure from
Victorian ornamental excesses—and by
implication its confining social code.
C. F. A. Voysey, a leading Arts and

Crafts adherent, was known for the
restrained colors and pared-down
patterns of his wallpapers, fabrics, and
carpets. In his later career Voysey
departed from the handmade emphasis of
Arts and Crafts and relied heavily on
manufacturers to make and sell his
goods.
When Arts and Crafts reached the
United States at the turn of the century,
influential designers followed Voysey’s
footsteps. Gustav Stickley built his
signature slat-back furniture into an
empire of showrooms, catalogues,
production facilities, and even a
magazine called The Craftsman.

Without modern manufacturing, his
success would have been impossible.
Stickley’s example encouraged
American designers to advocate the
accessibility offered by modern
manufacturing. In the words of Frank
Lloyd Wright, machine-made furnishings
made it possible “for rich and poor alike
to enjoy beautiful surface treatments of
clean, strong forms.”[3] Arts and Crafts
in American hands became an attempt to
ennoble and improve domestic life in as
many homes as possible.
The palette of the Arts and Crafts
movement of the first decade of the
twentieth century includes a range of

complex, earthy tones, all of which
support the idea of home as noble
refuge. The rich neutrals of Pine Bark,
Beech, Antique White, and Cream Tan
form a restful base for residential
interiors. Leather Brown, Autumn Leaf,
Brittany Blue, and Loden Green refer
directly to nature—the Arts and Crafts
movement’s most frequent source of
inspiration.

Left: Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
bound 1905, binding by Frederick Kranz
Right: Linen press 1904, Byrdcliffe Arts
and Crafts Colony

Left: Chandelier 1907 1909, Greene and
Greene, Pasadena, California
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) Pine Bark 17-1410; Beech 191618; Antique White 11-0105; Cream Tan
13-1108; Leather Brown 18-1142; Autumn
Leaf 17-1347; Brittany Blue 18-5610;
Loden Green 18-0422

Jewel Tones
The years prior to World War I saw
coronation ceremonies in Norway,
England, Denmark, Spain, Italy,
Portugal, and Belgium— not to mention
the Russian and Dutch coronations just
before the century began. The grandest
of these generated a wave of
commissions to jewelers throughout
Europe. The Parisian firm of Cartier, for
example, shot into international
prominence after they supplied tiaras for
the coronation of England’s Edward VII.
More familiar with royal patronage
were established firms like Carl

Fabergé’s. His “objects of fantasy”
earned him the position of official
jeweler to the courts of Russia, Sweden,
and Norway. Tsar Nikolai II
commissioned forty-four eggs throughout
his reign, not to mention opera glasses,
cigarette cases, and other sumptuous
accessories and objects. Fabergé’s vivid
colors were part of his appeal, and lapis
lazuli and nephrite jade were favorite
materials.
René Lalique became prominent at
nearly the same time as Fabergé. His
following was attracted less by stately
luxury and more by Lalique’s wildly
inventive designs. He freely mixed

precious and semiprecious stones with
blown glass, ivory, and other unexpected
materials. His use of enamel techniques
like champlevé and plique-a-jour gave
Lalique a nearly unlimited color palette,
which he used to create shimmering Art
Nouveau versions of peacocks,
hummingbirds, dragonflies, and more.
Influential patrons collected his jewelry,
including actress Sarah Bernhardt and
philanthropist Calouste Gulbenkian.
At the 1900 Universal Exposition,
Lalique displayed over one hundred
pieces “laid out like a meadow of
wildflowers in vitrines decorated with
bats flying overhead against a twilight

sky and backdrops of bronze butterfly
women.”[4] He was one of several
designers (including Louis Comfort
Tiffany) hoping to establish an
international reputation. He succeeded.
Rich Gold forms the gleaming
foundation of the Jewel Tones palette.
Victoria Blue, Viridis, Cloisonné,
Chinese Violet, and Chateau Rose hint at
colored gemstones and the saturated,
shimmering colors of fine enamel.

Left: Pendant 1901, René Jules Lalique
Right: Group of Fabergé eggs ca. 1900
1910

Left: Peacock library lamp ca. 1900 1910,
Tiffany Studios, New York
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Rich Gold 16-0836; Victoria Blue
18-4148; Viridis 17-5734; Cloisonné 18-4440;
Chinese Violet 18-3418; Chateau Rose 172120

The Charm of
Iridescence
Painter Louis Comfort Tiffany became
interested in glass in his late twenties.
After apprenticing at glass studios in
Brooklyn, he founded the Tiffany Glass
Company in 1885. His desire to capture
the beauty of plants and flowers drove
Tiffany to develop an immense catalog
of glass colors and textures.
By 1900, Tiffany was known
worldwide for his work in glass, metal,
enamel, and other materials—which he
called Favrile, after an Old English

word for handmade. Tastemaker
Siegfried Bing wrote in praise of him,
“Never, perhaps, has any man carried to
greater perfection the art of faithfully
rendering Nature in her most seductive
aspects.”[5] Of Tiffany’s peacock
feather designs, he said, “[T]his truly
unique art is combined in these
peacocks’ feathers with the charm of
iridescence which bathes the subtle and
velvety ornamentation with an almost
supernatural light.”[6]
Nature was Tiffany’s inspiration,
but his methods were scientific. Tiffany
relied on laboratory substances like
silver nitrate, uranium, manganese,

arsenic, and potash nitrate which,
combined in precise quantities with
glass, made his signature gold luster.
Other recipes created as many as five
thousand glass colors and textures.
Unknown technicians worked behind the
scenes, under the direction of Arthur J.
Nash and his son Leslie, to achieve the
effects Tiffany needed.
Others, like Frederick Carder of
Steuben Glassworks, also explored
iridescence. He introduced gold-toned
Aurene glass in 1904 as an attempt to
rival Tiffany. The allure of pearlescent,
iridescent, and reflective finishes
remained part of the armory of the

decorative arts for the rest of the
century.
Pale Gold and Antique Gold form
the foundation of the iridescent palette.
Juniper, Sepia, and Deep Teal reference
Art Nouveau’s interest in nature.
Lavender, Evening Sand, and Almost
Mauve capture the subtle and dreamy
play of light across a Tiffany peacock
vase.

Left: Blue peacock vase ca. 1900 1910,
Tiffany Studios, New York
Right: Ornamental art glass print ca.
1902 1908, Meyers Konv

Left: Eighteen-light pond lily decorative

lamp ca. 1902 1915, Tiffany Studios, New
York
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Pale Gold 15-1927; Antique Gold
16-0730; Juniper 18-6330; Sepia 18-1928;
Deep Teal 19-4914; Lavender 15-3817;
Evening Sand 14-1311; Almost Mauve 122103

Firsts for Women
Innovation at the Universal Exposition
was not confined to fashion and the
decorative arts: attendees saw early
signs of some of the revolutionary social
changes that would characterize the new
century. For example, nineteen women
competed for the first time at the second
Olympic Games, staged as part of the
Exposition. Charlotte Cooper was the
first female Olympic champion, with a
first in tennis.
Other sporty women furthered
Cooper’s example. Baroness Raymonde
de Laroche became the first woman to

earn a pilot’s license in 1910. Annie
Taylor became the first person to go
over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1902—
and afterward said of her adventure,
“Nobody ought to do that again.” Many
women embraced sport as healthful for
mind and body—and as a way to express
a sense of personal freedom in public
life.
The sporting life helped birth the
ground-changing idea that the body was
no longer something to mold into
predetermined shapes with corsets and
rigid, structured garments—but rather a
vibrant force to be trained through sport
and diet. For those who could afford the

time and expense, brisk walks and bike
rides in the countryside were thought
good for the posture. French men and
women swam together without scandal
along the coast of Normandy on getaway
weekends and summer vacations. Alpine
sports began to take hold, and skiing,
skating, and curling provided a new
respite from the winter doldrums.
The colors of early twentiethcentury sporting life are grounded in
pragmatic, unfussy neutrals from dark to
light, with Anthracite and Brunette at the
deep end of the scale and Rugby Tan,
Warm Sand, and Pristine at the lighter
end. In a reflection of the new presence

of women in sport, Mirage Gray,
Powder Pink, and Shale Green layer a
breezy, feminine aspect into the palette.
American Beauty suggests a blush of
new power for women in the young
century.

Left: Three women on bicycles ca. 1900
1910

Right: Hartford Tire magazine
advertisement 1909

Left: Ad for Kellogg s Toasted Corn

Flakes 1907
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Anthracite 19-4007; Brunette 191235; Rugby Tan 15-1315; Warm Sand 151214; Pristine 11-0606; Mirage Gray 154703; Powder Pink 14-1511; Shale Green166116; American Beauty 19-1759

Poiret Revolution
In Paul Poiret’s hands, fashion became a
luxurious vehicle for fantasy that
encouraged movement and ease rather
than conformity, back pain, and fainting
spells. He transformed Belle époque
dressmaking into twentieth-century
couture with his emphasis on draping
over tailoring. And he presaged today’s
global lifestyle brands with his lines of
furniture, décor, and fragrance.
In 1903, shortly after establishing
his own atelier, Poiret eliminated the
petticoat from his designs. The corset
followed suit in 1906. He liberated

women from the hourglass silhouette
imposed upon them by tradition and
maintained by foundation garments so
constricting that they sometimes harmed
their wearers. He explained the success
of his clothes by saying, “I am merely
the first to perceive women’s secret
desires and to fulfill them.”[7]
His sense of what women wanted
took him beyond the references that
governed fashion at the turn of his
century. He found inspiration in the
Hellenic chiton, the Japanese kimono,
Middle Eastern harem pants, and more.
He invented new shapes with his
comfortable cocoon coats, which

enveloped their wearer in sensuous
fabrics, and in his famous chemise
dresses which, because they hung
loosely from the shoulders, freed their
wearers from any sense of clothing as
physical restraint. His frequent use of fur
and other sumptuous materials
heightened the pleasure of wearing his
clothes.
His palette was as interesting and
revolutionary as everything else about
him. He found his competitors’ color
choices to be dull to the point of tedium.
But “my sunburst of pastels has brought
a new dawn,”[8] he proclaimed—and
his tones of Jaffa Orange, Yolk Yellow,

and Cocoon, combined with Cadmium
Green, Chinese and Chalk Violet, and
Crocus, justify his declaration.

Left: Coat drawing from Bon Ton
Gazette ca. 1900s, Paul Poiret
Right: Coats and cloaks from Les Robes
de Paul Poiret 1908, Paul Iribe

Left: Three dresses and a toad from Les
Robes de Paul Poiret 1908, Paul Iribe
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Jaffa Orange 16-1454; Yolk Yellow;
Cocoon14-1025; Cadmium Green 18-5424;
Chinese Violet 18-3418; Chalk Violet 17-

3615; Crocus 16-3115

The Fauves
Fauves is French for beasts, because the
artists of this movement— the first art
revolution of the twentieth century—
were said to paint less like men than like
animals. They sometimes squeezed paint
out of the tube and directly onto the
canvas. And even when they used
brushes, the marks they made were
aggressive daubs of unalloyed color
rather than brushstrokes.
They made their mark at the 1905
Salon d’Automne in Paris. The rawness
of their work touched off a scandal
comparable to that of the First

Impressionist Exhibition of 1874. “A pot
of colors flung in the face of the public”
was the assessment of one critic,
Camille Mauclair.[9]
But history sees the Fauves in a
much more positive way. They were the
first to see painting in a truly Modern
light—as mere marks of pigment on
canvas. They created in their works a
visual experience rather than a mirror
held up to something else. They set
painting free from the academic
conventions of realism, and even of the
Impressionists’ need to capture the
sensory experience of a place or event.
Henri Matisse painted Calm, Luxe,

et Volupté in 1904, which is generally
recognized as a successful articulation
of the movement’s ideas. By 1907, most
of the individualistic Fauves had
splintered away to other ideas and
styles. But their exploration of painting
as solely pigment and surface became
the basis for the increasingly abstract
exploration of color and form that
characterizes Modern art of the twentieth
century.
Jaffa Orange and Fusion Coral,
Pink Lavender and Confetti, particularly
when used to depict landscape elements,
trumpet the Fauves’ deliberate departure
from realism. Strong Blue, Pompeian

Red, and Fluorite Green heighten a sense
of assertive and unnatural beauty, while
Sycamore is frequently used like a pen
stroke to instill some form into the
colorful mayhem of the Fauves.

Left:The Port of La Ciotat 1907, Georges
Braque
Right:Tugboat on the Seine, Chatou
1906, Maurice de Vlaminck

Left: Open Window, Collioure 1905,
Henri Matisse
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Jaffa Orange 16-1454; Fusion
Coral 16-1543; Pink Lavendar 14-3207;

Confetti 16-1723; Strong Blue 18-4051;
Pompeian Red 18-1658; Fluorite Green 170133; Sycamore 19-5917

1910s
Changes and Challenges
Can a silly little doll capture the heart of
a decade? If it is a Kewpie, yes.
Illustrator Rose O’Neill’s guileless
adaptation of the Cupid of classical
mythology was a hit from the moment it
appeared in Ladies’ Home Journal in
1909. Three-dimensional Kewpie dolls
later sold by the tens of thousands, and
cartoon versions ran in broadly
circulated women’s magazines for
twenty-five years.
What was it about the Kewpie that

made so many fall in love? The sunny
intentions behind the Kewpie played a
part in the craze. “Kewpie philosophy
takes the unwieldiness out of wisdom
[and] puts cheerio into charity…”
O’Neill said, ever the optimist.[10]
Though successful financially, O’Neill’s
life was not a happy one romantically,
and the Kewpie was her sunny response
to the trials of Love, or indeed to the
trials of anything. The resolute and
steady colors of her Kewpie world
capture her stalwart cheer—as well as
something essential about the decade.
Other innocent toys, including
Raggedy Ann and the Erector Set, also

became toy empires, which points to the
nascent commercialism of the century.
More than one brand of optimism
was in wide distribution in the United
States. Another entrepreneurial
American artist, Maxfield Parrish,
painted radiant landscapes populated
mostly by scantily clad nymphs and
youths. Like O’Neill, he sold millions of
reproductions of his work and became a
part of the American imagination. His
fans included Edith Wharton towards the
beginning of his life and Andy Warhol
towards the end, both drawn to his
accomplished painting technique and
perhaps also to his languorous

sensuality. The intense blue of his skies
came to be called Parrish Blue, a color
which was widely used in textiles,
ceramics, and more. It is the center point
of a lush, romantic palette.
Across the Atlantic, the stylish
Wiener Werkstätte advocated another
aesthetic ideal: a completely designed
existence, from coats to carpets and
shoes to shades, all in refined shapes
and colors. Founded by visionaries
Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, the
Werksttte movement wanted “to promote
an ideal and purposeful order and
simplicity in craftsmanship,” at the same
time as it brought the sensibilities of the

middle and upper classes of the
Hapsburg Empire (and elsewhere) into
the young century.[11] The founders,
along with a host of well-known
collaborators, rendered their designs in
carefully curated tones. Their success
took the Wiener Werkstätte into nearly
every category of the decorative arts, in
a prototype of today’s international
mega-brand.
Artist and designer Leon Bakst,
along with cultural impresario Sergei
Diaghilev and his choreographers and
dancers, seduced the avant-garde of
Paris into adulation with their work at
the Ballets Russes. Starting with

Scheherazade in 1910, the company
stunned its audiences with downright
sexy ballets that were a radical
departure from the prim, high-societyapproved ballets of the established
companies. Bakst’s costumes and sets,
which adapted the patterns and textures
of the East in a bold, modern way,
became a fashion craze. Clothing and
interiors across Paris brightened visibly
in emulation of Bakst’s passionate
language of color.
Optimism, idealism, and sensuality,
however, were not the only influences in
the air. The Cubists captured something
of the tensions of pre–WWI Europe with

their studied reordering of reality. In
their attempt to portray the multiple
perspectives of modern life, they
captured the fragmented view of the
world that would emerge after the
conflict. On first exposure to the work of
the Cubists, Teddy Roosevelt declared
them “the lunatic fringe.” But their
intellectual endeavors, carried out in
mostly somber urban colors, turned out
to be more clairvoyant than lunatic.
At the onset, World War I inspired
a burst of chivalrous patriotism and
persuasive propaganda. But the deadly,
tedious trench warfare that dragged on
for years soon replaced heroic rhetoric

with a more mournful view. Erich Maria
Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western
Front later emerged as a realistic
account of the war from a soldier’s point
of view. It suggested, too, the
disillusionment of society at large with
the generation whose leadership
provoked the war. The colors of World
War I express, of course, the influence
of military uniforms and of flag-waving
patriotism. But the mournful aftermath is
captured in the color of the corn poppy,
an enduring symbol of the many lives
sacrificed around the world.
The years after World War I saw,
particularly in the United States, a

rushed return to normalcy which went
well beyond “normal.” Soldiers, who
had experienced something of the world
outside their cities and towns, and their
wives, many of whom had now worked
outside the home, were ready for new
ideas. They embraced a wave of laborsaving home appliances, a new emphasis
on home hygiene and the domestic
sciences, and the idea of home
improvement promoted by new
magazines like the long-running House
Beautiful. Rules for home design were
rewritten in strong, optimistic colors,
which set the stage for the roaring
decade to come.

Theatrics
The Ballets Russes set the world on fire
with a 1910 production of
Scheherazade. With impresario Sergei
Diaghilev at the helm, and Michel
Fokine as choreographer, RimskyKorsakov’s lush 1888 evocation of the
legendary storytelling queen of The
Book of One Thousand and One Nights
came alive as a modern ballet. But it
was Leon Bakst’s designs for costumes
and sets that elevated the production into
the realm of modern theater. His
subsequent designs for the Ballets
Russes, with which he was active

through 1914, introduced a passionate
and contemporary language of color and
pattern to avant-garde Parisians.
Russian-born Bakst brought a
fascination with folk art and Eastern
sensibilities into his work. His patterns
simplified Turkish, Persian, and Central
Asian textiles into bold, modern
geometry. Suzani embroideries were
simplified into cotton prints of
concentric circles. References to
complicated ikat patterns were
delivered in crisp appliqué or beading.
Diaphanous, patterned scarves swirled
suggestively around women’s costumes
constructed with simple bras and hip

bands rather than a stiff corset.
Occasionally, as in star dancer Vaslav
Nijinsky’s performance in Prélude à
l’après-midi d’un faune, sexualized
choreography combined with Bakst’s
designs challenged social mores of the
day.
But his admirers were undaunted.
His work elicited a fashion craze, which
opened the way for brightly colored
clothing with Orientalist touches like
plunging V-necks, turbans, and tribal
jewelry. His set designs were no less
influential, and for many years to come,
divans and floor cushions were used to
evoke a bit of Scheherazade’s

enchantment.
Bakst’s exotic palette featured
saturated contrasts between Russet
Orange, Grenadine, Dazzling Blue,
Mauvewood, and Turkish Tile.
Sensuous, smoky colors of Faded Rose,
Amber Brown, and Golden Haze
supported Bakst’s Orientalist approach.

Left: Costume design for a dancer in
Diaghilev s production of the ballet
Scheherazade 1910, Leon Bakst
Right (top): Modern dress, Dione 1910,
Leon Bakst
Right (bottom):A Scheherazade Salon
1910, Leon Bakst

Left: Costume design for The Great
Eunuch in Diaghilev s production of
the ballet Scheherazade 1910, Leon Bakst
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Russet Orange 16-1255; Grenadine
17-1558; Dazzling Blue 18-3949; Mauvewood
17-1522; Turkish Tile 18-4432; Faded Rose
18-1629; Amber Brown 17-1147; Golden
Haze 12-0826

Parrish Blues
“There seem to be magic days once in a
while, with some rare quality of light,
that hold a body spellbound,” wrote
Maxfield Parrish.[12] For the first thirty
years of the twentieth century, Maxfield
Parrish held thousands of viewers
spellbound with his paintings.
He illustrated Edith Wharton’s
well-received 1904 Italian Villas and
their Gardens, which was followed by
equally successful illustrations for
several children’s books, including The
Arabian Nights. He quickly became a
sought-after painter of magazine covers,

and entered an exclusive contract with
Collier’s, for which he created sixty
covers. After Collier’s he worked with
other titles such as Ladies’ Home
Journal and Harper’s Weekly. His
illustrations were reprinted
commercially and sold to homes, hotels,
and offices as wall decoration—which
proved so wildly popular that Parrish
has been called “the common man’s
Rembrandt.”[13] A reproduction of his
1920 painting Daybreak was owned by
one in four American households.
In Parrish’s idealized world, the
sky occasionally featured a fluffy cloud
or a handful of stars, but was otherwise

perfectly, gorgeously blue. Look closely
at one of his skies. They start off at the
horizon as a pale white-blue with a hint
of green and eventually soar into a
celestial hue that became known as
Parrish Blue. The color proved so
popular that it appeared in china,
textiles, stained glass, and more.
Parrish fell out of favor in
midcentury, with critics like influential
Clement Greenberg decrying his
“hallucinatory highoctane realism.” But
in his final years artists like Andy
Warhol embraced the work’s
combination of lyricism and
androgynous sensuality.

Parrish’s skies incorporate Marina,
Celestial, and Turkish Sea. His lush,
optimistic depictions of nature are
brightened with Ibis Rose, Mulberry,
and Forest Green. And Dawn is part of
Parrish’s depictions of early morning
light and youthful skin.

Left: Equity Lodge commemorative
plate 1912
Right: Blue and pink tobacco flower
design 1915 1920, Charles Rennie
Mackintosh

Left: Cleopatra 1918, Maxfield Frederick
Parrish
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Marina 17-4041; Celestial 18-4530;

Turkish Sea 19-4053; Mulberry 17-3014;
Ibis Rose 17-2520; Forest Green 17-0230;
Dawn 12-0811

Wiener Werkstätte
Designers Josef Hoffmann and Koloman
Moser, along with industrialist Fritz
Wrndorfer, founded the Wiener
Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops) in the
early 1900s to provide an alternative to
the overwrought designs of the past and
to combat the heaviness of urban life.
Like the early British Arts and
Crafts movement, the Wiener Werkstätte
eschewed modern manufacturing. Unlike
the Arts and Crafts movement, however,
there was little or no compromise with
technology: the Werksttte remained
throughout its almost thirty years

devoted to arts, crafts, and design
conceived with human intellect, made
with human hands, and intended to
beautify human environments. The
ultimate dream of Hoffmann and Moser
was to achieve a kind of
Gesamtkunstwerk—a total work of art—
in people’s homes and lifestyles.
Outfitting a home as a
Gesamtkunstwerk was then (and now)
an expensive proposition. Expense
aside, it may not have been entirely easy
to be a Werksttte client. Hoffmann and
Moser wrote, “Our middle class is as
yet very far from having fulfilled its
cultural task. Its turn has come to do full

and wholesale justice to its own
evolution.”[14] Part of fulfilling one’s
“cultural task” required wearing clothes
that would not clash with Werksttte
interiors, and Hoffmann sparked the
Werksttte’s entry into fashion with a
1911 gown designed for the Belgian
owner of a lavish top-to-bottom
Werksttte house whose wardrobe must
not have coordinated sufficiently with
the elegant wallpaper.
The Werksttte palette begins with
the dramatic tones of Moonless Night
and Red Mahogany, without whose
depth the Werksttte’s graphic patterns
would have fallen flat. Saxony Blue,

Dazzling Blue, Feldspar, and Cinnabar
imbue the palette with luxurious
references to semiprecious stones used
in Werksttte jewelry. Lavender Gray,
Cream Gold, Shell, and Silver provide
the ethereal top-notes required by the
Werksttte’s idealistic agenda.

Left: Tea service 1905, Josef Hoffmann,
Wiener Werkstätte
Right: Brooch 1908, Josef Hoffmann

Left: Leopard textile swatch 1912,
Arch E. Wimmer, Wiener Werkstätte

Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom)Moonless Night 19-4203; Red
Mahogany 19-1521; Saxony Blue 18-4225;
Dazzling Blue 18-3949; Feldspar 16-5815;
Cinnabar 18-1540; Lavender Gray 17-3910;
Cream Gold 13-0739; Shell 13-1405; Silver
14-5002

Youthful Pastimes
Neither childhood nor toys were
invented in the twentieth century. But a
new combination of major magazines,
mass manufacturing, and higher
discretionary incomes came together to
create the business of children’s toys.
One of the century’s first toy crazes
began in 1909, when illustrator Rose
O’Neill drew the first Kewpie for
Ladies’ Home Journal. Her happy
creatures stayed in broad circulation for
twenty-five years. In 1913, O’Neill
created her three-dimensional bisque
Kewpies in two sizes. During a factory

visit, she found the smaller version to be
poorly executed. She commented that
since the small dolls would be sold to
the poorest children, it was essential that
they equal the larger ones in quality.
This was implemented, and sales
soared.
O’Neill is said to have earned over
a million dollars (twenty million in
today’s currency) in Kewpie royalties—
but money was not her goal. She seemed
to want her innocent creatures to buoy up
anyone who met them. “Do good deeds
in a funny way. The world needs to
laugh or at least to smile more than it
does,” she wrote.[15] The Kewpie

certainly brought smiles to many. The
Mysto Erector Structural Steel Builder
appeared in 1913, backed by the first
aggressive promotional ad campaign for
a toy. At once practical looking and a
vehicle for fantasy, the Erector Set
fascinated sons and fathers—and
probably some daughters and mothers,
too. Raggedy Ann was introduced to the
public in 1918 by illustrator Johnny
Gruelle, with book and doll sold side by
side. The combination was very
successful, and presages the multimedia
approach of toy marketing today.
The palette of early toys and their
packaging begins with the earthy

primaries of ochre-yellow and deep red.
Warm and cool neutrals are layered
against the primary colors. The flesh
tone of celluloid Kewpies and wistful
Raggedy Ann also comes into play.

Left: Group of Raggedy Ann dolls ca.
1910s
Center: Erector Set ad ca. 1910s
Right: Cover of Tip Top Weekly 1912

Left: Cover of The Kewpies, Their Book
1913, Rose O Neill
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) 7556; 7621; 462; 7527; 7410

Cubism
Cubism pushes art further into the
twentieth century than the Fauves dared
to go. The Fauves broke with academic
realism, and even with the
Impressionists’ desire for a truthful-tothe-eye visual experience. But the
Cubists introduced a “mobile
perspective,” which demands that the
viewer, presented with interconnected
fragments and facets of an object, must
reassemble the pieces in order to arrive
at the meaning, the underlying reality, of
the thing being painted.[16]
The Cubists attempted to show how

the reality of a thing can unfold across
not just multiple perspectives, but time,
too. In Marcel Duchamp’s Nude
Descending a Staircase, for example,
the many-faceted “time-exposure” of the
painting covers not a single moment but
rather a series of them. The painting
captures adjacent and relevant realities,
whether physical or temporal, in order
to arrive at a richer version of coherence
than offered by mere realism.
The serious, demanding
intellectualism of the Cubist proposition
was too important to be rendered in the
decorative colors of the Fauves. Picasso
and Georges Braque delivered their

message in somber tones, along with bits
of wrapping paper, wallpaper,
newspaper, and even sand, dirt, and
house paint. Eventually, later Cubists
like Robert Delaunay and Juan Gris
introduced more vivid colors in a desire
to capture the vibrant urban reality of
pre–WWI Paris.
Shale, Gray Ridge, Chestnut,
Golden Brown, and Tan helped the
Cubists deliver contour and
dimensionality without a sense of
realism. Aurora Red, Ensign Blue, and
Dark Green are used to draw the eye
into the surface of the painting, and to
heighten a sense of visual drama.

Left: Nude Descending a Staircase (No.
2) 1912, Marcel Duchamp
Right: Artillery 1911, Roger André de La
Fresnaye

Left: Italian Still Life 1914, Lyubov
Sergeevna Popova
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Shale 19-3903; Gray Ridge 18-

3710; Chestnut 19-1118; Golden Brown 181940; Tan 16-1334; Aurora Red 18-1550;
Ensign Blue19-4026; Dark Green 19-5513

World War I
World War I began in the summer of
1914 and was only supposed to last until
Christmas. It started in a wave of
patriotic fervor. Poems were written.
Songs were sung. Propaganda posters
appeared far and wide—enticing men
into military service, women into thrift,
and the general public into a state of
unity.
As the men went to war, women
mostly held down the fort both at home
and in the workplace. In the United
States, seven hundred thousand women
were employed in munitions factories

alone. Many thousands served in the
army and navy nursing corps. Still more
conducted buses, stood on manufacturing
lines, and sat at desks, filling the spots
left open by their husbands and brothers.
But the war did not end by
Christmas. It lasted four long years,
during which time sixteen million people
died and twentyone million were
wounded worldwide. The toll on Europe
was profound, particularly along the line
of trenches that stretched from Belgium
to the Swiss frontier. What had begun
with optimism ended with a sense of
tragedy.
In the aftermath, national borders

were redrawn, empires disassembled,
and hierarchies discredited. The
awesome power of technology in the
hands of warring states was nearly
impossible to contemplate. It was called
“the war to end all wars.” Sadly, this
did not turn out to be true.
The colors of the day were sensible
and functional. Vanity seemed
inappropriate when nearly every family
had lost loved ones. It was a time for
duty and modesty. Medal Bronze, Twill,
Trekking Green, and Dress Blues
express the military’s omnipresence.
Saxony Blue, Grenadine, and Bright
White, reminiscent of the colors of the

U.S., British, and French flags, recall the
patriotism of the era.
Grenadine, when it stands alone,
recalls the corn poppy, which became a
symbol of remembrance for those lost in
the war.

Left: U.S. Food Administration poster

1918, Paul Stahr
Right: Gee!! I wish I were a man, I d
join the Navy Navy recruiting poster
1917, Howard Chandler Christy

Cover from The Ladies Home Journal
1917, Howard Giles

Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Medal Bronze 17; Twill 16-1108;
Trekking Green 19-5411; Dress Blues 194024; Saxony Blue 18-4225; Grenadine 171558; Bright White 11-0601

Coming Home
Soldiers reuniting with their families
brought with them a new openness to
change. Young people seemed eager to
leave behind the ideas of their parents’
generation, which got them into the Great
War—and the ways in which they
“nested” in their new homes revealed
their willingness to reinvent life as the
decade came to a close.
Europe’s dominance in matters of
fashion and home styles waned, and the
New World exerted more influence. The
House Beautiful was founded in 1918
and became a bible of tasteful

decorating with a can-do attitude and
emphasis on home improvement. Every
bungalow could be made perfect, if you
just followed the directions of the new
tastemakers.
Home improvement was more than
an aesthetic pursuit. Labor-saving
devices in the form of home appliances
entered the marketplace. Over two dozen
home refrigerators were introduced by
General Electric, Frigidaire, and
Kelvinator. Toasters, coffee percolators,
and waffle irons encouraged efficient
homemakers to electrify their kitchens
even further. Whirlpool and Maytag
introduced their first washing machines

in 1911, greatly easing the Sisyphean
work of laundry day. Even the ordinary
kitchen stove became a “kitchen
triumph” with a fresh coat of blue
enamel.
Refrigeration and more frequent
clothes-washing were part of an interest
in better home hygiene—an idea made
allimportant by the deadly flu epidemic
of 1918. Even Armstrong, the developer
of linoleum, got in on the act with
advertisements that proclaimed their
new product to be “germ free,” high
performance, and aesthetically pleasing.
Cocoon suggests the familiar
comforts of home, reinforced by Golden

Cream, Cashew, Lavender Lustre, and
True Blue. Deep Lichen Green and
Moonless Night provide strength and
structure.

