California Apparel News

In the wake of Pantone’s announcement of its color of the year (two, actually—“Rose Quartz and “Serenity”), print-on-demand site Spoonflower released its own 2016 Color to Avoid.

Using insight from a panel of 270 fabric designers from more than 15 countries, Spoonflower has dubbed “Neon Slime Lime” the “most unfashionable and ‘off-trend’ color” of the year.

Robin Szypulski, a senior designer at Spoonflower (an online resource that lets users design, print and sell their own fabric, wallpaper and gift-wrap), said the company was inspired by Pantone and other color forecasters’ annual predictions for color of the year to “find the opposite – the color likely to be most ‘off-trend,’ unfashionable and out of tune with the mood of the times.”

“If people today are seeking serenity and a chance to de-stress, this won’t provide it,” Szypulski said, “It’s more likely to make them wince, cringe or want to hide in a dark room.”

A small group of 30 of Spoonflower’s most popular designers were asked to nominate their picks of most “off-trend colors” and then 270 of the site’s “power designers” (who are users who earn money from selling their designs on Spoonflower) then chose the ‘winner.” The result was pretty much a landslide, Spoonflower said, with 58 percent of the votes, which was more than five times as many votes as the next “best” worst color.

Here’s Spoonflower’s 2016 Color to Avoid in situ.

Spoonflower acknowledged that Neon Slime Green had its heyday in the 80s “along with other day-glo colors like hot pink” for “windbreakers, jogging suits, leg warmers and hair scrunchies.” And at least one of the judges, Virginia Odien, a fabric designer from Riverside, Calif., noted that it is an appropriate color for “elves, gnomes and maybe a fairy attending a music festival in the swamp.”

With that in mind I went in search of some defense of neon green.

These Swatch watches are current designs—and available at the Watch Shop.

You can pick up this vintage Betsey Johnson dress (size 4) on ebay for $298.

French actress and model Estelle Lefébure looked pretty great in this 80s-era Body Glove suit

Madonna looked pretty edgy-cool in neon green in the 80s.