Pantone Colour of the Year 2017?

You know I'm mad keen on colour and have very strong feelings about the subject, well it got me thinking about how on earth could anyone choose a 'Colour of the Year'? Pantone do it every year and for the most part, I think they do a pretty spot on job... but it is made easier by the fact that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy to a certain extent. I mean you can't know the power that these big trend predictors have. If they say something is going to be THE colour this year then lots of designers take that into consideration and so..it is...
I remember a friend of mine, many years ago, had a top job in a very big global brand, as the coordinator of women wear or some such thing. Anyway, I vaguely remember that she got a look book from one of these big trend predicting companies and it cost something like £20 000 to have this book over the weekend and look at it. Really. This was in the pre internet days I must admit, but even so...utterly bonkers, and you didn't even get to keep the thing, just look at it!

This year Pantone did a dual colour of the year, for the first time, with Serenity blue and Rose Quartz

and I think they were bang on with Rose Quartz, but I have not seen any of that pale blue anywhere...so...hmmmm, well anyway, what is going to be the colour for 2017? And how do they choose it?
Apparently the team of about 20 Pantonians travel around looking at the obvious markers for up coming trends, like street fashion and interior design, but they also take note of the colours of luxury cars being released and if some new artist is super hot and uses a particular shade a lot...so basically they go around absorbing as much of everything as they can then sit about and thrash it out together until they come to a decision of sorts, which then gets released to the public in December.

So what do I think the colour for 2017 will be? well I don't get out that much and I certainly don't get to visit the fashion capitals of the world and hang about in cafes looking at people as a job...sounds quite good actually... so I don't have quite so much to go on... If I got to choose it would be Dove Grey

I've seen it a lot in homewares, interior design, hair colour and street clothes...

But Pantone almost never choose muted colours so I think it very unlikely that they will pick Dove Grey.

Lets look at the last 10 years of Pantone Colour of the Year...

see, no neutrals. So how about a dark vibrant blue? It's a big colour in interior design,  cars, hair and fashion...

well, it's a bit too close to the 2008 colour, but still a contender. 

Do they ever choose metallics? No, but maybe this could be the thing for next year? For the first time. They could pick Copper/Rose Gold. Copper has and still is huge in homewares, interior design and fashion accessories. I see that trend continuing for sure...

or is that more of a 2016 thing? I don't know, I just know that I love it, especially teamed with soft pink and grey...

It's easy to look back over the year and see the strong trends, but it is a very different thing to look forward and predict what they will be, but I'm always very excited to find out... I'm not sure why it thrills me so much, I guess it is because it is one of the few  times people focus on colour in the abstract and then I feel like my colour mad gang just got bigger and I'm not alone in my fascination with colour.  I would love to know what you think will be the colour of 2017...