年的流行色组合有怎样的政治意味

What’s in a shade? If you are Pantone, the “color authority” and the dominant color trend forecaster, and you get to choose a “color of the year” every year, potentially a lot. It could include determining fashion’s direction (these are the hues that inform the fabrics that get bought by designers that get made into your clothes), influencing interiors, and even affecting how food appears. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite so much political and philosophical import attached to a color decision as I have for the 2016 “Color of the Year.”

色彩有什么作用？如果你是潘通(Pantone)——“色彩权威”和主导色彩潮流的预测者——如果你能选择每年的“年度色彩”，那么你会发现它有很多作用。包括可以决定时尚的方向（这会决定设计师购买什么颜色的面料，也就是你最终穿什么颜色的衣服），影响室内装饰，甚至影响食物的外观。不过，我从未看到哪一年的年度色彩选择像2016年这样深受政治和哲学的影响。

For the first time, it’s a blend of two colors: Rose Quartz (a kind of mineral pink) and Serenity (a light blue). On the company’s website, the colors flow seamlessly into each other so that it’s impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends.

2016年的年度色彩与以往不同，它是两种颜色的组合：粉水晶（Rose Quartz，一种矿物粉色）和宁静蓝天（Serenity，一种淡蓝色）。在该公司的网站上，这两种颜色浑然融为一体，看不清它们的界线。

Two colors! It may not sound revolutionary, but everything is relative. And know this: It’s not about indecision, but social progress. That’s Pantone’s position, anyway.

两种颜色！也许它听起来不算重大变革，但一切都是相互关联的。要知道：这不是因为优柔寡断，而是因为社会进步。不管怎样，这是潘通的立场。

Explaining the choice, the company cited “societal movements toward gender equality and fluidity, the consumer’s increased comfort with using color as a form of expression, a generation that has less concern about being typecast or judged and an open exchange of digital information that has opened our eyes to different approaches to color usage.”

潘通在解释这一选择时提到以下这些因素：“主张性别平等和流动性的社会运动；消费者越来越喜欢把色彩当作一种表达方式；这一代人不太在意被认定为某一种类型或遭到评判；公开的数字信息交流让我们看到颜色使用的不同方式。”

There’s no arguing with that one. From bathroom signs to fashion runways, the gender lines have been blurring at an ever-faster pace. It’s about time we ended ye olde pink/blue, girl/boy stereotype divide.

这一点毋庸置疑。从卫生间标志到时装秀，性别界线正在加速变得模糊。现在我们差不多该抛弃传统的“女孩用粉色，男孩用蓝色”的成见了。

Admittedly, choosing the most clichéd gender colors can seem a bit simplistic, but Pantone has a broad constituency to manage; this is not about the cutting edge, but the big middle.

不可否认，选择最老套的性别色彩似乎有点过分简化，但是潘通拥有庞大的客户群，这种选择不是为了前卫，而是为了找出平均值。

Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, said the joining of the two colors reflected “a soothing sense of order and peace” — presumably an attractive thing to incorporate into a product at a time of insecurity and global turbulence. It also implies that there is no line between “us” and “them.”

潘通色彩研究所(Pantone Color Institute)的执行总监莱亚特丽斯·艾斯曼(Leatrice Eiseman)说：把这两种颜色组合起来反应出“一种令人慰籍的秩序感与和平感”，在这个全球动荡和缺乏安全感的时代，把这种感觉融入产品应该具有吸引力。它也暗示着，“我们”和“他们”之间没有界线。

That’s a lot of issue-related messaging to pack into a single color trend (or even two), but the Pantone statement says it’s the company’s job to reflect social trends and capture them in a shade — which will then become part of the fabrics of our lives, as it were.

对于一种色彩潮流（又或说两种色彩潮流）而言，要包含的和不同话题有关的信息传递太多了，但潘通在声明中称，体现社会潮流并用一种颜色捕捉它们，是公司的工作。和往常一样，这种颜色将会进入我们生活中使用的面料。

Certainly, the emails have already started flooding in celebrating various products in shades of Rose Quartz and Serenity. But I wonder: Are we suddenly going to see a host of blended pastel ties, as opposed to the currently popular red and blue, popping up in the next round of presidential debates? Place your bets now.

当然，我们已经收到很多邮件，称赞各种粉水晶色和宁静蓝天色的产品。不过，我想知道：在下一轮总统竞选辩论中，我们会突然看到各种混合的、色调柔和的领带吗（而不是当下流行的红蓝领带）？现在就下注吧。