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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/s...olor-year.html

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We interrupt your daily newsfeed with this message brought to you by purple, which traveled all the way from ancient times to become the color of 2018.

The Pantone Color Institute, which helps makers of products select color for designs, announced this week that it chose to paint the coming year Ultra Violet, a purple-highlighter shade.

So why purple?

It’s “the most complex of all colors,” Leatrice Eiseman, the institute’s executive director, told The New York Times. “Because it takes two shades that are seemingly diaåmetrically opposed — blue and red — and brings them together to create something new.”

The word Ms. Eiseman used in her description of purple, “complex,” shares a root with “complicit,” which Dictionary.com selected as the word of the year for 2017. But where “complicit” has dark undertones, “complex” promises hope with its mysteriousness. We may welcome that after a year steeped in uncovering sexual-harassment complicity.

In ancient times, coveted purple dye was made from the mucus of sea snails in the Phoenician city of Tyre, according to a 2015 report in The Guardian.

Tyre engaged in trade with Jerusalem, that long-prized city that again finds itself in the news. The biblical Lydia was a seller of purple.

Historically, purple has been highly valued, driven by its burdensome production and its association with wealth, power and royalty. Do Prince Harry and his fiancée, Meghan Markle, know that it is said that in the 16th century Queen Elizabeth I of England didn’t permit anyone but close relatives of the royal family to wear purple?

In 1856, a British chemist named William Henry Perkin made the color more accessible to commoners when he patented a process for synthetic purple, which he achieved as he was trying to concoct a treatment for malaria.

The Purple Heart is awarded to United States Armed Forces members who are wounded in action (or in their name to their next of kin if they are killed). Purple has also been worn for mourning in some cultures; fans of Prince, no doubt, celebrate that he used the color as an exclamation point. Gucci and other fashion designers of recent collections already have, too.

But the hue can also be an ominous symbol: The National Weather Service added two shades of purple to map Hurricane Harvey’s rains this year.

And the N.W.S. turned to it to indicate “extreme fire danger” in Southern California, where fires have been raging and conditions have pushed past red.

On the other hand, rather than a warning, the color is an invitation to many who practice mindfulness, that movement that trains your mind on the present moment. An internet search will show the movement’s fondness for the color, which has often been connected with meditation (even when your flight is delayed) and spirituality.

The Pantone Color Institute has been choosing a color of the year since 2000 (Rose Quartz — think millennial pink — shared the title with Serenity blue in 2016, and Greenery was the choice for 2017). For 2018, Ms. Eiseman said, “We wanted to pick something that brings hope and an uplifting message.”

Some makeup aficionados might add “allurement” to purple’s benefits. Kylie Jenner introduced her purple palette this fall.

But the color isn’t for everyone.

Diametrically opposed, you might say. Still, how a color so rare in nature went viral on the planet is a mystery in itself. Was it in spite of, or because of, its rarity? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Purple catches the eye, setting off butterflies in the stomach or mild upset — we can’t ignore its presence. We may never know why, unless we ask a purple unicorn.