Left: Black Model T Ford Touring car
1915
Right: Pyrex ad 1918

Left: Armstrong Flooring ad 1919

Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Cocoon 14-1025; Golden Cream 130939; Cashew 17-1137; Lavender Lustre 163920; True Blue 19-4057; Deep Lichen
Green 18-0318; Moonless Night 19-4203

1920s
Modern Ways
The ’20s roared. Time-honored systems
and old hierarchies had created a
devastating (and some thought pointless)
war. In the wake of its devastation, an
exuberant and very visible fringe of
young people—centered mostly in the
major cities of the United States and
Europe—experimented with new ways
of dressing and dancing, romancing and
traveling. Parents everywhere were
shocked.
Throughout the decade, social

mores were deeply challenged, and the
hegemony of the white male weakened a
little. After a decades-long suffrage
movement, women were granted the vote
in the United States in 1920. The Jazz
Age brought African-inflected rhythms
and African-American performers into
the limelight for the first time. Sessue
Hayakawa, a Japanese actor, became
one of Hollywood’s highest paid talents.
Young women’s skirts got shorter. Their
hair got bobbed. And many inhibitions
faded into the background. Makeup, once
the domain of actresses and prostitutes,
brightened many lips and cheeks.
Prohibition and its unintended by-

products, speakeasies and moonshine,
made breaking the law a game.
Rebellion was in the air, perfumed with
cocktails and cigarettes, and it was
expressed in a color palette anchored in
intoxicating Apricot Brandy and
Winetasting.
Artist J. C. Leyendecker channeled
the sensuality of the ’20s into
commercial illustrations that tempted
customers into buying not just clothing,
but an image. His iconic Arrow Collar
man made a giant of the company he
came to symbolize. Good looking,
athletic, and sexy, he suggested that
wearing an Arrow shirt made you the

same. Not surprisingly, Leyendecker’s
colors were at once sensual and
wholesome, a combination advertisers
continue to pursue to this day. But even
in the relatively freewheeling
atmosphere of the ’20s, shirt buyers
would have been surprised to learn that
the Arrow man was modeled after
Charles Beach, the partner with whom
Leyendecker lived for almost fifty years.
The openness of the decade
allowed idiosyncratic talents like
Clarice Cliff to thrive. She took a
warehouseful of defective pottery and
decorated it with bright enamel patterns
for her line of Bizarre Ware. Assisted by

a small team of painters known as
Bizarre Girls, she offered a burst of
happy and affordable color to many
homes. Society hostess and artist Florine
Stettheimer also worked with sunny
tones, but only for her own delight—and
that of the talented New Yorkers who
flocked to salon-style gatherings in her
colorful home. Both Cliff and
Stettheimer mixed bright citrus colors
with quirky doses of pink and purple.
Another unique talent, artist Raoul
Dufy, was invited by fashion designer
Paul Poiret to bring his sensibilities to
textile design. True to the bold spirit of
his era, Dufy simplified form and color,

often at a very large scale, and in doing
so had a profound impact on textile
design. As manufacturers near and far
emulated his strategies, floral motifs
became more modern in their layering of
geometry and simple painterly gestures.
They also replaced Dufy’s preferred
black and white with a seductive palette
of beautifully faded colors.
Speed was also seductive in this
era. Over thirty million cars took to the
roads over the course of the decade,
introducing new freedom to many.
Luxury trains and ships lured passengers
with twin promises of style and speed.
The notion of travel evolved from

something only for the very rich or the
very daring into the idea of the pleasure
trip accessible to the many. Exquisitely
drawn travel posters promised coppery
suntans and glamorous palm-shaded
watering holes.
A leisurely Nile cruise was among
the favored destinations for European
travelers. But interest in Egypt went
well beyond boat trips when Howard
Carter discovered the tomb of King
Tutankhamen in 1922. Extensive news
coverage gave the public detailed
images of furniture and statues that had
not seen sunlight in over three thousand
years, and all things Egyptian became a

craze. Gold and the colors of inlaid
stones made the Tutmania of the ’20s
glisten—as a vogue for Egyptianinspired objects swept the globe.
Egyptian references were among
the many influences to combine in the
internationally popular Art Deco style.
What started as a rarified style of
furniture and interiors for wealthy
interwar Europeans—as conceived by
legendary talents like émile-Jacques
Ruhlmann—gradually became a more
accessible and streamlined language of
shapes and finishes. Eileen Gray’s
exploration of steel tubing and other
industrial materials opened new avenues

for Art Deco designers.
Industrial materials were also
explored, with intellectual rigor, by the
highly influential Bauhaus school in its
pursuit of a union between art, craft,
design, and technology. Instructor
Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel chairs are
still icons of industrial design. What is
less remembered is the Bauhaus’s
exploration of color and form, and the
emotional and spiritual aspects of each.
Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, and Wassily
Kandinsky each contributed to the
Bauhaus approach to the basics of
design and human experience. While
their ideas are perhaps too complex for

icon status, their contemplative color
palette and the thinking behind it still
influence creatives everywhere.

Art Deco
Art Deco got its name from the
Exposition Internationale des Arts
Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held
in Paris in 1925 and attended by
exhibitors from twenty countries and
sixteen million viewers.[17] The
modern language of luxury promoted by
the fair began, for the most part, in the
ateliers of the designers and craftsmen of
France.
Designer and decorator ÉmileJacques Ruhlmann epitomizes the
Parisian genius behind Art Deco. Using
rare woods, complex marquetry, gilding,

ivory, shagreen, and much more, he
turned diverse references to historical
styles into costly and superfashionable
furnishings and interiors. He was not at
all concerned by the immense prices he
charged: “Only the very rich can pay for
what is new and they alone can make it
fashionable.” And they did.
It took designers like Irish-born
Eileen Gray to hone Art Deco into sleek
simplicity—and to introduce less
expensive materials. Fascinated by the
luster of lacquer, she studied with Parisbased Japanese master Sugawara Seizo.
She learned to craft gorgeous screens,
small furniture, and objects in black and

red with silver details. Her lacquered
interiors for an apartment on the rue de
Lota, completed in 1924, attracted much
attention for their tasteful modernity. Her
Transat Chair also sprang from her
fascination with sleek lacquer.
She experimented with less
expensive materials, too. The chromed
metal and glass E-1027 side table she
designed for her own home is popular
again today. Her 1925 steel-framed
Bibendum chair remains an exemplar of
modern design. Gray’s work opened the
way for Art Deco to become an
accessible and international movement.
Silver and Jet Black form the sleek

contrast essential to the Art Deco
aesthetic. Carnelian, Champagne Beige,
and Turtledove add warm nuance, while
Lavender Violet beckons with a cool
allure.

Left: Art Deco glass bottle and three
glasses ca. 1920s
Right (top): Screen 1928, Eileen Gray

Right (bottom): Leather evening shoes
1925, Bob, Inc., New York

Left: Dressing table and chair 1922 1926,

design by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, pochoir
print from Interieurs en Couleurs by Leon
Deshairs, Albert Levy, ed.
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Silver 14-5002; Jet Black 19-0303;
Carnelian 16-1435; Champagne Beige 141012; Turtledove 12-5202; Lavender Violet
17-3924

Tutmania
The fifth Earl of Carnarvon was ready to
throw in the towel: with his backing,
archeologist Howard Carter had
disturbed a great deal of Egyptian sand
with little to show for it. But Carter
begged his patron for one last season of
digging in the autumn of 1922, convinced
by slim evidence that he knew the
location of a lost tomb in the Valley of
Kings. Carnarvon relented.
Four days into that last dig, Carter
found a stone stairway descending to
massive doors. When Carnarvon arrived
three weeks later from England, they

opened the tomb together and Carter
crawled inside. When asked what he
saw, his legendary reply was,
“Wonderful things!”
Constant newsreel and newspaper
coverage of King Tutankhamen’s trove
of furniture, ritual objects, statues, and
pharaonic jewelry turned public appetite
for all things Egyptian into an
international cultural phenomenon. The
“Tutankhamen Rag” was played in the
ballroom of Luxor’s Winter Palace
Hotel. Furniture, interior décor, and
fashion soon featured lotus motifs and
ancient symbols.[18] Biscuit tins and
perfume bottles conveyed messages

(about shelf life?) in hieroglyphics.
Cleopatra earrings, scarab rings, and
sphinx shoulder clips abounded.
Amazing talents such as designer Pierreémile Legrain modeled side chairs and
dressing tables after archeological
specimens in ebony, vellum, shagreen,
chromium-plated metal, zebra skin, and
lacquer.[19]
Like Napoleon’s France, which had
experienced its own Egyptian revival a
century earlier, the Jazz Age found a
place in its heart for an ancient, deeply
religious culture.
Shimmering Rich Gold captures the
awe-inspiring luxury of King Tut’s

burial goods. Burnt Henna, Imperial
Blue, and Aqua Haze are found in the
semiprecious inlay of his jewelry and
statuary. Nile Green, Sahara Sun, and
Desert Sage remind us of the frescoed
walls of Tutankhamen’s well-preserved
tomb, and their promise of a sumptuous
eternal life.

Left: Art Deco glass perfume bottles ca.
1920s

Right: Corsage ornament ca. 1923,
Georges Fouquet

Left: Funerary mask of Tutankhamen

ca. 1332 1322 BC
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Rich Gold 16-1836; Burnt Henna
19-1540; Imperial Blue 19-4245; Aqua
Haze 15-5209; Nile Green 14-0121; Sahara
Sun 14-0936; Desert Sage 16-0110

Cocktails and
Laughter
American women were granted the right
to vote in 1920, a major shift in public
life. But change did not stop there.
Energized in part by disillusionment
with established rules and norms
following World War I, heated up with
sophisticated jazz, and set afire by the
Eighteenth Amendment’s prohibition of
alcohol, the 1920s roared rebelliously.
Young women cut their hair short,
slicked it down with brilliantine, and
raised their hemlines. They went to

nightclubs with men…in cars. They
wore lipstick and rouge. They smoked
and danced and drank from their
boyfriends’ hip flasks. Or from their
own. Freewheeling “flappers”
thoroughly shocked their elders. As
Dorothy Parker said in her poem “The
Flapper,” “She’s not what Grandma
used to be.”[20]
Some blamed everything on jazz.
Anne Shaw Faulkner, head of the music
division of the General Federation of
Women’s Clubs, published her essay
“Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?”
in 1921.[21] To Faulkner’s ears, jazz
was the music of the devil himself, and

pulled innocent youth headlong into
moral decay. To young people dancing
the Charleston, the Black Bottom, the
Fox Trot, the Cubanola Glide or the
Tango Argentino, the devil never
sounded so good.
The Jazz Age was also an
international phenomenon. Across the
Atlantic, East St. Louis–born Josephine
Baker stunned le Tout-Paris with her
shimmy and her shimmer. She became a
sexy, intriguing emblem of interwar
daring and style, even as she
demonstrated a new freedom for women
to create lives completely of their own
choosing.

Flapper colors express the
pleasure-loving times with Winetasting
and Apricot Brandy, highlighted by the
fleshy appeal of Dusty Pink and Desert
Rose. Boa and Pale Gold bring luxury to
the never-ending party promised by
Infinity.

Left (top): Josephine Baker La Vie
Parisienne ad ca. 1920
Left (bottom): Panne velvet wrap, detail
ca. 1925
Right: Gold evening dress 1926 1927,
Edward Molyneux

Left: The Flapper cover of Life
magazine 1922, F. X. Leyendecker
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Winetasting 19-2118; Apricot
Brandy 17-1540; Dusty Pink 14-1316;
Desert Rose 17-1927; Boa 17-0625; Pale
Gold 15-0927; Infinity 17-4015

Destinations
Though post–WWI nationalism made
international travel a little more
complicated, improvements in train and
ship lines gave it a stylish sense of
luxury and adventure. The forward
march of technology also made speed
part of the thrill.
The most luxurious form of
international travel was the ocean
cruise. The Île de France, for example,
made her maiden voyage from Paris to
New York in 1927. She was equipped
with all the necessary luxuries: a twostory chapel with pipe organ, a

sixhundred- seat dining room with a gold
and silver fountain, a tea room, and a
Parisian sidewalk café, all of which
were designed with thirty-six kinds of
wood and a variety of lacquer and
metalwork. The quality of the interiors
was not the only way ships distinguished
themselves: they also competed to see
who could travel fastest, particularly
across the Atlantic.
When it came to speed, the airplane
trumped them all. Charles A. Lindbergh
made his historic solo flight across the
Atlantic in 1927, and while the world
celebrated his achievement, it also
seemed to become smaller. International

travel, while still the province of the
well-to-do, became a bit more
imaginable. Lindbergh used his fame to
promote the commercial aviation
industry to make sure that it became
achievable, as well.
Graphic designers did their part to
build desire for cities like Paris and
London with elegant posters that
glamorized both destinations and their
inhabitants—who all seemed to wear the
latest fashions. Resorts like Nice and
Vichy also benefitted from such
marketing: resort towns that relatively
few had heard of became worldwide
household names.

The color language found in travel
posters of the day frequently employed
the coppery tones of suntans and the
warm neutrals of sand and sunlight.
Silvery greens gave elegant life to
oceans and rivers, and olives and
browns to the landscape.

Left: Travel ad for La Cte d Azur 1928,
Roger Broders
Right: Le Mont Revard travel ad 1927,
Roger Broders

Left: Vichy travel ad 1928, Roger Soubie
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) 7410; 7407; 7566; 7499; 7580;
5783; 5763; 476

The Leyendecker Man
The career of illustrator Joseph
Christian Leyendecker was fueled by a
booming market for magazines that
created an intense demand for
illustrators. Over a forty-year period he
created more than three hundred covers
for the Saturday Evening Post alone,
where he is credited with originating the
rotund, rosy-cheeked Santa which still
presides over the American Christmas
season, as well as sash-wearing Baby
New Year.
As the number of printed pages
grew, so did the number of

advertisements needed to fund them—
and the growing commercial market is a
second force behind Leyendecker’s
career. He was among the most
influential commercial artists of his day,
starting with years of work for Chicagobased menswear labels Kuppenheimer
and Hart, Schaffner, and Marx.
Leyendecker’s most enduring
commercial creation, however, was the
Arrow Collar Man. Leyendecker himself
approached Arrow with the idea of
creating a signature masculine icon for
their company: “Not simply a man, but a
manly man, a handsome man…an ideal
American man.”[22] The fit, pensive,

and undeniably handsome character
created by Leyendecker came to
represent an ideal of masculine beauty
still resonant today. The Arrow Collar
Man also remains one of advertising’s
great success stories: he helped Arrow
eventually gain control of 96 percent of
the market for store-bought shirts.
What was the final force behind
Leyendecker’s success? Love. His lifepartner of nearly fifty years, Charles
Beach, was the model for the Arrow
campaign. They kept their personal life
mostly hidden, but their undercover
attachment may explain the smoldering
quality of Leyendecker’s colors and

brushwork.
Toast, Rutabaga, and True Blue
create a stable triad of sincerity and
wholesomeness in Leyendecker’s palette
—which Peat, Nasturtium, and Prune
bring alive with complex and passionate
color.

Left: Motorcycle Cop and Kids cover
of The Saturday Evening Post 1922, J.
C. Leyendecker

Middle: Kuppenheimer ad 1920, J. C.
Leyendecker
Right: Socks by Interwoven 1926, J. C.
Leyendecker

Arrow Dress Collars and Shirts 1920, J.

C. Leyendecker
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Toast 16-1331; Rutabaga 12-0806;
True Blue 19-4057; Peat 19-0508;
Nasturtium 16-1451; Prune 19-2014

Bauhaus
The Bauhaus was founded in 1919, and
folded under Nazi pressure in 1933. Its
ambitious goals sought a synthesis of art,
craft, design, and technology into
functional objects and beautiful
environments for living and working.
The school’s embrace of machine
production created an enduring impact
on twentiethcentury design—and the
Bauhaus aesthetic is most often
remembered in instructor Marcel
Breuer’s chrome-plated tubular steel
chairs and the rational architecture of
founder Walter Gropius.

But there is another side to Bauhaus
thought, stemming from early
collaborator Johannes Itten. As the only
founding faculty member with teaching
experience, Itten designed the Bauhaus
introductory curriculum in 1919, which
covered basic ideas about color, form,
and material. Itten emphasized selfdiscovery as the key to successful
learning, and sought not to damage the
creative impulse of his students. Such
tenderness put him at odds with the
Bauhaus master-apprentice model of
instruction. He was also revered by his
students, which did not endear him to
Gropius.

Itten resigned in 1922, but fellow
instructors Paul Klee and Wassily
Kandinsky elaborated on his ideas about
the synchronicity of color and form.
Yellow is sharp and triangular. Blue is
spiritual and circular. Red is square and
associated with weight and matter.
Secondary colors were associated with
hybrid forms and nuanced meanings.
Kandinsky also discussed the possibility
of experiencing color as sound and
texture—something with which he,
capable of synesthesia, was familiar.
An interconnected universe of
color, form, and emotion emerges from
the work of these men. The colors of the

spiritual Bauhaus begin with mystical
Moonless Night, Violet Storm, and
Lavender. Delft contributes a restful
blue, while Oxblood and Burnt Ochre
offer the gravity of red without weighing
down the palette. Yolk Yellow and
Sunflower lend a lively energy without
disturbing the thoughtful violet end of the
spectrum.

Left: Tanz Festspiele (Dance Festival)
poster 1928, Max Burchartz
Right (top): Club Chair B3 (Wassily)
1925, Marcel Breuer
Right (bottom): Ancient Harmony no.
236 1925, Paul Klee

Left: Several Circles (Einige Kreise)
1926, Wassily Kandinsky
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Moonless Night 19-4203; Violet
Storm 18-3944; Lavender 15-3817; Delft 19-

4039; Oxblood Red 19-1524; Burnt Ochre
18-1354; Yolk Yellow 14-0846; Sunflower 161054

Modern Pleasures
Once the Fauves and Leon Bakst let the
color-genie out of the bottle, it was
impossible to contain it. The 1920s
embraced the color revolution of the
preceding decades and added a new,
cheerful spin. Bright tones became
vibrant rather than clashing, and
whimsical rather than revolutionary. As
the Roaring ’20s embraced a range of
new pleasures, a capricious, energized
palette emerged in fashion, ceramics,
upholstery textiles, paintings, and more.
One of the notable proponents of
bright tones was ceramic designer

Clarice Cliff. After apprenticing as an
enamel decorator and lithographer, she
was hired by England’s Newport Pottery
as a pattern painter. Confronted with a
warehouse full of defective goods that
needed to be sold, she covered their
flawed surfaces with bright patterns of
on-glaze enamel colors.[23] Much to the
surprise of the salesmen, her line, backstamped “Bizarre by Clarice Cliff,” was
immensely successful. Cliff’s colorful
vision remained popular until World
War II, when her signature effervescence
seemed altogether too happy.
Another eccentric vision for color
emerged across the Atlantic. Florine

Stettheimer, a wealthy, unmarried New
York hostess, painted with tones Clarice
Cliff would have admired. After the only
exhibition of her work during her
lifetime, in 1916, she painted solely for
her own pleasure. Her canvasses
describe the doings of her social set,
which included some of New York
City’s most creative residents, as well
as a rich fantasy life. Her exuberant,
idiosyncratic depictions of events real
and imaginary radiate pure color. In the
words of a biographer, “[S]he was not
one for mixing colors; what came
straight out of the tube seemed to her
quite good enough.”[24]

Modern Pleasures blends Bright
Lime Green, Buttercup, and Carrot in
generous amounts. Sachet Pink sweetens
up their citrus mix, while Persian Jewel,
African Violet, and Amethyst Orchid
add eccentricity and flirtatiousness.

Left (top): Beauty Contest: To the
Memory of P. T. Barnum 1924, Florine
Stettheimer

Left (bottom): Appliqué bird-of-paradise
charger 1930, Clarice Cliff
Right: Cloche hat 1925, Kilpin Ltd.

Sheer silk flapper print ca. 1926, sourced

by Patricia Nugent Design and Textiles
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Bright Lime Green 14-0244;
Buttercup 12-0752 ; Carrot 16-1361;
Sachet Pink 15-2216; Persian Jewel 173934; African Violet 16-3520; Amethyst
Orchid 17-3628

A Rose Is a Rose
As a painter, Raoul Dufy’s work is often
thought too decorative and sentimental to
join the canon of twentieth-century art.
But as a textile designer, nothing could
be further from the truth. His pattern
work pulled textile design expressively
into the realm of art, and continues to
inspire designers today.
Fashion designer Paul Poiret, who
advocated a free exchange of ideas
between art, craft, and design,
commissioned Dufy to create textiles
after seeing his woodcut illustrations for
poet Guillaume Apollinaire’s Le

Bestiaire. Dufy had fashioned a splendid
universe of fauna and flora in black and
white, and Poiret was intrigued.
The results were unusual. Arts and
Crafts and Wiener Werkstätte designers
had begun to treat flora in a graphic
manner, but Dufy simplified references
to nature even further. In his hands,
leaves and petals were rendered as
large-scale masses of black with a
single white detail. An early black and
white fabric for Poiret, La Perse, was
made into a coat worn by Madame
Poiret in 1911 and created a sensation.
Later floral prints for Poiret reduced the
rose, quintessential symbol of romance,

to a single white line on black—or to a
silhouetted blossom surrounding a froth
of white brushstrokes. On the strength of
his work with Poiret, preeminent silk
mill Bianchini-Ferier teamed with Dufy
to make groundbreaking textiles through
the late 1920s.
Dufy’s manner of handling floral
motifs bridged the gap between
traditionally feminine patterns and a
visual language appropriate for the more
liberated women of the 1920s. His work
was emulated and adapted in Europe and
the United States.
Rose patterns were often delivered
in a subtle and seductive palette. Faded

Rose and Honey Peach lead the way,
cooled by Acorn and Grape Jam.
Aluminum and Mallard Blue provide a
bit of deep shade to this garden.

Left: Abstract rose ca. 1925 1928, sourced
by Patricia Nugent Design and Textiles
Right (top): Silver sweetmeat dish in the

form of a rose 1925 1926, Omar
Ramsden
Right (bottom): Styled rose with shards
ca. 1928, sourced by Patricia Nugent Design
and Textiles

Left: Rose on graphic ground ca. 1920
1928, sourced by Patricia Nugent Design

and Textiles
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Faded Rose 18-1629; Honey Peach
13-1015; Acorn 18-1314; Grape Jam 18-3415;
Aluminium 16-1107; Mallard Blue 19-4318

1930s
Resilience and Recovery
The 1930s began on October 29, 1929,
also known as Black Tuesday. The rapid
decline of the New York Stock
Exchange silenced the Roaring ’20s, and
threw the United States into the Great
Depression, which would endure until
1939. Other countries followed suit in a
domino effect, and the entire world
suffered from the downturn.
Unemployment exceeded 25 percent in
the United States, and went as high as 33
percent in some developed nations.

Industries of all kinds were devastated
by lack of demand—even agriculture,
with crop prices down as much as 60
percent. The gloom was general, and
thick.
Nonetheless, it took some time for
the Great Depression to completely take
hold. Projects conceived in the late ’20s,
like the Chrysler and Empire State
buildings, came to completion in the
’30s in the Art Deco style, replete with
gleaming silver and gold details and
expensive red, black, and green marble.
But after that, with new construction
slowing to a crawl, the splendors of Art
Deco mostly continued in the more

modest form of consumer goods.
Manufacturers explored design as a
tool for tempting customers into
purchasing, and products from radios to
bathroom scales began to look as
dynamic and stylish as the New York
skyline. Industrial design came into its
own as the bridge linking new materials
and technologies to the consumers who
might be enticed into adopting them in
their daily lives. Bakelite, a durable and
inexpensive plastic, became an amazing
resource for industrial designers in their
pursuit of affordable appliances and
other products. Bakelite was also used
extensively in costume jewelry. It was

made in colors resembling jade, jet,
amber, and exotic woods—but at a
satisfying fraction of their cost.
The movies were another
affordable source of satisfaction, and
distraction. In the form of gangster films,
horror flicks, madcap comedies, and
teary dramas, movies helped people cast
aside their worries for a while, for just
fifteen cents. Millions of moviegoers
around the world were thrilled with
stories of pluck and persistence—and
enthralled by images of beautiful
actresses in shimmering satin gowns.
Living a life of luxury was still possible
in the Depression, if you did it

vicariously. Costume designers (who
were often noted fashion designers in
their own right) set the styles of the day
in smoky, subtle colors which also had a
practical side: such tones could be worn
and re-worn for a long time, which was
a necessity in lean circumstances.
This simultaneously luxurious and
practical palette of fashion entered the
home in the cosmopolitan hands of
interior designers like Syrie Maugham,
whose rooms brought movie glamour to
life.
Having fun at home was more
economical than going out, and radio
programs, board games, and comic

strips became wildly popular. Monopoly
came into thousands and thousands of
homes in the mid-1930s, along with
Chinese checkers and other amusements.
Even the younger members of a family
could dream of becoming Wall Street
titans with vivid plastic houses and
hotels spread around the cheerfully
bright game board. Late 1930s
superheroes like Superman and Batman
also inhabited worlds of forthright color,
as they kept the forces of evil at bay.
President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s Works Progress
Administration kept the forces of
unemployment at bay for hundreds of

thousands of people who had nowhere
else to turn. The WPA, FDR’s farreaching response to the Great
Depression, created public buildings,
roads, bridges, tunnels, and a system of
public parks that remain treasured
national assets to this day. A division of
the WPA, the Federal Art Project,
employed thousands of artists, some of
them destined to become leaders of the
post–World War II modern art scene.
One of the FAP’s accomplishments was
a series of posters publicizing the new
parks, and the grounded but vital palette
they used reveals something important
about the resilience of Depression-era

America.
The softer palette of Roseville
Pottery, an important player in a 1930s
vogue for American art pottery, revealed
a marked departure from brighter hues
popular in the 1920s. Roseville became
most successful when it offered
affordable goods in warm neutrals and
earth tones, accented by the colors of
leaves and flowers. Nature, said to be
the ultimate source of all good design
ideas, also proved to be a source of
colorful comfort to homemakers across
America.
As the 1930s came to a close, some
hope appeared. Unemployment rates

began to come down. Tensions in
Europe notwithstanding, people began to
feel that there was light at the end of the
tunnel. When the New York World’s
Fair opened with its theme “Building the
World of Tomorrow,” its promise of a
pristine, logical, orderly future seemed
like a dream after the nightmare of the
Great Depression. The millions who
attended the Fair were entranced by its
promises of one-hundredmiles- per-hour
highways, super-efficient factories
producing gorgeous futuristic cars, air
conditioners, and vacuums, and lives
made easier by technology. Tomorrow
couldn’t come fast enough if it looked as

beautiful as the Fair itself, resplendent in
the blues of sky and outer space, and the
white and yellow of sunshine.
Also in 1939, The Wizard of Oz
movie debuted. Its celebration of humble
American determination was, like the
World’s Fair, a fitting end to the
Depression. Dorothy Gale’s journey to
Oz gave Americans a glimpse of an
unpredictable Technicolor world, and
her efforts in the face of the strange and
unknown resonated profoundly with
moviegoers. For a country on the brink
of recovery, “Somewhere Over the
Rainbow” finally looked to be within
reach.

Deco Architecture
Art Deco cathedrals of commerce and
entertainment radiated glamour into the
economic gloom of the 1930s. Two of
the most enduring examples of Art Deco
architecture were completed early in the
decade—in spite of the Wall Street
crash of 1929. The glorious Chrysler
Building opened in 1930 thanks to
automobile mogul Arthur P. Chrysler’s
personal backing. Not coincidentally,
former General Motors vice president
John Jakob Raskob headed the group of
industry titans who financed the
construction of the Empire State

Building in 1931. Both buildings were
immensely popular from the start and,
even without the motivation of Motor
City rivalries, Art Deco as an idiom for
modern architecture became a global
phenomenon. From Shanghai all the way
around the world to San Francisco,
sensuous machine-age curves blended
with stylized references to nature and
historical styles with gorgeous results.
The ability to accommodate a vast
range of influences—from ancient Egypt
and Mesopotamia to electricity or local
flora— encouraged both architects and
designers alike to experiment with Art
Deco’s gleaming geometries. What was

good for skyscrapers turned out to be
just as good for toasters and costume
jewelry. Where Walter Chrysler spent
lavishly on red Moroccan marble in his
building’s lobby, a clever designer
substituted a bit of enameled brass on
the housing of an electric shaver. While
John D. Rockefeller spent a bundle on
costly bronze hardware at Rockefeller
Center, machined aluminum would do
nicely at home. Art Deco worked at most
price levels, and helped nontraditional
products and materials gain acceptance.
The Deco palette of the 1930s
fulfilled its mission as an antidote to the
Great Depression with luscious tones.

The silver of 1920s Deco remains, but
the obvious luxury of gold becomes
more important. Precious metals are
layered against smooth chocolate, misty
jade, and satiny mauve.

Left (top): Art Deco clock ca. 1920s 1930s
Left (bottom): Schick razor ca. 1931,
designed by Raymond Loewy

Right: The pinnacle or Vortex of the
Chrysler Building in New York 1927
1930

Left: Art Deco elevator door in the
Chrysler Building in New York 1928
1930
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Silver; 10366; 7533 ; 5635; 4725

Illusions
Approximately 28 percent of Americans
were without income in the early 1930s.
The world economy was dismal. The
Dust Bowl, breadlines, and the tensions
that would eventually escalate into
World War II, provided a stream of bad
news. But fifteen cents entitled a
moviegoer to a comfortable seat, a
newsreel, a short film, and a starstudded feature film with John
Barrymore, Barbara Stanwyck, or
Carole Lombard—or Clark Gable, Bette
Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey
Bogart, or dozens of others. The movies

provided an escape in a time that badly
needed one, and between sixty and
seventy million Americans every week
went to the movies.
Many films of the 1930s explored
American ideals of individualism,
classlessness, and progress. Their happy
endings represented the righting of
wrongs, the rebalancing of social and
economic inequities, and the triumph of
hard work and determination. Women’s
big screen roles, particularly,
highlighted the backbone and strength
needed to get to the last scene and its
satisfying denouement. Katharine
Hepburn, Joan Crawford, and Bette

Davis became stars in the 1930s, and
remained so long after, in part because
their personalities were built with a
fundamental sense of grit. Nothing could
quite get the best of them or dim their
determination to live their own lives.
Moral tales were not the movies’
only appeal. Beautiful people in
beautiful clothes were part of the
attraction. Coco Chanel, Elsa
Schiaparelli, Edward Molyneux,
Madame Grès, Jean Patou, and Jeanne
Lanvin flocked from Paris to Hollywood
to costume the stars. Americans Gilbert
Adrian and Edith Head designed for film
too, and sometimes crossed over into

retail success. Adrian’s butterfly gown
for Joan Crawford’s Letty Lynton sold
half a million copies at Macy’s in the
depths of the Depression.
Subtle, smoky colors characterize
the time. Smoked Pearl and Pearled
Ivory acknowledge the glow of pearls
and satin finishes. Shitake, Fennel Seed,
and Jojoba bring quiet warmth into the
palette, while Green Milieu offers a
seductive shadow.

