Pantone color forecasts: Are they accurate? Courtesy Pantone. In an airy studio on a high floor of the London College of Fashion, featuring a long conference table, white walls, and a view to an adjoining patio—where, a sign warns, bees are being kept—the hues you will see in two years are being divined by a pan-European group of colorists. “What do we say about blue?” Asks David Shah, a British-born, Amsterdam-based designer who heads the meeting on behalf of Pantone, the quietly ubiquitous American company that maintains color standards for publishers, designers, and the fashion world. “Blue took so long to come back. It came back last year in a watery story, it’s here this summer in an indigo story—what are we doing about blue?” “A good navy,” says a French woman with short blonde hair, “is going to fulfill the role that black used to fill, because black is now launching into another dimension.”
“How do we see black now?” So the new black is … black? Color forecasting is almost as old as the fashion industry itself. The Serious Cachet of "Secret Brands" In a world where brands rule, nobody drinks sweetened caramel water. They drink Coke or Pepsi. And while some still drink no-name water, many prefer Evian or Poland Springs. Brands are so embedded in our daily habits that it's hard to imagine a world without them. But a couple of store chains -- Muji of Japan and American Apparel in the U.S. -- are striving to establish just such a world by offering the "unbrand" with their logo-free products, and they're achieving tremendous success. How to account for it? Logo-free obviously appeals to set of consumers who are sick of being bombarded with brand names and seek to be unshackled from them. But in the case of Muji and American Apparel, more than that is going on. IN THE GUCCI CLUB? This is counterintuitive, because logo-free has long meant lower-end, products embraced by those who couldn't afford a brand name.
"A ZEN LEVEL. " NO POLITICAL AXES. Its logo-free clothing is made of 100% cotton in bright solid colors with no imprints. What are examples of real "secret brands" ACRONYM. Interview with Gildas Loaec: 10 Essentials. When Gildas Loaëc was 19 years old, he ran a small record shop in Paris. Among his customers were Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, better known as the arena-rocking robots of Daft Punk. "I was not super good at business at that time, and I was getting closer with them, and I ended up living with Guy-Manuel as his roommate, I will say, though it was kind of more like squatting," Loaëc says. As fate would have it, Daft Punk was just putting out their first single on the Scottish label, Soma, and they enlisted Loaëc to work with them in a tight five-person team including Daft Punk, Pedro Winter aka Busy P, and a mystery person Loaëc describes as a third, behind-the-scenes member of Daft Punk.
Of the next 15 years spent with the group, Loaëc says, "I learned a lot of things with them in terms of style and marketing. We were trying to make it happen and make the story grow. " After our interview, Loaëc invited us out to Kitsuné Club Night. Men - Just In.