Lori Falce: Purple is the color of the year

Every year, Pantone — a 70-year-old company in New Jersey that has built its business on the matching and mixing of colors — pulls out its crystal ball and makes a prediction for the coming 12 months.

The company looks at the trends, analyzes the horizon and announces the Color of the Year. For 2021, Pantone actually picked two. There is a buttery yellow smooth as custard with the sunny name “Illuminating.” It is aspirational and uplifting. Its counterpart is “Ultimate Gray,” a shade as solid as cinder blocks and just as firmly foundational.

And Pantone is wrong.

Oh, those may be the colors that will show up on bath towels and paint palettes in 2021, but the color that emerged Wednesday as the definition of the coming year is purple.

It showed up vividly in the outfits of many at the inauguration. Kamala Harris wore it as she was sworn in as vice president. It appeared in shades as deep and wine-drenched as Michelle Obama’s draping coat and flowing pants and as violet as Hillary Clinton’s signature pantsuit.

It was not just a Democratic statement. When former first lady Laura Bush emerged from her black car, she was wearing a powdery lilac hue as optimistic as spring hyacinths. Even departing vice president Mike Pence’s tie wasn’t the sapphire blue he wore when taking his own oath in 2017. Instead he went with the color of a rich merlot.

So was everyone coordinating outfits like junior high girls planning the perfect yearbook pictures? It probably was not that obvious, but also not that trivial.

The symbolism of the color can’t be discounted. Purple, as we all learned in kindergarten, is the color you get when you mix blue and red, the colors that have come to represent the Democratic and Republican parties.

What the not-so-subtle palette ought to represent is the blending of two sides after one of the most contentious elections in our history — a bitter war over the White House that literally ended in a siege of the U.S. Capitol Building.

While many on both sides are skeptical or downright scornful of the idea of post-election healing, that has to stop if we are to grow beyond the ugliness that has become our resting state. Both sides — both sides — have to stop trying to exert control and avenge grievances.

We have to take off our red and blue jerseys and decide to look more at what needs to be done than who is doing it. We need to care more about the people who will be helped than the power that will register on our team’s scoreboards. We need to all embrace the purple that represents the best of both sides.

Perhaps Pantone was just a bit too early. In 2018, the company picked Ultra Violet as the year’s hue. It noted the grape-soda purple as “one of tradition and elegance or unexpected boldness” and said it “complements and emboldens every other color.”

That is the energy that 2021 needs. Something that celebrates both sides. Something that supports and improves everyone.