Right (top):Striated vintage buttons ca.
1933
Right (bottom): John Barrymore and
Katharine Hepburn in a still from Bill
of Divorcement 1932
Left: Evening ensemble 1929, Jean Patou,
House of Patou

Left: Syrie Maugham s Drawing Room
at 213 King s Road, Chelsea, as
featured in The Studio 1933
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) Smoked Pearl 18-0000; Pearled
Ivory 11-0907; Shitake 18-1015; Fennel
Seed 17-0929; Jojoba 14-0935; Green Milieu
16-5806

Fantastic Plastic
After Belgian-born Leo Baekeland
invented Velox photographic paper
(which he sold to George Eastman for a
cool million dollars), he turned to
synthetic resins. His laboratory
experiments led to the development of a
phenol formaldehyde compound which
could be hardened under heat and
pressure: glossy, durable Bakelite
plastic. Starting in 1909, Baekeland sold
black and brown Bakelite primarily to
the electrical industry.
When Baekeland’s patent expired
in 1927, other companies got into the

business. The American Catalin
Corporation, for example, quickly
introduced a range of pretty new colors,
which took Bakelite beyond the
technical world. The Bakelite
Corporation and its competitors
convinced manufacturers of everything
from telephones to toys and billiard
balls to barware to try hard plastics.
Working with Bakelite was less labor
intensive than metals and woods, and
manufacturers could offer plastic
products at lower prices—a vital selling
advantage during the Great Depression.
A plastic radio could be sold for ten
dollars, while one with a wooden case

might retail for ten times that amount.
In fact, the radio was one of the
products that carried Bakelite around the
world. Radios with elaborate grilles,
etched dials, and cases of all shapes and
sizes emerged in the United States, Great
Britain, France, Germany,
Czechoslovakia, and even Australia.
Bakelite jewelry became another
wonderful phenomenon, with carved cuff
bracelets and smooth bangles
ornamenting many wrists. To women
trying to economize in lean times, plastic
jewelry was an appealing way to keep
up appearances.
The vivid palette of 1930s Bakelite

often emulated precious materials, with
Pirate Black as an alternative to jet and
Buff Yellow and Radiant Yellow to
amber. Grenadine and Red Orange
looked like costly Japanese lacquer.
Fairway resembled serpentine jade, and
Friar Brown substituted for dark tropical
woods. Gloxinia lent its own eccentric
appeal to this newly popular substance.

Left: Telephone ca. 1929

Right: Multicolored Bakelite necklace ca.
1937

Top: Bakelite billiard balls ca. 1935
Bottom: Patriot radio 1939, designed

by Norman Bel Geddes, manufactured by
Emerson Radio and Phonograph Corp., New
York
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom)Pirate Black 19-4305; Buff Yellow
14-0847; Radient Yellow 15-1058; Grenadine
17-1558; Red Orange 17-1464; Fairway 186320; Friar Brown 19-1230; Gloxinia 193022

Diversions
In the midst of the Great Depression,
most Americans were earning 40 percent
less than in the 1920s—if they earned
anything at all. Luxuries were difficult
(or impossible) to justify. Movies were
a great way to keep spirits up, but
admission for the whole family was
often impossible on an annual salary of
thirteen hundred dollars or so. Miniature
golf became popular, but the admission
fee was an issue here too.
Board games emerged as a cheerful
and affordable way to stay home.
Monopoly was introduced in 1934 by

Charles Darrow, a salesman who had
lost his job. Probably inspired by an
earlier creation called The Landlord’s
Game, Darrow designed Monopoly
nearly as we know it today, with streets
named after those in Atlantic City, a
handful of game tokens, a pair of dice,
and piles of fake money.
Parker Brothers rejected Darrow’s
Monopoly, citing fifty-two errors in the
game’s design—including unclear rules
for winning and a game time well over
forty-five minutes. But with true
Depression-era spirit, Darrow
persevered. He sold a self-produced
version to Wanamaker’s department

store in Philadelphia in late 1934. Upon
hearing of the deal, Parker Brothers
reconsidered and had Monopoly on the
shelves in early 1935; they sold twenty
thousand sets the first week. The game
has been in continuous production since,
and can be played in over twenty-five
languages.
Comics also provided affordable
amusement, and older characters like
Krazy Kat and Little Orphan Annie were
joined in the 1930s by Dick Tracy,
Popeye, Flash Gordon, Li’l Abner, and
Prince Valiant. Superman and Batman
dashed onto the scene as the decade was
ending.

Depression-era diversions were
colored in unmistakably upbeat tones.
Strong primary colors were flanked by
bright orange and dark teal. Peach and
blue-gray completed the Monopoly
board and added a light touch to the
comics.

Top: Monopoly board game ca. 1935,
Parker Brothers
Bottom: Tricorne pattern dishes ca.
1935, Salem China Company, designer Don
Schreckengost

Left: Toy Sale ca. 1936 1941, New York
City, Federal Art Project
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 5473; 185; 7549; 1505; 661; 1565;

658

Parks and Recreation
During Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first
hundred days as President of the United
States, he addressed the Great
Depression with New Deal programs.
But the economy did not respond. After
congressional elections in 1934, the
Second New Deal began. Social
Security was established—and so was
the WPA, the Works Progress
Administration, which employed crowds
of impoverished workers to construct
public buildings, roads, parks, and more.
Roosevelt backed jobs instead of
handouts, which he feared would risk

“the spiritual and moral disintegration of
the national fiber.”[25]
A branch of the WPA, the Federal
Art Project (FAP), employed 5,300
artists, who collectively created
225,000 works of art. Murals were
installed in hospitals and post offices.
Paintings were placed in libraries and
schools. Sculptures were raised in
public parks. A 22,000-plate Index of
American Design was created to catalog
American folk culture. Paradoxically,
public resources were enhanced during
the worst economic situation in U.S.
history. Something was made where
much might have been destroyed.

The FAP was born of the
conviction that culture is an essential
thread in the tapestry of American life—
one that must survive. The American
nation and its culture benefitted greatly
from the FAP’s support for a generation
of artists who might otherwise have been
silenced. Mark Rothko and Jackson
Pollock went on to mammoth careers.
Painters Ivan Albright, Paul Cadmus,
Childe Hassam, and Jacob Laurence
also took part, as did sculptor Isamu
Noguchi, printmaker Rockwell Kent, and
others.
Among its many accomplishments,
the FAP produced a series of posters

celebrating the new WPA park system.
Noble but grounded colors pay tribute to
the transforming work of these New
Deal programs. Landscapes of olive,
pea green, and amber unfold against
deep azure skies. Black, lavender, and
mauve underscore the dignity of the
American response to adversity.

Left: Poster for Federal Art Project
exhibition 1938, Stanley Thomas Clough

Center: Poster for United States
Travel Bureau NYC Art Project, Work
Projects Administration, 1936 1940, Harry
Herzog
Right: Poster for National Park Service
NYC Art Project, Work Projects
Administration, 1936 1940, Frank S.
Nicholson

Left: Poster for the United States
Travel Bureau Federal Art Project,
Works Progress Administration 1936 1938,
Richard Halls

Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Silver; 10366; 7533 ; 5635; 4725

Roseville
Soft colors and clean lines made
Roseville vases attractive. But it was the
carefully molded flower and leaf
patterns that elegantly stretch across
their shoulders and waists that made
them a sought-after collectible in the
1930s and beyond.
Roseville Pottery was founded in
1890 in Ohio, whose clay beds and
favorable position on railroad networks
made it a good place for commercial
potters. Their first success came with the
Rozane pattern of 1900—which also
represented their first foray into high

quality goods. By the 1920s Roseville
had ventured into an asymmetrical,
Deco-inspired line called Futura, but
subsequent Depression-era tastes
required more soothing colors and
comforting shapes. The 1930s gave rise
to the classic Roseville look, and
memorable patterns such as Blackberry,
Cherry Blossom, Laurel, Tourmaline,
and Baneda.
Roseville introduced Wisteria in
1933, a successful, earthy combination
of purple, green, and warm neutrals.
Building on Wisteria’s simple shapes
and comforting colors, Pinecone was
introduced in 1935, and proved to be the

company’s most successful line—
offered in dozens of shapes and a variety
of glazes. Ixia, Bushberry, and many
other classics followed until the
company’s closure in 1954.
Roseville was sold at accessible
prices in midrange department stores
and boutiques, and ladies across the
country were inspired to populate
mantels, tables, and windowsills with
their collections. Rivals McCoy,
Newcomb, Van Briggle, Weller, and
Rookwood competed for attention, each
with their own distinct shapes, colors,
and patterns. A significant collector base
still exists today for the wares of many

American art pottery producers.
The classic Roseville palette is
grounded in gentle Aspen Green and
Blue Yonder, and the nourishing neutrals
of Biscuit and Jojoba. The blossomcolors of Dusty Pink, Heather Rose,
Lupine, and Chinese Violet give
Roseville its feminine charm.

Left: Wisteria pattern ca. 1933, Roseville
Pottery, Zanesville, Ohio

Center: Wisteria pattern ca. 1933,
Roseville Pottery, Zanesville, Ohio
Right: Baneda pattern ca. 1932, Roseville
Pottery, Zanesville, Ohio

Left: Ixia pattern ca. 1937, Roseville
Pottery, Zanesville, Ohio
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Aspen Green 17-0215; Blue Yonder

18-3937; Biscuit 16-1336; Jojoba 14-1935;
Dusty Pink 14-1316; Heather Rose 17-1608;
Lupine 16-3521; Chinese Violet 18-3418

The Wizard of Oz
The year 1939 was a remarkable year
for American movies. Mr. Smith Goes
to Washington, Of Mice and Men, and
Gone With the Wind vied with
Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Ninotchka,
Stagecoach, and Wuthering Heights for
the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Decades later, however, we can
confidently state that The Wizard of Oz,
called by the Library of Congress the
most watched film in history, eclipses
them all. The Wizard of Oz gives us the
first all-American fairy tale, in which a
small town girl faces her demons to

develop an appreciation for her humble
home. It’s a bildungsroman for the
Heartland, and an homage to the plucky
underdog. Arlen and Harburg’s
unforgettable soundtrack, and the clever
surprise of Technicolor in
Munchkinland, complete the picture.
But the film is more popular now
than when it was new to the big screen.
In part, this is thanks to the small screen.
It was broadcast annually on television
for almost thirty years, bringing scores
of new fans. It was also the first home
video released by MGM in 1980—
bringing yet another generation to
Emerald City.

Critics have tried to explain the
film’s enduring power with Buddhist or
feminist points of view, populist or
Christian analyses, or New Age
philosophy. But there is nothing that
comes close to explaining the appeal of
Dorothy, her friends, and her enemies.
They are part of us, and that’s
explanation enough.
Dorothy’s innocence is embodied
by her Blue Bell gingham. The ruby
slippers as well as the perilous field of
poppies were Poppy Red. Silver, Straw,
and Lion stand for the Tin Man, the
Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion.
Vibrant Green recalls both the Emerald

City and the Wicked Witch of the West.
And Spectra Yellow beckons us down
the Yellow Brick Road.

Left: Dorothy s ruby slippers from The
Wizard of Oz 1939
Right (top): The Wicked Witch of the
West from The Wizard of Oz 1939
Right (bottom): The Scarecrow, the Tin

Man, Dorothy, Toto, and the Cowardly
Lion from The Wizard of Oz 1939

Left: The Yellow Brick Road from The
Wizard of Oz 1939
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Blue Bell 14-4121; Poppy Red 171664; Silver 14-5002; Straw 13-0922; Lion
17-1330; Vibrant Green 16-6339; Spectra
Yellow 14-0957

The World of
Tomorrow
The 1939 World’s Fair was designed to
lift New York City out of the Great
Depression. Financially speaking, it did
not: its parent body lost $19 million and
declared bankruptcy in 1940. The fair’s
Streamline Modern “World of
Tomorrow” did, however, entrance
fifty-one million viewers with a clean,
efficient, well-designed vision of the
future…populated with new cars, new
houses, new appliances, and new
gadgets produced by the manufacturers

who sponsored many of the exhibits.
General Motors contributed the
Futurama, the most popular attraction.
From a row of moving armchairs,
visitors circled a thirty-six-thousandsquare-foot scale model of the futuristic
America of 1960. Ribbons of high-speed
highways, punctuated with exquisite
cloverleaf intersections, traveled across
hill and valley into model cities and
towns. Farms along the road from
immaculate home to efficient office
encouraged trees to bear more fruit with
individual greenhouse canopies.
Bridges, dams, and tunnels yoked nature
into collaboration with man for the

betterment of both. To a country
struggling with the Great Depression,
this kind of future looked marvelous.
Design of the Fair was governed by
a committee which included four of the
greats of American industrial design:
Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Loewy,
Henry Dreyfuss, and Walter Dorwin
Teague. They had risen to prominence in
the 1930s as manufacturers sought to
optimize the appeal of their wares with
dynamic design, the latest technology,
and the promise of ever-improved
performance. The white spire and sphere
at the center of the Fair, and the
consumer goods at the heart of the

exhibits, made a powerful argument for
design as an element essential to a
decent future.
Deep Blue, True Blue, Bright
White, and Sunlight capture the Fair’s
pristine hopes for 1960. Phantom and
Silver are integral to the modern
technologies the Fair described as
central to progress.

Left: Diesel powered Zephyr train logo
ca. 1933, photo by Eric Futran
Center: Waring Blendor ca. 1937, photo
by Eric Futran
Right: Juice-O-Mat ca. 1937, manufactured
by Rival Co., photo by Eric Futran

Left: Poster for New York World s Fair

1939, Joseph Binder
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Deep Blue 19-3847; True Blue 194057; Bright White 11-0601; Sunlight 1300822; Phantom 19-4205; Silver 14-5002

1940s
War, Peace, and Prosperity
As the ’30s turned into the ‘40s, a world
gripped by the Great Depression quickly
turned into a world at war. Fighting
between Japan and China started in
1937. France and Britain declared war
on Germany in 1939. The United States
and Russia, reluctant to get involved,
finally joined the Allies in 1941.
Millions of troops were deployed as
countries from every continent became
involved. Memories of World War I
were still painfully fresh for many, and

the colors that came to epitomize this
war were a more serious blend of dutiful
khakis and tans and navies, with slim
rations of patriotic red and blue to keep
spirits up.
Though massive tooling-up for the
war brought unemployment rates in the
United States nearly to zero, the
aggression in the air was another trauma
to add to the lingering wound of the
Depression. An entire generation had
come of age in a time when it felt like
their brightest ideas and sharpest skills
were unlikely ever to be rewarded. The
painter Edward Hopper captured the
bleakness of lost, fragile people going

through the motions of modern life but
taking little satisfaction from it. Some of
the trenchant quality of Hopper’s work
comes from his enigmatic use of rich,
promising colors to depict silence and
isolation.
Film noir picked up on the same
misgivings about modern life that
informed Hopper’s work, though with a
delicious flair for the melodramatic.
Nothing was exactly as it seemed in film
noir. Its sonatas of deception were
played out by treacherous beauties and
flawed heroes. Seduction went hand in
hand with betrayal. Danger lurked
around every corner. Film noir

shimmered with shadow and smoke, and
bristled with passion and badness. The
silvery grays and absolute blacks
flashing across the screen were joined in
film noir posters by exclamations of
dark red.
At the same time that Hopper and
film noir contemplated the dark side of
the American dream, Walt Disney
brought a lively, animated vision to the
silver screen. His first featurelength hit,
1937’s Snow White, showed how a
cartoon could cover the range of human
experience from dark drama to a sunny
happy ending. In 1940’s Fantasia, he
pushed animation even further, hoping to

create something like the
Gesamtkunstwerk sought by the Weiner
Wersksttte and the Bauhaus. Set against
masterpieces of classical music
conducted by music titan Leopold
Stokowski, the sometimes serious,
sometimes funny sequences of Fantasia
opened new avenues for animation—and
questioned whether the intellectual elite
had exclusive ownership of high culture.
Embedded in the mystical and
mysterious colors of Fantasia are hints
of what was happening in the world. In
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Mickey
Mouse must deal with the unexpected
force of the machinery he has set in

motion.
By 1945, the fighting had stopped.
Years of pent-up creativity and joy
could finally blossom, in spite of
postwar rationing in Europe and the
global aftermath of the war. On some
level, postwar fads for toys and
newfangled consumer products like Silly
Putty and Tupperware, Frisbees, and
Slinkies were an essential and welcome
relief from thoughts of atomic bombs and
wartime atrocities. The Hawaiian shirt
also became popular across America
after the war, with its life-giving greens
and blues, and touches of tropical
brights. A world at war turned into a

world at play.
The music industry also provided
an affordable and thrilling respite from
the everyday. As the decade went on,
Big Band sounds gave way to solo
artists like Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore,
and the inimitable Frank Sinatra, whose
center-stage crooning delighted
screaming “bobby-soxers” everywhere.
Behind the scenes, graphic designer
Alex Steinweiss fueled music sales with
evocative record covers—something he
introduced in 1940. Their primary
colors and Kandinsky-esque
compositions served as a visual
representation of the sounds inside.

Steinweiss helped people decide
what to spin on their turntables, but
William Levitt put a roof over their
heads. Levitt streamlined home
construction with assembly-line
techniques and helped returning World
War II vets settle down with new brides
and new families into new homes.
Modern suburbia was born.
Homeowners were encouraged to color
their modern nests with scientific
precision. The right glowing color
choice brought the right wavelength of
light into a room and made it peaceful or
lively, energizing or good for the
digestion, according to the discerning

home decorator’s desire.
But the most stunning architect of
1940s desire was fashion designer
Christian Dior. Out of the gloom of
postwar Europe, Dior’s Corolle
collection of 1947, dubbed The New
Look by the press, burst onto the scene.
His intention, he said, was to design for
“flower women,” a marked departure
from the practical garb of the
Depression and the war. Exaggerated
peplums and full, full skirts recalled
Belle époque dressmaking, but they
were also modern in their message of
confidence and seduction and their fastmoving sense of authority. Dior’s

hushed, shimmering palette was a paean
to classical definitions of beauty with a
distinctly twentieth-century feel— and a
complete farewell to two decades of
trouble and woe.

Fantasia
Walt Disney’s animated Silly
Symphonies, alongside his half-pint
protégé Mickey Mouse, made him
famous. These seventy-five shorts,
released between 1929 and 1939, were
Disney’s apprenticeship for feature
films: he honed scripts, mastered a
growing range of color, and explored the
use of music so integral to his later
films. Snow White, his triumph of 1937,
showed Disney’s wondrous vision for
animation.
But fairy tales and talking animals
were not enough. Disney’s 1940

Fantasia explored the relationship
between classical music and the visual
arts. Its foray onto highbrow turf
provoked a rumble with the reigning
intellectual and cultural elite.
The passage featuring Bach was
largely respectful of the abstract beauty
of orchestral music—originating with
German artist Oskar Fischinger’s
Kandinsky-influenced sketches. The
mid-film introduction of the science of
sound and musical instruments
prefigured Leonard Bernstein’s Young
People’s Concerts of two decades later.
So far, so good.
But The Dance of the Hours, with

its tutu-ed ostriches and toedancing
hippos had a satirical edge. And Night
on Bald Mountain descended into a sort
of demonic kitsch. The elite were not
pleased, conductor Leopold Stokowski’s
support notwithstanding.
The masses were not entirely
pleased either. Fantasia lost money.
Nonetheless, the film is often cited as
Disney’s magnum opus—his chance to
show everything that animation could do.
Fantasia’s most popular segment,
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, shows
Mickey Mouse grappling with magic.
His robe telegraphs youthful exuberance
(and danger) with Bittersweet red. Out-

of-control brooms defy him with Golden
Cream. The sorcerer’s den is imbued
with magic and mystery (like the rest of
the film) through complex, ambiguous
Deep Lichen Green, Oil Blue, Alaskan
Blue, and Turkish Sea—enlivened by
Rapture Rose and Raspberry Radiance.
Total Eclipse gives outline and shadow
to the characters onscreen, but it also
recalls the enthralling darkness of
classic movie houses.

Left: The Pegasus family flying down
for a landing on Elysian lake from
Fantasia 1940, Walt Disney Studios
Right: The Frost Fairies from Fantasia
1940, Walt Disney Studios

Top (right): The Arabian Dance fish from
Fantasia 1940, Walt Disney Studios
Top (left): The Greek cupola on the lake
from The Pastoral Symphony from
Fantasia 1940, Walt Disney Studios
Bottom (left): Mickey Mouse and the

animated broom carrying buckets from
Fantasia 1940, Walt Disney Studios
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Bittersweet 17-1663; Golden
Cream 13-0939; Deep Lichen Green 18-0312;
Oil Blue 17-5111; Alaskan Blue 15-4225;
Turkish Sea 19-4053; Rapture Rose 171929; Raspberry Radiance 19-2432; Total
Elclipse 19-4010

Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was thirty-one before
he sold his first painting— and forty-one
before his career actually took flight. A
handful of watercolors in a 1923
Brooklyn Museum show received
enthusiastic notices, which helped
Hopper sell every piece in a subsequent
solo show. He bought a car with the
money and finally quit the illustration
work that he so loathed to focus on his
painting.
An accomplished technical artist,
Hopper handled landscape, portraiture,
and architecture with equal aplomb.

What intrigues viewers, however, is not
his technique, but the undeniable sense
of loneliness Hopper creates with it.
There is cold silence in his breezy New
England landscapes, and mournfulness
even in portraits of his vivacious and
beloved wife, the artist Josephine
Nivison. His paintings are peopled with
souls unable to bridge the distance
between them to make a connection.
Does the emotion come from
resentment at the isolation of long years
of unnoticed work or from a tendency
toward melancholy, observed by his
colleagues? Either way, his dark
sensibilities helped him give expression

to the bewildered and discouraged
feelings of Depression-era Americans.
Many of his best-known works
were painted in the early 1940s, when
the country had finally emerged from the
worst of it. Office at Night (1940)
depicts a shapely secretary and her
indifferent manager alone after dark; not
a trace of the sexual tension you might
expect is in evidence. Gas (1940) shows
the futile radiance of a country gas
station attempting to keep at bay the
darkness of the surrounding woods. The
four figures of Hopper’s Nighthawks
(1942) avoid each other’s glances in a
scene infused with the anomie of city

life. His dispirited vision of the modern
world shows little hope for happiness.
Hopper’s disquieting emptiness is
rendered in paradoxically full-bodied
tones of teal and emerald, ruby and
amber, and an earthy brown.

Office at Night 1940, Edward Hopper

Nighthawks 1942, Edward Hopper

Left: Gas 1940, Edward Hopper
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 7477; 7728; 7597; 131; 724

World War II
World War I began with a thunderclap
and thoughts of chivalry. World War II,
however, started after years of
frustrating attempts to contain the Axis
powers. Once the fighting finally started,
first in Europe and then in the Pacific,
the reluctant Allies approached it mostly
with an unromantic sense of duty.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s
laconic and businesslike approach
seemed just right. His no-nonsense
jacket became an international fashion
icon, perhaps because it conveyed a
sense of wartime purpose. And purpose

was needed to get through the war and
the unprecedented retooling of the
manufacturing sector to make the
equipment needed to fight in it.
In order to get through communal
ordeals like rationing and blackouts,
people generally tried to put a good face
on things. Norman Rockwell’s cover for
the Saturday Evening Post conveys,
with humor, the wave of public support
for Allied efforts. It also shows the
efficient use of fabric common to
clothing of the day.
England instituted some of the
strictest rationing on textile use. “Utility
clothing” was designed by some of the

best London talents, like royal
dressmaker Norman Hartnell. All frills
were eliminated and every adult was
rationed the equivalent of only one outfit
a year. “Make Do and Mend” was the
pragmatic slogan for wartime
minimalism. In the United States, Claire
McCardell and others offered practical
styles like her denim Popover Dress,
and the “American Look” began to take
form.
Rationing ended in 1946 in the
United States, but not until 1954 in
England. For most people, practicality
continued to govern consumption long
after the war had ended.

Uniforms and functional clothing
alike made use of Tan and Olive Gray,
as well as Dress Blues, Major Brown,
and Desert Palm. Paprika spiced things
up wherever possible, and Blithe tried
to keep spirits high.

Left: Eisenhower wool army jacket 1944

Right: Recruiting poster 1941 1943,
Robert Muchley, Federal Art Project,
Pennsylvania

Left: Willie Gillis at the USO 1942,
Norman Rockwell, Cover of The Saturday

Evening Post, February 7, 1942
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Tan 16-1334; Olive Gray 16-1110;
Dress Blues 19-4024; Major Brown 190810; Desert Palm 19-0815; Paprika 171553; Blithe 17-4336

Carefree and Casual
World War II ended in Europe in May of
1945, and in the Pacific in August. Initial
jubilation was followed by a sigh of
relief. The world suddenly allowed
itself to be, at least emotionally, “at
ease.”
After years of men in military
uniforms and women in sturdy factory
duds, comfortable casual wear burst
onto the scene. The no-fuss practicality
of uniforms and work wear continued to
influence everyday fashion. But the Big
Kahuna of casual wear was the
Hawaiian shirt, thanks in part to

thousands of Pacific
Theater veterans who returned
home with a short-sleeve tropical shirt
that designated its wearer as carefree
and casual. The Hawaiian shirt sprang
from Hawaii’s unique cultural mix.
Scraps of patterned kimono cloths from
Japan were often hand-made into men’s
shirts. Filipinos brought their own
patterned barong Tagalog into the mix—
as did the Chinese their intricate
embroideries. Native Hawaiians had
block-printed loincloths and sarongs. In
some form or other, these influences
came together in the Hawaiian shirt in
the early twentieth century. Ethel Chun

Lum and her brother Ellery Chun are
often cited as the refiners and
popularizers of the concept, and offered
the classic one-pocket button-front
version by the mids-1930s.
Locals and Waikiki surfers adopted
the look, which spread to the mainland
(particularly California and Florida) in
the late 1940s. Men from President
Harry Truman to actor John Wayne were
photographed in them. Soon, even
classic English retailer Jaeger offered
the Hawaiian shirt shape (without the
typical patterns) in its stores.
The Carefree and Casual palette
captures the lush island home of the

Hawaiian shirt with the leafy greens of
Fir and Greenbriar. Clear-sky tones of
Air Blue and Purple Impression are
dotted with fluffy clouds of
Marshmallow. Maize and Molten Lava
raise the temperature to tropical levels.

Iconic Jantzen

Diving Girl image
1948

Left: Page from an Aldens clothing
catalog 1947
Right: Jaeger Clothing advertisement
1945

Left: Hawaiian shirt ca. 1940s
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Fir 18-5621; Greenbriar 16-6127;
Air Blue 15-4319; Purple Impression 17-

3919; Marshmallow 11-4300; Maize 13-0746;
Molten Lava 18-1555

The American Dream
The GI bill of 1944 helped 2.25 million
World War II veterans with college
tuition. Millions more got job training,
and home, business, and farm loans.[26]
New GI benefits helped spark a housing
boom, a rush to the altar, and a baby
boom, as a young, educated, affluent
middle class raced toward the American
dream.
Integral to that dream was the
increasingly affordable singlefamily
home. Long Island builder William J.
Levitt’s 1947 Levittown homes were
made using assembly line–style

planning. He could finish thirty homes a
day, each equipped with refrigerator,
washing machine, and television.
Mortgage payments were as low as fiftyseven dollars, a bargain even in 1947
terms. Other builders emulated his
efficient example and new suburbs
popped up across the country. The
“bedroom community” changed the
landscape not only with homes but with
rail links and commuter highways.
The new presence of mass
manufacturing in home building led to a
phenomenon writer Timothy Mennel
calls “the miracle house,”[27] a place of
technological wonders containing “every

labor-saving device known to modern
science and every new idea in planning,
in building materials and in air
conditioning.”[28]
Color was also discussed in the
language of science. A 1946 Pittsburgh
Paints brochure titled “Color Dynamics”
promotes interior paints based on the
“principles of energy in color.”
Customers were told that color can be
employed with scientific accuracy to
enhance the beauty of the home, inside
and out. Dining rooms would encourage
good digestion if painted with the right
color frequencies. If you chose the right
bedroom colors, you would never get up

on the wrong side of the bed. The
problematic design features of any home
could be masked with camouflage
techniques, and safety maintained with
proper use of contrasting colors.
The “right” color frequencies were
often in upbeat tones of Apricot Wash
and Apricot Sherbet. Meadow and
Russet Brown were used for dynamic
contrast, and Vanilla and Rose Smoke
for quieter effects.

Left: Interior page from Color
Dynamics consumer education booklet
ca. 1946, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company
Center: Interior page from Color
Dynamics consumer education booklet
ca. 1946, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company
Right: Back cover from Color
Dynamics consumer education booklet
ca. 1946, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company

Left: Interior page from Color
Dynamics consumer education booklet
ca. 1946, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Apricot Wash 14-1230; Apricot

Sherbet 13-1031; Meadow 14-6319; Russet
Brown 19-1338; Vanilla 12-0712; Rose
Smoke 14-1506

Hit Parade
Records were once sold in plain brown
wrappers like lamb chops from the
butcher. Young graphic designer Alex
Steinweiss changed all that in 1940 with
the first album cover—for Smash Song
Hits by Rogers and Hart.
The design was simple: letters on a
Broadway marquee spelled out the
important information, and an eyecatching red cloth spine grabbed
attention. Columbia Records liked the
results, and the album cover was born.
So was Steinweiss’s career, which
unfolded across three decades, every

major music category, and most major
record companies.
Steinweiss adapted the bold
graphic sense of Piet Mondrian and the
dreamlike movement of Wassily
Kandinsky into resonant commercial
work. Rather than focusing on static
photographs of recording artists, his
imagery conveyed the mood and
emotional appeal of the music inside the
cover. The black and white hands on the
cover of Boogie Woogie said something
about the exciting exchange between the
black and white artists on the playlist,
while John Kirby’s eponymous album
promises a nighttime urban joy ride.

Album covers helped music sales
recover from the Depression, as did the
rise of solo vocalists like Frank Sinatra.
His first charttopping song was the 1940
“I’ll Never Smile Again,” recorded with
Tommy Dorsey. In 1941, he was named
Billboard Magazine’s top male singer.
In 1944, thirty-five thousand fans rioted
outside New York’s Paramount Theater
because Sinatra’s concert there was sold
out. In the late 1940s he became a screen
star, too.
The world responded warmly to
Sinatra’s heat, just as it did to
Steinweiss’s bold graphics. The sounds
of the forties were presented in

appealing blues and golds, and the
absolutes of black and white. A sense of
snazzy sophistication comes through in
lush menswear browns.

