As any cool kid will tell you, the most important palette you can wear is on your sneakers. Luckily, most of the shoe industry is right on track with the newly developing long-tail, Limited Edition, Artist Series, Custom Designed and DIY markets, which includes any color lover who has the perfect palette to show off on the streets.

Custom Sneakers

Most of the major brands have jumped on the DIY sneaker design track, but not all the sites are the same. While I didn’t go through every shoe site, here are a few that even if you are not about to buy a new pair of shoes, will at least keep you busy and distracted as you go through all the colorway options available.

Converse

Link

• Shoes: 12 styles
• Materials: Canvas, Suede, Leather
• Colors: 30 colors and patterns
• Delivery Time: 2 to 4 weeks

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There is no better time to show off color than during the summer, and many designers are doing just that. Taking the cue of the summer season, designers are creating some very inspiring color palettes for us to enjoy. Here are a few of the more dramatic and bold color palettes that, if worn, will expose any true color lover.

Womans

Insight

Insight’s personality encompasses a lifestyle that surrounds everything surf, skate, art, music, fashion and popular culture. They just want to design clothing that they themselves would want to wear. It isn’t high science, however they do have good ideas and good ideas can be priceless and that is one (of the many) secrets behind the labels success.

Insight

Shoshanna

Classic, fun, feminine, and sexy are what Shoshanna is all about in creating her signature swimwear and apparel. So no matter what season it may be, dive into something new.

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We thought it was time to check in on our most loved Palettes, Colors and Patterns making their way around the community at the moment.

With 108,705 members who have created 1,196,974 Colors, 431,454 Palettes and 133,971 Patterns, we needed a way to divide up all the colors into a manageable post, as to avoid creating an overwhelming color explosion that might lead to the mind collapse of some poor blog reader. So, we are doing it by color, of course. Here are 50 of the top Palettes, Colors and Patterns from the community, starting with RED.

Red Palettes

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Graffiti has been balancing a fine line of public opinion between vandalism and art since its beginnings. Recently, with graffiti gaining more acceptance as a legitimate art form, many artist have seen their work taken from the streets and placed in galleries all over the world. Even though this shift has taken place, most graffiti artists still stick to the art form’s roots as public art, sharing color inspiration to all those who walk through our modern cities.

Though limited by the manufacturers of spray paint, the color palettes of contemporary graffiti artists are inspiring in many ways. In a lot of ways the palettes created on public walls change as each new piece is added, creating a completely unique, site specific color palette which evolves with time and through the generations of street artists. These palettes often include the surrounding colors and architecture of their location, adding even more depth to a piece and drawing in as much attention to the location of their work, as to the work itself.

The often bold and dynamic color palettes of today’s graffiti artists are becoming more and more technical with the increased use of gradients and blending. And are an amazing source of color inspiration.

Photo by otherthings


Photo by baldiri

Photo by otherthings


Photo by otherthings


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Today, more than ever, companies need to separate themselves from others that share the same crowded marketplaces, and it is being done with branding and creating a unique and easily recognizable visual identity. The visual identity of a business can be one of its most valuable intangible assets, and part of that visual identity is color.

Referring to Business Week’s ‘Best Global Brands 2007‘ (link to PDF) report, which ranks “brands which place high importance on managing the economic value of their intangible assets, and primary their brands, consistently out preform basic economic measures,” we selected what may be the most easily identifiable logos in the corporate world today, then stripped them of every line and gradient to pullout just the color palettes. See if they are just as strong without the logo itself.

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There are many women in the world that will never be caught dead in anything other than a tan or black shoe. As a woman, I understand the importance of such staples in one’s collection, but somehow feel my life would be a little less fun without the brightly colored shoes that are in mine. Of course, women’s shoes in general have a long history, and they have meant many things to both men and women alike. A shoe can match a bag, complement an ensemble, or make a bold statement all on its own. Here are a few insights into the colors of shoes (and what they sometimes communicate).

Photo by kalandrakas

The red shoe
Depending on who you talk to, a woman who wears red shoes is either brave and fashionable or she is advertising her status as a lady of the night. It’s amusing to think there could be such contrasting reactions, but red tends to make a statement in all types of fashion, and shoes are no exception. Many women view red shoes as a symbol of power, much like a feminine version of a men’s “power tie”. To date, if a woman chooses to wear any brightly colored shoe outside of her basic neutral choices, it tends to be a red shoe.

Photo by PinkMoose

The primary shoe
You don’t see a lot of shoes in primary shades on women, and there’s a reason — it takes a very specific type of personality to pull it off. Not unlike the colors themselves, a shoe in a primary shade is attention-grabbing, and unless a woman focuses on collecting clothing to complement such footwear, it’s likely shoes of the same hue will sit in the back of the closet. With the recent popularity surge in eighties-inspired fashions, primary colors for the feet have made a bit of a comeback, but who knows how long they will will stick around.


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The reasons to ride a bike are aplenty: infinite MPG, exercise, no pollution, and my favorite, no sitting in traffic. While bikes can’t offer a solution to every commuting situation, bike communities around the US have been growing, and so have the number of custom color palettes found on bikes.

Looking through the gallery at Fixed Gear Gallery it was easy to find inspiring color palettes from the thousands of user uploaded images of fixed-gear bikes. Here are a few:

Bikes are a great canvas to showcase color compositions, and it doesn’t just have to be about painting your frame, with simple color additions in the way of grip tape or saddles, down to the tiniest component, there are many ways of creating a unique color palette, one that could even inspire the people stuck in traffic to ride a bike.

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We thought we would take a look at some of the best designed color compositions from across the web. Organized by base color, we searched through the CSS galleries over at Design Meltdown and CSS drive to find some websites whose color palettes we think are great.

BLACK + WHITE

rafaelzundt.com

gleamix.jp

imagineboris.com

canvasmagazine.ne


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We love color lovers, especially when they love COLOURLovers, and extra especially when they integrate COLOURlovers into their love of spreading the love of color. Such as our member wearpalettes

There once was a blog named The Sartorialist who changed the way fashion was viewed and how trends were passed along from city to city, for the better, we hope, as we hope all things are for the better.

One day, a graphic designer by the name of Daniel thought it would be a good idea to archive the inspirational colors of the clothing that he was seeing. Daniel turned to The Sartorialist and their archive of photos to start his journey into the creation of wear palettes. Little did he know that such an idea, was such an idea. One that would touch the hearts of so many, simply with color.

This is the story of daniel and the blog wear palettes.

The Sartorialist

About Wear Palettes

wear palettes is a blog for color and fashion inspiration. Drawing from the archives of street fashion photos from The Sartorialist, the blog has collected nearly 1600 different palettes, and allows you to search the archive using 22 different tags, if you are looking for color specific inspiration. The creator behind wear palettes is Daniel, a Swiss graphic design student who first had the idea of a clothing color database for one of his school projects.

I sat down with Daniel, at our respective computers located halfway across the world from eachother, to have an intimate chat about wear palettes, COLOURlovers, and fashion.

The Sartorialist

COLOURlovers Meets wear palettes

COLOURlovers:Tell me about wear palettes?

Daniel: It is a collection, a database of palettes taken from The Sartorialist street fashion pictures. It has almost 1600 units and I update it everyday. Also, the palettes are categorized by color and you can sort through the palettes for colors you are looking for.

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I’ll never forget the first time I discovered Tokidoki. It was about two years ago, and I was walking in downtown San Francisco with a friend when I saw a girl walking down the street in front of me carrying a Tokidoki bag. Being a fan of cute art and vivid colors, I followed her (discreetly!) for several blocks, trying to identify more about her fantastic purse. Of course, it wasn’t long until I had solved the mystery, and soon enough I had more Tokidoki bags than I would ever need.

Italian Tokidoki creator Simone Legno founded his company in 2005 with the help of business partners Pooneh Moohajer and Ivan Arnold. The word Tokidoki means “sometimes” in Japanese, which Legno gives more background on in the form of a little enclosure card that comes with the majority of Tokidoki products. His story started back in 2003, when Pooneh Moohajer and her husband Ivan discovered Legno’s website. Pooneh was the co-founder of popular cosmetics line Hard Candy, and she saw something distinctly marketable in Legno’s design style.

Legno released his first collaboration with the company Le Sportsac in Spring 2006. The bags met a tremendous reaction from fans, who soon were rabid to collect any and all things Tokidoki. To this day, the bags that are out of print fetch up to $400 on Ebay. There are also multiple fan sites who categorize all the releases and aid collectors in finding the bags they want to add to the burgeoning collections. The best of these is Tokidoki blog, which not only updates on the bags but all the other collectibles as well. It’s an excellent place to begin if you find you have a gnawing hunger to own one of these delightful creations.

Legno’s signature style caught the eye of the designer toy world quickly as well, and soon many collectible sculptures were available. While he has collaborated with most major designers, the most popular series seems to be the one made by STRANGECo, who released two major lines, Cactus Friends and Moofia. The Cactus Friends were small animals wearing cactus-like armor, such as the little green dog Bastardino. The Moofia series was based around milk products. Fans reacted positively to these as well, as they were not only adorable but also affordable. Having been welcomed into the designer toy universe with open arms, Tokidoki found itself reaching a whole new group of fans.


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