Copyright © 2017 Japan Society of Kansei Engineering. All Rights Reserved.
Transactions of Japan Society of Kansei EngineeringJ-STAGE Advance Published Date: 2017.06.09
doi: 10.5057/ijae.IJAE-D-16-00050
International Journal of Affective EngineeringJ-STAGE Advance Published Date: 2017.06.09
doi: 10.5057/ijae.IJAE-D-16-00050
1. INTRODUCTION
Style which can be seen as the archetype of fashion,
started since the middle of the 14th century in Europe and
it has been continually changing since then [1]. Nowadays,
fashion forms large industry. Various sizes of apparel
companies such as traditional luxury fashion brands,
mass-produced and widely sold fashion brands, are
proposing new clothing one after another. Color is one of
the keys to drive sales of products for these apparel brands
and companies. The consumer has become accustomed
to a wide range of inspirational color choices, thus select-
ing the right colors to satisfy the customer is important.
Various kinds of color forecasting methodologies have
been proposed [2, 3]. One important component of the
color forecaster’ methodology is to study the designer
Ready-to-Wear Collections. In fact, the collections always
draw the attention on small apparel companies and fast
fashion retailers, especially the collections holding by
luxury brands twice a year in international fashion cities
such as London, Paris, Milan, New York and Tokyo. These
collections usually have a special theme, and show brands’
new clothing for the coming season. Through the presen-
tations, luxury brands act as a leader of shape and color of
fashion, and have a great influence on apparel industry
and our fashion life.
This study focused on the clothing color of representa-
tive luxury brands, investigated and analyzed the
frequency and change of color used between 2006 and
2015. We aimed to clarify the individual and common
color features of the luxury brands. Furthermore, results
of analysis were compared with the clothing color features
of three representative global fast fashion brands to clarify
their respective characteristics.
2. INVESTIGATIONS
2.1 Research targetsThis study focused on five luxury brands: Louis Vuitton,
Hermes, Gucci, Chanel and Prada, which are ranked high
in the brand value ranking of the luxury category [4].
Colors of luxury brands’ clothing were collected from
images of 20 collections: Spring/Summer (SS) Ready-to-
Wear Collection and Autumn/Winter (AW) Ready-to-Wear
Collection between 2006 and 2015, presented on the
website of American fashion magazine VOGUE [5].
2.2 MethodsThe colors were extracted using the same method as the
previous [6]. From the collected images, a representative
color area in each item in an image was extracted. Items
considered in this study were outer, inner, pants, skirt,
dresses and so on, however, accessories like scarves,
stockings, and socks were excluded. Therefore, there were
more than one item in most of the images. Some items had
complicated pattern (more than one main colors), thus
a representative color of such item was not identified as
a color sample. The color samples were measured by
using a color measurement software Feelimage Analyzer
(Viva Computer Inc.), quantized the colors in terms of
CIELAB values [7] and JCC40 [8].
The total number of the collected color samples was
7587 including 1492 from Louis Vuitton, 1699 from
Received: 2016.12.16 / Accepted: 2017.04.12
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Color Feature of Luxury Brand Clothing, and its Change in Recent 10 Years
Qian XIONG, Saori KITAGUCHI and Tetsuya SATO
Kyoto Institute of Technology, Matsugasaki, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8585, Japan
Abstract: This paper investigated and analyzed the distribution, frequency and transformation of clothing color of five representative luxury brands (Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Gucci, Chanel and Prada), through measuring the color of digital pictures of Ready-to-Wear Collections held from 2006 to 2015. Color features of each brand and in common were discussed and summarized. They were also compared with fast fashion brands to understand the similarities and differences in color between these two different fashion styles. As a result, luxury brands tended to use more vivid and bright colors in the spring-summer seasons, and more dull and dark colors in the autumn-winter seasons. These tendencies were similar to fast fashion brands. However, the color changes of luxury brands between two seasons were larger than those of fast fashion brands. Different characteristics of color selections and changes were also found between luxury brands.
Keywords: Luxury brand, Clothing color, Fashion week, Ready-to-Wear Collection
Advance Publication
Hermes, 1213 from Gucci, 2040 from Chanel, and 1143
from Prada. Table 1 shows the number of the samples
collected from each brand of each collection.