Left (top): John Kirby album cover 1941,
Alex Steinweiss
Left (bottom): Teddy Wilson - Billy
Holiday album cover 1941, Alex Steinweiss
Right: Boogie Woogie album cover 1942,
Alex Steinweiss

Left: Frank Sinatra: The Best of the
Columbia Years album cover photo ca.
1943 1948
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Bittersweet 17-1663; Golden
Cream 13-0939; Deep Lichen Green 18-0312;
Oil Blue 17-5111; Alaskan Blue 15-4225;
Turkish Sea 19-4053; Rapture Rose 171929; Raspberry Radiance 19-2432; Total
Elclipse 19-4010

Film Noir
Dark Hollywood movies of deception
and betrayal of the 1940s and 1950s
were first classified as film noir by
French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but the
term did not come into broad use until
the 1970s, when critical assessment of
the American Dream went mainstream.
The cinematic exploration of the
dark side of the American spirit may not
have been deliberate, but film noir
murder mysteries, tales of underworld
crime, and stories of romantic betrayal
were nonetheless deeply resonant to
moviegoers. The films of the genre

embody the undercurrent of political
paranoia that erupted in the Communist
witch hunts of the McCarthy era, give
voice to discomfort with changing
gender roles and the deadening
alienation of urban life, and even suggest
that not everyone was sure that the
nuclear family wouldn’t eventually
explode.
Film noir continues to resonate
because of its dark psychology, but also
because of its incredible style. A beam
of light splintered by Venetian blinds
reveals the duplicity of beautiful and
treacherous women. The looming
shadows between streetlamps turn cities

from centers of culture and commerce
into pits of despair. A black telephone
rings—not with quotidian chitchat but in
ominous warning of death on the
doorstep. Camera angles, chiaroscuro
lighting effects, costume design, and
haunting music infuse everyday reality
with spine-tingling risk. Not to mention
the bewitching faces of leading ladies
like Barbara Stanwyck and Veronica
Lake, and the pained mugs of Humphrey
Bogart and Fred MacMurray.
From the Maltese Falcon of 1941
through the Sunset Boulevard of 1950,
and beyond, film noir played up the
drama inherent in every non-color from

black to white. White Sand and Ash
were the colors of cigarette smoke and
crime-concealing mist. Gull Gray
clothed heroes and heels alike. Raven
and High Risk Red were the colors of
temptresses everywhere.

Left: Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner
in a still from The Killers 1946
Right: Joan Crawford in a still from

Mildred Pierce 1945

Left: Marquee poster for Shadow of a

Doubt 1943
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) White Sand 13-0002; Ash 16-3802;
Gull Gray 16-3803; Raven 19-0000; High
Risk Red 18-1763

La Mode
Nearly two years after the fighting
stopped, French haute couture began to
rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the
war. Before the conflict, as many as a
hundred thousand people had worked in
France’s influential fashion industries,
and many were eager to re-establish
Paris as the center of fashion. With the
backing of textile baron Marcel
Boussac, Christian Dior launched his
couture house in February 1947 to
instant acclaim.
He shrugged off careworn decades
of depression and war, and encouraged

women to blossom again as they had
during the Belle époque. Monumentally
broad hats, sometimes trimmed in dyed
feathers, created alluring shadows.
Jackets flared from tiny waists into hipaccentuating peplums. Skirts bloomed
wide with petticoats. Jewelry
reappeared. The yards and yards of
French fabrics Dior used anticipated the
end of rationing, at least in fashion
terms. Wealthy clients, and even the not
so wealthy, adored the collection. Dior
was soon to represent half of French
couture exports.
He called his collection Corolle,
after the ring of petals around a flower.

But it was Carmel Snow of Harper’s
Bazaar who named the collection for
posterity. “It’s quite a revelation, dear
Christian. Your dresses have such a new
look,” she said.[29] “The New Look”
stuck.
Dior’s elegance inspired not just
the press, but fashion illustrators too.
His friend Christian Bérard rendered the
sloped shoulders and jutting hips of
Dior’s influential Bar day ensemble in
an iconic image. René Gruau captured
the sex appeal of Dior’s bareshouldered gowns. Their work seemed
to show women how to move in the new
world of the New Look.

Dior’s elegance was not confined
to shape and form. Caviar, Bijou Blue,
Lavender Gray, Parfait Pink, and
Moonlight extend his vision into
exquisite color as well. Cloud Dancer
and Alabaster Gleam lend shimmering
highlights to Dior’s unveiling of postwar luxury.

Left: Fashion plate for Christian Dior
in Vogue 1947, Christian Bérard
Right: Advertisement for Bally Shoes
in Femina magazine 1947, René Gruau

Left: Christian Dior fashion in Femina
magazine 1949, René Gruau
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) Caviar 19-4006; Bijou Blue 183921; Lavender Gray 17-3910; Parfait Pink
13-2804; Moonlight 15-1309; Cloud Dancer
11-4201; Alabaster Gleam 12-0812

1950s
Pastels and Primaries
In the 1950s, much of the world moved
from rationing and recovery to optimism
and abundance. A rosy economic
outlook combined with a manufacturing
boom gave rise to modern consumer
culture, replete with broad choices in
many product categories, frequent
introduction of new products, celebrity
endorsements, and new colors for a new
era. Colors shifted dramatically from the
largely practical and dutiful mood of the
1940s to an overall feeling of

exuberance and confidence.
Even the pastels of the 1950s were
poised and self-assured. Advances in
color technology at the movies served up
new, subtle tones onscreen—yielding the
range of icy pastels frequently used to
highlight the cool elegance of the most
beautiful stars. Shimmering aquamarine
and pale pink, especially, made their
way from screen to real life.
But not everything stayed calm,
cool, and collected. Cosmetics giants
like Revlon, Max Factor, and Elizabeth
Arden promoted a much warmer sort of
beauty. Vivid lipstick colors made every
woman’s lips look kissable. The

contrast between pearly skin and fiery
lips and nails was downright sexy—and
very Hollywood.
Even sensible American brands
like Hockanum Woolens took a cue from
the cosmetics world to explore a
dramatically saturated palette. Their
1955 color card, called Coast-to-Coast
Woolens, offered sexy and sumptuous
reds and purples alongside safer grays
and beiges. American Beauty red and
Dahlia purple were an extension of the
vivid cosmetics of the ’50s.
Hollywood was not the only
influence on color and design, of course.
The modernist philosophies of the

Bauhaus found their way around the
world in the work of mid-century
Modernists—architects and designers
who explored the relationship between
form and function in increasingly
humanistic ways. Designers such as Ray
and Charles Eames and George Nelson
softened the angular lines of early
Modernism with ergonomic curves.
Whimsically contrasting colors made
their work inviting and intellectual at the
same time.
The concept of the teenager rose to
prominence in the 1950s, when a whole
generation was expected to attend high
school and college—thus prolonging

their “carefree” youth. Between
allowances and afterschool jobs, they
had some pocket money and the freedom
to spend it—which quickly made
teenagers a new market. Many of them
bought themselves a poodle skirt or a
leather jacket. But the luckiest ones
found their way behind the wheel of a
sublime turquoise or warm-red
Studebaker—part of a joyful color
palette which satisfied a group that took
its light-hearted pleasures seriously.
The home front enjoyed its fair
share of color, too. The best-selling
dinnerware in America, Homer
Laughlin’s Fiesta, introduced happy new

colors for the home—as did Formica,
Rubbermaid, and scores of consumer
goods companies. Their glowing shades
balance the relaxed Father Knows Best
vision of family life with the brisk
efficiency expected of the modern
homemaker.
Even the ideal family needed a
vacation now and then, and the perfect
venue appeared in Walt Disney’s 1955
creation, Disneyland. You could travel
around the world—and even through
time—without leaving Disney’s
legendary playground, which is still the
most visited theme park in the world.
Play was also explored by Ray and

Charles Eames, whose conceptual toys
were designed to instill a sense of
creativity into young and old alike.
Whether in the form of Disney’s magical
escape or the Eameses’ intellectual
exercises, playfulness was
communicated in a tempting palette of
firework colors, balanced with the light
and shadow of black and white.
Even the fabulousness of the ’50s
couldn’t quite conceal looming issues,
however. President Harry S. Truman
approved production of the H-bomb in
1950, and the fear of nuclear disaster
entered classrooms and homes alike.
Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare

wreaked havoc on civil liberties.
The Abstract Expressionists,
centered on a small group of
iconoclastic New York City painters,
telegraphed the tension in the air with an
agitated style of mark making called
“action painting.” Their nervous,
personal, vehement work attracted
international attention and the center of
the art world moved from Paris to New
York. They painted the darker side of the
era in boldly contrasting colors, often
shrouded with black and gray. The
crackling interior monologue they shared
with their audience hinted at the energy
that would fuel the 1960s.

Happy at Home
As the world regained a sense of
normalcy after World War II, Rosie the
Riveter returned home to organize
domestic life for her Baby Boom kids
and GI Bill husband. The structure of
work outside the home stayed with many
homemakers, however, and cleaning and
cooking took on a brisk efficiency.
“New and improved” brands like Tide
set the standard for everything brought
into the home: products had to deliver
convenience and ever better results via
the latest technologies available.
The 1950s sitcom Father Knows

Best typified this new idealized
American family. The Andersons’
kitchen was surely kitted out with
Formica countertops and Fiestaware in
bright, but not too bright colors. By the
1950s, Formica’s heat-set sandwich of
paper or fabric and synthetic compounds
was offered in two durable finishes—
standard or cigarette-proof. Industrial
designer Raymond Loewy updated
Formica’s visual range in 1953. He recolored the best old patterns, and added
new geometrics and faux-marbles. New
solids were smash-hits—with refined
turquoise and faded pink leading the
pack.

Homer Laughlin also updated its
popular Fiesta line in the 1950s with a
new and popular range of rose,
chartreuse, grey, and forest green to
complement long-running yellow and
turquoise options. Fiesta’s pretty colors
reflected the country’s optimism, and the
brand’s mix-and-match strategy gave
homemakers control over the colors on
their tables. The combination made
Fiesta the best-selling dinnerware line in
U.S. history.
Lemon Drop and Pastel Turquoise
shine with 1950s cheerfulness, and
Lunar Rock looks skyward. Linden
Green, Leaf Green, and Silver Pine

provide hopeful nourishment—and
Faded Rose gives a blush of warmth.

Top (left): Lazy Susan ca. 1950,
photograph by Victoria Kasuba Matranga
Top (right): Fiesta advertisement ca. 1952
Bottom (left): Pebblecloth ca. 1950s
Bottom (right): Fiesta dinnerware ca.
1952

Left: Ad for Gibson 600 Electric Range

ca. 1950s, Gibson Electrics
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Lemon Drop 12-0736; Pastel
Turquoise 13-5309; Lunar Rock 14-4201;
Linden Green 15-0533; Leaf Green 15-0332;
Silver Pine 18-5410; Faded Rose 18-1629

Teen Angels
The Teenager was born in the 1950s.
The decade gave rise to the expectation
of universal high school education, and
even a college degree for the ambitious
—lengthening the intermediate stage
between childhood and adulthood. This
prolonged period without full adult
responsibilities was not spent merely
pursuing an education, however: having
fun became a uniquely teenage
preoccupation.
Rock ‘n’ roll music blared on the
radio. Sock hops kept teens out late.
Diners and drive-ins catered to young

drivers escaping the prying eyes at
home. Giddy girls screamed for Elvis or
Ricky Nelson. James Dean’s T-shirtand-jeans-wearing rebel became an
icon.
The U.S. teen scene divided itself
predominantly between “preppy” and
“greaser” categories. Wardrobe choices
were distinctly different: snug sweaters
worn with wide felt poodle skirts in
cheerful pinks on one side, and tight
jeans on the other. Preppy boys wore
varsity sweaters and greasers wore
leather jackets.
But both sides of the sartorial
divide agreed on one thing: a car for

cruisin’ was an absolute necessity. The
cars of the 1950s were offered in colors
that had never been seen before. The
Studebaker was especially hot—in
bright colors as well as a variety of
shiny metallic finishes. Technology
developed by DuPont Coatings helped to
foster these teen-baiting innovations.
In both clothing and automobiles,
teenagers flocked to an optimistic color
range. Turquoise and warm red were
jubilantly bright, with celadon providing
a modulated option. Metallic finishes
came in bronze, peach, and other
delectable colors.

Left: Poodle skirt ca. 1951, designed by Juli
Lynne Charlot
Right: 1952 Studebaker Commander

Left: James Dean in Rebel Without a
Cause 1955
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 7471; 7625; 7606; 559; 10350;
10156; 10191; 10264

Mid-Century
Modernists
Mid-Century Modern is the name given
to modernist interior, architectural, and
product design between 1933 and 1965.
Like the Bauhaus before them, MidCentury Modernists saw the successful
interaction between their products and
end users (human beings) as allimportant to the relationship between
form and function. As a result, MidCentury design often addresses human
needs for comfort, accessibility, and
performance.

In the hands of Ray and Charles
Eames, two notable American MidCentury Modernists, humor became part
of modern design. Their prolific
partnership was built on Charles’s
architectural mindset and Ray’s innate
sense of color and artistry. In their early
years, they created often exuberant and
always innovative furniture designs that
attracted an international reputation. In
subsequent years they collaborated on
exhibitions, films, toys, graphics, and
textile designs.
Together with Eero Saarinen, the
son of Eames’s mentor Eliel Saarinen,
the Eameses explored molded plywood

as a material for furniture. They
submitted an attention-getting entry in
“Organic Design in Home Furnishings,”
a competition staged by MoMA, and
won first prize. The Eameses and
Saarinen went on to design numerous
classics, some of which are still in
production.
Another Eames colleage, George
Nelson, was a legendary design director
of American furnishings innovator
Herman Miller. Among a host of iconic
Nelson products, his clocks stand out for
their consistent blend of functionality
and light hearted beauty.
The Mid-Century palette expresses

the optimism of designers working
toward new solutions for living with
Mimosa, Muskmelon, and Dark Citron.
Whisper White, Steel Gray, and Forest
Night add strength and structure. Aqua
Haze’s complexity hints that there is
serious intellect at work.

Top: Wall Clock ca. 1952, designed by George

Nelson and made by Howard Miller Clock
Company
Bottom: Wire chairs with bird sculpture
1952, by Charles and Ray Eames

Left: Tulip Armchair (model 150) 1955
1956, Eero Saarinen
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) Mimosa 14-0848; Muskmelon 151242; Dark Cirton 16-0435; Whisper White
11-0701; Steel Gray 18-4005; Forest Night
19-0414; Aqua Haze 15-5209

Movie Goddesses
The Technicolor process brought
smashing (and exaggerated) hues to the
screen in the 1930s, but it was expensive
and unwieldy. When Eastman Kodak
introduced 35mm color film developed
with affordable and improved methods
in 1952, audiences saw the change.
Colors were pearlier and even languid
—paving the way for cool beauties like
Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn.
Kelly grew up wealthy in
Philadelphia. Against her parents’
wishes, she pursued acting after being
refused college admission for poor math

scores. Her upward trajectory was the
stuff of fairy tales. In six short years, she
made eleven films, stunned the world
with her effortless elegance, and married
Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956. Her
breakthrough year was 1954, with Green
Fire, The Country Girl, Rear Window,
Dial M for Murder, and The Bridges at
Toko-Ri released back to back. At the
1955 Academy Awards, she wore an
aquamarine silk dress designed by
movie costumer Helen Rose, who had
also put her in a pale green suit in Rear
Window. Kelly shared the title of best
dressed woman with couture-wearing
Babe Paley that year, which delighted

many, because Kelly’s off-screen
wardrobe consisted mostly of sensible
skirts and sweater sets.
Audrey Hepburn’s beauty was
more gamine than Grace Kelly’s,
particularly in her breakthrough role in
1953’s Roman Holiday. But by the time
Funny Face came along in 1957,
couturier Hubert de Givenchy had
designed much of her personal and
professional wardrobe, and Hepburn
had established her lifelong reputation
for streamlined elegance.
Kelly and Hepburn embraced the
new subtleties of color at the movies in
all the milky tones found in moonstones

and opals: delicate lavender, seductive
aquamarine and azure, and fresh, pale
apricots and yellows. Hepburn’s Funny
Face co-star Kay Thompson sang “Think
Pink” in the movie, and pale pink is this
palette’s crowning color.

Right: Anne Aubrey in a Lux brand soap
ad 1959

Left: Audrey Hepburn in a publicity
photo for Funny Face 1957

Left: Grace Kelly posing for Life

magazine 1954
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 9286; 9483; 9140; 9402; 9200;
9340

Cosmetic Superstars
Advertising campaigns like “Fire and
Ice” and “Cherries in the Snow”
explained that 1950s glamour centered
on the striking contrast between vivid
lips and perfect skin. Think of redhot
Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof, or sultry Marilyn Monroe in The
Seven Year Itch.
You didn’t have to be born with
movie star looks to resemble one,
however. Cosmetic innovators helped
everyone look more like movie stars.
Max Factor’s 1914 introduction of PanCake powder simplified movie makeup

by eliminating the need for both base and
powder. His formulas were eventually
offered to the public to huge success. In
1940, Factor’s son introduced
smearproof Tru-Color lipstick in six
shades of red. Elizabeth Arden kept
clear skin and red lips in vogue even in
wartime with her Venetian Cream
Amoretta skin products and Montezuma
Red lipstick—a shade which paired
well, she said, with military uniforms.
By 1950, the vogue for pale skin
and red lips was pushed to new levels
by Charles Revson, founder of Revlon.
He hired photographer Richard Avedon
to shoot the world’s first supermodel,

Dorian Leigh, for his “Fire and Ice”
campaign. His passionate red and pink
lipstick shades were offered in nail
polish, too. Revlon drove home the
message of his saturated tones with
names like “Paint the Town Pink” and
“Fifth Avenue Red.”
The 1950s passion for reds also
found its way into fashion and costume
jewelry, with designers like Claire
McCardell introducing relatively
affordable movie star glamour into
department stores nationwide.
Powder Puff, Powder Pink, and
Blush capture the flawless skin of 1950s
movie stars. The ardent, kissable lips

that completed the look were Claret
Red, Rouge Red, and Lipstick Red.

Top (left): Vintage costume jewelry ca.
1954, designed by Halbe
Top (right): Evening dress 1950, designed
by Claire Cardell, manufactured by Townley
Frocks
Bottom (left:) English advertisement for
Elizabeth Arden lipstick ca. 1950s

Bottom (right): Ad for My Love
perfume by Elizabeth Arden 1950

Left: Revlon s first

Fire and Ice

advertisement featuring Dorian Leigh
1952
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Powder Puff 11-1404; Powder
Pink 14-1511; Blush 15-1614; Claret Red
17-1740; Rouge Red 18-1755; Lipstick Red
19-1764

Coast-to-Coast
Woolens
Machine-woven woolens have a long
history in the United States, dating back
to the early nineteenth century, when
pioneering American industrialists tried
to copy British machinery for spinning
yarns and weaving fabric. Eventually
men with illustrious surnames like Cabot
and Lowell created businesses that
turned New England from a region of
farmers and fisherman into an industrial
powerhouse.
Hockanum Woolens played a part

in that development. Founded in 1848 in
the Rockville district of Vernon,
Connecticut, it made woolen goods for
Civil War uniforms, and later fine
materials for men’s and women’s
clothing. Hockanum stayed in operation
in good times and bad, until owner J. P.
Stevens, who had purchased it in 1934,
shut it down in 1951. At that point it
became part of another historic
movement: the flight of industries from
the North, where wages had become
high and unions prevalent, to the South,
where business owners sought cheaper
wages.
By 1955, the year that Hockanum

offered an incredibly stylish collection
called “Coast-to-Coast Woolens,” the
company was not a mill per se, but a
brand of fabrics offered by corporate
giant J. P. Stevens. But Stevens had
become a textile giant for a reason: it
understood how to move with the market
to offer colors and textures that would
be desired by customers. Under Stevens,
Hockanum Woolens ascended into high
fashion, with weave structures designed
to hold the architectural shapes of
Diorinfluenced suits for women. They
were also embraced by the stylish
French-born Lilly Daché, who was for
many years the last word in American

millinery.
Coast-to-Coast Woolens were
made in luscious, saturated tones of
American Beauty, Ginger, Dahlia,
Purple Opulence, and Epsom. Charcoal
Gray, Blue Heaven, and Beige supported
the bolder end of the palette.

Top: Cover, Hockanum Coast-to-Coast
Woolens 1955
Bottom: Interior spread, Hockanum

Coast-to-Coast Woolens 1955

Left: Selection of images from
Hockanum Coast-to-Coast Woolens 1955
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) American Beauty 19-1759; Ginger
17-1444; Dahlia 18-3324; Purple Opulence
18-3840; Epsome 17-0324; Charcoal Gray 18-

0601; Blue Heaven 17-4023; Beige 14-1118

Fantasyland
In 1950, Cinderella explained that “a
dream is a wish your heart makes.” But
Walt Disney’s wishes were not
completely satisfied by silent audiences
in darkened theaters. Just like Pinocchio,
Disney wanted his dreams to become
real.
Disneyland was his ultimate wish
fulfillment—a $17 million park of eight
themed areas, dozens of shops and
restaurants, and thrilling rides and
exhibits. The park opened in 1955, and
was regularly filled with parents and
children eager to visit “the happiest

place on earth.”
What makes Disneyland so
popular? It packages traditional fairy
tales alongside American myths,
international destinations, and futuristic
visions in quick, accessible bites perfect
for the Media Age. Disney’s television
alliance certainly helped elevate the
park in the public imagination, too. The
Wonderful World of Disney aired
weekly in some form for fifty-four years
—enshrining the fireworks over
Cinderella’s castle as an icon for
generations of kids.
Ray and Charles Eames’s popular
1952 House of Cards is an icon of a

different sort. It celebrates the
imagination by encouraging individual
creativity. House of Cards challenges
kids (and parents) to create diverse
structures out of its thirty-two
interlocking pieces. The Eameses chose
scenes from everyday life as well as
their international travels to pattern each
card. The contrasting designs enhance
the sense of play so important to the
Eameses— which also found expression
in The Toy of 1951, the Hang-It-All of
1953, and the solar-powered DoNothing Machine of 1958.
Fantasy and play are colored in
spellbinding pinks and purples, and

dashes of piercing blue and magical
olive green. Black and white add
dramatic contrast.

Left: House of Cards (giant size) 1954,
Charles Eames
Right: House of Cards 1952, Charles and
Ray Eames

Left: Fireworks over Disneyland,
opening day 1955
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) 211; 7655; 285; 7768; Black 6;
White

Abstract
Expressionists
The general optimism of the 1950s did
not completely overshadow the old
wounds of war—or new fears of nuclear
bombs, the Cold War, and shape-shifting
modern existence. Abstract
Expressionism, with its twitching,
slithering bursts of color, gave voice to
the darker thoughts of the age.
The Abstract Expressionist
movement was led mostly by the New
York School—a handful of painters
including Jackson Pollock, Willem de

Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Hans
Hofmann. Their styles vary, but the
intensity of their work unifies them.
Jackson Pollock thrilled the art
world with his departure from the norms
of easel painting. He put his canvas on
the floor, and used sticks, knives, and his
hands to throw paint onto the canvas
from every direction. Perhaps
surprisingly, a sense of coherence
emerges from his chaos of spattered
paint.
Much of Willem de Kooning’s
work depicts human figures. The intense
exaggeration of his portraits, particularly
his voracious women, describes deep

sexual tension. Even his abstract work
seems to give inchoate fears discernible
form.
The force of Abstract
Expressionism shifted the center of the
art world from Paris to New York.
Frank Lloyd Wright was hired to design
a home for Solomon R. Guggenheim’s
vast collection of modern art. He
departed from the squared-off norms of
Manhattan architecture with a curling
ribbon of a museum. The Guggenheim
was Wright’s last major work, and he
called it a “temple of spirit.” Not
universally popular with artists or
viewers, it has also been called other

names. But when its central core holds a
red Calder mobile, “temple of spirit”
seems accurate.
The Abstract Expressionists
created dark meaning through the
juxtaposition of bright colors. Orange
vibrates against teal. Yolk yellow
battles with azure blue. Somber tones of
gray, black, and lavender shroud these
conflicting tones with a moody mist.

Left: Red Lily Pads (Nénuphars rouges)
1956, Alexander Calder
Right: The Guggenheim Museum, New
York 1958, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
Bottom: Ocean Greyness 1953, Jackson
Pollock

Left: Composition 1955, Willem de
Kooning
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 7579; 632; 129; 2718; Warm Gray
1; Black 7; 7654

1960s
Saturated ’60s
Paul Kantner, lead man of the rock group
Jefferson Airplane, once quipped, “If
you can remember anything about the
’60s, you weren’t really there.” There’s
an aspect of truth in Kantner’s words:
this turbulent decade is hard to pin
down. Was it idealistic or rebellious?
Shaggy or stylish? Coarse or composed?
Kantner implied that hallucinogens were
the obstacle to clear recollection. The
more likely culprit, though, was change.
The 1960s stand between the generally

positive outlook of 1950s and the
scramble for self-satisfaction of the
1970s. In ten watershed years,
everything transformed.
John F. Kennedy was elected thirtyfifth President of the United States in
1960, and with his victory came a
national wave of optimism. His
energetic call to repair some of the ills
of U.S. society made many anticipate
ever better times for America. His
stylish First Lady, Jacqueline Bouvier
Kennedy, brought her keen eye to the
White House—felt primarily in her
efforts to restore the presidential
residence, but also in her personal style.

When she represented the United States
on a state visit to India in 1962, the
youthful, rosy palette of her wardrobe,
combined with the vivid glamour of
India, was influential in later fashion and
décor.
But the Kennedys’ Camelot was
short-lived. JFK’s murder in 1963
wounded the American psyche deeply,
and for a long time. Artists Robert
Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns explored
the post-assassination mood in mournful
grays interrupted by siren-loud brights.
Another artist, Andy Warhol, took
the social temperature with different
results. Rather than dwelling on the loss

of nobility represented by Kennedy’s
death, Warhol seemed to revel in the
rudderless, classless, media-fueled
society that was left. Celebrities and
soup cans received equal, jarringly
colorful treatment in his work: both
were American icons promoted
ceaselessly in old and new media. Their
ubiquity bleached them of meaning—but,
oddly, gave them significance at the
same time.
While Warhol was busy blurring
the lines between pop and high cultures,
’60s flower children were pretty blurry
themselves. The media mostly trumpeted
druggy love-ins as the end of

civilization, but hippies saw them as a
new freedom from old rules. Pot and
LSD figured largely in the hippie scene,
giving birth to a dizzying psychedelic
color palette, new graphic styles, tie-dye
wardrobes, and ideas that were at once
wildly hedonistic and dreamily
idealistic.
The kaleidoscope of Swinging
London went well beyond psychedelic
tie-dyes. British fashion designers like
Mary Quant, inventor of the miniskirt,
exploded with youthful energy in the
1960s. Their designs were strictly for
young, skinny Twiggy–like people. Their
shops were often theatrical, rock-

drenched affairs where even thirty-yearolds would have felt overripe. But the
dreamy clothes, colored in moody,
smoky tones, were made up of equal
parts Art Nouveau and the Middle East,
Art Deco and India, Rolling Stones and
Robin Hood. British fashion of this time
is still a touchstone for contemporary
designers.
The freedom in the air was not
limited to music, drugs, and fashion,
however. The Civil Rights and Black
Power movements— combined with
Africa’s steps out of colonialism and
into independence—represented great
advances for people of color

everywhere. Black was suddenly
beautiful, politically, physically, and in
a design context, too. Sleek black
furnishings and clothing began to
proliferate.
Innovative children’s educational
series Sesame Street featured a handful
of human instructors of various skin
colors. But all colors were represented
by the show’s Muppet cast, including
green, blue, and orange. Big Bird led
this glorious rainbow coalition, which
forty years later still brings vital
learning into homes in 140 countries.
Another colorful force came of age
in the 1960s, as well. Lawrence Herbert

changed the printing industry with his
PANTONE Matching System. When one
of PANTINE's colors was chosen for a
job, the printer used PANTONE’s inks
and formulas to recreate that same color
every time. The clarity and simplicity of
the system were a huge success—and
PANTONE eventually became the
language of color for creative people
across many industries.
The ’60s were full of colors, and
PANTONE assigned a number and a
formula to each and every one of them.

A Different Space
John F. Kennedy’s time as President of
the United States began with optimism.
His youth and charisma signaled the
possibility of change—borne out by
Kennedy’s space race, his support for
civil rights, and his handling of the 1962
Cuban missile crisis. His First Lady,
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, brought
beauty and style to a White House that
had lacked both for decades. Their
personal popularity resembled that of
movie stars rather than politicians.
Kennedy’s assassination in
November 1963 snuffed out the bright

light that had attracted so much attention
and inspired so much hope. It inflicted a
wound on the American psyche that took
decades to heal. In fact, nostalgia for
Kennedy’s Camelot still lingers. The
1968 assassinations of Martin Luther
King, Jr., and
Robert F. Kennedy also left huge
holes in America’s perception of itself.
The innocence of the ’50s had morphed
into something frightening and complex.
Robert Rauschenberg’s 1964
Retroactive combines silkscreened
news images with expressive, painterly
color. A dark cloud hovers over the late
President’s head. The apples to his left

are upside down. An astronaut is falling
from the sky. An atmosphere of gloom
and decline prevails. The symbolic
green of renewal is threatened by the
welling-up blood red of danger.
Jasper Johns’ use of grays in many
of his works raises equally intriguing
questions—what happened to the red,
white, and blue? We see the color
names, but not the actual hues. Darkness,
instead, prevails. In Flags of 1965,
Johns offers an American flag of colorwheel opposites: orange, green, and
very dark blue—as if to say that nothing
is what it proclaims itself to be.
Rauschenberg and Johns posed

their questions about the world in black
and blue and a host of grim grays—
punctuated with blood red, jarring green,
and foreboding orange.

Left: Passage 1962, Jasper Johns
Right: Flags 1968, Jasper Johns

Left: Retroactive I 1964, Robert
Rauschenberg
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) Black; 2747; 405; Cool Gray 8;
1797; 7740; 715

Kensington and
Carnaby
A wave of eccentric, modern style swept
the world from London’s Kensington and
Carnaby Streets in the 1960s. Young
Brits, tired of the boring, matronly goods
on offer, were searching for youthful,
modern styles—and a group of young
designers stepped up to meet their needs.
Mary Quant introduced the
miniskirt in 1964, joined later by her
smock dresses and snug ribbed
sweaters. The legendary store Biba
(brainchild of Barbara Hulanicki)

popularized the mini—and also made it
a bit shorter season after season until it
achieved micro-mini status. Zandra
Rhodes crafted lush hooded caftans.
Ossie Clark created hot pants and gypsy
dresses. John Bates invented catsuits and
string dresses. John Stephen suggested
flared velvet pants for men.
All of it was designed for svelte
young people. Most of it was affordable.
Some of it was sold in theatrical stores
like Biba, where the Art Nouveau and
Art Deco signage and displays were just
as interesting as the clothes. Loud pop
music blared nonstop on selling floors,
and some stores served drinks to keep

customers (and their wallets) loose.
Daytime shopping around Carnaby
Street was populated with thick-lashed
girls, shaggy men, and their smashing
outfits— but it paled in comparison to
the nightlife. Clubs around Carnaby
Street booked young acts like the Rolling
Stones, the Beatles, and the Who, and
“Swinging London” really came alive
after dark.
The colors of Kensington and
Carnaby blend Blue Yonder with dark
Java, smoky Cordovan, and moody
Mineral Red. Bright Violet and Jaffa
Orange shed a Mod light on things, and
Sheepskin and Pale Gold serve as

neutrals.

