Mocha Mousse isn’t the misspelled name of a beloved cartoon — it’s Pantone’s official Color of the Year for 2025.
Also known as Pantone 17-1230, Mocha Mousse is a light brown that evokes, well, mocha and chocolate mousse.
We’ve discussed how Pantone chooses its COTY before, but it’s all about charting and predicting trends in fashion and design.
Pantone picks the color in spring so it can line up merchandise deals, The Washington Post notes.
Knowing trends in advance allows the global supply chain to prepare for increased demand and reduce some guesswork, per Forbes.
Even for Pantone, it’s mostly about marketing: It claims to have 95% brand recognition in the design industry because of COTY.
Color fans may be shocked to learn that the COTY is anything but “Brat green,” an arguably hideous shade that graced a Charli XCX album cover and became a meme unto itself.
The color was unavoidable on social media this summer, which saw restaurants selling carefully colored green drinks, an Etsy seller shipping 1k green “Charli lighters,” and sizable search increases for green cars, per NBC News — all to court virality.
Just wait until 2031, when some album with a brown cover is all the rage.