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Orange is the new black

What is it about the colour orange? -- It is everywhere this spring.

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What is it about the colour orange?

It is everywhere this spring.

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In boutique windows, décor magazines and seed catalogues, on paint swatches, throw cushions and patio furniture.

It’s the colour of 2012, or so says the Pantone Colour Institute, which creates colour standards for the fashion, beauty and home industries based on consumer habits, popular culture trends, news events and inspiration from designer runways. Pantone named a particularly bold reddish-orange hue called Tangerine Tango its top colour of the year based on its forecasts of what North American consumers want or need.

The appeal of orange, in its many variations, is its exuberance. A blend of red and yellow, orange takes its vibrancy from the two. In an era of economic instability, when the news is dominated by crumbling infrastructure, budget imbalances, government corruption and student protest, who wants more grey?

Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Colour Institute, says orange has the power to spur consumer spending, to “channel cheerfulness.” Orange stands up and gets noticed. It also makes people feel excited and exhilarated. It was Frank Sinatra’s favourite colour and the backdrop to Canada’s so-called orange crush, which swept Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party into the official Opposition during last year’s federal elections. The artist Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude swathed Central Park in 99,000 metres of it for their New York City installation called The Orange Gates in New York City in 2005, a year after the Ukrainians adopted it for their popular uprising, the Orange Revolution, which sent hundreds of thousands of orange-clad protesters into the streets of Kiev to protest rigged elections.

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In fashion, colours come and go frequently. But Eiseman says orange is particularly long-lasting. Her team of forecasters is seeing Tangerine Tango stretch all the way through spring and summer, right into fall. At the International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago recently, Eiseman says she was surrounded by orange — from Le Creuset saucepans and casseroles and Sterlite plastic storage containers for the kitchen to orange-print napkins and tablecloths for the dining room and orange throw cushions for the living room.

“Orange is eye-catching and energetic. Fresh and fun. It has happy connotations — a certain kind of whimsy,” she said. “Retailers just love how consumers are drawn to it.”

For a long time, though, orange had a down-market image. It was associated with cheap toys and fast food (think A&W and Harvey’s). And then it disappeared in the 1980s. But in other cultures around the world, orange has long been the colour of vitality, or rebirth, of happiness and celebration. In the 1990s, as the Internet helped spread global trends, orange began to make its way into the North American and European mainstream. Then in 1998, Apple introduced its orange iMac, and that certified it as hip and happening. When Volkswagen introduced its new Beetle, there was an orange model. So, too, Austin’s mini Cooper.

Orange has since come to be used by designers and product developers as a staple colour. They love its attention-getting properties, but also its “trans-seasonal” flexibility. Bold, bright, intense citrus orange for summer is softened and subdued and made ready for fall as persimmon or burnt orange.

“Really, it’s amazing how many different colours look great with orange, how versatile it is for such a strong colour,” says Montreal fashion designer Judith Desjardins.

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