Left: Biba logo, British magazine ad ca.
1960s, Barbara Hulanicki
Center: Jerkin ca. 1968, Mirandi
Right: Skirt and Jumper 1965, Mary
Quant

Left: Suit 1960, Cifonelli
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Blue Yonder 18-3937; Java 191016; Cordovan 19-1726; Mineral Red 171537; Bright Violet 19-3438; Jaffa Orange
16-1454; Sheepskin 14-1122; Pale Gold 150927

Black Is Beautiful
The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968
ended decades of legalized racial
segregation in the United States. Great
Society legislation of 1965 addressed
some of the ills caused by racial
discrimination. The Black Power
movement of the mid-1960s brought
pride and personal action into the mix,
establishing a political voice for
American blacks, bringing young leaders
into the picture, and redefining long-held
notions of physical beauty. Africa’s
liberation from colonial powers also
resonated around the world, and gave an

international dimension to the movement
in North America.
Black was no longer in the
shadows. Black was proud. Black was
powerful. Black was beautiful.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches
soared over the airwaves— as did the
songs of Diana Ross and the Supremes,
Aretha Franklin, and many more
Motown recording artists. Sydney
Poitier became the first black actor to
win the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Diahann Carroll starred in the 1968
television series Julia. Naomi Sims was
the first black model to appear on the
cover of Life magazine, in 1969.

Black also became an essential
color in fashion and design—
representing everything that was hip,
cool, and modern. Verner Panton’s sleek
molded plastic chair made an
impression—as did heavy black eye
makeup and Op Art’s pulsating graphics.
The Beatniks’ fondness for black berets
and somber clothing morphed into
sophisticated, sexy black fashion, often
worn with red or olive accents.
Chestnut, a lush representation of
African skin tones, shares the spotlight
with Jet Set in this palette. Silver Cloud
and Cloud Dancer bring crispness and
contrast. Fiesta and Ecru Olive add a

stylish dimension to the absolutes of
black and white.

Left: Martini date unknown
Right: Panton classic chair 1959 1960,
designed by Verner Panton, manufactured
by Vitra

Left: Black Models Take Center
Stage, cover of Life magazine 1969
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Chestnut 19-1118; Jet Set 19-

5708; Silver Cloud 15-4502; Cloud Dancer
11-4201; Fiesta 17-1564; Ecru Olive 17-0836

Psychedelia
“Turn on, tune in, drop out” was
Timothy Leary’s 1966 admonition to
anyone who would listen. LSD had
propelled him into selfexploration,
enlightenment, and (of course) intense
pleasure, and he was eager to share what
he’d learned.
Tie-dye-wearing “flower children”
around the world followed his
instructions, and a psychedelic era of
vibrating colors and optical effects
bloomed. References to acid trips laced
many hit songs, including the Beatles’
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the

Doors’ “People Are Strange,” and
Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” all
released in 1967. That same year, Peter
Fonda starred in a film written by Jack
Nicholson called The Trip, about a
firsttimer’s LSD experience.
Album covers and concert posters
frequently emulated the LSD experience
with frenetic collages, undulating type,
and hallucinogenic color. Graphic
designer Wes Wilson created a
sensation with his delirious work for
San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium, a
mecca for rock fans everywhere. Peter
Max’s pulsating style leavened the
madness with a little charm. Even

photographer Richard Avedon
contributed to the craze with a beautiful
quartet of manipulated portraits of John,
Paul, George, and Ringo.
Psychedelic drugs were integral to
San Francisco’s legendary Summer of
Love, as well. Young people flocked to
the Haight- Ashbury neighborhood to
experiment with communal living and
free love, to wear what they pleased and
stay high as long as they wanted. After
the legendary Woodstock Music Festival
of 1969, the hippie movement had a
hangover, and psychedelia started its
descent into the headshops and
counterculture cafés of big cities.

Whether used as a tool for
heightened self-awareness or just a plain
old good time, LSD’s visual effects
were loaded with saturated color.
Aubergine, violet, and fuchsia competed
for attention in dilated pupils. Peridot
green and sunshine yellow were
naturally unnatural. Indigo, blue, and
orange were the unstable foundation of
the psychedelic experience.

Left: Tie-dyed T-shirt swatch ca. 1960s
Right: Still from the Beatle s movie

Yellow Submarine 1968

Left: Untitled (Bob Dylan) 1967, Peter
Max
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 7649; 265; 246; 383; 7548; 2735;
1505; 2995

Sesame Street
In 1969, American kids received a great
big gift from Joan Ganz Cooney’s
Children’s Television Workshop:
Sesame Street. A sevenfoot yellow
canary named Big Bird appeared
onscreen to teach children their numbers
and letters. From his garbage can,
scruffy Oscar the Grouch recited
parables on proper behavior, while
Cookie Monster offered advice on
impulse control. Roommates Bert and
Ernie worked through every problem
with good will. And Grover’s “Hello,
Everybodeeeeee!” made us all feel

welcome.
Sesame Street was designed to
meet the needs of children of all shapes,
colors, sizes, and situations—hence the
whimsical diversity of its Muppet cast.
Cooney assembled a remarkable
team to develop her universally
appealing teaching tool. The now
legendary Jim Henson made the
enchanting menagerie of characters. Joe
Raposo wrote many of the show’s songs
(some of which went on to become
mainstream hits) including “[It’s Not
Easy] Bein’ Green,” “Sing,” and “Blue.”
And the Carnegie Corporation funded it
all. Public television stations broadcast

Sesame Street as many as eighteen times
a week, and kids and their parents
adored it.
Adults appreciated them so much,
in fact, that the Muppets had their own
acclaimed primetime television show
from 1976 to 1981, as well as six
feature films and several television
specials.
The show is alive more than four
decades later, and some version of the
Sesame Street concept airs in 140
countries today.
Oscar the Grouch made the most
out of being Spinach Green. Big Bird
ignited little minds in Vibrant Yellow

with a taste of Cherry Tomato. Ernie
cheered up stuffy old Bert with his Sun
Orange face. The Cookie Monster
snacked in Dazzling Blue. Huggable
Grover reached through the television
screen with Blithe blue fur and a
Shocking Pink nose.

Top (left): Grover 1969, Sesame Workshop

Top (center): Oscar the Grouch 1969,
Sesame Workshop
Top (right): Cookie Monster 1969, Sesame
Workshop
Bottom: Big Bird 1969, Sesame
Workshop

Left: Bert & Ernie 1969, Sesame

Workshop
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Spinach Green 16-0439; Vibrant
Yellow 13-0858; Cherry Tomato 17-1563;
Sun Orange 16-1257; Dazzling Blue 183949; Blithe 17-4336; Shocking Pink 172127

Warhol
Andy Warhol staged his first solo shows
in Los Angeles and New York in 1962,
filling the galleries with portraits of
Marilyn Monroe, and multiple cans of
Campbell’s Soup, bottles of Coca Cola,
and dollar bills. Was the work kitschy
and monotonous? Or were the slight
variations in silkscreened color and
texture fascinating and ironic?
Whichever interpretation you choose
(and Andy didn’t really care either
way), the work took Warhol to the center
of the American Pop Art scene.
Other Pop artists grappled with

imagery from the worlds of advertising
and mass media, but no one
contemplated celebrity as thoroughly as
Warhol. His intensely colored multipleportraits of Elvis Presley and Elizabeth
Taylor celebrated their overwhelming
fame—even as it packaged them up like
canned goods. Warhol’s later portraits
of relatively unknown collectors and
wealthy patrons employed the same
techniques as his more famous subjects
— spotlighting precisely their lack of
fame in the process.
Warhol himself became a Pop Art
artifact. Across the span of his career, he
assumed multiple identities as

“corporate executive, avant-garde artist,
society portrait-painter, author,
filmmaker, television host, nightclub
owner, record producer, band manager,
theatrical producer, magazine publisher,
film actor, fashion maven, and
occasional model.”[31] He demanded
attention as a celebrity, and played with
and profited from this status— even as
he derided modern fame as meaningless
and ephemeral. There seemed to be no
facet of media-fueled modern identity he
couldn’t celebrate and criticize in the
same breath.
Warhol depicted the famous and the
infamous, the unique and the ubiquitous,

in lurid values of burnt red, orange, teal,
emerald, turquoise, pink, and violet. The
freshness and humor of lime and taxicab
yellow stop the palette from descending
into sheer cynicism—because, after all,
Warhol only criticized what he admired.

Left: Marilyn 1967, Andy Warhol

Right: Campbell s Soup Can 1965, Andy
Warhol

Left: Self-Portrait 1966, Andy Warhol
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom)7621; 158; 7713; 340; 318; 516;
7662; 7744; 1235

PANTONE
Lawrence Herbert (LH to his friends)
started off as a printer: he skillfully
matched the colors brought to him by
clients and their designers. After a
particularly rough day of clients insisting
on press that LH wasn’t giving them the
colors they wanted, he had a thunderclap
of inspiration: what the printers needed
was a palette of tried and true formulas
so that designers and clients could
choose the colors they wanted, and
printers could apply the formulas to
every job. The final printed colors
would meet the clients’ specifications

every time.
In 1963, LH approached twentyone ink manufacturers with his proposed
PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM
(PMS). If they agreed to be official
suppliers of the system’s ten component
colors, LH would provide them with the
PMS color formulas— and a whole new
way for printers, designers, and clients
to communicate about color. All but one
signed LH’s agreement in less than two
weeks, and PANTONE’s journey
toward worldwide use began.
In 1964, LH developed the
PANTONE Color Specifier for the
design market. The first PANTONE

MATCHING SYSTEM for artists’
materials appeared in 1965. In
subsequent years, PANTONE added
color matching systems for powder
coatings and paints, plastics, on-screen
technologies, textiles, and more—and
became the language of color used by
designers, artists, and manufacturers
around the world.
The colors of PANTONE’s first
PMS fan deck reflect the 1960s taste for
vibrant tones. Rubine Red, Rhodamine
Red, Purple, and Reflex Blue glimmer
seductively at the center of the palette.
Yellow and Warm Red’s hot notes
balance out the deliciously cool shades

of Process Blue and Green.

Left: Yellow PANTONE Color chips ca.
1960s
Right (top):Lipcolor Plus advertisement
1961
Right (middle): Marshall s photo-oil
colors and pencils advertisement ca.
1960s
Right (bottom): Cover of PANTONE

MATCHING SYSTEM ca. 1960s

Left: Paper mini-dress with faces 1960s
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Rubine Red; Rhodamine Red;
Purple; Reflex Blue; Yellow; Warm Red;
Process Blue; Green

1970s
Earthy and Eclectic
What happens after the psychedelic
1960s? A time of acute disagreement
about U.S. foreign and environmental
policies, an oil crisis, a poor global
economy, Watergate, and much more. If
the ’60s were a party, the ’70s were a
heavy therapy session, putting the
world’s major issues under a
microscope.
Four young people were killed and
nine wounded in the Kent State
massacre, a confrontation between

police and university students protesting
the war in Southeast Asia, in May 1970.
As a result, flower children got serious
as activists, and closed down more than
450 schools with a strike involving over
four million students. Environmental
protests achieved quicker success than
the anti-war movement, and the early
1970s saw the first Earth Day, as well
as significant legal progress against
pollution. The desire for integrity within
both protest movements sparked an
affinity for earth tones and natural
materials. Hippies abandoned
psychedelia and donned feathers and
leathers and earth tones in order to feel

grounded and sincere.
The new focus on Earth as a living
entity in need of protection attracted
artists as well as hippies. Land art
became a new genre, with visionaries
like Robert Smithson and James Turrell
turning earth and rocks into
contemplations on our terrestrial home,
and our presence in it. Land art added an
ethereal, contemplative palette to
popular earth tones.
A by-product of the movement
resulted in a memorable moment where
white was simply no longer sufficient
for kitchen appliances. Avocado and
Harvest Gold (and their close associate

Burnt Orange) took over the kitchendining areas of mod, open-plan houses.
The palette was designed to satisfy the
“back to nature” urge of the ’70s. From
the distance of a few decades, its
artificiality makes that idea seem odd,
but the palette was very influential for a
short time.
The punk movement rejected
hypocrisy and anything inauthentic,
perhaps as a result of spending time in
Mom’s Avocado green kitchen. In the
United States, the Ramones developed
the harsh wall of sound and the
disparaging lyrics typical of punk music.
In London, the Sex Pistols perfected the

look: spiky Mohawk hair in DayGlo
colors and a ripped and safetypinned
wardrobe of black clothes, often
emblazoned with foul-mouthed mottos.
Their aesthetic was as “anti” as their
lyrics. Oddly, reading punk lyrics on a
page reveals a point of view as
Romantic in many ways as Byron and
Shelley. Boys still met girls, and
everyone still got upset when it didn’t
work out.
At the thousands of discos that
bloomed in the ’70s, romance abounded.
Well, at least sex did. Dance floor
gyrations under brilliantly colored light
shows (and a snow shower of mirror-

ball reflections) frequently led to
temporary relationships. Saturday Night
Fever inspired many to don a white suit
and hoof their way into the Sexual
Revolution. At world-famous Studio 54,
Manhattan’s disco par excellence, the
freedom to touch became a form of
social mobility, with glittering
celebrities and good-looking nobodies
sharing their love of nightlife.
Home decorators longing for
romance in their living environments
explored French Country style as an
escape from the flap and fury of the ’70s.
Grounded in the sweet and vivid colors
of Provence, and replete with handmade

textures and antique furniture, French
Country was (and for many still is) a
sweet way to make home the refuge it
often needs to be.
Some consumers, though, needed
help settling on a color palette for their
home—and their wardrobes and vanity
tables, too. The ’60s’ profusion of color
needed to be harnessed into appealing
choices—and color science became a
topic of broad interest in the ’70s.
Bauhaus theorist Johannes Itten, and
even the U.S. government, helped with
textbook instruction in color theory. But
artist and designer Vera Neumann (the
Vera of printed scarf and tunic fame)

seemed to have been born with an
understanding of color, and her bright
work did much to help Americans
embrace new color choices.
During the tumult of the ’70s, many
people moved to California for sun, surf,
and scenery, for the counterculture
remnants of the Summer of Love, or in
search of success in music, television, or
film. The beauty of California was easy
to enjoy. Success in “the industry” was
not. The Eagles’ 1977 hit “Hotel
California” invited a moment’s
consideration of the dark side of the
’70s, with its hints of addiction and
selfdestruction. An overlay of shadow

obscured the brights of the ’60s, and the
need for a more structured approach to
life was on the horizon.

Colors and
Coordinates
The 1960s color explosion propelled
many people into wild experimentation
in fashion and decor. But just as many
were intimidated by the vast choices
available to them, and several resources
emerged in the 1970s to train designers
and consumers to navigate the modern
rainbow.
An inexpensive re-issue of
Johannes Itten’s 1961 The Elements of
Color appeared in 1970. His blend of
Bauhaus color philosophy and graphic

application has been called ethicoaesthetics—a discipline with elements
of behavioral psychology, sociology,
and psychiatry.[32] In practice, he
invited artists and designers to master
the ways in which color affects others.
The 1970 edition is a textbook classic
still used in universities over forty years
later.
Even the U.S. government saw an
opportunity to help consumers
understand their choices in fashion,
cosmetics, and home furnishings. Color
in Our Daily Lives was published in
1975 and distributed to classrooms
across the country, as well as to the

general public. Like Itten’s work, it
explores the relationship between
families of color, and explains concepts
like lightness and hue, contrast and
harmony. Its stated goal was to “help
you to sense color and feel color
relationships so that you will know more
clearly what colors are right for
you.”[33]
Designer and artist Vera Neumann
didn’t seem to need any help
understanding color interaction, or the
way color creates a mood. Neumann’s
effortless drawing style and effervescent
palette were enormously popular in the
1970s. She turned everything from

garden flowers to ancient Incan motifs
into scarves and dresses, home textiles
and posters. Her customers trusted Vera
to manage the rainbow for them, and as a
result, they were often some of the most
confidently colorful ladies around.
Harmony and contrast were
frequently explored in complex shades
of mustard and apricot, aqua and
periwinkle, lemon and pink, vermillion
and sky blue.

Left: Cover from Color in Our Daily
Lives: A Consumer Guide educational
booklet 1975, produced by the U.S.
Department of Commerce, National
Bureau of Standards
Center: Poster for Vera s first art
exhibition at the Emile Walter
Galleries, New York 1970
Right: Interior page from Color in
Our Daily Lives: A Consumer Guide
educational booklet 1975, produced by the
U.S. Department of Commerce, National

Bureau of Standards

Left: The Foucault Pendulum poster
1972, Vera Neumann

Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 7752; 157; 7465; 2718; 121; 211;
7416; 644

Avocado and Harvest
Gold
The hippies of the 1970s were not the
only people interested in feeling closer
to nature. By the end of the ’60s
consumers of all stripes flocked to earth
tones in clothing, cosmetics, and décor.
At the top of the list was Avocado, a
smoky green that may or may not actually
exist in nature—but was seen in the ’70s
as sincere and healthful, as well as
stylish and up to date. The strain of
satisfying all of those adjectives at once
was bound to show, and 1970s kitchens

stocked with Avocado appliances, pots
and pans, contact paper, and synthetic
floor coverings looked a bit heavyhanded at times, even when lightened up
a bit with Golden Olive and Cream
Gold.
Harvest Gold, Burnt Orange, and
Tortoise Shell were also key kitchen and
appliance colors—just when residential
architecture was advocating open-plan
kitchen-dining rooms, where families
could spend lots of quality time together.
Larger rooms meant more wall and
counter space, which were often
populated with macramé hangings
shaped like owls, mushroom-motif

canisters, and daisy tea towels.
Wallpapers and shag carpets in this
palette’s colors were bestsellers in the
’70s, as were durable synthetic
Herculon upholstery fabrics, often in big
plaids, which covered sofas and chairs.
These mod materials made their way
beyond the kitchen and into dens,
bedrooms, and living rooms. They also
hit the road in elaborately decorated
mobile homes, which acquired a fan
base for a while.
The concept of color matching
attracted a strong following, too.
Hostess gowns blended with the
hostess’s décor, her children’s outfits

with her dress. Sometimes even the hors
d’oeuvres coordinated, too.
The rigor of maintaining an all
Avocado and Harvest Gold home was
perhaps too much for mainstream
consumers, and the palette fell out of
favor by the end of the decade.

Left: Shag carpet ca. 1970s

Right: JC Penney instructional
classroom pamphlet ca. 1968

Right: Plantation

wallpaper pattern

ca. 1970 1975, sourced by Patricia Nugent
Design and Textiles
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Avocado 18-0430; Golden Olive 160639; Cream Gold 13-0739; Harvest Gold 160948; Burnt Orange 16-1448; Tortoise
Shell 19-1241

Feathers and Leathers
Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent
Spring brought the cumulative effects of
pesticide use into the public
consciousness. The threat of a birdless,
mortally wounded ecology alarmed
many, and the book resonated across the
Sixties as a rallying cry for an
increasingly powerful environmental
movement. The first Earth Day occurred
in 1970. The Clean Air Act was signed
that same year, followed in 1972 by the
Clean Water and Pesticide Control Acts.
Ten years after Carson’s publication, her
nemesis, DDT, had finally been banned.

The nonprofit organization Keep
America Beautiful launched a public
service campaign on Earth Day in 1971
that became a symbol of the
environmental movement. It portrayed an
American Indian rowing his canoe
downstream through ever more polluted
waterways until he reaches a big
industrial city, where a bag of rancid
trash is thrown at his feet. At the end of
the spot, he turns to look at the camera
and a single tear runs down his
weathered face. The message was clear:
it was time to care for the environment
before it was lost. Ad Age magazine
named it one of the top one hundred

advertising campaigns of the twentieth
century.
A natural palette, along with
references to Native American culture,
sprouted from the intense interest in
environmental issues—as well as the
newly militant American Indian
Movement. Feathers, fringed suede, and
worn leathers telegraphed a lack of
pretension, and sometimes even an
advanced sense of spirituality. Other
natural materials like cork were popular,
too. References to historical patchworks
and Western top-stitching reinforced the
message of earthy sincerity, and touches
of do-it-yourself macramé and crochet

granted their wearers major hippie
“cred.”
Corsair and Gray Green capture the
clean water of lakes and streams. Tan,
Mustang, Cinnabar, and Pheasant recall
frontier buckskin, well-worn boots, and
the fringed vests of the 1970s.

Top: Eight-foot tobacco leather and
chrome sofa early 1970s
Bottom: Brown leather cork -effect

rubber platforms 1970s

Left: Feather and suede neckpiece ca.

1971, designed by EMBE
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Corsair 19-4329; Gray Green 160518; Tan 16-1334; Mustang 19-1217;
Cinnabar 18-1540; Pheasant 16-1332

Provence
The ’70s were not always dreamy: think
of stagflation, Watergate, and Vietnam.
But just as van Gogh had escaped some
of his woes in Provence in the late
1880s, French Country style soothed the
stresses and strains of home decorating
in the 1970s.
Decorators and antiquaires Pierre
Le Vec and Pierre Moulin opened their
Greenwich Village shop, Pierre Deux, in
1967. The combination of washed
fruitwood furniture, rustic ceramic and
glass accessories, and French blockprinted fabrics by Souleiado was a hit.

By 1973 the Pierres had expanded
across the street with a separate fabric
store, capitalizing on the success of
ready-made pillows and linens, but also
on fabric by the yard for custom drapes.
By 1977, Terence Conran’s Habitat
shop and catalogue were filled with
stripped woods and cheery cottons.
Laura Ashley’s eighty-five-shop retail
empire also went French Country at
about that time. The look appealed not to
hippies, but to ladies with nice houses
that needed some charm, and summer
wardrobes that wanted some romance.
The nostalgic quality of the style
was not overly sentimental, due to its

grounding in the real colors of
Provence’s sky and land, flowers and
trees. And the joie de vivre of French
Country accommodated handmade wares
from many countries, which could be
blended into interiors to suit individual
tastes. The look has proved durable, and
Pierre Deux, now led by Madame
Hedwidge Cointreau de Bouteville,
continues to explore Le Vec’s and
Moulin’s original vision.
The French Country style of the
’70s was colored in Provence and Vivid
Blue to match the gorgeous
Mediterranean sky. Artichoke Green,
Deep Claret, and Phlox Pink recall the

region’s lush fruits and flowers, and
Deep Lavender and Lavender remind us
of Provence’s fragrant herb.

Top: Cachepot ca. 1975
Bottom: Alpes de Haute, Provence date
unknown, photograph by Brian Lawrence

Left: Paisley cotton ca. 1976, sourced by
Patricia Nugent Design and Textiles

Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Provence 16-4032; Vivid Blue 174432; Artichoke Green 18-0125; Deep Claret
19-1840; Plox Pink 17-2627; Deep Lavender
18-3633; Lavender 15-3817

Land Art
NASA gave us a new way of seeing
Earth. In images from outer space, dirt
and rocks dematerialize, and an ethereal
blue orb appears, dotted with green and
veiled in wisps of cloud. Earth looks
tender and fragile—and in need of
protection.
The budding environmental
movement underscored the idea of
Earth’s fragility: far from being an
endless source of raw materials and a
bottomless receptacle for waste, the
planet came to be seen as a living,
breathing entity in its own right. Earth

was now something to cherish—not
merely to profit from.
Land artists like Robert Smithson
explored ideas of terrestrial beauty and
fragility in earth-based work—notably
in Smithson’s 1970 Spiral Jetty, a 150foot long curl of black basalt rock and
earth jutting into Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
The jetty disappears and reappears in
the lake’s changing depths, sometimes
coated with salt, sometimes black and
graphic. Spiral Jetty captures something
about the permanence and vulnerability
of nature, and mankind’s influence on
both.
In 1979, artist James Turrell

embarked on an even more ambitious
land art project. He purchased the fourhundred-thousandyear- old crater of an
extinct volcano near Flagstaff, Arizona,
and began a series of tunnels, chambers
and viewing platforms that transform the
land into a meditation on light and mass,
and on the act of observation. Like
Stonehenge, Turrell’s interventions
frame the winter and summer equinoxes,
and catch the motion of planets and stars.
But the Roden Crater Project is less a
celebration of seasons and much more an
invitation to look at looking— to watch
your mind in the act of perception.
The deep blue of outer space and

the grays of ancient ash convey the
Roden Crater Project’s cosmic message.
But the shifting tones of morning, noon,
and evening sky are land artists’ main
palette.

Satellite view of James Turrell s
Roden Crater 2007, USGS image

Top: Construction photo, West Portal,
James Turrell s Roden Crater 1979
Bottom: Spiral Jetty 1970, Robert

Smithson, Great Salt Lake, Utah
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 284; 454; 7612; 406; 7674; 408; 267

The Day the World
Turned Day-Glo
The Ramones, a bunch of Queens kids in
a garage band, performed at legendary
Manhattan night haunt CBGB’s seventyfour times in 1974. They wore black
leather jackets and dirty jeans and
assaulted audiences with a hard, earsplitting sound in bitter two-minute
doses. Their short lyrics were not mindexpanding flower-child idylls, but rather
rebellious rants that savaged anything
sentimental, fake, or conventional. The
Ramones are usually credited as

inventing punk music.
In London, the Sex Pistols took up
the punk banner of sullen rebellion.
Under the management of jack-of-allartsy-trades Malcolm McLaren, Johnny
Rotten and Sid Vicious became
worldwide antiheroes for their skill at
spotlighting the hypocrisy of
establishment figures (up to and
including the Queen of England). They
were just as famous for their green hair,
profane T-shirt slogans, and drug habits.
The Sex Pistols can be considered as
perfectors of punk style.
Vicious and Rotten emulators
abounded. Girls wore combat boots,

tutus, and artfully ripped T-shirts held
together with safety pins. Wraith-thin
boys wore bondage pants under jackets
with so many metal studs they resembled
armor. Both sexes dyed their spiked hair
in Day-Glo colors, pierced their ears,
noses, eyebrows, and everything else.
The Day-Glo colors of punk hair
and druggie black light posters were
celebrated in 1978 with the X Ray Spex
song “The Day the World Turned DayGlo,” with lead singer Poly Styrene
rejecting the overabundance of synthetic
materials in modern life: polystyrene,
nylon, perspex, acrylic, polypropylene,
and latex.

The punks’ color of choice was
nihilistic black, a perfect backdrop for a
mind-blowing spectrum of neon dyed
hair and paintspattered T-shirts.

Left: Rainbow neon lights date unknown
Center: Lost Horizon blacklight
poster 1970
Right: PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM
color strip ca. 1970

Left: Punk girl with mohawk 1970,
London
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) Process Blue; 7488; Yellow 012;
1575; Orange 021; 213; Rhodamine Red;
Black 6

Night Life
A thumping four-on-the-floor beat,
flashing light shows, spinning mirror
balls, poppers and Quaaludes: discos
were the pleasure palaces of the Sexual
Revolution. Young studs in snug pants
and lithe beauties in wrap dresses
bribed bouncers and doormen
everywhere for the privilege of seducing
each other on the dance floor and
sometimes consummating their passion
in shadowed corners.
In its early days, disco was an
urban phenomenon, with black and gay
followings. But 1977’s Saturday Night

Fever took disco mainstream. Deney
Terrio, host of TV’s Disco Fever, taught
John Travolta how to dance. Costumer
Patrizia von Brandenstein sewed him
into a tight white suit. The Bee Gees
wailed tales of struggle and romance.
Travolta’s suave and sexy moves
inspired a nation to do the Hustle, and
the film helped fill an estimated ten
thousand discos in the United States
alone.
At discos like New York’s
renowned Studio 54, beautiful nobodies
rubbed shoulders (and sometimes more)
with celebrities like Liza Minnelli,
Halston, Mick Jagger, and even Truman

Capote. Politicians and old-money
patricians visited the club right
alongside well-styled waitresses and
coiffed garage mechanics. Donna
Summer performed there, as did other
disco greats like the Village People and
Gloria Gaynor. People who frequented it
in its heyday remember the scene at
Studio 54 fondly, and with a wicked
twinkle in their eyes.
Travolta’s white suit, the louche
darkness of nightclubs, and the silver of
mirror balls are the starting point for the
Night Life palette. Radiant pink and
orange, pulsating against yellow and
cobalt, recall the passionate wonderland

of the dance floor.

Left (top); Night club mirrored disco ball
ca. 1970s
Left (bottom): Colored disco lights in a
nightclub ca. 1970s
Right: Donna Summer ca. 1970s

Left: John Travolta in a still from

Saturday Night Fever 1977
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) White; 10103; 212; Warm Red; 129;
301; Black 3

Hotel California
The 1963 Beach Boys’ hit Surfin’ USA
celebrated California’s rugged beaches,
cool waves, and laid-back lifestyle.
People around the world got the
message, and California’s population
roughly doubled between 1960 and
1980.
Some new Californians were
indeed attracted by surfing. A subculture
grew up around chasing waves,
perfecting the moves, relaxing
afterward, and always looking cool. The
surf board became a canvas for artists
like Rick Griffin, whose distinctive

cartoons were filled with hazy popculture references to nature, science
fiction, Latino culture, and Native
American mythology. At the other end of
the design spectrum, minimal stripes
were just as interesting. Surfboard art
became so rich that it inspired the
spinoff subculture of skateboarding.
But sand and surf were not
California’s only attractions. The film,
television, and movie industries
promised fame and fortune to many starstruck young people. Only a very few
had their prayers answered, like the
Midwestern musicians of the Eagles, a
band whose albums became 1970s best-

sellers.
Whether you made it to the top or
not, the entertainment industry tempted
with more than celebrity and money: its
culture of excess and self-destruction
proved to be the dark underbelly of
Californian life. “Hotel California,” the
1977 Eagles song from the album of the
same name, sketches out the seductive,
potentially disastrous side of the Los
Angeles star-making machine. The
attention, the luxury, the intoxication of
success were dazzling, but they were
also a trap: once hooked, where do you
go? As the song says, “We are all just
prisoners here, of our own device.”

Even paradise has its drawbacks.
California’s natural appeals were
rendered in vivid ocean blue, alongside
the lively greens of plants that never see
winter. Her dangerous temptations come
in sunset colors of blush and burgundy,
which eventually fade to black.