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
3.1.1 Color distributions of the five luxury brandsFigures 1 and 2 show the results of color samples
plotted on the a*b* and L*C* coordinate system of
CIELAB color space respectively, to investigate the hue,
chroma, and lightness distributions of the five luxury
brands.
1) Louis Vuitton:The colors used by Louis Vuitton were centered on the
red-yellow direction, and a small area of purple as shown
in the a*b* coordinate system in Figure 1. The colors used
in the SS season were distributed in larger area comparing
with the color distribution of the AW season. Figure 2
shows that a large number of the colors used in the SS
season distributed in the areas of the high-chroma and
high-lightness, particularly yellow, and also the medium-
chroma areas of blue and red. When it turned to the AW
season, the bright yellow colors and the colors with
medium-chroma used in the SS season were clearly
reduced and the more dull colors appeared.
2) Hermes:Hermes colors were densely distributed on the orange-
yellow area. The medium-chroma and low-chroma brown
were largely used. Hermes is famous for using leather in
their products of a long term, and also uses leather in their
clothing collections. Therefore, the brownish color of the
leather increased the proportion of the usage of brown.
3) Gucci:Gucci used a large number of red and blue colors of
various chroma, moreover they also had obvious prefer-
ences at the green direction, especially the high-lightness
green and bluish green colors in the SS season, as well as
the high-chroma blue.
4) Chanel:The colors used by Chanel were distributed relatively in a
small area, and were mainly concentrated at the low-chroma
and achromatic color areas. Furthermore, the red colors
with various chroma and lightness were heavily used in the
SS and AW seasons. Color combination of black and white
is a consistent style of Chanel since its inception. As Coco
Chanel said, ‘Black holds everything. White also. They are
absolutely beautiful. It’s the perfect harmony’ [9]. Chanel
created a unique simplicity and elegance among interna-
tional fashion industry using the classic black and white,
meanwhile adding the fashion colors of modern society.
Table 1: The number of measured and unmeasured color samples
Time
Brands
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
SS AW SS AW SS AW SS AW SS AW SS AW SS AW SS AW SS AW SS AW
LouisVuitton
Collected 82 86 85 91 116 83 98 103 113 93 83 101 80 94 88 77 72 96 80 84
Removed 10 1 7 3 25 0 9 15 43 20 23 9 32 24 10 7 14 14 23 24
Measured 72 85 78 88 91 83 89 88 70 73 60 92 48 70 78 70 58 82 57 60
Hermes
Collected 112 110 114 124 99 92 84 85 103 105 103 86 77 92 69 82 73 80 56 72
Removed 6 0 8 4 1 5 5 5 7 10 3 5 7 10 17 4 9 6 7 0
Measured 106 110 106 120 98 87 79 80 96 95 100 81 70 82 52 78 64 74 49 72
Gucci
Collected 67 64 58 68 92 94 84 85 75 80 80 85 77 86 63 78 66 59 64 71
Removed 20 6 10 4 21 21 22 8 9 10 1 7 27 12 17 23 28 7 17 13
Measured 47 58 48 64 71 73 62 77 66 70 79 78 50 74 46 55 38 52 47 58
Chanel
Collected 127 81 122 96 105 86 115 104 116 113 144 149 128 161 127 133 142 147 158 185
Removed 30 7 12 19 13 6 16 3 15 15 33 19 25 24 29 33 54 47 50 49
Measured 97 74 110 77 92 80 99 101 101 98 111 130 103 137 98 100 88 100 108 136
Prada
Collected 62 84 64 74 68 62 66 59 56 62 65 52 80 72 62 89 59 87 73 66
Removed 1 2 6 2 12 4 6 2 13 19 17 12 19 25 0 12 18 17 16 16
Measured 61 82 58 72 56 58 60 57 43 43 48 40 61 47 62 77 41 70 57 50
Color Feature of Luxury Brand Clothing, and its Change in Recent 10 Years
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Figure 1: Color distribution on the a*b* coordinate system Figure 2: Color distribution on the L*C* coordinate system
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5) Prada:Prada tended to use the red, yellow and blue colors of
a variety of chroma, but rarely used the reddish purple.
