From mocha tailoring and café-au-lait knits to cocoa leather accessories, earth tones are outperforming their 2024 selves in menswear, both in search data and in sell-through across multiple markets. At the same time, Pantone had crowned PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse as its Color of the Year 2025; a warm, chocolatey brown “imbued with richness” and designed to answer our collective desire for comfort.
So the question is simple but important:

Are men suddenly wearing more brown because of Pantone… or did Pantone simply give a name to a trend that was already in motion?

In other words, Pantone is not randomly throwing darts at a color wheel. It is reading the room then translating that into a specific swatch.

Why Mocha Mousse for 2025?

At launch, Pantone staged an all-brown experiential party in New York, with Mocha Mousse–wrapped installations, espresso martinis, Joybird furniture and even a Mini Cooper painted in the hue, a very literal demonstration of how one color can be ported across categories in a single night.

But the internet had… feelings

The choice sparked polarized reactions:
Articles in design and beauty media noted that social feeds were split between those calling the shade “cozy, luxe and timeless” and those dismissing it as “dull,” and “uninspired.”

One Creative Bloq piece rounded up memes and a widely shared X (Twitter) post comparing Mocha Mousse to unflattering everyday browns, proof that Color of the Year now lives as much in meme culture as in mood boards. Creative Bloq

Where Pantone’s influence is strongest (and weakest)

Strong impact zones

• Interiors & home: Mocha Mousse and adjacent browns are showing up in paints, sofas, ceramics and soft furnishings, framed as warm, liveable neutrals that pair beautifully with creams and off-whites.
• Beauty: Brown mascaras, mocha nails and “latte makeup” have exploded in 2025; one Who What Wear UK report notes brown mascara’s surge on TikTok as part of the “clean girl” trend.
• Branding & packaging: From coffee brands to DTC beauty, design blogs are actively suggesting Mocha Mousse as a go-to for “approachable premium” branding, especially when paired with cream and muted pastels. vistaprint.com+1

More diffuse impact

For a luxury fabric house like Roger La Viale, Pantone doesn’t dictate our color card, but it absolutely shapes how we frame and communicate what we already feel is coming.

Are earth tones really up in 2025 menswear?

Short answer: Yes, dramatically and not only because Pantone said so.

A menswear analytics report from Accio notes that search interest for men’s casual shirts (a category heavily stocked in neutral and earthy tones) hit a normalized index value of 100 in November 2025, up from 60 in November 2024 (a ~67% increase) alongside recommendations to stock jackets in beige, brown and sage green to align with current demand.

Tailoring specialists describe brown as “the new black” for Fall/Winter 2025, positioning chocolate, espresso and caramel suits as the anchor shades of the season.

In other words, even if you’d never heard of Pantone, you’d still be noticing more brown on the street, in showrooms and in your wardrobe this year.

Cause or effect? How much credit does Pantone actually deserve?

Let’s zoom in on the sequence.

The pre-Pantone trend

Before Mocha Mousse was announced in December 2024:
Runways were already tilting toward quiet luxury and warmer neutrals, particularly in men’s tailoring and knitwear.
So there is strong evidence that browns, beiges and khakis were on the rise before Pantone ever named Mocha Mousse.

The plot twist: from Mocha Mousse (2025) to Cloud Dancer (2026)

Just as the world settles into brown, Pantone has thrown a deliberate curveball. In early December 2025, Pantone announced PANTONE 11-4201 Cloud Dancer, a soft, natural white, as its Color of the year 2026 – the first time in the program’s history that a white has been chosen.

Pantone describes Cloud Dancer as:

• A “lofty white neutral” and “breath of fresh air”
• Symbolising calm, clarity, reset and quiet reflection in an overstimulated world
• A blank canvas inviting new ways of living and thinking

The backlash – and what it tells us

The choice has triggered intense debate:

• It’s the first white CoY, and some commentators have called it “creatively uninspired” or “painfully tone-deaf”, questioning the optics of celebrating “whiteness” in a politically charged era.
• People’s coverage cites Instagram users slamming the shade as boring, while The Guardian and Ideal Home document critics asking if Pantone is “trolling” its audience with a “colour that’s basically the absence of color.”
• At the same time, Vogue and Times of India emphasize Cloud Dancer’s resonance with a broader move toward minimalism, emotional clarity and quiet, sustainable aesthetics in both fashion and interiors.

The narrative arc

2025 – Mocha Mousse: Warmth, indulgence, comfort, a soft brown wrapping around us like a blanket in chaotic times.

2026 – Cloud Dancer: Subtraction, quiet, reset; not another cozy neutral, but a step into near-absence, asking what remains when we strip color (and noise) away.

For Roger La Viale’s storytelling, this is a gift:

We move from “cocooning” (2025’s browns) into “clearing space” (2026’s whites) , a palette shift that can mirror deeper conversations about simplifying wardrobes, buying better, and dressing with intent.

The 2026 Color of the Year is not an anomaly, it’s a logical progression.

From Viva Magenta (2023) to Peach Fuzz (2024) to Mocha Mousse (2025), Pantone’s recent choices track a curve from bold, expressive to soft, skin-adjacent to fully grounded, earthy comfort. Cloud Dancer (2026) is the plot twist that takes that logic to its extreme: what if the next move is less, not more?

What this means for Roger La Viale and our menswear story
For us, the takeaway is not “follow Pantone blindly,” but:

• Use Pantone’s Color of the Year as a diagnostic tool, a way of checking whether our instincts on mood and palette line up with what broader culture is feeling.
  
• Treat colors like Mocha Mousse as anchor points: in 2025, that might mean grounding our collections with mocha tailoring, cacao accessories, and coffee-toned outerwear, then layering interest with texture and proportion.
  
• Prepare for the Cloud Dancer era by exploring off-white shirting, tonal fabrics and layered neutrals that let construction, fabric and silhouette do the talking.

Most importantly, we should remember: Pantone provides the language. Men decide the story.

Right now, the numbers show that men are choosing earth tones in greater numbers than last year. Pantone didn’t force that decision, but by naming Mocha Mousse, it helped make those choices feel not just stylish, but emotionally right for 2025.