Left: 1970s Soul Surfers scale model

surfboard collection 2005, Malcolm Wilson
Right (top): Poster for Pacific
Vibrations 1970, film by John Severson, art
by Rick Griffin
Right (bottom): Clyde Aikau, Waimea,
Smirnoff 1974, Photograph by Jeff Divine

Left: Studio portrait of the Eagles
1974 1975
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 3005; 293; 555; 77765; 156; 7622;

539

1980s
Adventures in Affluence
The 1980s was the era of Ronald
Reagan and Margaret Thatcher,
deregulation and laissez-faire
economics, a global economic boom,
and the end of the Cold War. It was a
time of big ideas implemented through
big policies. Cable television started its
twenty-four-hour news coverage, with
the successful 1987 rescue of Baby
Jessica from the bottom of a well
seeming to get as much bluster and
airtime as the 1986 Space Shuttle

disaster.
Multinational corporations and
government deficits expanded
exponentially across the decade as
lower taxes delighted big business but
stressed national budgets.
The New York Stock Exchange
also grew dramatically until 1987’s
Black Monday market crash. In the same
year, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street
character Gordon Gekko declared that
“Greed is good”—which seemed to be
enough encouragement for stocks to
finish upward not just in 1987 but in ’88
and ’89, too.
The exaggeration of the era

expressed itself in power suits with big
shoulder pads for men and women.
Aerobic workouts promised both sexes
that feeling the burn would result in buns
of steel. Hairdos and biceps ballooned
to enormous sizes. Expensive Rolex
watches were must-have accessories.
An average episode of Dallas, one of
the most popular television series of the
decade, would display these and other
1980s splendors— along with Stetson
hats, cowboy boots, and blue jeans. The
latter, whether sexy Calvin Kleins or
roughed-up Lees, were also a key style
statement: in the ’80s you could wear
them anywhere, in many shades of

indigo.
Another popular television show,
Miami Vice, made sherbetcolored Tshirts and pastel neckwear, along with
hair gel and designer jackets with
rolled-up sleeves, look completely
masculine. The show’s main characters,
Crockett and Tubbs, were early
metrosexuals, and many men followed
their lead.
Lady Diana Spencer’s fresh-faced
and innocent beauty captivated the
world. Her wardrobe as a bride-to-be
was laced with corduroys and
Wellington boots and other
accoutrements well outside the realm of

high fashion she would later inhabit. But
her down-to-earth preppy look (known
as “Sloane Ranger” style in the U.K.)
was enormously influential all the same.
The best-selling Official Preppy
Handbook humorously explained uppercrust habits to mainstream Americans.
Empire-building designer Ralph Lauren
encouraged everyone to dress like an
aristocrat, too.
Learning how to dress was a topic
of considerable interest in the selfimproving ’80s. Thoughtful color
analysts divided individual complexions
and colorings into seasons or times of
day in an attempt to explain which

clothes and cosmetics would optimize a
person’s natural gifts. “Having your
colors done” became an international
sensation, and set many women on the
road to wearing what was right for them
as individuals rather than blindly
obeying the dictates of faraway fashion
editors.
Painter Georgia O’Keeffe felt most
at home when far, far away from fashion
editors, in the hills of her beloved
northern New Mexico. She studied the
landscape and the colors around her, and
reveled in their mauve-inflected beauty.
The colors of New Mexico, and the
Southwest style, reached out far and

wide to make mauve the defining color
of the decade.
Northern Africa, seen through the
eyes of design powerhouse Yves Saint
Laurent, was also a style influence. His
Marrakech retreat, Majorelle, brought
vivid Palace Blue into fashion and home
décor, along with radiant colors
borrowed from Moroccan mosaics,
pottery, and glass. International
influence also emanated from Japan,
with a group of talented designers like
Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, and
the amazing Issey Miyake embracing
somber colors in an intellectual reexamination of what was beautiful and

stylish.
The Milan-based Memphis studio
took a critical look at what decades of
Modern aesthetics had declared
beautiful… and decided to shake the
design world up. It paired marble with
plastic laminate, expensive wood and
glass with confetti patterns, and
introduced elements of whimsy and play
into the contemporary creative process.
Its colors were as seriously playful as
Memphis founder Ettore Sottsass
himself.
Artist Keith Haring’s early work
was also playful, and also about shaking
things up. He painted, in simple cartoon

style and sweet colors, the antics of the
Sexual Revolution’s gay partisans. His
color sensibility helped to make his
optimistic message of unity and joy
widely palatable—a technique
employed by other designers, as well.
The AIDS crisis of the 1980s
claimed Haring as one of its many
victims. The creative community was
among the hardest hit groups and the
struggle to address AIDS, as well as the
strength to mourn the lives cut short by
it, were among the factors that would
define the aesthetics and colors of the
’80s.

Memphis, Michael,
and Philippe
Was the über-influential 1980s design
collective Memphis named after a Bob
Dylan song, the capital of ancient Egypt,
or the birthplace of Elvis Presley? The
first answer is correct, but Memphis
founder Ettore Sottsass would have
loved the question: Memphis was a
deliberate mash-up of high- and lowculture references, expensive and cheap
materials, functionality and playfulness.
Sottsass was in his sixties when he
gathered a bunch of European twenty-

somethings to launch Memphis during
the 1981 Milan Furniture Fair. Their
provocative, zany offerings, including
Sottsass’s Carlton Cabinet, attracted
immediate media endorsement, and
Memphis was star material right off the
bat.
Each Memphis design seemed to
ask whether sleek, rectilinear
International Style Modernism could
really be considered modern in the face
of the blinking, beeping, banging
cacophony of contemporary life. Though
responses to Memphis were not
universally favorable, the
“overwhelming, confusing, and

uncontrollable superabundance” of the
collective struck a chord with critics and
consumers, who answered no.[34]
Avant-garde collectors and daring
decorators embraced it, too.
American postmodernist Michael
Graves joined Memphis for a time,
adding his brand of whimsy to the mix.
Even after his departure, Graves’s
product designs continued Memphis’s
quirkiness. The success of his whistlingbird teakettle for Alessi (which sold
over a half-million copies) heralded the
democratization of design that would
rumble through successive decades.
The enduring influence of Memphis

can be seen in the groundbreaking work
of French designer Philippe Starck. His
prescient 1984 Café Costes interior
combines futurism and nostalgia— a mix
which resonates in subsequent projects
like the 1988 Royalton Hotel in New
York, and the long-legged lemon juicer
he designed in 1990.
Memphis’s irreverence was
colored in contrasting Deep Blue,
Ribbon Red, Piquant Green, Anthracite,
and Flax. Sandstorm and Allure
provided a resting place in the Memphis
playground.

Left: Miss Milch chair 1988, designed by
Philippe Starck
Right: Alessi teakettle ca. 1985, designed
by Michael Graves

Left: Carlton Room Divider 1981,
designed by Ettore Sottsass, manufactured
by Memphis Milano
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Deep Blue 19-3847; Ribbon Red 19-

1663; Piquant Green 17-0235; Anthracite
19-4007; Flax 13-0935; Sandstorm 16-1235;
Allure 16-4021

To the Manor Born
Designers and celebrities largely
promulgated and popularized the trends
of twentieth-century fashion, with a scant
handful of notable aristocratic
exceptions, including young Lady Diana
Spencer, who became instantly and
forever famous when she married Prince
Charles, heir to the British throne.
Lady Diana was in her teens when
her engagement was announced, and her
status as high fashion icon was still
years ahead. Early paparazzi
photographs placed her squarely in the
ranks of the “Sloane Rangers,” a class of

wealthy, countrified young Brits fond of
horseback riding, Labrador Retrievers,
and country weekends. Girls wore Fair
Isle sweaters and long print skirts. Boys
sported rep ties, their fathers’ overcoats,
and good shirts proudly worn until
threadbare. Both sexes frequently
donned wellies and corduroys. The
wildly popular 1982 Sloane Ranger
Handbook described it all in detail.
The American version of the
Sloane Ranger was, of course, the
Preppy. The habits of privileged
preppies were outlined with tongue-incheek humor in the 1980 Official Preppy
Handbook, which fueled a craze for

khakis, Lacoste shirts, and buttondowns.
Bronx-born Ralph Lauren amassed
a fashion and fragrance empire
throughout the 1970s and 1980s by
skillfully referencing the habits of oldmoney WASPS. In his hands, the shortsleeved cotton knit tennis shirt became
the enormously successful Polo shirt,
offered in a host of colors. His tweed
suits and oxford shirts became first a
menswear juggernaut and then a force in
women’s wear. In the 1980s, Lauren
entered the home arena as well,
licensing everything from sheets and
towels to dinnerware and furniture.

Much of the appeal of Ralph Lauren’s
brands lies in his promise that any
discerning consumer can become
aristocratic with the right purchases.
Deep Forest, Evergreen, Breen, and
Crimson are at once ancient and
heraldic, and down-to-earth. Rich Gold
lends a little nouveau glitter to the
otherwise privileged palette.

Left: Repp tie ca. 1983
Right: Polo by Ralph Lauren perfume
ad ca. 1980s

Left: Lady Diana Spencer with her

fiancé, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales,
at Balmoral, Scotland 1981, photo by
Anwar Hussein
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Deep Forrest 19-6110; Evergreen
19-5420; Breen 19-1034; Crimson 19-1762;
Rich Gold 16-0836

Urban Cowboys
John Travolta wore a manly pair of
jeans onscreen as Bud Davis in 1980’s
Urban Cowboy. At the same time, in TV
ads for Calvin Klein jeans, fifteen-yearold Brooke Shields was undeniably (and
controversially) feminine. Nothing, she
assured us, came between her and her
Calvins. From smooth designer jeans
worn with a Chanel jacket to rugged
501s and flannel, denim was suddenly
everywhere—and universally
acceptable.
Top-ranking nighttime soap opera
Dallas did its part to boost denim and

other Southwestern gear. Millions
watched the shenanigans of scheming J.
R., faithless Sue Ellen, pretty Pam,
putupon Bobby, and long-suffering Miss
Ellie. The Ewings’ Stetsons and boots
were no longer only for ranch and range:
fans took them into cities, too. Dallas
also brought adultery, alcoholism, family
turmoil, dishonest dealings, and nailbiting cliffhangers into television
mainstream. The urge to discover who
shot J. R. made Dallas’s fourth season
opener the most watched television
show of the day. Many subsequent series
adapted Dallas’s frothy denim-wearing
mix.

The marketing of jeans and the
media’s exploration of sex and sexuality
bloomed in tandem. Photographer Bruce
Weber’s subliminal (and sometimes not
so subliminal) homoerotic work for
global fashion brands brought a hint of
things not normally discussed into the
mainstream. Richard Avedon featured an
only slightly older Brooke Shields again
in a 1984 Calvin Klein TV spot where
she warned that if her jeans could talk
she would be ruined. Sex was in the air,
and it was usually wearing jeans.
Even so, the popularity of jeans
encouraged designers and merchants to
search for new ways to entice

customers. Dark Denim remained the
standard for jeans. But stone-washing
softened them into Faded Denim and
acid finishes made rural denim look
urban and technological in Gull Gray
and Bleached Denim. Leather Brown
and Bison recall the colors of boots and
belts.

Left: Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing on
Dallas ca. 1980s
Right: Ad for Frye boots ca. 1980

Left: Calvin Klein jeans ad featuring

Brooke Shields 1980
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Dark Denim 19-4118; Faded Denim
17-4021; Gull Gray 16-3803; Bleached
Denim 18-3930; Leather Brown 18-1142;
Bison 18-1027

Signs and Symbols
The 1984 Olympic Games took place in
sprawling Los Angeles. Planners and
residents alike worried about how to
direct numerous visitors from around the
world through the complex city and into
their seats at appointed times—without
ruining California’s casual ambience.
Skillful use of color turned out to be the
spoonful of sugar that sweetened up a
disciplined crowd control program.
Signage for the Olympics was
created by Deborah Sussman, an
environmental graphic designer. Her
flexible modular system delivered the

Games’ logo package, venue
identification, directional and service
information (and more) with a colorful,
insouciant postmodern vocabulary. She
said of her color choices: “The palette
consists of unexpected, stimulating
juxtapositions that instantly separate the
Olympic pageantry from the everyday
environment, the drabness of permanent
institutions, industries, streets—hot
magenta, vermilion, and chrome yellow,
set off by aqua.”[35]
Sussman’s colors resembled
celebrity-charged publications like
Interview, a probably accidental but
fitting reference to the region’s

entertainment industry–driven culture.
Artist Keith Haring also embraced
a separation from “the drabness of
permanent institutions” through visual
means. His vivid colors and expressive
graphics spoke about social unity and the
joy of being alive. Much of Haring’s
early work depicts the pre-AIDS gay
sexual revolution. Haring’s style
managed to capture the sensuality and
the politics of the time without falling
into the adversarial category of protest
art.
When Haring was diagnosed with
AIDS in 1987 the subject matter of his
work became sometimes grimmer, but it

remained accessible and appealing until
his death of an AIDS-related illness in
1990.
Like Sussman, Haring succeeded in
conveying a strong message with
considerable joy through adroit use of
lime and emerald greens, aqua and
orange, purple and magenta, and black.

Top: Entry to the stadium for the Los
Angeles Olympics 1984, designed by
Sussman/Prejza & Co.
Bottom: Untitled 1985, Keith Haring

Left: Interview magazine cover 1981
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) 583; 7480; 299; 170; 267; 191;
Black

Miami Vice
From 1984 to 1989, a mildly cynical and
deeply slick cop show held sway on
broadcast television: Miami Vice.
Detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo
Tubbs (played by Don Johnson and
Philip Michael Thomas) fought drug
dealers and ne’er-do-wells for primacy
on the streets of then-seedy South Beach
and other neighborhoods around
Biscayne Bay. Crockett and Tubbs won
their hour-long battles, but somehow
always seemed in danger of losing the
war against crime.
One foe definitively vanquished by

Crockett and Tubbs, however, was the
sartorial modesty of the American male.
Sonny Crockett made it quite clear that
real men did wear lavender. And linen
pants. And Italian loafers without socks.
Tubbs’ wardrobe choices suggested that
pink neckties were possible, too…at
least if your personal firearm was in
good working order. Or if you had a
sleek black Ferrari at your disposal.
Eternal five o’clock shadow, lots of hair
gel, and blazers with rolled-up sleeves
were also de rigueur. These TV crime
fighters were less hawk than peacock,
and their “metrosexual” look took
America by surprise avant la lettre.

Hugo Boss and Gianni Versace
menswear collections benefitted greatly
from all the fuss, but so did Miami itself.
Many credit the success of the show
with drawing attention to the need to
renew the city’s Art Deco heritage.
Miami’s pastels and tropical accents
were cleaned up and repainted in a
boom of development and restoration
after the show left the airwaves, and
South Beach is now a global tourist
destination where vanity and flirtation
are generally the most serious vices on
offer.
Pink Mist, Lavendula, Radiant
Orchid, and Lantana are the hot notes of

the Miami Vice wardrobe. Gray Violet
and Deep Ultramarine recall Miami’s
sky and sea, and Moonless Night
provides a little cover for an
indiscretion or two.

Top: Downtown Miami at night date
unknown, photo by Elvis Santana
Bottom: Ferrari logo ca. 1980s

Left: Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) and
Rico Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) in
Miami Vice ca. 1980s

Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Pink Mist 13-2805; Lavendula 153620; Radiant Orchid 18-3224; Lavanta 161624; Gray Violet 14-4103; Deep
Ultramarine 19-3950; Moonless Night 194203

Majorelle and
Morocco
At seventeen years old, Algerian-born
Yves Saint Laurent won third place in a
fashion competition. At the awards
ceremony in Paris, the editor of French
Vogue, Michel de Brunhoff, encouraged
him to cultivate his talents. When Saint
Laurent won the competition a year later,
de Brunhoff arranged a meeting with
Christian Dior. Dior hired him as an
assistant on the spot, and in a short time
spoke of him as heir apparent at the
House of Dior.

Upon Dior’s sudden death in 1957,
Saint Laurent led the Dior empire for a
few years before founding his own
fashion house in 1961. Saint Laurent’s
clothes quickly captured the new power
and autonomy (and sexiness) explored
by women of the Sixties and Seventies.
Safari jackets, references to African and
Asian cultures, women’s evening wear
patterned after men’s tuxedos, pantsuits,
and color-blocked Mondrian dresses
were among Saint Laurent’s most
influential introductions.
But Saint Laurent’s monumental
success came at a price. The pressure of
designing two couture and two ready-to-

wear collections a year, along with other
factors, pushed him into drug and
alcohol addiction. By 1980, he needed a
refuge.
With his partner, Pierre Bergé, he
purchased the Marrakech house and
gardens of painter Jacques Majorelle.
The estate’s vivid Palace Blue walls
and exotic plantings had fallen into
disrepair since the painter’s death in
1962. Saint Laurent applied his exquisite
eye to their restoration, and fashioned a
luscious, multicolored fantasy from
Majorelle’s initial design. Saint Laurent
added walls and walkways of subdued
Pink Sand and Desert Sand. Massive

pots were glazed and painted in Saffron
and Arabesque. Tinted glass lanterns of
Rose Violet and Byzantium purple added
exotic mystery.
Saint Laurent’s haven provided a
window into North African culture that
influenced fashion and home design of
the ’80s.

Left: Majorelle Gardens, Marrakesh,
Morocco ca. 1980s
Right: Moroccan dyebaths ca. 1983,
photograph by Herb Eiseman

Left: Lamps in the Marrakesh market,
Morocco ca. 1980s, photograph by Paul

Plebinga
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Palace Blue18-4043; Pink Sand
15-1318; Desert Sand 17-1524; Saffron 141064; Arabesque 16-1441; Rose Violet 172624; Byzantium 19-3138

Santa Fe
Wisconsin-born Georgia O’Keeffe found
her artistic home in 1917 during her first
visit to New Mexico. By the 1930s,
O’Keeffe spent as much time as possible
in the hills between Santa Fe and Taos,
painting red and black escarpments, the
undulating mauve terrain, the silvery
sage of high desert plants, and bones
bleached by the sun. Even when her
paintings depicted the wide-open nature
of the Southwest, they also described the
human mind’s internal passage between
desire and contemplation, intimacy and
distance, inspiration and trepidation.

A 1987 National Gallery exhibit of
O’Keeffe’s work was mounted shortly
after her death at ninety-eight.
Enormously popular, it traveled across
the United States, drawing attention not
just to her work, but also to the land that
inspired it.
O’Keeffe was not alone in her love
for the Southwest’s evocative mélange
of Old West individualism and
adventure, ancient Native American and
Spanish cultures, and a frisson of New
Age spirituality. Sun Belt population
grew enormously in the 1980s as the
Rust Belt decayed and lost its vibrancy.
New Sun Belt homes explored desert

color schemes, artisan-made fabrics,
pine furniture, and Talavera pottery, and
frequently adapted time-tested adobe
techniques to contemporary needs.
The look caught on, and Southwest
style was embraced across the country
as a new casual decorating strategy for
both home and office: the mauveinflected tones of desert earth, adobe,
and high Sierra sunsets were suddenly
everywhere. Just as America went
Avocado green in the ’70s, it turned
mauve in the ’80s. Everything from
pillows to paints, fabrics, and wall-towall carpeting explored this twilight
color.

The Southwest look centers, of
course, on earthy mauve. Other
landscape-derived tones of rich brown,
pink sandstone, adobe red, and sage
green are essential, too. Dreamy
lavenders lend a sense of historical and
spiritual depth.

Top: Flame stitch-style upholstery
fabric Santa Fe style ca. 1984

Bottom: Purple Hills Ghost Ranch
2/Purple Hills No. II 1934, Georgia
O Keefe

Bear Lake (Desert Abstraction) 1931,
Georgia O Keefe
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 4735; 7629; 7606; 7618; 7536;
5145; 5155

Personal Colors
Writer Tom Wolfe called the ’70s the
“Me Decade” because of its rampant
obsession with self. In the ’80s, selfimprovement became the rage.
Television series like Lifestyles of the
Rich and Famous and Dynasty
promoted outsized combinations of
outfits, hair, body, and big bucks—and
lives of exaggerated glamour. The
bigger, better, reinvented American
dream of the ’80s required strenuous
pursuit of all kinds of transformation.
Aerobics remade the body, thanks
to Jane Fonda and others. The perfect

résumé remade careers. Men and women
learned to dress for success in bigshouldered power suits with big hair to
match. Hair coloring was no longer a
deep, dark secret as both men and
women found the fountain of youth in
Grecian Formula or similar potions.
Department stores such as Saks
Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s
enlarged their cosmetics areas.
Drugstores expanded their personal
product aisles with popular cosmetics
and hair care brands. Celebrity makeup
artists like Jeff Angell and Way Bandy
shared professional makeover secrets.
Magazines were filled with “before and

after” stories. Infomercials were born,
and frequently peddled opportunities for
personal transformation in the looks
department.
Color analysis became a hot topic
—how to choose the right colors to
enhance personal coloring as well as
developing the confidence to make the
right choices. Suzanne Caygill
developed a color theory that
categorized people into one of four
seasonal types—which appeared in
book form in 1980’s The Essence of
You. Leatrice Eiseman (co-author of this
book) developed the Color Clock, which
offered Sunrise, Sunlight, or Sunset

palettes, and allowed for natural
crossover colors suitable for everyone
on both emotional and aesthetic levels.
Her 1983 Alive With Color, recently
updated as More Alive With Color,
outlined the concept.
Among the more flattering personal
colors were Cappuccino, Byzantium,
Pampas, Earth Red, Feldspar, Celestial,
Muted Clay, and Bellini.

Left: Miss Clairol color matching chart
ca. 1980
Right: Suit Giorgio Armani, 1982

Top: Before and after color analysis
ca. 1984
Bottom: Color Clock. fanguide: More

Alive With Color concept ca. 1983
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Cappuccino 19-1220; Byzantium
19-3138; Earth Red 18-1631; Feldspar 165815; Celestial 18-4530; Muted Clay 161330; Bellini 13-1114

Japonais
In the 1980s, years of strong growth had
given Japan the world’s second highest
gross national product—just behind the
United States. Well-off Japanese
consumers formed a strong base for
Toyota, Sony, and others, and Japanese
companies became increasingly global.
Japanese fashion also blossomed in
the 1980s. Issey Miyake, after working
with Hubert de Givenchy and Geoffrey
Beene, had opened his own fashion
company in 1970. His clothes managed
to marry Eastern and Western styles by
being both relentlessly simple and

extremely noticeable. In the late 1980s,
his revolutionary heat-pleating process
ennobled synthetic fabrics in memorable
ways, and his often stark color
sensibility strengthened the status of
black and gray in fashion.
Fellow designer Rei Kawakubo’s
Comme des Garons line also created a
sensation in the 1980s. Her frayed
fabrics, unraveling seams, and strategic
rips, made a fashionably anti-fashion
statement. No style rebellion has ever
been quite so somber— or so expensive.
Yohji Yamamoto’s asymmetrical
austerity also gained an important
following among fashion intellectuals.

The gravitas of Japanese design
influenced many Western talents, as
well. Graphic designer Patrick Nagle’s
work adapted the strong outlines of
Japanese woodblock prints, filled in
with bold, dense color. His album cover
for rock group Duran Duran’s biggest
hit, Rio, became one of his best-known
images.
Italian-born architect Massimo
Vignelli believed that “an architect
should be able to design everything from
the spoon to the city.” He proved his
point with projects in furniture, tabletop,
branding, clothing, lighting, signage,
consumer products, interiors, and more.

His clean, concise approach echoed
Japanese simplicity and seriousness.
The minimalist colors of Stretch
Limo and Mineral Gray are the
foundation of the Japanese palette. Small
amounts of Rhododendron, Cress Green,
and Amethyst Orchid add contrast, while
Dusk suggests the palette’s intellectual
impetus.

Left: Sasaki Colorstone dinnerware
1985, designed by Vignelli Associates with
David Law
Right: Black wool jersey dress 1983, by
Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons

Left: Rio/Texas 1982, Patrick Nagel
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom)Stretch Limo 19-4005; Mineral
Gray 15-5704; Rhododendron 19-2024; Cress
Green 15-0643; Amethyst Orchid 17-3628;
Dusk 17-3812

1990s
Nuanced ’90s
The ’90s were the best of times, with a
generally optimistic mood opening the
way for rich colors from other cultures,
as well as brighter floral tones from our
own. After a brief recession, the U.S.
economy blossomed, household incomes
grew markedly, and a healthy stock
market encouraged both large and small
investors to participate. At the end of the
decade, the U.S. government reported
budget surpluses for the first time in
decades. Smoking was no longer

allowed in airplanes. Dolly the Sheep
duplicated herself. Harry Potter
introduced himself. South Africa
reformed itself. Princess Diana glittered.
Viagra astounded.
But the ’90s were the worst of
times, too—and the bad news created a
need for a range of softer, thoughtful
colors which offered comfort and
sustenance. The Soviet Union collapsed,
leaving millions in dire straits.
Tragedies in Rwanda and Bosnia
introduced the phrase ethnic cleansing
into our lexicon. Iraq invaded Kuwait
and the first Gulf War resulted. The
breadth and complexity of AIDS as a

global phenomenon became ever
clearer. The Rodney King riots and the
controversy around the O. J. Simpson
murder trial showed that old wounds
were far from healed. The first World
Trade Center bombing shocked the
world. So did the Columbine shootings,
the murder of Matthew Shepard, the
Oklahoma City bombing, the Lewinsky
affair, and Princess Diana’s death. And
that’s not even the half of it.
Did more happen to the world in
the 1990s, or did we just talk more about
it? The number of television and radio
channels continued to grow, filling every
second of the day with chatter. The

Internet was born, and attracted at least
three hundred million users by the end of
the decade—transmitting not just the
news, but details of life, at its best and
its worst, to and from every point on the
globe. Village gossip could become
headline news—and vice versa. Thanks
to computers, events, commerce, and
culture became internationalized to an
unprecedented degree.
Computers also exerted influence in
the field of design. Apple’s 1998 iMac
launch added computers to fashion and
the arts as sources of color inspiration.
Japanese anime’s techno look reinforced
that message with its energetic, rule-

breaking color combinations.
But the need to escape technology
and the turbulence of current events was
a current running through many of the
prevailing trends of the time. Creatives
of all kinds looked to other cultures for
inspiration. Zen-influenced design
clearly offered sanctuary with its
simultaneously earthy and ethereal mix
of natural colors and textures. African
influences also infused a grounded,
authentic feeling into fashion and décor.
And Latino culture brought a much
needed warmth into the cultural milieu
through not only color and design but
also cooking and music.

Some sought solace and validation
not through cultural exploration but
through the golden logos of European
designers: bling became both a common
sight on city streets as well as an oftenused expression.
Still others, like Martha Stewart,
had no use for bling. She offered a
popular alternative to logos in her
refinements on traditional American
domestic habits. She strongly advised
that improved gardens, crafts, living
rooms, kitchens, laundry rooms, labeling
systems, dinner menus, and picnic
baskets made life worth living. All you
had to do was read Martha Stewart

Living for guidance.
Many young people were unsure
about the course their lives would take,
and Grunge’s nihilistic point of view
appealed to them. Especially when sung
to a background of wailing guitars by a
charismatic frontman. The Seattleinspired antimaterialistic embrace of
thrift shop duds impressed fashion
cognoscenti—but Grunge’s used-flannel
look did not translate well to department
store shelves. Similarly, famous Grunge
rockers did not have an easy time
reconciling their success with their
rebellious origins.
Millennial anxiety contributed to

Grunge’s emotional appeal—and also
made it difficult for many others to look
toward the future. Dire predictions
clashed with dreams of a better world
for the children and grandchildren of
present generations. The discipline of
Futurism offered some guidance, with
trend forecasters helping designers,
retailers, and consumers to define what
the twenty-first century might bring.
No one could know for sure what
challenges and opportunities would
appear—but that didn’t stop them from
dreaming.

Grunge and Graffiti
The “get it and spend it” ’80s ended
with the brief economic downturn of the
early ’90s, which got Bill Clinton
elected as the forty-second president of
the United States, and turned many young
people into thrift shopping antimaterialists. Their fraying flannels,
ancient sweaters, dirty jeans, cracked
leather jackets and heavy-soled Doc
Martens were not new—quite the
opposite. But when paired with the
distorted guitars and anguished lyrics of
indy Seattle bands, the Grunge aesthetic
was born.

Was Grunge hardy individualism or
drug-fueled nihilism? Was it a refreshing
rebellion against overly branded
American consumerism, or just a
youthful retreat from responsible
adulthood? Grunge disciples didn’t care.
They found resonance in Pearl Jam’s
“Black” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like
Teen Spirit.” Eddie Vedder and Kurt
Cobain put their generation’s angst into
cathartic words and music, and became
rich and famous in the process.
Paradoxically, they and their bands
arguably became as commercial as the
culture they criticized. The dissonance
between rebellion and runaway success

proved too much for Cobain, who
committed suicide in 1994.
Grunge went mainstream when
Marc Jacobs and other designers brought
it to the runway in 1992, with mixed
results: fashion customers were reluctant
to pay top dollar for thrift store looks.
Embraced by the art world in the
1970s and seemingly everywhere in
large cities in the 1980s, graffiti
continued its dual role as defacer of
property and declaration of youthful
anger. More allied with Hip-Hop than
Grunge, the anger and frustration graffiti
expressed was shared by both.
Purple Haze and Coffee Bean refer

to the birthplace of Grunge, and Faded
Denim, Earth Red, and Gull to its thrift
shop duds. Dark Shadow, of course,
captures something about Grunge’s
mental state.

Top: Graffiti in Los Angeles ca. 1990,
photo by Eric Olage
Bottom: Doc Marten boots ca. 1990s,
photo by Peter G. Balazsy

Left: Kurt Cobain 1998, photo by Mary

Evans
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Purple Haze 18-3718; Coffee Bean
19-0915; Faded Denim 17-4021; Earth Red
18-1631; Gull 17-3802; Dark Shadow 193906

It’s a Good Thing
Martha Stewart’s first cookbook, the
popular 1982 Entertaining, was
followed by a spate of books on cooking
and weddings, frequent television
appearances, newspaper pieces, and
more. In 1990, this late-twentiethcentury goddess of domesticity
channeled both knowledge and name
recognition into her successful
periodical, Martha Stewart Living.
Living was not, of course, the first
magazine to address house and garden,
but its point of view transformed
homeoriented publishing—and millions

of homes. Under the art direction of
longtime Stewart collaborator Gael
Towey, it blended nineteenth-century
photography styles, twentieth-century
type and graphics, and a timelessly
feminine palette. Diverse influences
notwithstanding, the simplicity and
clarity of the magazine remained
deliciously consistent—whether
showing readers the intricacies of handcut foil oak leaf garlands for holiday
mantels, cataloging heirloom cherries or
carnations, or describing a labeling
scheme for canning closets.
Within a few years of the
magazine’s launch, Stewart became a

television star—which fueled her
licensed product sales and readership of
her newspaper column. When her
corporation, Martha Stewart Living
Omnimedia, went public in 1999 she
became one of the world’s top
businesswomen.
Stewart’s ideas set high
expectations for making and keeping a
home where family meals are lovingly
made, and both décor and garden are
conceived with a connoisseur’s vision
and maintained with old-fashioned
diligence. But for those who take her
advice in the right doses, Stewart has
revived craft, defined a tasteful vision

for interiors, and encouraged her
audience to enjoy things they have made
with their own hands. As she has often
said, “It’s a good thing.”
Martha Stewart Living’s gardening
issues are among its most popular,
giving prominence to floral colors like
Hollyhock, Spring Crocus, Pink
Carnation, Raspberry Rose, Jacaranda,
Foliage Green, and Linden Green.

Left: White hydrangea ca. 1998, photo by
Herb Eiseman
Top (center): White/pink variegated
hydrangea ca. 1998, photo by Herb Eiseman
Top (right):Purple coneflower with
birdbath ca. 1998, photo by Andrew Drake
Center: Purple hydrangea ca. 1998, photo
by Herb Eiseman
Bottom: Martha Stewart Everyday

Seed Packets ca. 1999, design by Stephen
Doyle, photo by Lisa Hubbard

Left: Martha Stewart Living cover 1999
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Holyhock 19-2924; Spring Crocus

17-3020; Pink Carnation 16-2124;
Raspberry Rose 18-2333; Jacaranda 17-3930;
Foliage Green 18-6018; Linden Green 150533; Snow White 11-0602

The Nature of Zen
The urge to retreat from an increasingly
urbanized world found expression in the
1990s in a nature-based vocabulary of
textures and colors thought to express the
values of Zen Buddhism. While the
literal meaning of Zen refers to
meditation and the state one reaches
while meditating, Zen-inspired design of
the ’90s didn’t involve actual
meditation. It often succeeded, though, in
producing spaces and objects with a
soothing sense of calm and a tranquil,
carefully edited visual experience. At its
best, ’90s Zen design linked man to

nature in an unobtrusive, contemplative
way—like a traditional Japanese haiku.
An important manifestation of ’90s
Zen appeared in spas around the world.
The number of spas doubled between
1994 and 1999, and masques, massages,
and manicures became a $5 billion
industry.[36] A refuge from busy
schedules took the form of
selfpampering rituals—and the best spa
services were often found in the bestdesigned (and most Zen) spa spaces.
Swiss architect Peter Zumthor
designed the 1996 Therme Vals spa in a
pure Modern style brought subtly and
excitingly to life with the textures and

earthy colors of locally quarried stones
and other natural materials. The
refinement of Zumthor’s work makes the
spa seem ancient and totally of the earth
—even as it satisfies all the
requirements of an up-to-date twentiethcentury luxury destination.
Zumthor may not have been overtly
pursuing Zen design, but his honed
granite surfaces achieved it nonetheless.
Other designers chose even more
natural-looking, eroded surfaces that
emphasized the passage of time. But the
effects were similar.
Grounded in meditative use of
natural materials, Zen design embraced a

color palette that speaks to clean air,
unpolluted water, and preservation of a
pristine environment. Soft Shadow
Green, Shale Green, and Moss Gray
were contemplations of earth’s beauty.
Ether, Lichen, and Water Lily brought an
ethereal quality to the palette.