As same as Gucci, Prada also used the brighter green and
more vivid blue-green colors than other three brands. It is
conceivable that Italian who living under the influence of
the Mediterranean environment have an enthusiastic bold
sensibility in their color selection. In addition, the high-
chroma red colors stood out in both the SS and AW
seasons.
Colors used by the five brands were particularly concen-
trated in the areas of achromatic colors, red, brown, and
blue, but not many in the green area. Generally, the SS
season had a wider color gamut than the AW season. In
the SS season, the colors were found in the high-chroma
areas of yellow, green, and blue in the a*b* coordinate
system, however these colors were disappeared or used
less in the AW season. In the L*C* coordinate system,
many colors were found in the low-chroma areas of
various lightness. It also showed that the high-chroma red
was used in both the SS and AW seasons by most of the
brands.
3.1.2 Color distributions ratio from 2006 to 2015Figure 3 shows the color distribution ratio of the five
brands in ten years between 2006 and 2015 categorized
using the JCC40 color system.
In general, the ratio of the neutral colors including ivory
and achromatic colors to the chromatic colors was almost
1:1, except Chanel which used more black and white. Louis
Vuitton, Hermes and Prada used slightly more achromatic
colors in the AW season than in the SS season. In contrast,
Gucci used more achromatic colors in the SS season.
In the achromatic colors, black was the most used color,
closing to or exceeding 50% of the achromatic colors in
each brand. More white and ivory were seen in the SS
season, and more black and dark gray were seen in the
AW season. In the chromatic colors, Louis Vuitton,
Hermes used brown colors frequently. Gucci and Prada
preferred the vivid and bright colors, especially for red,
yellow-green, green, blue hues. Chanel used much less
proportion of the chromatic colors than the others;
however used various hues and tones, particularly light
pink and dark blue.
3.2 Annual changes of the color distribution ratio of the five brands
Annual changes of the clothing colors of the five brands
between 2006 and 2015 were presented in a 100% stacked
area chart in Figure 4.
1) Louis Vuitton:As shown in diagram, the proportions of the achromatic
colors used by Louis Vuitton were decreased year by year
from 2007 in both the SS and AW seasons, however turned
around and were increased since about 2012.
Louis Vuitton used various chromatic colors in the SS
season. During 2006-2011, pink and red colors were the
majority, then yellow and blue colors were increased from
2010. The collections of 2007 and 2014 looked special,
using a great many achromatic colors. The theme of
the collection in 2007 was ‘romantic-cum-sporty’ [10],
on which a large number of ivory and white clothing
were displayed, with few vivid colors at the present. The
collection of 2014 SS season was full of black, because
this collection was the last show of Marc Jacobs, the chief
designer would leave office soon. He wanted to create an
Figure 3: Color distribution ratio of five luxury brands from 2006 to 2015
Color Feature of Luxury Brand Clothing, and its Change in Recent 10 Years
Advance Publication
Figure 4: Proportion change of clothing colors of luxury brands from 2006 to 2015
Advance Publication
image different from his usual style and to create an
impressive show.
The color changes in the AW season were relatively
smooth comparing with the SS season. Vivid red, grayish
brown and dark brown appeared in every year. After 2010,
the proportion of the dark blue became larger.
2) Hermes:The color ratio in both the SS and AW seasons changed
smoothly, without too much ups and downs. The color
selection of Hermes was more consistent than other
brands. Orange and brown were the Hermes’ main colors.
Therefore, these colors were constantly used every year
and other colors such as red, yellow and blue colors were
used as accent colors.
In the SS season of the past ten years, ivory and white
had always been the greatest proportion of their color.
During 2006-2011, the ratio of white to black was
approximately 1:1, and it changed to 3:1 after the
replacement of their chief designer in the 2011 AW
season. From 2013, the new designer used much more
bright orange and blue, bringing a strong visual impact
on us.
In the AW season of 2006-2010, brown and black were
the main colors, without greatly changes every year.
A significant change in color usage was observed in
2011, ivory, white, vivid red, bright orange, yellow
and blue colors appeared more. This could also be
the influence of the change of the designer in the 2011
AW season.
