Few things fascinate me more than the signals fashion sends us – not just fashion, but music, art and design too. These creative worlds act as mirrors, catching what stirs beneath the surface of our society. Colours, trends and aesthetic choices are rarely random. They reveal what preoccupies us, what we long for, and sometimes what we’re trying to escape.
This year, the Pantone Color Institute named PANTONE 11-4201 Cloud Dancer its Colour of the Year. It’s a natural, luminous white, and Pantone describes it as “a whisper of tranquility in a noisy world” – a calming symbol for a society that is slowly rediscovering the value of quiet reflection.
Look a little closer, and Cloud Dancer starts to feel like a near-perfect portrait of this cultural moment.
We live in a world of constant stimulation, where hustle culture tells us to keep pushing, keep producing, keep performing. And yet, in direct response to all that noise, a counter-movement is growing; a deep collective craving for stillness, simplicity and mental breathing room.
More and more people are searching for meaning beyond the material. Rest, genuine human connection and real-life experience are gaining currency. Satisfaction is found less in accumulation and more in reduction: less noise, less speed, more presence. What many people are looking for, says Pantone, is a reset.
That desire for a reset is showing up in fashion too (Hello fourteen newly appointed creative directors!). Vogue described the mood of the Spring/Summer 2026 season as ‘fashion as feeling’ — expressive, celebratory and deeply personal. Collections burst with energy and colour, with a strong focus on layering, wearability and individual joy. Getting dressed, it seems, has become an act of pure self-expression again (happy me!).
At first glance, this seems to contradict the quiet white of Cloud Dancer. But look again, and a common thread emerges: expression and authenticity. Pantone’s invitation with Cloud Dancer isn’t to wear white, it’s to use the blank space, to fill it with who you are, how you want to feel and how you want to show up in the world.
And that, to me, is exactly when fashion has always been at its best. A language. A way of signaling something true about yourself. In an era where our preferences are shaped by algorithms and our social media feeds curate our desires before we’ve even noticed them, developing your own aesthetic sensibility feels almost like an act of resistance.
The Mirror We Don’t Always Notice
What strikes me most is how these vast cultural currents eventually find their way into something remarkably small and personal: that moment in the morning, standing in front of your wardrobe.
It might seem trivial. But it’s actually a quiet psychological ritual; one of the few genuine private decisions most of us make each day. Before the emails, before the meetings, before the noise of other people’s expectations settles in, there is this small window of self-determination. In those few seconds, you’re deciding (often without realising it) how you’ll face the world that day.
We psychologists have long understood that what we wear influences not just how others perceive us, but how we perceive ourselves. The term ‘enclothed cognition’ describes the way clothing shapes our mindset and behaviour. A sharp blazer can shift your posture and your confidence. A favourite worn-in sweater can soften the edges of a hard day before it’s even begun. We dress not just for the occasion, but for the version of ourselves we need to be – or hope to become. Clothing, in that sense, is never passive. It’s a daily negotiation between your inner world and the one you’re about to step into.
This is what makes fashion so much more interesting than its critics give it credit for. It’s easy to dismiss it as superficial. But the impulse behind it runs much deeper. The desire to present yourself, to be seen, to communicate something without words — these are fundamental human needs.
The challenge today, of course, is that this vocabulary is increasingly being written for us. Scroll through any social media platform and you’ll encounter an endlessly refreshing parade of aesthetics, each one packaged and hashtagged and made to feel both aspirational and immediately accessible. Cottagecore. Quiet luxury. Mob wife. The cycle spins faster every season, and the pressure to participate (or at least to keep up) can quietly erode the very sense of personal style it claims to inspire.
This is precisely why the cultural mood Pantone is pointing to feels so relevant. Cloud Dancer, with its invitation to pause and imagine, is in many ways a response to that overwhelm. It asks: what would you choose, if you weren’t being told what to choose?
Developing a genuine personal style takes time and a certain willingness to experiment. It means paying attention to what actually makes you feel like yourself, rather than what earns approval or what looks good in photos. It means being curious about why certain colours or silhouettes resonate with you, and letting those preferences evolve naturally, rather than forcing them to align with whatever the algorithm is currently surfacing.
That kind of self-knowledge doesn’t come from endlessly shopping or scrolling, and it doesn’t arrive overnight. It builds slowly, through the outfits that felt exactly right and the ones that didn’t. It comes from paying attention to how clothes make you feel, not just how they look.
Perhaps the most honest mirror fashion gives us is the one in your own wardrobe each morning. In a world saturated with visual noise, where trends cycle faster than ever, there is something quietly powerful about choosing what you wear with intention. Not because it’s in style, but because it feels like you.
And maybe that is the most beautiful thing fashion can offer us right now. Not a trend to follow, but a question worth asking, every single morning.
Who am I today ?
How do I want to feel ?
And what do I want to show the world ?
Who is Anke Vermeer?
As a fashion psychologist and researcher, Vermeer focuses on the psychological impact of clothing and the role that fashion and clothing play in our society, our behavior, and the transition to a more sustainable system. As a researcher at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, she focuses on consumer behavior and how sustainable marketing can be used to make conscious choices more attractive and accessible. Her mission is to provide insight into the psychological drivers behind clothing and consumer behavior in order to contribute to a better future for people and the planet.
