...And then there's Mauve

Dec 2024

I wrote an entry about Pantone’s color of the year as it relates to the colors in the movie

Wicked. Afterwards, I thought “Hmm, if we add sepia to pink, we get…mauve.” Then Ben Moore revealed its

paint color of the year. Cinnamon Slate. A literal blend of pink and sepia. Sherwin Williams

included “Mauve Finery” in their Color Capsule for 2025.

How did we get here?

Let’s backtrack a moment: For those who needed it, the Barbie movie gave us permission, nay, encouraged us, to use vibrant pinks in our décor. Still, these fully saturated colors, while

delicious, can be difficult to incorporate into our spaces over time.

That’s where mauve comes in. Think of it as Barbie and Galinda falling into a bucket of Millennial Gray.

IYKYK

I’m Gen-X and in the early 80s we had a little made-for-tv movie called “The Thorn Birds” in which our1930’s era heroine wore a dress in a color called “Ashes of Roses,” which, itself, was inspired by a color that was popular during the Victorian Era.

We also had Laura Ashely. She was a designer in the 80s who was famous for using this shade of pink in her often floral and vintage-inspired clothing, bed linens, home décor, and so on. I also painted my mom’s living room dusty rose back then. Mauve was everywhere.

The return of this color (it’s not a comeback) was inevitable. And it makes sense when we consider how the ‘trend pendulum’ swings to touch on (or skip) various aspects of

generational influence when we’ve had too much of one or another.

This time around it’s my era providing some nostalgic reference points. Can aubergine be far behind?

E Gads! I don’t know how I feel about this yet.