It’s October, so it’s time for color frequency statistics on the spring/summer fashion ready-to-wear collections!
Previous entries: FW26, SS26, FW25, SS25, FW24, SS24.
My methodology hasn’t changed — it’s still automatic color scoring using the same script, using a call to GPT-4o. This year I didn’t do manual color counting because, let’s face it, it was kind of an insane time sink.
This is a big change from previous years — it’s much more neutral, and in particular it’s dark. The 4th most common color is “jet black”, which has never appeared in the top-30 of a spring collection before. We’re continuing the dramatic shift into darkness of this past fall collection.
For comparison, here’s SS26’s top colors:
Notice that red, usually a fairly common color, has moved way down from 6th place to 24th. Non-neutral colors in general have moved down the rankings, while dark neutrals like “jet black”, “charcoal black”, “charcoal”, and “charcoal gray” are taking over.
Comparing SS27 to SS26, the biggest winners and losers are as follows:
New (present in SS27 top-30 but not SS26)
jet black
charcoal black
charcoal
charcoal gray
chocolate brown
taupe
ivory
dusty rose
hot pink
mustard yellow
olive
chartreuse
sage green
emerald green
cobalt blue
sky blue
powder blue
magenta
fuchsia
Rising (significantly higher ranked in SS27 than SS28)
Lost (present in SS26 top-30 but not SS27)
light gray
dark gray
dark brown
light brown
light tan
light beige
light pink
pale pink
soft pink
dark pink
coral
light yellow
pale yellow
light green
dark blue
navy blue
purple
dark purple
Falling (significantly lower ranked in SS27 than SS26)
Or, visualized:
The “winners” are a dark and glowing palette: deepest blacks and charcoals, accompanied by the autumnal tones of burgundy, olive, and mustard, and jewel tones like emerald, cobalt, fuchsia, and magenta.
The “losers” are mostly sunny and bright — light pinks and tans, light yellows (pastel yellow was my pick for the 2026 color of the year), and light green, complemented with bold red, pink, and orange. Garden-party colors are definitely not the thing this spring.
Luxury goods spending is back on track, according to BCG:
After a weak 2024-2025, growth is back up to pre-pandemic levels. So, just as I mentioned regarding the black-dominated FW26 collections, I don’t view the predominance of black as a “back to basics” conservative move borne of economic caution. Fashion is thriving — its turn towards darkness is a stylistic shift, not a financial necessity.
Black can have infinite semantic connotations, depending on context — the “basic” utilitarian option, minimalist elegance, spooky gothic vibes, or power and authority.
Black is, of course, the color of death (in the West), and the color of night — it has somewhat ominous connotations. But it’s also a perennial, versatile favorite.
The choice to make an item conspicuously black is a power move, a choice to refrain from color and let form speak for itself.
So what black “means” in this context depends a lot on the form and texture — what kind of black are we seeing in the SS27 collections?
Of course, we do see many examples of minimalist, elegant basics, often with long, drapey silhouettes:
But this season is more conspicuous for its ornamentation.
We see a lot of fringe, with its roaring-20’s flapper associations:
as well as its more cowboy-inflected or punk cousin, leather fringe:
We also see sequins and glitter:
beading:
lace:
and dangling, draping sashes or ties:
Silhouettes are slender, sometimes even shrunken, and sometimes long and sinuous. Ornamentation is abundant. While nobody is doing note-for-note period pieces, the Jazz Age allusion seems pretty clear to me.
(and sometimes the styling makes the implications explicit)
The 1920’s, like the 2020s, were an economic boom that felt apocalyptic to live through. They had the new media technologies of the radio and telephone; we have AI. Their world felt post-civilizational and frenetically hedonistic; ours, we’re being told, is the same. It may be the end of the world, but at least we’ll have some great parties.
I use the color of the year to make a personal theme for the year, as part of goal-setting and trying to keep the years from flowing together into a mush.
2026 was the year of pastel yellow, and accordingly I got a pastel yellow notebook, vibecoded a pastel yellow to-do list app, and set myself a theme of “optimism” — a grounded, normal, basic optimism, the spirit of making progress on mundane real-world tasks.
It went pretty well, all things considered: I got a job, lost the post-pregnancy weight, and finally feel pretty much comfortable with “being my age” (38), with the attendant expectations to be past youthful folly and in a position to be relied upon and capable of assuming authority.
Now, 2027 is coming upon us, and the color of the year is black, which admittedly sounds inauspicious.
And for those monitoring the situation, there’s a lot to be concerned about. AI risk has hit the point of being legibly urgent even to the previously-skeptical; we are somehow at war in Iran; the Republic is not doing great; the kids are not all right; there’s a rising tide of anti-Semitism; and and and.
But I can’t help with most of those problems, and my personal rituals are supposed to be positive, so: for 2027, I’m going to take the color of the year to represent power. My goal is to settle into what power I have. To own my decisions, to own my flaws and the possibility of being judged negatively, to stop playing naive when I actually know better, to be a good steward of authority wherever I’m granted it, to be at peace with the “darker” elements of my nature and stop angsting about not living up to a squeaky-clean ideal more appropriate to a little girl…
“Jet black” as a positive vision, of being decisive, strong, and wholehearted.
Let it be a good new year for all of us, whatever it brings.