Pantone announced their Color of the Year for 2025: Mocha Mousse

Every December the design world eagerly awaits for the color experts at Pantone to announce their prediction for color trends for the coming year. This year, the direction is going rich and conservative with the pronouncement of Mocha Mousse as the big thing for 2025.

Mocha Mousse reminds me of my Brownie Uniform from when I was in Elementary School.

How do they come up with their colors? According to the company, “Pantone identifies color trends by sending a global team of color experts to research various industries like fashion, art, design, entertainment, travel, and even social media, to gather inspiration from emerging trends, new technologies, social conditions, and cultural moods, ultimately selecting a "Color of the Year" that reflects the current zeitgeist; this process involves attending events like fashion weeks, analyzing art exhibits, and observing everyday streetwear to identify dominant color palettes.”

While Mocha Mousse conjures images of a deep, rich cocoa brown, some of Pantone’s interpretations look a bit like Mocha Cream, or a dark beige.

Responses to the announcement on Pantone’s Instagram account were fairly mixed but skewed to negative:

“Sad beige. This is sad beige”.

“This color is meh at best”.

Most comments were about the AI generated video that was posted to demonstrate the shade:

“very disappointed by the ai generated video :(((“

“AI generated blends. Can’t tell what the actual specific color is. We honestly didn’t deserve this 😒”

Others were enthusiastic:

“Oh yes please! This color is so beautiful and versatile. I'm gaining so much inspiration right now 👏👏👏”

Most of the positive comments are from cosmetics companies that sell shades of brown, or coffee companies.

Bella Hadid and Jennifer Lopez in shimmering shades of Mocha

Celebs have been wearing a richer shade of Mocha Mousse for quite some time now, in fact it was the color of Spring in 2024 as seen above on Bella Hadid and Jennifer Lopez. What I love about a rich brown is the way it blends with other shades like blue, amber and pink. Below are some ideas from Anthropologie to get your imagination going: