Pantone unveiled its 2007 spring palette last September. Pantone’s colors are the benchmark for design professionals in the apparel as well as home design arena. They are indicative of what colors the fashion forward and designers will be dabbling in for seasons to come. Pantone colors unveiled for the spring are perfect colors for formulators of soaps and body care products be they plain type concoctions or the imaginatively exotic and decadent.

I have always imagined fashion and body care as complements of each other, and have always viewed the fashion world’s take on a particular color group or textural combination with visions of formulating and mimicking those same colors and textural combinations at some time in personal formulations. So like the fashion forward, soap makers juxtapose the neutral colors of their products with the spring garden-like colors of packaging and accessory trimmings of labels, hangtags, etc.

The stuff of fashion becomes what we put on our skin, which in turn becomes what we eat. Moreover, as we fashion our outer covering we fashion for the pleasure of the eyes and nose; each quest unrelenting for the perfect form of symmetry and aesthetics balanced with artistic imagination.

The colors touted as having relevance are:

PANTONE 12-1206 - Silver Peony C=3 M=13 Y=15 K=0
PANTONE 15-0326 - Tarragon C=37 M=7 Y=60 K=0
PANTONE 16-3801 - Opal Gray C=34 M=21 Y=28 K=0
PANTONE 14-1041 - Golden Apricot C=8 M=26 Y=70 K=0
PANTONE 19-2924 - Hollyhock C=55 M=97 Y=14 K=3
PANTONE 13-0648 - Green Sheen C=13 M=5 Y=72 K=0
PANTONE 16-3929 - Grapemist C=57 M=28 Y=1 K=0
PANTONE 16-1220 - Cafe Creme C=19 M=38 Y=45 K=5
PANTONE 16-1720 - Strawberry Ice C=1 M=56 Y=29 K=0
PANTONE 14-4318 - Sky Blue C=45 M=9 Y=8 K=0

Soap makers have always known that colors are much like fragrances; they change vis-à-vis fragrance palettes evolving from one season to the next. Leitrice Eiseman, executive director of Pantone’s Color Group, explains that colors are not invented from season to season, but rather that colors evolve, “So the Apple Cinnamon of fall becomes the Cafe Crème of spring.” Likewise, perfumery formulators change aroma chemicals with names like Apples of Wintertime used in body care and soaps to other names reflecting the new season; thus, the former Apples of Wintertime becomes the light-infused nectar fruity combinations of spring and instead of drinking Warm Apple Cider, we eat Apple Crumpets drizzled with the berries of spring and summer time.

For those who do not live and breathe this reality, it may all seem to be the same gourmand, fruity craze from season to season-- but it is not. Ask any Indie soap and body care maker if there is a difference between a Crème Caramel aroma and a Golden Caramel scent, and they will point out in vigilant details the underpinning hidden tenacious notes and the top ephemeral notes that distinguishes one seasonal scent from the next; it really needs to be experienced to be believed.

Along with the change in season, is one in color, so the earthy tones of the winter are replaced by the light and heady colors of spring. Soapmakers, like designers of apparel mix and impose note upon note, ingredient upon ingredient adding the lightness of titanium dioxide to create fruity juice stained colors, blending a cocaphony of oils such as coconut, palm and hydrogenated soybean oil until perfect synergism is achieved.

To color for the spring and any other season, visit these purveyors of color material for soap:

Natural Colorants--
Emporium Naturals has the distinction of having the most luscious blends of natural colors for soaps. If you have been hesitant to try natural colors in soaps fearing that they will fade, check out their color combinations Click Here for Website.

To view Pantone's Color palette for Spring 2007, Click Here to Visit Pantone's website and then click on link in page to download the Color Palette in pdf format.