Viva 2023: The Magenta-Hued Year of Verve

Recently, Pantone has announced PANTONE 18-1750 Viva Magenta as the Colour of the Year for 2023. What’s the vibe?

Magenta, the zealous, spunky, neither-too-red-nor-true-fuschia colour that is part underdog and other parts shocking and complex speaks to the coming of a nuanced yet radical era. The pink of tourmaline, the red of cochineal and rouge, this hue tints the upcoming year with vim.

Viva Magenta may come as the obvious colour choice, given the Y2k resurgence, the ‘Barbiecore’ trend in anticipation of the new Barbie movie releasing next year and Valentino’s viral PPPink show among other things. 

In the official statement the Pantone Colour Institute’s Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman announces:

“Pantone’s Color of the Year, Viva Magenta 18-1750, vibrates with vim and vigour. It is a shade rooted in nature descending from the red family and expressive of a new signal of strength. Viva Magenta is brave, fearless, and a pulsating color whose exuberance promotes a joyous and optimistic celebration, writing a new narrative.

This year’s Color of the Year is powerful and empowering. It is a new animated red that revels in pure joy, encouraging experimentation and self-expression without restraint, an electrifying and a boundaryless shade that manifests as a stand-out statement. PANTONE 18-1750 Viva Magenta welcomes anyone and everyone with the same verve for life and rebellious spirit. It is a color that is audacious, full of wit and inclusive of all.”

2022 was coloured by slapstick, an actual Slap (re that Will Smith Oscars moment), the revivals of Y2k celebrity scandal fixations and the blogosphere of the once-artisan internet, and Pantone’s Very Peri. The periwinkle blue with violet undertones was a blend of “the faithfulness and constancy of blue with the energy and excitement of red.” 

The year was anything but predictable. 

Exemplifying the colour, everything seemed always on the brink, nearly explosive and then at once tame. It ebbed and swayed between warm and cool, certainty and risk, red and blue—from Taylor Swift breaking more Billboard records yet, and then breaking Ticketmaster, to Elon Musk’s tumultuous Twitter takeover for example. 

In design, a collaboration with Microsoft saw a Very Peri theme brought to Edge. The tech giant also tasked Microsoft Paint users to create something using the colour. In art, the online art community DeviantArt curated a gallery of artists in the tone. 

In music, Kpop fans of the global phenomenon BTS, collectively known as ‘Army’ claimed the colour. The fanbase, familiar with the phrase I Purple You that was coined by Kim Taehyung, a member of the band, resonated with the colour’s poignance—a trust the band and its fanbase share. The year in vibes was one of teetering slight melancholy and cautious optimism . 

#MAGENTAVERSE

How does the Viva Magenta colour speak to Gen Z? 

This generation earns the apt moniker ‘Gen Zeal’. This is a pragmatic, proactive, experimental generation; characteristics that accurately match those of Pantone’s colour of 2023.  

Identity and technology intertwine (see: the recent trend of self ‘AI-fication’), and Gen Z can relate to this unrestrained hue, representing the colour of the blood that pulses through the generation. 

The team at Pantone admit that while the colour is “rooted in the primordial,” it also considers our technology age. In partnership with Artechouse, Pantone in Miami have created the ‘Magentaverse,’ an immersive virtual experience of the hue. In another tech collaboration, Motorola released the Edge 30 Fusion in anticipation of the colour of 2023. 

On the other hand, the natural world inspiration for this colour is the hard shelled cochineal beetle, the bug that conquered Europe, according to the BBC. Eiseman adds that “as virtual worlds become a more prominent part of our daily lives, we look to draw inspiration from nature and what is real.” 

“PANTONE 18-1750 Viva Magenta descends from the red family, and is inspired by the red of cochineal, one of the most precious dyes belonging to the natural dye family as well as one of the strongest and brightest the world has known.” The dye comes from the acid the bug emits to fend off predators, and dates back to Mesoamerican Southern Mexico 2000 BCE. The cochineal, too, is alike to Gen Z in its resilience and unbridled buoyancy. 

The nod to empowerment does not go unnoticed. While the colour is neither decidedly gendered, nor gender-neutral, the unassertive yet beguiling carmine red secretion these days is used as a colourant in food and, more significantly to this article, in lipstick. 

With the ongoing women’s liberation movement in Iran, female celebrity abuse litigants, and the abuses that go unreported, consider Angela Carter’s 1975 article for New Society, ‘The Wound In the Face’, that makes a poignant analogy about lipstick, referring to the red lip trend as “a bloody gash, a visible wound”, and a signal of the transience of women’s security.

In the coming year, aligned with the spirit of the Viva Magenta colour of the year, Kenga is plugging into the vivacity and vim of a year that promises our very essential energy—a keenness to disrupt boundaries, assert our existence and a sense of joie de vivre.