POWER DRESSING #004

Erika Kirk and Pantone’s Year of White

Happy Friday, everyone, genuinely, congratulations on making it to the end of another week and RIP to Dario Vitale’s Versace job, there’s clearly some very Machievellian maneuvering going on there but I’ll get into it next week. Anyways I hope you have something fun lined up for the weekend, because I absolutely do not. I will be at home, hunched over my book draft, watching other people’s Instagram stories and trying not to piss off any popstar fanbases on Twitter. Huge fun. Enormous joy. Carpal tunnel incoming.

Anyways, for today’s Power Dressing, I had a completely different idea ( including yapping about Katy Perry in her politician WAG era ) but then the Pantone Color of the Year dropped and I’ve been writing notes on it. So voila we’re going to talk about that. This is Power Dressing 004.

So every December, Pantone crowns a “Color of the Year,” which is basically their way of telling us how we supposedly feel. Usually it’s something optimistic like about renewal without actually saying what, exactly, needs renewing. This year, though it feels like they cut the bullshit and didn’t even bother with metaphor. They just picked white. Sorry, Cloud Dancer. Officially: PANTONE 11-4201, described with phrases like “lofty lightness” and “an aerated presence,” which sounds less like a color and more like GOOP candle at a boutique hotel.

By the way did you know Pantone has never picked a white before? Not once. And I don’t want to be “that friend who’s too woke” but come on. I mean we are smack dab in the middle of post-2024 mess, DEI getting stripped out of everywhere, we’ve got a massive Neo-Nazi movement rising online, rappers saying Heil Hitler, White House messaging leaning into white supremacist talking points. I don’t know about you but from my end things are not looking all that great.

Pantone swears it’s about burnout and calm vibes. Laurie Pressman, their VP, basically pitched Cloud Dancer as, I don’t know, I guess a weighted blanket for the eyes. And yeah, it does pair rather nicely with fuzzy knits and furniture shaped like marshmallows seen in every beige-fluencer’s apartment. But white in America is not a neutral choice. It’s never been. Far from it. It’s purity, virginity, surrender, hospital corridors, colonial architecture, and, let’s not bury the lede, people who say “It’s not about race” As The New York Times put it, the color comes with “certain connotations.” No shit Sherlock. Vogue even called it a color that “does not disturb,” which…yes, that’s the issue. We’re in an era defined by disturbance.