Pantone’s 2025 Color of the Year is Mocha Mousse—“It’s About Life’s Little Pleasures”

Every year Pantone selects a color that the company believes identifies the mood of the moment. For 2024, that color was “Peach Fuzz,” a tone “whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and soul.” It was worlds away from brat green, which undoubtedly ended up being the actual color of the year, and did indeed enrich our bodies, minds, and souls.

This year, Pantone’s focus was on harmony, and a return to nature. “It’s about reframing experiences, understanding the importance of little pleasures and living in the moment,” explained Laurie Pressman, VP of the Pantone Color Institute. “It could be a sweet treat, a nature walk—the whole idea is about personal comfort and indulgence; but they don’t have to be just about yourself. It’s also something that you can gift and share with others.”

And so the color for 2025 is called Mocha Mousse, a warm brown with sometimes reddish or mauve-ish undertones that indeed recalls its namesake whipped dessert. “The name of the color is always quite important to the feeling that we want to convey,” added Pressman. “If you notice it’s mousse, there’s a lightness to it. And we’ve seen this shift over the past years into more vaporized or light-feeling colors.”

As it turns out, Mocha Mousse does have a strong presence in many men’s and women’s 2025 collections. Many designers seem to have also focused on that airy feel, using it in slinky silk satins, buttery leathers, and suedes, and other shaggy textures. Interestingly, on darker skin tones, Mocha Mousse becomes a nude. Lee Eiseman, the Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute points out the shade’s versatility. “We might’ve called it an earthy color, but using it in a kind of silky texture brings a whole new feeling,” she said. “We call it a sensorial warmth because it does warm the senses; when we look at a color like Mocha Mousse, we can smell that warm, delicious aroma of chocolate—we can certainly taste it!—and in addition to that, our eyes tell us that it has this inherent sensorial warmth.” It is also versatile in the way it fits in with other colors—next to powder blue, turquoise, or pink it stops being a neutral and transforms into another bold shade. See the best examples of Mocha Mousse on the runways below.