Two weeks ago I was at Ambiente – the largest consumer goods fair in Europe. Two weeks ago and will this be the last fair of the season? After attending this the enormous Light&Building and iSaloni postponed their dates… So this might be the last and possibly most important fair to look at when it comes to design and lifestyle. So, because of the importance I have decided to divide my report from Ambiente in three parts. First out is a report on colour, then on lifestyle and objects and finally a separate report on sustainability.
So let’s talk about colours. As an overview we can conclude that there is a lot of colour. The picture above has very little of that, and stacks of plates like this in a beige, grey hue was not very common. Instead the brands were experimenting a lot.
And to be honest it is a very, very, very diverse colour world right now. It’s like there is no “right” colour combination any longer. You could say there is a tendency towards a brighter and 70s like colour scheme with for instance orange. But there is also some 60s, 80s and perhaps even 40s colour scheme. I would say there is a lot of colours and a lot of retro or vintage.
So let’s do this.
Colour of the year for Pantone is this electric, or classical blue. Or ultra marine? You would mainly see this trendy colour on smaller objects or details. Plates like this were not very common. But nice. If you look at the report from 2019 you could actually see more of this blue, more than this year.
Blue works well with brown. It gets both vintage, familiar and conservative at the same time. A Scandinavian vintage?
It is absolutely different from the hand crafted, rough plates we have seen for the last five years.
The brown also shifted towards a more maroon or burgundy colour. Preferably with grey or black. Serious. Proper.
But I totally see that we need more playfulness and fun. I think we will see less of this, and more “happy colours”.
We see much more of more colours. When you walk at a fair like Ambiente you immediately feel that this is “the future”, optimism and new. The colours are light and childish. Like crayons? More like crayons than candy.
I have talked about celadon and the minty green before and that is absolutely still here. Here together with brown and a pink tone.
60s inspirerd Pucci patterns for Rosenthal.
Celadon with other colour combinations.
Even with a forrest-y green colour. Brown-green? Very 70s.
And we must talk about this 70s brown-green… Whaaaaaaaaaaaat? In Swedish we have a way of calling this “vomit green”. But so new and so different. Just because of that I love it.
Here this vomit green together with apricot or pink…
But all sorts of green work.
Green together with yellow seems obvious.
And yellow, Of course there is a lot of yellows.
Last colour to talk about is orange. Yes, also this a very 70s reference. But lots of proud, energetic orange with some selfesteem. It’s a colour for the courageous.