Top: Beach lichen ca. 1998, photograph by
Maureen Welton
Bottom (left): Tafoni reflected in water
ca. 1998, photograph by Maureen Welton
Bottom (right): Ornamental urn ca.
1998, urn and photograph by Maureen
Welton

Left: Tafoni cliff ca. 1998, photograph by
Maureen Welton
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) Shadow Green 14-0627; Shale
Green 16-6116; Moss Gray 15-6410; Ether
14-4506; Lichen 15-5812; Water Lily 110304

Out of Africa
Nelson Mandela’s anti-apartheid
activism landed him in South African
jails for twenty-seven years. He was
finally released in February of 1990 and
a few months later began a thirteencountry tour to promote representative
democracy in his homeland. He brought
a persuasive, truly African voice into the
global media, and the world listened. He
won the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize and
became president of South Africa in
1994 after the country’s first election
open to all citizens.
The progress unfolding in Africa

brought new attention to the continent,
and the worlds of publishing and design
embraced what they saw. Margaret
Courtney Clarke published two gorgeous
accounts of African people and their
homes, African Canvas (1990) and
Ndebele: The Art of an African Tribe
(1993). Carol Beckwith and Angela
Fisher, a prolific team of Africanists,
produced African Ark in 1990—and are
still exploring African cultures today.
The earthy arts and crafts captured
by these and other 1990s publications
depict deeply cultural colors, designs,
and textures— which at the same time
feel essentially modern. Ralph Lauren

went beautifully African in his widely
acclaimed October 1996 runway shows.
Many other fashion and home
professionals were also inspired by
Africa, including Irish-born interior
designer Clodagh and American
furniture innovator Tucker Robbins.
Their use of hand-hewn wood, handwoven fibers, and graffito textures
delivered a sensation of authenticity and
sincerity.
The grounded optimism of
Mandela’s progressive movement was
captured in Red Clay, Cactus, and
Dazzling Blue. Egret, Raw Sienna,
Golden Straw, Cub, and Dark Earth

bring references to ancient handmade
ways into the mix.

Left: Hand carved wooden spider tables
from Cameroon ca. mid-1990s, designed by
Tucker Robbins
Right (top): South African pottery ca.
1995
Right (bottom): Lidded basket ca. 1990,
Beauty Nxgongo (Zulu peoples)

Left: Hand woven Ghanian Kente cloth
ca. mid-1990s

Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom)
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Red Clay 18-1454; Cactus 18-0130;
Dazzling Blue 18-3949; Egret 11-0103; Raw
Sienna 17-1436; Golden Straw 12-0921; Cub
18-1016; Dark Earth 19-1020

Latin Flavors
U.S. sales of spicy Mexican salsa
outranked classic ketchup (in dollar
terms) in the early ’90s. What did this
surprising omen portend? The arrival of
Latino culture into the American
mainstream. It’s fitting that food
provided the beachhead moment: after
years of burger-and-fries chains
blanding out America’s palette, a little
spicing up was needed. A handful of
curious chefs went beyond salsa to
cacao, pitahaya, and zapote for deep
Latin flavor.
The music world also showed how

much Americans savored the heat and
color of Latin culture. Salsa music and
dancing gained popularity throughout the
’90s. Wim Wenders’ 1999 documentary
The Buena Vista Social Club sparked
huge interest in el son Cubano, making
Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo
recording stars well into their golden
years. Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida
Loca” was red-hot in 1999, as well. So
were Marc Anthony’s crossover hit “I
Need to Know” and Jennifer Lopez’s
number one song “If You Had My
Love.”
But top music honors that year went
to longtime musical genius Carlos

Santana. At the 2000 Grammy Awards
he won eight trophies for his number-one
1999 record Supernatural, including
best album. After over thirty years of
blending Latin, rock, jazz, and African
influences, these were a fitting tribute to
his musical achievements.
As many Latinos point out, Spanish
was spoken in North America well
before English. The oldest U.S. state
capital, Santa Fe, was an established
town ten years before the Pilgrims even
set foot on the shores of Massachusetts
Bay. It was only a matter of time before
the United States acknowledged the
ancient and vibrant Latin part of its

national identity—and expressed it in
spicy reds, hot pinks, and bright oranges
juxtaposed with jalapeo, earthy sienna,
and passionate purple.

Top (left): Squash blossoms ca. 1999, photo
by Sheri Giblin
Top (right): Dried chili peppers ca. 1999,
photo by Sheri Giblin

Bottom (left): Pitahaya fruit ca. 1999,
photo by Bobbie Hawkes
Bottom (right): Sliced mango in a wine
glass ca. 1999, photo by Sheri Giblin

Left: Margarita ca. 1999, photo by Sheri
Giblin
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) 136;; 370; 7592; 184; 1795; 527

Chic over Geek
What did certain 1990s personal
computers, tissues boxes, and waste
cans have in common? Nothing except a
palpable sense of style. And hugely
successful launches.
Apple Computer, losing ground in
its battle with techno behemoth
Microsoft, found new hope in the August
1998 launch of the iMac. Apple threw
out the beige-box straightjacket of
computer design and introduced their
new product in an eye-popping array of
translucent plastics. The colors
underscored the message promoted by a

massive media campaign: Macs were
for adventurous thinkers rather than
computer geeks. First weekend sales of
the iMac were a whopping $25 million,
and by the end of the year Apple was in
the black by over $300 million.[37]
Apple’s success inspired a host of
imitators. Suddenly, staplers (and
everything else) could be electric blue
or orange. Or cherry, grape, lime, or
curaao. Apple’s brave design team
created the first color palette derived not
from fashion or the arts, but from
computers.
Kleenex also used design to
differentiate itself from the competition.

Kimberly Clark, the makers of Kleenex,
introduced sophisticated, vibrant colors
onto supermarket shelves in the
mid-’90s—often with dazzling foil and
film overlays on standard packaging
materials. There was no need to hide
these fashionable cubes from view.
Consumers were dazzled, and Kleenex
flew out of the stores.
Once consumers showed that style
could influence their tissue choices, it
was inevitable that a waste can would
come along to tempt them as well.
Industrial design wunderkind Karim
Rashid stepped in with his sexy and
successful little poubelle, Garbo. The

New York Times called it “the garbage
can that got glamour,” and its pretty
plastic curves came in classic neutrals.
[38]
Rashid’s self-professed doctrine of
sensuous minimalism, like the iMac and
innovative Kleenex boxes, paved the
way for a design boom that would
transform once utilitarian consumer
goods into a chic category.

Left: Fresnel Lens Kleenex boxes ca. 1999
Right: Garbino trash can by Karim
Rashid for Umbra ca. 1990s

Left: iMac Circle ad 1999
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to

bottom) 1505; 1935; 2597; 361; 285; Black
3

Anime
Though Japanese animation and cartoons
date back at least to 1917, artist Osamu
Tezuka (aka “The God of Comics”) is
generally credited with elevating early
efforts at both into the art forms of anime
(animated moving pictures) and manga
(graphic novels). His 1947 book-length
New Treasure Island introduced the
stylized, big-eyed creatures still
evolving today. Tezuka’s early-’60s
television cartoon Kimba the White
Lion was anime’s first international hit
—followed by an anime version of
Tatsuo Yoshida’s manga classic, Speed

Racer.
Anime and manga, though
consistently an important part of
Japanese visual culture since Tezuka,
exploded into a truly global phenomenon
in the 1990s. Pokémon appeared in
Japan in 1996, and in the United States
shortly after. Created by Nintendo,
Pokémon made the creatures of anime
accessible to audiences everywhere—
particularly teen and pre-teen boys. A
Pokémon television cartoon was the top
rated-kids program in America in the
late ’90s—which helped fuel the sales
of millions of Pokémon Game Boys and
trading cards, and more.

The anime aesthetic strongly
influenced fashion and product design.
Female characters with huge eyes,
stylized choppy hair, and techno-tough
clothes found their way onto the streets
as fans imitated the look. Anime male
physiques were generally muscular and
overdeveloped, and therefore harder for
boys to emulate, but many oddly shaped,
blobby little creatures sprang out of the
cartoons and into popular toys and
gadgetry—including Hello Kitty.
One of the most notable aspects of
anime was its irreverent use of color.
Vibrant pinks, blues, and greens radiated
against each other with the sudden

interruption of a strong red, yellow, or
purple. Rule-bound notions about color
were abandoned, giving more freedom
and inspiration to graphic designers and
animators internationally.

Right: Anime girl with camera 1990s,
Steve & Ghy Sampson
Left: Cute anime monsters 1990s,
Bulent Gultek

Left: Cover of I.D. magazine ca. 1999
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) 230; 231; 318; 293; 361; 382; 1675;
107; 528

Conspicuous
Consumption
Once upon a time, companies like
Chanel or Louis Vuitton catered to the
very rich with clothing and accessories
which, by virtue of expensive materials
and painstaking craftsmanship, carried
huge price tags. If you couldn’t afford it,
you couldn’t have it.
The mass media profusion of the
1990s, however, changed luxury
marketing. Celebrity-fueled magazines,
television, and Internet gossip showed
what the rich and famous were wearing

every time they left the house—and
millions of star-watchers wanted what
they saw. If Jennifer Lopez was wearing
Gucci, every woman needed it. If
Vuitton goods were hot enough for
Kanye West to sing about, they became a
“must have” at retail.
Huge luxury corporations like
LVMH Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessey
saw an opportunity to grow, and they
took it. For example, Rose Marie Bravo,
CEO of Britain’s Burberry from 1997 to
2005, promised “luxury for
everyone.”[39] She delivered accessibly
priced Burberry plaids right alongside
luxury fashion goods, and Burberry sales

soared worldwide.
New purchasers of luxury brands
found that it wasn’t enough just to own a
bit of designer glamour, however.
Friends, neighbors, colleagues—and
innocent passersby—had to know you
owned it. As a result, logos grew to
enormous sizes. What was once a fine
leather handbag became a billboard: the
bigger the logo, the better. A new word
was coined to describe all of the
branded ostentation: bling.
Artist Jeff Koons somehow
presaged the bling phenomenon. His
late-’80s gilded porcelain statue of
Michael Jackson and his pet chimp sold

at auction for an unprecedented $5.6
million in 1991 and spoke to the
unintended consequences of the
machinery of fame: commoditization of
style and the loss of individuality.
Precious tones of Silver, Pale
Gold, and Champagne Beige were bling
essentials. Their appeal was accentuated
by dark French Roast and classic Stretch
Limo.

Left: Madonna on her Blonde
Ambition tour 1990, photo by Sean
Kardon
Center (top): Sean Puff Daddy Coombs
1999, photo by Reed Saxon
Center (middle): Lizard skin bag ca. 1990s,
Chanel
Center (bottom): Cuff bracelet ca. 1990s,
Chanel

Right: Donatella Versace and actress
Jennifer Lopez partying at Limelight
in New York ca. 1990s, Photo by Rose
Hartman

Right: Michael Jackson and Bubbles 1988,
Jeff Koons
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Silver 14-5002; Pale Gold 15-0927;
Champagne Beige 14-1012; French Roast
19-1012; Stretch Limo 19-4005; Blanc de

Blanc 11-4800

Future Forecasts
As the twenty-first century approached,
millennial anticipation injected a
nervous energy into the zeitgeist. Dark
visions of the future usually included
fears of the Y2K bug wiping out the
world’s computers, the deepening of
political and social conflict, and the
declining health of the planet. Hopeful
dreamers instead sometimes saw
technology as humanity’s savior, and
imagined the constant betterment of
people and planet.
Endless and opinion-laden media
discussion of what the next century

would bring did not help most people
settle comfortably into a vision for the
future—and the search for coherence in
the data blizzard of the Information Age
lingered.
Futurists, philosophers-cum-stylesetters who blend trendwatching and
sociopolitical observation to predict the
look and feel of humankind’s future,
stepped in to meet the need for
perspective. Alvin Toffler and Faith
Popcorn, for example, anticipated the
effects of increasing technology on our
personal lives, and to some degree
assured us that we would survive into
the next century. Others focused more on

how the future would look, and defined
colors, patterns, and shapes that would
suit our future needs.
View Color Planner, an
international trend forecast published by
Amsterdam-based View Publications,
predicted two very strong color
influences for the fall and winter of
1999–2000, centered on contrasting
pessimistic and optimistic visions of the
future. The dichotomy of feeling was
reflected in diverse palettes that spoke
of the wonders and mysteries of the
galaxy in deeper tones, while lighter,
more diaphanous hues were expressed
as a source of “fragile and vaporous

weightlessness.”
Users of these forecasts—designers
and retailers worldwide— were invited
to shore up their customers for the road
ahead with Rust, Garnet, Marron,
Vineyard Wine, Midnight Navy and
Shale—or to invent hopeful fashion and
décor for happy-ever-afters in Ketchup,
Lyons Blue, Deep Wisteria, Oasis,
Tourmaline, and Lark.

Top: Page spread from View Color
Planner 1999 2000, David Shah
Bottom: Image from View Color
Planner 1999 2000, David Shah

Images from View Color Planner
1999 2000, David Shah
Right: Pantone Swatches (top to
bottom) Garnet 19-1655; Shale 19-3903;
Vinyard Wine 19-1623; Rust 18-1248;
Marron 18-1415; Midnight Navy 19-4110;
Ketchup 18-1449; Lyons Blue 19-4340;
Deep Wisteria 19-3842; Oasis 16-0540;
Tourmaline 16-4411; Lark 16-1324

Endnotes
[1]James Laver, Costume & Fashion: A
Concise History (New York:
Thames & Hudson, 1995), 213–
221.
[2]Virginia Cowles, Edward VII and
His Circle (London: Hamilton,
1956).
[3]Frank Lloyd Wright’s speech “The
Art and Craft of the Machine,”
1901, quoted in Bruce Brooks
Pfeiffer, The Essential Frank
Lloyd Wright: Critical Writings on
Architecture (Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 2008).
[4]William Warmus, The Essential
Réne Lalique (New York: Harry N.
Abrams, 2003), 41.
[5]Siegfried Bing, Tiffany exhibition
catalog, Grafton Galleries, London,
1899. Cited at
http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/lo
lot_id=159509699.
[6]Ibid.
[7]Michael and Ariane Batterberry,
Fashion: The Mirror of History
(New York: Greenwich House,
1982), 268–272.
[8]Ibid.
[9]Camille Mauclair, Trois crises de

l’art actuel (Paris: E. Fasquelle,
1906), quoted in Jean Leymaire,
Fauves and Fauvism (Lausanne:
Rizzoli, 1987), 7.
[10]http://kewpiedoll.org/rose-ceciloneill-and-her-kewpie-dolls-2/.
[11]Gillian Naylor, review of Wiener
Werkstätte: Design in Vienna
1903–1932, by Werner J.
Schweiger, Journal of Design
History 4, no. 4 (1991): 261–64.
[12]Letter to F. W. Weber (1950),
published in New YorkPennsylvania Collector, August 8,
1991.
[13]Bruce Watson, “Beyond the Blue:

The Art of Maxfield Parrish,”
Smithsonian Magazine, July 1999.
[14]Josef Hoffmann and Koloman
Moser, “Working Program,” 1905,
quoted in Gillian Naylor, review of
Wiener Werkstätte: Design in
Vienna 1903–1932, by Werner J.
Schweiger, Journal of Design
History 4, no. 4(1991): 261–264.
[15]Jean Metzinger, “Note sur la
peinture,” Pan, October-November
1910: 649–51.
[16]www.roseoneill.org
[17]But the name didn’t catch on until a
1965 museum show at the Musée
des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and a

1968 book by Bevis Hillier, Art
Deco of the 20s and 30s (London:
Studio Vista/New York: Dutton,
1968).
[18]Christopher Frayling,
“Egyptomania” in Art Deco 1910–
1930 (London: V&A Publications,
2003).
[19]James Stevens Curl, Egyptomania –
The Egyptian Revival: A
Recurring Theme in the History of
Taste (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1994).
[20]Stuart Y. Silverstein, ed., Not Much
Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy
Parker (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 2009), 113–114.
[21]Ladies’ Home Journal, August
1921: 16–34.
[22]Lawrence Cutler and Judy Goffman
Cutler, J. C. Leyendecker:
American Imagist (New York:
Abrams, 2008).
[23]Leonard Griffin, Clarice Cliff: The
Art of the Bizarre (London:
Pavilion Books, 1999).
[24]Parker Tyler, Florine Stettheimer:
A Life in Art (New York: Farrar,
Straus, and Company, 1963).
[25]“Annual Message to Congress,”
January 4, 1935, quoted in Ronald
Edsforth, The New Deal:

America’s Response to the Great
Depression (Blackwell, 2000).
[26]Louise I. Gerdes, ed., The 1940s
(San Diego: Greenhaven Press,
2000).
[27]Timothy Mennel, “‘Miracle House
Hoop-La’: Corporate Rhetoric and
the Construction of the Postwar
American House,” Journal of the
Society of Architectural
Historians 64, no. 3 (September
2005): 340–361.
[28]Joseph Hudnut, “The Post-Modern
House,” Architectural Record
(May 1945): 70. Quoted in Mennel.
[29]www.designmuseum.org

[30]“The Beats in India: A Symposium”
sponsored by the Asia Society
(June 14, 2008), seen on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=3MmnDqiVU2o.
[31]Dave Hickey, “Andy and the
Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of” in
Andy Warhol “Giant” Size (New
York: Phaidon, 2006).
[32]Arthur Karp, review of The
Elements of Color, by Johannes
Itten, Leonardo 5, no. 2 (Spring
1972): 180–181.
[33]U.S. Department of Commerce,
National Bureau of Standards,
Color in Our Daily Lives

(Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1975).
[34]Richard Horn, Memphis: Objects,
Furniture, and Patterns
(Philadelphia: Running Press,
1985).
[35]Wolf Von Eckardt, “Design: A
Festive Moment, Not an Epic,”
Time Magazine, August 6, 1984.
[36]Christina Valhouli, “Travel Feature:
Spa Industry Tones Up,” Forbes
Magazine, July 11, 2002.
[37]“iMac Campaign,” Marketing
Campaign Case Studies,
http://marketing-casestudies.blogspot.com/2008/02/imac-

campaign.html.
[38]Phil Patton, “Public Eye: The Little
Can That Could,” New York Times,
September 3, 1998.
[39]Dana Thomas, How Luxury Lost Its
Luster (New York: Penguin Group,
2007), 261.

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Image Credits
1900s
Edwardian Affairs
Cinq Heures chez le Couturier Paquin:
House of Worth, London, UK / The
Bridgeman Art Library International
Queen Alexandra’s ostrich feather fan:
The Royal Collection © 2011 Her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
“A Summer Toilette” Illustration:
Chromolithograph. The Stapleton
Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library
International
Arts and Crafts

Chandelier: Mahogany, ebony, and
leaded glass; 281/2 in. × 25 in. (72.4 cm
× 64.8 cm); Image copyright © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art
Resource, NY
Linen Press: Oak, tulip poplar, brass, 55
× 41 × 183/4 in. (139.7 × 104.1 × 47.6
cm); Image copyright © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art
Resource, NY
The Essay on Nature by Ralph Waldo
Emerson: From the Collection of George
& Karin Look
Jewel Tones
Pendant: Gold, enamel, opal, pearl,
diamonds; 3 × 23/8 in. (7.6 × 6.0 cm); ©

2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
York / ADAGP, Paris; Image copyright
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art
Resource, NY
Group of Fabergé eggs: Photograph by
Alexander Makarov; Image courtesy
www.123rf.com
Peacock library lamp: Courtesy of the
Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass
The Charm of Iridescence
Blue peacock vase: © Haworth Art
Gallery, Accrington, Lancashire, UK /
The Bridgeman Art Library International
Glaskunstindustrie III: Courtesy of
Leatrice Eiseman
Eighteen-light pond lily decorative

lamp: Courtesy of the Neustadt
Collection of Tiffany Glass
Firsts for Women
Hartford Tire ad: Image courtesy of The
Advertising Archives
Three women on bicycles: The Stapleton
Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library
International
“Excuse me” ad: Image courtesy of the
Kellogg Company
Poiret Revolution
Coat drawing: Photo by Mary
Evans/Everett Collection (10133158)
Coats and cloaks from Les Robes de
Paul Poiret: The Art Archive / V&A
Images

Three dresses and a toad: The Stapleton
Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library
International
The Fauves
The Port of La Ciotat: Image courtesy
of National Gallery of Art, Washington
Tugboat on the Seine: Image courtesy of
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Open Window, Collioure: Image
courtesy of National Gallery of Art,
Washington
1910s
Theatrics
Costume design for Scheherazade:
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of
Cambridge, UK / The Bridgeman Art

Library International
Modern Dress for Dione: Pencil and
watercolor; The Fine Art Society,
London, UK / The Bridgeman Art
Library International
A Scheherazade Salon: Private
Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library
International
Costume design for The Great Eunuch:
Watercolor and paper; Musee des
Beaux- Arts, Strasbourg, France /
Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library
International
Parrish Blues
Commemorative plate: Courtesy of Herb
and Leatrice Eiseman

Blue and pink tobacco flower design:
Photo © The Fine Art Society, London,
UK / The Bridgeman Art Library
International
Cleopatra: © American Illustrators
Gallery, NYC /
www.asapworldwide.com / © DACS /
The Bridgeman Art Library
International; Art © Maxfield Parrish
Family Trust/Licensed by VAGA, New
York, NY
Wiener Werkstätte
Tea service: Lucie Rie, London, UK /
The Bridgeman Art Library International
Brooch: Gold, silver, agate, amethyst,
bloodstone, jasper, coral, lapis lazuli,

moonstone, opal, tourmaline, and other
semi-precious stones; 21/8 × 21/8 in. (5.4
× 5.4 cm); Private Collection, Courtesy
Neue Galerie New York
“Leopard” textile swatch: Courtesy of
the FIDM Museum at the Fashion
Institute of Design & Merchandising,
Los Angeles, CA
Youthful Pastimes
“Hello Boys” Erector Set ad: Image
courtesy of The Advertising Archives
Group of “Raggedy Ann” Dolls: Image
courtesy of Ben Ear wicker/Garrison
Photography LLC
Cover of Tip Top Weekly: Courtesy of
Special Collections, Stanford University

Library
Cover of The Kewpies, Their Book:
Courtesy of the Bonnybrook Museum
Cubism
Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2):
Oil on canvas, 577/8 × 351/8 in. (147 ×
89.2 cm); © 2011 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris /
Succession Marcel Duchamp; Image
courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of
Art/Art Resource, NY
Artillery: Oil on canvas, 511/4 × 623/4
in. (130.2 × 159.4 cm.); Image copyright
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art
Resource, NY
Italian Still Life: Oil, gypsum and paper

on canvas; Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow,
Russia / The Bridgeman Art Library
International
World War I
“Be patriotic…” U.S. Food
Administration poster: Image by Paul
Stahr/Library of Congress
Navy recruiting poster: Image by
Howard Chandler Christy/Library of
Congress
Cover from The Ladies’ Home Journal:
Image courtesy of The Advertising
Archives
Coming Home
Black Model T Ford Touring car: Ron
Kimball/ KimballStock

Pyrex Glass ad: Image courtesy of The
Advertising Archives
Armstrong Flooring ad: Used by
permission of Armstrong World
Industries, Inc.
1920s
Art Deco
Art deco glass bottle and three glasses:
Photo courtesy of Angelo
Hornak/Angelo Hornak Photo Library
Evening shoes: Leather. Length: 11 in.
(27.9 cm). Gift of Mrs. R. C. Jacobsen,
1954 (C.I.54.14.2a,b); Image copyright
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art
Resource, NY
Screen: Wood with red and black

lacquer, silver leaf, and composite
decoration, brass hinges; Victoria &
Albert Museum, London / Art Resource,
NY
Jacques-Emil Ruhlmann dressing table
and chair: Private Collection / The
Stapleton Collection / The Bridgeman
Art Library International
Tutmania
Art Deco glass perfume bottles: Photo
by Angelo Hornak/Angelo Hornak Photo
Library
Corsage Ornament: Jade, onyx,
diamonds, enamel, and platinum, 87/8 ×
33/4 in. (22.5 × 9.5 cm). Gift of Eva and
Michael Chow, 2001 (2001.723a, b);

Image copyright © The Metropolitan
Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY
Funerary mask of Tutankhamen: The Art
Archive / Egyptian Museum Cairo /
Gianni Dagli Orti
Cocktails and Laughter
Josephine Baker “La Vie Parisienne”
ad: Courtesy of the Advertising
Archives
Panne velvet wrap detail: Courtesy of
Leatrice Eiseman
Gold dress: Silk, length at CB: 30 in.
(76.2 cm). Gift of Mrs. Adam Gimbel,
1942 (C.I.42.33.3). The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, NY, U.S.A.;
Image copyright © The Metropolitan

Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY
“The Flapper” cover of Life magazine:
Courtesy of the Advertising Archives
Destinations
All images: Courtesy of the Advertising
Archives
The Leyendecker Man
Cover of The Saturday Evening Post:
Courtesy of Curtis Publishing
“Good Clothes” Kuppenheimer ad:
Courtesy of the Advertising Archives
Socks by Interwoven: Courtesy of the
Advertising Archives
Arrow Dress Collars and Shirts:
Courtesy of the Advertising Archives
Bauhaus

“Tanz Festpiele” poster: Printer:
Graphische Anstalt F.W. Rohden, Essen,
Germany. 1928. Photolithograph, 351/2 ×
331/4 in. (90.2 × 84.5 cm). Purchase
Fund, Jan Tschichold Collection.© 2011
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Image copyright
© The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed
by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
Club Chair B3 (Wassily): Bent steel
tube frame, chromed; The Bridgeman Art
Library International
Ancient Harmony: Kunstmuseum, Basel,
Switzerland / Gift of Richard DoetschBenziger, 1960 / The Bridgeman Art
Library International; © 2011 Paul Klee

Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York / VG BILDKUNST, Bonn.
Several Circles: Oil on canvas, 551/4 ×
553/8 in. (140.3 × 140.7 cm). Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding
Collection, By gift, 41.283.© 2011
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
/ ADAGP, Paris
Modern Pleasures
Beauty Contest: Oil on canvas, 50 ×
601/2 in. Gift of Ettie Stettheimer,
1947.242, Wadsworth Atheneum
Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut;
Image courtesy of Wadsworth Atheneum
Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY

Appliqué bird-of-paradise charger:
Photo © Bonhams, London, UK / The
Bridgeman Art Library International
Sheer silk flapper print: Image courtesy
of Patricia Nugent Design and Textiles
Mannequin head: Victoria & Albert
Musem, London; Image Copyright ©
V&A Images—All rights reserved.
A Rose Is a Rose
Silver sweetmeat dish: Manufactured in
London, England; Copyright © V&A
Images
Abstract rose: Image courtesy of Patricia
Nugent Design and Textiles
Styled rose with shards: Image courtesy
of Patricia Nugent Design and Textiles

Rose on graphic ground: Image courtesy
of Patricia Nugent Design and Textiles
1930s
Deco Architecture
Schick razor: Image courtesy of Victoria
Kasuba Matranga; From the book
America At Home: A Celebration of
Twentieth-Century Housewares by
Victoria Kasuba Matranga, National
Housewares Manufacturers Association
Art Deco clock: Photo courtesy of
Angelo Hornak/Angelo Hornak Photo
Library
“Vortex” of the Chrysler Building: The
Bridgeman Art Library International
Art Deco elevator door in the Chrysler

Building: Photo courtesy of Angelo
Hornak/Angelo Hornak Photo Library
Illusions
Vintage button collection: Courtesy of
Leatrice and Herb Eiseman
Syrie Maugham’s Drawing Room: The
Stapleton Collection / The Bridgeman
Art Library International
Evening ensemble: silk, no dimensions
available. Gift of Madame Lilliana
Teruzzi, 1972 (1972.30.17a, b); Image
copyright © The Metropolitan Museum
of Art / Art Resource, NY
Still from Bill of Divorcement: RKO /
The Kobal Collection
Fantastic Plastic

Bakelite necklace: Courtesy of Leatrice
Eiseman
Bakelite billiard balls: Courtesy of
Leatrice Eiseman
Telephone: Neue Galerie New York /
Art Resource, NY
“Patriot” radio: Catalin, H. 8, W. 11, D.
51/2 in. (20.3 × 27.9 × 14 cm). John C.
Waddell Collection, Gift of John C.
Waddell, 2001 (2001.722.11); Image
copyright © The Metropolitan Museum
of Art / Art Resource, NY
Diversions
Monopoly board: Courtesy of Bill and
Bobbie Hawkes
Tricorne pattern dishes: Image courtesy

of Victoria Kasuba Matranga; From the
book America At Home: A Celebration
of Twentieth-Century Housewares by
Victoria Kasuba Matranga, National
Housewares Manufacturers Association
Toy Sale: Image courtesy of the Library
of Congress
Parks and Recreation
All poster images: courtesy of the
Library of Congress
Roseville
All Roseville pottery images: courtesy
of Herb and Leatrice Eiseman
The Wizard of Oz
All images: The Wizard of Oz, MGM /
The Kobal Collection

The World of Tomorrow
Zephyr, Waring Blendor, and Juice-OMat: Images courtesy of Victoria Kasuba
Matranga; From the book America At
Home: A Celebration of TwentiethCentury Housewares by Victoria
Kasuba Matranga, National Housewares
Manufacturers Association
“The World of Tomorrow,” Poster:
Image courtesy of the Library of
Congress
1940s
Fantasia
All images © Disney
Edward Hopper
Office at Night: Oil on canvas, 223/16 ×

251/8 in. (57.2 cm × 63.8 cm);
Collection Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis; Gift of the T. B. Walker
Foundation, Gilbert M. Walker Fund,
1948
Nighthawks: Oil on canvas, 331/8 × 60
in. (84.1 × 152.4 cm); Friends of
American Art Collection, 1942.51, The
Art Institute of Chicago; Photography ©
The Art Institute of Chicago
Gas: Oil on canvas, 261/4 × 401/4 in.
(66.7 × 102.2 cm). Mrs. Simon
Guggenheim Fund, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A.;
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern
Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art

Resource, NY
World War II
Eisenhower wool army jacket: Division
of Military History and Diplomacy,
Smithsonian Institution, National
Museum of American History
Poster for Federal Art Project in
Pennsylvania: Image courtesy of the
Library of Congress
Cover for The Saturday Evening Post:
Image © SEPS 1942, used by gracious
permission of the Rockefeller Family
Trust
Carefree and Casual
Iconic Jantzen “Diving Girl” image:
Courtesy of Jantzen/Perry

