What colour are you?
Are you black, yellow, brown or white? Well, according to Pantone's newest collection of shades β you are neither.
The paint company's new SkinTone Guide was created by measuring thousands of sample skin tones across a full spectrum of skin types. The collection includes 110 shades and none of them include the stereotypical skin shades of "white" or "black."
But the shade swatches aren't only designed for consumers to figure our their exact colours, Pantone ensures beauty and fashion companies can benefit as well.
For beauty, the guide can be used when matching cosmetics to certain skin tones; in fashion, the guide can be used for designing and producing garments and accessories to match specific models or markets.
Some cosmetic companies like L'Oreal and Rimmel offer smaller scales of skin tone shades, but Pantone hopes to show the diversity of skin tones beyond fair, medium and dark.
Other cosmetic brands have already challenged some of these general colours. Vasanti, a makeup brand based in Canada has created a line of shades that appeal to a large demographic of diverse South Asians. While IMAN Cosmetics, founded by supermodel Iman, has created make-up shades exclusively for women of colour to represent different races, cultures and ethnicities.
What do you think of this campaign? Will this change how the beauty industry views skin shades? Let us know in the comments below:
