Pantone’s Color of the Year is helping brew excitement for 2025.
Laurie Pressman, vice president at the Pantone Color Institute, describes the newly crowned COTY, Mocha Mousse, as a “mellow brown infused with a sensorial and comforting warmth.”
When selecting the hue, the Pantone Color Institute had a particular focus on harmony and thoughtful indulgences, Pressman said. The color is meant to inspire what the organization calls “mocha moments”—quick reprieves from the deluge of stress people face in their day-to-day lives.
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“That moment could be a call with your mother, a call with your friend, a walk with your dog, a call with your sister. It could be making somebody a pie and bringing it over. It’s about tapping into…something that fills you back up [and] getting you back to that point of center, of harmony,” Pressman told Rivet.
The company celebrated its newly announced hue at an event at the Altman Building in New York City Thursday night, complete with espresso martinis, tables’ worth of chocolate mousse and activations from some of its core partners: Motorola, Post-It and Ipsy, among others.
Pantone takes a slew of different cultural and social aspects into account when selecting the COTY annually, Pressman said.
”What’s taking place in the world, and how is that getting expressed in the language of color? What do we see bubbling up across all areas of design? It is a global outlook. It’s tied to macro trends,” she explained.
And though the ways culture finds expression have changed since Pantone started sharing COTY—originally planned to be a one-off release of Color of the Millenium—Pressman said the selection process remains the same, with additional inputs.
In recent years, social media has helped drive along trends—macro and micro—and influenced consumers’ shopping habits and sentiments. This year proved no exception to that pattern, and brown has been having a “mocha moment” of its own over the past several months, with accessories like Adidas Sambas in the Earth Strata colorway and Coach’s brown Brooklyn Shoulder Bag (with the brand’s signature cherry charm, of course) dominating fall fashion inspiration videos on TikTok.
Creators like Frederick Espinet (@frederickespinet), Alicia Staples (@aliciabstaples) and Henna Ali (@thehennaali) have amassed hundreds, if not thousands, of likes on TikTok videos showing themselves unboxing their recent purchases, adorning their bags with loud charms and gold chains or styling their brown Sambas with other neutral staples, like wide-leg, medium-wash denim; beige-hued cardigans and trench coats.
More traditional anchors of pop culture have also been embracing Pantone’s mocha-centric daydream. Celebrities and trend influencers like neutrals-lover Kim Kardashian; “it girl” Hailey Bieber; fashion blogger Nina Sandbech; pop icon Rihanna and TikTok sweetheart Alix Earle have all been spotted stepping out in brown in recent months, adding fuel to fashion enthusiasts’ interest in making brown hues a central part of their wardrobe.
That same affinity has extended into the designing and manufacturing sectors, and brands have already worked to incorporate the crowd-favorite color into their Spring/Summer 2025 collections. Coach, Diesel and Saint Laurent models walked runways clad in mocha earlier this year.
But Pantone looks far beyond fashion when selecting the COTY, and the music industry also had its nose on the pulse before the institute’s announcement. This year, listeners fawned over pop princess Sabrina Carpenter’s smash hit “Espresso,” another inadvertent ode to brown. For some, sipping an espresso martini among friends in a cozy bar has become the type of “mocha moment” Pantone executives speak of.
As Mocha Mousse’s popularity continues to permeate consumers’ lives in 2025, Pantone expects it will complement a wide variety of other colors—from last year’s COTY, Peach Fuzz, to pale floral colors, to vibrant, exotic hues and more.
Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of Pantone Color Institute, said part of the allure for Mocha Mousse comes from the myriad ways it can be styled alongside other colors—whether neutrals or louder, bolder colors.
“We refer to [Mocha Mousse] as having a rich neutrality, because it is a color that we can think of in terms of using it with many other colors. And I think in ‘25, we’re going to see it used in ways that perhaps we haven’t seen it used before,” Eiseman said.