Communications
Page from an Aldens clothing catalog:
Aldens Clothing Company, Spring and
Summer 1947 catalog
Jaeger Clothing advertisement: Image
courtesy of The Advertising Archives
Hawaiian shirt: DAJ/Getty Images
The American Dream
All images: Courtesy Gena McGregor;
From Pittsburgh Color Dynamics
consumer education booklet, Pittsburgh
Plate Glass Company
Hit Parade
“Frank Sinatra: The Best of the
Columbia Years” album cover: Used
with permission of Columbia Records

Boogie Woogie, John Kirby, and Teddy
Wilson - Billy Holiday album covers:
Images provided by Alex Steinweiss,
courtesy of Leslie Steinweiss, used with
permission of Columbia Records.
Film Noir
Still from The Killers: Universal / The
Kobal Collection
Still from Mildred Pierce: Warner
Brothers / The Kobal Collection
Marquee poster for Shadow of a Doubt:
Universal / The Kobal Collection
La Mode
Fashion plate for Christian Dior: Color
engraving; Bibliotheque des Arts
Decoratifs, Paris, France / © DACS /

Archives Charmet / The Bridgeman Art
Library International; © 2011 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York /
ADAGP, Paris
Advertisement for Bally Shoes: Color
lithograph; Archives Charmet / The
Bridgeman Art Library International
Christian Dior fashion in Femina IV:
Watercolor on paper; Archives Charmet
/ The Bridgeman Art Library
International
1950s
Happy at Home
Lazy Susan: Collection of Victoria
Kasuba Matranga; Courtesy of Victoria
Kasuba Matranga

Fiesta dinnerware ad: Collection of
Fred Mutchler; Photograph by Fred
Mutchler
Homer Laughlin Fiesta dinnerware:
Image courtesy of Fred Mutchler
Pebblecloth: From the book Fabulous
Fabrics of the 50s (And Other Terrific
Textiles of the 20s, 30s, and 40s, by
Gideon Bosker, Michele Mancini, and
John Gramstad, 92. San Francisco:
Chronicle Books, 1992.
Gibson Electric Range ad: Image
courtesy of The Advertising Archives
Teen Angels
Poodle skirt: Courtesy of Leatrice
Eiseman

James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause:
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
Images
Studebaker Commander: Ron Kimball/
KimballStock
Mid-Century Modernists
Wall Clock: Image courtesy of Richard
Wright
Wire chairs with bird sculpture: Photo
courtesy of the Library of Congress
Tulip Armchair (model 150):
Fiberglassreinforced polyester and cast
aluminum, 311/2 × 251/4 × 231/2 in. (80 ×
64.1 × 59.7 cm). Manufactured by Knoll
Associates, New York, NY. Gift of the
manufacturer, The Museum of Modern

Art, New York, NY, U.S.A; Digital
Image © The Museum of Modern
Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource,
NY
Movie Goddesses
Anne Aubrey in a Lux brand soap ad:
Image courtesy of The Advertising
Archives
Audrey Hepburn in a still from Funny
Face: Paramount, The Kobal Collection
Grace Kelly posing for Life magazine:
Philippe Halsman/Magnum Photos
Cosmetic Superstars
Ruby brooch and two ruby earrings:
Courtesy of Leatrice Eiseman
Evening dress: Silk, plastic, (a) L. at

center back 64 in. (162 cm); (b) L. 140
in. (355 cm). Gift of Irving Drought
Harris, in memory of Claire McCardell
Harris, 1958 (C.I.58.49.4a, b). The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, NY, U.S.A; Image copyright ©
The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art
Resource, NY
Advertisement for Elizabeth Arden
lipstick: Photo by Apic/Getty Images
Ad for “My Love” perfume by Elizabeth
Arden: Copyright Apic, Hulton Archive,
Getty Images
“Fire and Ice” advertisement featuring
Dorian Leigh: Image courtesy of The
Advertising Archives

Coast-to-Coast Woolens
Images from Hockanum Coast-to-Coast
Woolens: courtesy of Keith Recker; J.P.
Stevens & Co., Inc, Los Angeles
Fantasyland
House of Cards, 1952: Photo ©
Bonhams, London, UK / The Bridgeman
Art Library International
Disneyland Park: Photo by Ralph
Crane/Time & Life Pictures/Getty
Images
Abstract Expressionists
Red Lily Pads (Nénuphars rouges):
Painted sheet metal, metal rods, and
wire, 54 × 201 × 101 in. (106.7 × 510.5
× 276.9 cm); Solomon R. Guggenheim

Museum, New York, 65.1737; © 2011
Calder Foundation, New York/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo
by David Heald The Guggenheim
Museum: Photo copyright Grant
Faint/The Image Bank/Getty
Ocean Greyness: Oil on canvas, 573/4 ×
901/8 in. (146.7 × 229 cm); Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York,
54.1408; © 2011 The Pollock-Krasner
Foundation/Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York
Composition: Oil, enamel, and charcoal
on canvas, 791/8 × 691/8 in. (201 × 175.6
cm); © 2011 The Willem de Kooning
Foundation /Artists Rights Society

(ARS), New York; Photo courtesy of the
Guggenheim Museum, New York
1960s
Passage to India
Pair of 18 karat yellow gold, coral,
chrysoprase and diamond earrings:
Courtesy of Camilla Dietz Bergeron, Ltd
First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy: Photo
by Art Rickerby//Time Life
Pictures/Getty Images
Veronica Hamel in McCall’s: Reprinted
with permission from Meredith
Corporation. © Meredith Corporation.
All Rights Reserved.
A Different Space
Passage: Oil and mixed media on

canvas, © DACS / Giraudon / The
Bridgeman Art Library International, Art
© Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA,
New York, NY
Flags: Lithograph, composition (irreg.):
345/8 × 257/8 in. (87.9 × 65.7 cm); sheet
(irreg.): 34? × 257/8 in. (87.9 × 65.7
cm). Publisher and printer: Universal
Limited Art Editions, West Islip, New
York. Edition: 43. Gift of the Celeste
and Armand Bartos Foundation; Art ©
Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New
York, NY. Photo courtesy of Wadsworth
Atheneum Museum of Art / Art
Resource, NY
Retroactive I: Oil and silkscreen ink on

canvas. 84 × 60 in. (213 × 152 cm); Gift
of Susan Morse Hilles. 1964.30; Art ©
Estate of Robert Rauschenberg/Licensed
by VAGA, New York, NY; image
courtesy of Wadsworth Atheneum
Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY
Kensington and Carnaby
Jerkin: Courtesy of the Victoria &
Albert Museum, London
Biba logo: Image courtesy of the
Advertising Archives
Skirt and jumper: Natural hessian and
synthetic fibres; Courtesy of the Victoria
& Albert Museum, London
Cifonelli Suit: Multicolor wool; © The
Museum at Fashion Institute of

Technology
Black Is Beautiful
Martini: Photo by Andrew Unangst /
Photographers Choice / Getty Images
Panton classic chair: Available through
DWR; © Vitra (www.vitra.com); photo
courtesy of Hans Hansen.
“Black Models Take Center Stage”
cover of Life magazine: Photo by Yale
Joel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Psychedelia
Tie-dyed T-shirt swatch: Photo by Erin
Calaway-Mackay
(http://www.kali.me.uk)
Yellow Submarine still: Image courtesy
of the Everett Collection

Untitled (Bob Dylan): Printer: Security
Printing Co., New York. 1967. Offset
lithograph, 36 × 24 in. (91.4 × 60.9 cm).
Used by permission of Peter Max;
Digital Image Photo credit: The Museum
of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA /
Art Resource, NY
Sesame Street
All images: “Sesame Workshop”®,
“Sesame Street”®, and associated
characters, trademarks, and design
elements are owned and licensed by
Sesame Workshop.© 2011 Sesame
Workshop. All Rights Reserved.
Warhol
Marilyn: Silkscreen; Photo by Bonhams,

London, UK / The Bridgeman Art
Library
Campbell’s Soup Can: Silkscreen ink
on synthetic polymer paint on canvas,
361/8 × 24 in. (91.5 × 61 cm); © 2011
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual
Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York; Photo: The Andy Warhol
Foundation, Inc. / Art Resource, NY
Self-Portrait: Silkscreen ink on
synthetic polymer paint on 9 canvases,
675/8 × 675/8 in. (171.7 × 171.7 cm); ©
2011 Andy Warhol Foundation for the
Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York; Digital Image © The
Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by

SCALA / Art Resource, NY
PANTONE
Marshall’s paint tubes, Lipcolor Plus,
Pantone paint chips, and Pantone
Matching System images: Courtesy of
Pantone
Paper mini-dress with faces: Used by
permission of the Kyoto Costume
Institute
1970s
Colors and Coordinates
Color in Our Daily Lives cover:
Courtesy of Leatrice Eiseman
Poster for Vera’s first art exhibition: ©
2011 The Vera Company; used with
permission

Color in Our Daily Lives interior:
Courtesy of Leatrice Eiseman
The Foucault Pendulum poster: © 2011
The Vera Company, Used with
Permission
Avocado and Harvest Gold
Shag carpet: Noel
Hendrickson/Photodisc/ Getty Images
Avocado JC Penney’s brochure:
Courtesy of Leatrice Eiseman
“Plantation” wallpaper pattern: Courtesy
of Patricia Nugent Textiles
Feathers and Leathers
Sofa: Photo courtesy of Nicky
Hedayatzadeh (www.iheartmint.com)
Brown leather “cork”-effect rubber

platforms: Photo courtesy of Jennifer
Karpin-Hobbs/ Morning Glorious
Vintage
Feather and suede neckpiece: Courtesy
of Leatrice Eiseman
Provence
Cachepot: Photograph courtesy of Herb
Eiseman
Blue and purple paisley fabric swatch:
Courtesy of Pat Nugent Textiles
Alpes de Haute, Provence: Brian
Lawrence/ Photographers Choice / Getty
Images
Land Art
Satellite view of James Turrell’s Roden
Crater: Photo courtesy of USGS

Construction Photo: Copyright James
Turrell; photo by Steve Shoffner; used
by permission of James Turrell and
Steve Shoffner
Spiral Jetty: Great Salt Lake, Utah;
Photo by Gianfranco Gorgoni; Art ©
Estate of Robert Smithson/Licensed by
VAGA, New York, NY
The Day the World Turned Day-Glo
“Lost Horizon” blacklight poster:
Courtesy of Matching System color strip,
ca. 1970
Rainbow neon lights: Photo courtesy of
Jenny G. (http://photos.datasage.com)
London: Photo courtesy agefotostock
Night Life

Colored disco lights: Photo courtesy of
Alessandro Paiva
(www.alessandropaiva.com)
Night club mirrored disco ball: Photo
courtesy of Paulo Meira
(www.unltdesign.com)
Donna Summer: Photo by Dagmar,
Dagmarfoto.com
Still from Saturday Night Fever:
Paramount / The Kobal Collection /
Holly Bower
Hotel California
Scale model surfboard collection: From
the private collection of Spencer Croul.
Photo by James Cassimus. Used by
permission of Malcolm Wilson

Clyde Aikau: image courtesy of Jeff
Divine
Studio portrait of the Eagles: Courtesy
Redferns/Getty Images
Poster for Pacific Vibrations: © John
Severson— SurferArt.com; used by
permission of John Severson
1980s
Memphis, Michael, and Philippe
Alessi teakettle: Courtesy of Herb and
Leatrice Eiseman
Miss Milch chair: Courtesy of Philippe
Starck
“Carlton” Room Divider: Wood, plastic
laminate. H. 763/4, W. 743/4, D. 153/4 in.
(194.9 × 189.9 × 40 cm). The

Metropolitan Museum of Art, John C.
Waddell Collection, Gift of John C.
Waddell, 1997 (1997.460.1a-d); Image
copyright © The Metropolitan Museum
of Art / Art Resource, NY
To the Manor Born
Polo by Ralph Lauren perfume ad: Image
courtesy of the Advertising Archives
Repp Tie: Image courtesy of Eric
Meltzer
Lady Diana Spencer and fiancé Prince
Charles: Photo by Anwar
Hussein/WireImage/Getty Images
Urban Cowboys
Ad for Frye boots: Image courtesy of the
Advertising Archives

Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing on Dallas:
Lorimar / The Kobal Collection
Calvin Klein jeans ad featuring Brooke
Shields: Image courtesy of the
Advertising Archives
Signs and Symbols
Untitled: © Keith Haring Foundation;
used by permission
Entry to the stadium for the 1984
Olympics: Used with permission of
Sussman/Prejza & Co.
Interview magazine cover: Image
courtesy of the Advertising Archives
Miami Vice
Downtown Miami at night: Photo
courtesy of Elvis Santana

Ferrari logo: © Mark Leo Lacey /
Alamy
Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) and Rico
Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas):
Universal TV / The Kobal Collection
Majorelle and Morocco
Majorelle Gardens: Panoramic
Images/Getty Images
Moroccan dyebaths: Photograph by Herb
Eiseman
Lamps in the Marrakesh market: Paul
Plebinga / Photodisc / Getty Images
Santa Fe
Purple Hills Ghost Ranch-2: Oil on
canvas affixed to masonite. 161/4 × 301/4
in. 1997.06.20. Gift of the Burnett

Foundation. The Georgia O’Keeffe
Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico,
U.S.A.. 2011 Georgia O’Keeffe
Museum/ Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York; Photo Credit: Malcolm
Varon, 2001/Georgia O’Keeffe Museum,
Santa Fe / Art Resource, NY
Flame stitch-style upholstery fabric
‘Santa Fe’ style: Courtesy of Herb and
Leatrice Eiseman
Bear Lake: Oil on canvas, 16 × 36 in.
(41.9 × 92.7 cm). On long term loan to
the New Mexico Museum of Art from
the Museum of New Mexico Foundation
(1984.336); © 2011 Georgia O’Keeffe
Museum/ Artists Rights Society (ARS),

New York. Photo courtesy of the New
Mexico Museum of Art
Personal Colors
Miss Clairol Red or Black shades: ©
The Procter & Gamble Company
Armani Suit: © The Museum at Fashion
Institute of Technology
“Before and after”: Photograph courtesy
of Herb Eiseman
Color Clock™ fanguide: Courtesy of
Eiseman & Japonais Associates
Japonais
Black wool jersey dress: Length at CB:
46 in. (117.5 cm). The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Gift of Muriel Kallis
Newman, 2003 (2003.79.21); Image

copyright © The Metropolitan Museum
of Art / Art Resource, NY.
Sasaki Colorstone dinnerware: Courtesy
of Vignelli Associates
Rio/Texas: Used by kind permission of
the Nagel Estate Collection
1990s
Grunge and Graffiti
Graffiti in Los Angeles: Photo by Eric
Olage
Kurt Cobain: Photo by Mary
Evans/Strength LTD/Ronald
Grant/Everett Collection
Doc Marten boots: Photographer: Peter
G. Balazsy/agefotostock.
It’s a Good Thing

Purple hydrangea, White hydrangea,
White/ pink variegated hydrangea
images: Courtesy of Herb Eiseman
Purple coneflower with birdbath: Image
courtesy of Andrew Drake, Seattle
Home & Lifestyle, October 2009
Martha Stewart Everyday Seed Packets;
Courtesy of Stephen Doyle, photography
by Lisa Hubbard
Martha Stewart Living cover:
Reprinted with permission, © 1999
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc
The Nature of Zen
All images courtesy of Maureen Welton,
President and Creative Director,
18Karat

Out of Africa
Hand carved wooden spider tables:
Courtesy of Tucker Robbins
South African pottery: Image courtesy of
Anne Roselt, Design & Style Director,
Plascon Paints, SA
Lidded basket: Ilala palm fiber; H. 13 ,
W. 21 in., Rogers Fund, 2000
(2000.441a, b). Image copyright © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art /
Art Resource, NY
Kente cloth: Photo by Keith Recker
Latin Flavors
Squash blossoms: Photo by Sheri L.
Giblin
Dried chile peppers: Photo by Sheri L.

Giblin; photo courtesy StockFood
Pitahaya fruit: Photo by Bobbie Hawkes
Sliced mango in a wineglass: Photo by
Sheri L. Giblin/Foodpix/Getty Images
Margarita: Photo by Sheri L. Giblin
Chic over Geek
Fresnel Lens Kleenex boxes: Courtesy
of Kimberly-Clark Worldwide, Inc.
Garbino trash can: Photo courtesy of
Umbra
iMac Circle: Image courtesy of the
Advertising Archives
Anime
Anime girl with camera: Steve & Ghy
Sampson/ Getty Images
Anime monsters: Bulent Gultek/Getty

Images
Anime Style: Image courtesy ID
Magazine
Conspicuous Consumption
Madonna on her “Blonde Ambition”
tour: AP-Photo/Sean Kardon
Sean “Puff Daddy” Coombs: AP
Photo/Reed Saxon
Michael Jackson and Bubbles: ©Jeff
Koons
Donatella Versace and Jennifer Lopez:
Photo by Rose Hartman / Getty Images
Lizard skin bag: 8 × 7 × 2.5” (20.3 ×
17.8 × 6.4 cm); Image courtesy of
Jennifer Kobrin
Cuff bracelet: Image courtesy of Carole

Tanenbaum Vintage Collection
Future Forecasts
All images: Courtesy of David Shah;
From View Color Planner, 1999–2000,
Metropolitan Publishing BV

Index
A
Abstract Expressionism, (MORE)
Adrian, Gilbert
Africa
Albright, Ivan
Alexandra of Denmark (queen of the
United Kingdom), (MORE)
American Catalin Corporation
American Indian Movement
Angell, Jeff
Anime, (MORE)

Anthony, Marc
Apollinaire, Guillaume
Apple Computer, (MORE), (MORE)
Appliance colors, (MORE)
Architecture, (MORE), (MORE)
Arden, Elizabeth, (MORE)
Armani, Giorgio
Armstrong Flooring
Art Deco, (MORE), (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE)
Art Nouveau, (MORE)
Arts and Crafts movement, (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE)
Ashley, Laura
Aubrey, Anne
Avedon, Richard, (MORE), (MORE)

B
Baekeland, Leo
Bakelite, (MORE), (MORE)
Baker, Josephine
Bakst, Leon, (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE)
Ballets Russes, (MORE), (MORE)
Bandy, Way
Barrymore, John
Bauhaus, (MORE), (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE)
Beach, Charles, (MORE)
The Beach Boys
The Beatles, (MORE)
Beckwith, Carol

The Bee Gees
Beene, Geoffrey
Bel Geddes, Norman, (MORE)
Bérard, Christian
Bergé, Pierre
Bernhardt, Sarah
Bernstein, Leonard
Bianchini-Ferier
Binder, Joseph
Bing, Siegfried, (MORE)
Black
Bogart, Humphrey, (MORE)
Boss, Hugo
Boussac, Marcel
Brandt, Edgar
Braque, Georges, (MORE)

Bravo, Rose Marie
Breuer, Marcel, (MORE)
Broders, Roger
Burchartz, Max

C
Cadmus, Paul
Calder, Alexander
California, (MORE)
Campbell, Naomi
Capote, Truman
Carder, Frederick
Cardin, Pierre
Carroll, Diahann

Carson, Rachel
Carter, Howard, (MORE)
Cartier
Caygill, Suzanne
Chanel, Coco
Charles (prince of Wales), (MORE)
Charlot, Juli Lynne
Christy, Howard Chandler
Chrysler, Arthur P.
Chrysler, Walter
Chrysler Building, (MORE)
Chun, Ellery
Clarke, Margaret Courtney
Claudel, Camille
Cliff, Clarice, (MORE)
Clodagh

Clough, Stanley Thomas
Coast-to-Coast Woolens, (MORE)
Cobain, Kurt
Conran, Terence
Consumption, conspicuous
Coombs, Sean “Puff Daddy,”
Cooney, Joan Ganz
Cooper, Charlotte
Cosmetics, (MORE), (MORE)
Cowles, Virginia
Crawford, Joan, (MORE)
Crosby, Bing
Cubism, (MORE)

D

Daché, Lilly
Dallas (television show), (MORE),
(MORE)
Darrow, Charles
Davis, Bette
Dean, James
De Brunhoff, Michel
De Kooning, Willem
De Laroche, Raymonde
Delaunay, Robert
De Vlaminck, Maurice
Diaghilev, Sergei, (MORE)
Diana (princess of Wales), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE)
Dior, Christian, (MORE), (MORE)
Disco, (MORE)

Disney, Walt, (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE)
Disneyland, (MORE)
Donghia, Sherri
The Doors
Dorsey, Tommy
Drake, Jamie
Dreyfuss, Henry
Duchamp, Marcel
Dufy, Raoul, (MORE)
DuPont Coatings
Dylan, Bob, (MORE)

E

The Eagles, (MORE)
Eames, Ray and Charles, (MORE),
(MORE)
Eastman Kodak
Edward VII (king of the United
Kingdom), (MORE), (MORE)
Egypt, (MORE)
Eiseman, Leatrice
Eisenhower, Dwight D.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Empire State Building, (MORE)
Environmental movement, (MORE)
Erector Set, (MORE)

F

Fabergé, Carl, (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE)
Factor, Max, (MORE)
Fantasia (movie), (MORE), (MORE)
Fashion, (MORE), (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE)
Faulkner, Anne Shaw
Fauves, (MORE), (MORE), (MORE)
Federal Art Project (FAP), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE), (MORE)
Ferrer, Ibrahim
Fiestaware, (MORE)
Film noir, (MORE)

Fischinger, Oskar
Fisher, Angela
Fokine, Michel
Fonda, Jane
Fonda, Peter
Formica, (MORE)
Fouquet, Georges
Frank, Nino
Franklin, Aretha
French Country style, (MORE)

G
Gable, Clark
Gallé, émile

Gardner, Ava
Gaynor, Gloria
Gehry, Frank
General Motors, (MORE)
Gervex, Henri
Giles, Howard
Ginsberg, Allen
Givenchy, Hubert de, (MORE)
Graves, Michael
Gray, Eileen, (MORE)
Great Depression, (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE)
Greenberg, Clement
Greene, Charles and Henry
Grefé, Wil

Grès, Madame
Griffin, Rick
Gris, Juan
Gropius, Walter
Gruau, Rene
Gruelle, Johnny
Grunge, (MORE)
Guggenheim Museum, (MORE)
Guild, Tricia
Gulbenkian, Calouste

H
Hagman, Larry
Halls, Richard

Halston
Hamel, Veronica
Haring, Keith, (MORE), (MORE)
Harrison, George
Hartnell, Norman
Hassam, Childe
Hawaiian shirts, (MORE)
Hayakawa, Sessue
Head, Edith
Henson, Jim
Hepburn, Audrey
Hepburn, Katharine
Herbert, Lawrence, (MORE)
Herzog, Harry
Hockanum Woolens, (MORE)
Hoffmann, Josef, (MORE)

Hofmann, Hans
Hopper, Edward, (MORE)
Hulanicki, Barbara

I
India
Iribe, Paul
Itten, Johannes, (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE)

J
Jackson, Michael
Jacobs, Marc

Jagger, Mick
Japan, (MORE), (MORE)
Jazz Age
Jefferson Airplane
Johns, Jasper, (MORE)
Johnson, Don

K
Kandinsky, Wassily, (MORE)
Kantner, Paul
Kawakubo, Rei, (MORE)
Kelly, Grace
Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier, (MORE),
(MORE)

Kennedy, John F., (MORE)
Kennedy, Robert F.
Kent, Rockwell
Kent State massacre
Kewpie dolls, (MORE)
Kimberly Clark
King, Martin Luther, Jr., (MORE)
Kirby, John
Klee, Paul, (MORE)
Klein, Calvin
Koons, Jeff
Kranz, Frederick

L

La Fresnaye, Roger Andre de
Lagerfeld, Karl
Lake, Veronica
Lalique, René, (MORE)
Lancaster, Burt
Land art, (MORE)
Lanvin, Jeanne
Larsen, Jack Lenor
Latino culture
Laughlin, Homer, (MORE)
Lauren, Ralph, (MORE), (MORE)
Laurence, Jacob
Leary, Timothy
Legrain, Pierre-émile
Leigh, Dorian
Lennon, John

Le Vec, Pierre
Levitt, William, (MORE)
Levy, Albert
Leyendecker, Joseph Christian, (MORE)
Lindbergh, Charles A.
Loewy, Raymond, (MORE), (MORE)
Lombard, Carole
Lopez, Jennifer, (MORE)
Lum, Ethel Chun

M
Mackintosh, Charles Rennie
MacMurray, Fred
Madonna

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Majorelle, Jacques
Makarov, Alexander
Mandela, Nelson
Martin, Ricky
Matisse, Henri
Mauclair, Camille
Maugham, Syrie, (MORE)
Max, Peter
Mayotte, Peter
McCardell, Claire, (MORE)
McCarthy, Joseph
McCartney, Paul
McLaren, Malcolm
McMenamy, Kristen
Memphis, (MORE)

Mennel, Timothy
Miami Vice (television show), (MORE),
(MORE)
Mid-Century Modern
Minnelli, Liza
Miyake, Issey, (MORE)
Molyneux, Edward
Monopoly board game, (MORE)
Monroe, Marilyn, (MORE)
Morris, William
Moser, Koloman, (MORE)
Moulin, Pierre
Movies, (MORE), (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE)
Muchley, Robert
Music, (MORE), (MORE), (MORE),

(MORE), (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE), (MORE)

N
Nagel, Patrick
Nash, Arthur and Leslie
Nelson, George, (MORE)
Neumann, Vera, (MORE)
New York World’s Fair, (MORE)
Nicholson, Frank S.
Nicholson, Jack
Nijinsky, Vaslav
Nikolai II (emperor of Russia),
(MORE), (MORE), (MORE)

Nirvana
Noguchi, Isamu
Nugent, Patricia, (MORE)

O
O’Keeffe, Georgia, (MORE)
Olympic Games, (MORE)
O’Neill, Rose, (MORE)

P
Paley, Babe
Panton, Vernor
PANTONE, (MORE)

Paquin, Jeanne
Parker, Dorothy
Parrish, Maxfield, (MORE)
Patou, Jean
Pearl Jam
Picasso, Pablo
Pierre Deux
Pittsburgh Paints
Poiret, Paul, (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE)
Poitier, Sydney
Pokémon
Pollock, Jackson, (MORE)
Pop Art
Popcorn, Faith
Popova, Lyubov Sergeevna

Portuondo, Omara
Presley, Elvis
Psychedelia
Pucci, Emilio
Punk movement, (MORE)

Q
Quant, Mary, (MORE)

R
Radziwill, Lee
Raggedy Ann dolls, (MORE)
The Ramones, (MORE)

Raposo, Joe
Rashid, Karim, (MORE)
Raskob, John Jakob
Rauschenberg, Robert, (MORE),
(MORE)
Reagan, Ronald
Remarque, Erich Maria
Revlon, (MORE)
Revson, Charles
Rhodes, Zandra
Robbins, Tucker
Rockefeller, John D.
Rockefeller Center
Rockwell, Norman
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, (MORE)
Roosevelt, Teddy

Rose, Helen
Roseville Pottery, (MORE)
Ross, Diana
Rothko, Mark, (MORE)
Rotten, Johnny
Rubbermaid, (MORE)
Ruhlmann, émile-Jacques, (MORE)
Ruskin, John

S
Saarinen, Eero
Saint Laurent, Yves, (MORE)
Santana, Carlos
Schiaparelli, Elsa

Schreckengost, Don
Seizo, Sugawara
Sesame Street (television show),
(MORE), (MORE)
Severson, John
The Sex Pistols, (MORE)
Shah, David
Shankar, Ravi
Shields, Brooke
Shore, Dinah
Sims, Naomi
Sinatra, Frank, (MORE)
Smithson, Robert, (MORE)
Snow, Carmel
Snow White (movie), (MORE), (MORE)
Sottsass, Ettore, (MORE)

Soubie, Roger
Southwest style
Stahr, Paul
Stanwyck, Barbara, (MORE)
Starck, Philippe
Starr, Ringo
Steinweiss, Alex, (MORE)
Stettheimer, Florine, (MORE)
Steuben Glassworks
J. P. Stevens
Stewart, Martha, (MORE)
Stickley, Gustav, (MORE)
Stokowski, Leopold, (MORE)
Stone, Oliver
Studebaker, (MORE)
Studio , (MORE), (MORE)

Styrene, Poly
Summer, Donna
Surfing
Sussman, Deborah

T
Taylor, Annie
Taylor, Elizabeth, (MORE)
Teague, Walter Dorwin
Technicolor
Teenagers, (MORE)
Television, (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE), (MORE)
Terrio, Deney

Tezuka, Osamu
Thatcher, Margaret
Thomas, Philip Michael
Thompson, Kay
Tiffany, Louis Comfort, (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE), (MORE)
Toffler, Alvin
Towey, Gael
Travolta, John, (MORE)
Truman, Harry, (MORE)
Turrell, James, (MORE)
Tutankhamen, King, (MORE)

U

Universal Exposition (Paris), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE)

V
Vedder, Eddie
Versace, Gianni
Vicious, Sid
View Color Planner,
Vignelli, Massimo
The Village People
Von Brandenstein, Patrizia
Voysey, C. F. A., (MORE)
Vreeland, Diana
Vuillard, Edouard

Vuitton, Louis

W
Warhol, Andy, (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE)
Wrndorfer, Fritz
Wayne, John
Weber, Bruce
Wenders, Wim
West, Kanye
Wharton, Edith, (MORE)
Wiener Werkstätte, (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE)
Wilson, Malcolm

Wilson, Wes
Wimmer, Arch E.
The Wizard of Oz (movie), (MORE),
(MORE)
Wolfe, Tom
Woodstock Music Festival
World War I, (MORE), (MORE)
World War II, (MORE), (MORE),
(MORE), (MORE)
WPA (Works Progress
Administration/Work Projects
Administration), (MORE),
(MORE)
Wright, Frank Lloyd, (MORE)

X
X Ray Spex

Y
Yamamoto, Yohji, (MORE)
Yoshida, Tatsuo

Z
Zeisel, Eva
Zen design
Zumthor, Peter

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the
following people for their invaluable
help with PANTONE The 20th Century
in Color:
Kris Ashley
Dan Benton
Dean Burrell
Yolanda Cazares
Clodagh
Becca Cohen
Fraser Conlon
Stephen Doyle
John Edelman

Ben Eiseman
Herb Eiseman
Stefan Freed
Susan M. Giangiulio
Elyse Goldberg
Bobbie Hawkes
Lisa Herbert
Brooke Johnson
Caitlin Kirkpatrick
Nina Kneff
Jennifer Kobrin
Susanne Lucas
Gary Lynch
Victoria Kasuba Matranga
Christine Mau
Gena McGregor

Eric Meltzer
Katie Miller
Fred Mutchler
Judi Noble
Pat Nugent
Cecile Panzieri
Bridget Watson Payne
Penny Pilkington
Avinash Rajagopal
Tucker Robbins
Matt Robinson
Susan Seid
Shane Stone
Carole Tenenbaum
Gael Towey
Elizabeth Vitiello

Maureen Welton
Sofia Whitcombe
Richard Wright

Text copyright © 2011 by Pantone LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without written
permission from the publisher.
The image credits constitute a continuation of
the copyright page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data available
eISBN: 978-1-4521-1313-5
PANTONE Color identification is solely for
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