3) Gucci:The color ratio lines of Gucci went ups and downs
sharply. It means that the dominant color alternated
between the achromatic and the chromatic colors almost
every year. In achromatic colors, black had been domi-
nated. White decreased suddenly after 2013, and nearly
only black left. The tendency of the chromatic colors also
varied each year.
In the SS season, it was conspicuous that various vivid
colors were used to cause strong visual impact. In 2009, a
theme of the show was tropical islands. Then a large
number of turquoise colors and pure blue were released
and attracted people. In 2010, color selection was totally
changed. White, gray, and black became main colors.
Then, it became the extreme ratio of the achromatic colors
to the chromatic colors. In 2013, Gucci released an
impressive collection with full of vivid red, yellow, green
and blue, coordinated with white and black, maximized
the visual contrast of the color.
In the years between 2006 and 2010, the colors of the
AW season were focused on the achromatic colors, dark
red, and brown. After 2010, the colors had been diversi-
fied, such as the proportions of pink and various chroma
of green and blue were increased.
4) Chanel:Over the past ten years Chanel had a high usage of
achromatic colors, which was 80% percent on average.
Chanel also preferred to use the chromatic colors mixing
with white or gray. Pink, yellow, orange, green, purple of
light tone, and brown, yellow, green, blue of grayish tone
were used a lot, with rare vivid pure colors.
The ratio of black to white had been maintained at 1:1
in the SS season, however sometimes changed according
to their theme. After 2011, Chanel had changed the inac-
tive color image and started to use more vital colors such
as bright green and vivid blue.
Black was dominant in achromatic colors in the AW
season, with the exception of the collection in 2010 which
presented ‘an arctic scene’ [11] and lots of white clothing
released then increased the ratio of white.
5) Prada:Prada had a zigzag line which was similar to Gucci, and
also used a wide range of colors, meanwhile used many
complementary colors, which made a sharp contrast of
colors.
In the SS season, the dominant color alternated between
chromatic and achromatic colors every two or three years.
The proportion of the colors irregularly changed year by
year. Before 2010, the colors with light and dull tone were
used heavily. Since 2011, the colors began to turn brighter
and more vivid tone.
In the AW season, the achromatic colors used 50-60%,
but in the last two years, 2014 and 2015, reduced below
50%. Black dominated in the achromatic colors. White
was even not used in some years. Since 2010, the high-
chroma red, orange, blue-green and purple colors
increased, and the tone also turned to bright and eye-
catching from moderate and gentle.
It was common to all the brands that red, brown and
blue colors were used in every collection, which could be
considered as the basic chromatic colors. The similar
characteristics were found between Hermes and Chanel,
and also between Gucci and Prada. The proportion lines
of the 100% stacked area chart through ten years changed
smoothly in Hermes and Chanel. It indicates that their
color selections did not change much year on year. On the
other hand, the proportion lines went ups and downs in
Gucci and Prada, meaning their color selections changed
dramatically year on year. It can be also seen that the color
selection of luxury brands was more depended on the
designer’s idea.
Color Feature of Luxury Brand Clothing, and its Change in Recent 10 Years
Advance Publication
3.3 Comparison of color usage between luxury fashion and fast fashion
Figure 5 shows the clothing color distribution ratio
of the three fast fashion brands: H&M, ZARA and
UNIQLO for 2013. The clothing were categorized
into two seasons: the SS and AW seasons. The SS
season included the clothing released between Mar.
and Aug. and the AW season included the clothing
released between Sep. and Feb. according to the previous
study [6]. Figure 6 shows the data for the five luxury
brands through 2013.
From the results, the color selection of the luxury brands
was obviously fewer than the fast fashion brands. There
were clear differences between the SS and AW seasons
in the color selections of the luxury brands (Figure 6).
On the other hand, the color selection of the fast fashion
brands was similar between the SS and AW seasons
(Figure 5).
In common with these fast fashion brands, white and
bright colors are used more in the SS season and black and
dark colors are more in the AW season [6]. However, these
tendencies were not necessarily seen in the luxury brands
during the year of 2013. For example, Louis Vuitton
shown in Figure 6 had higher ratio of black in the SS
season than the AW season, also Hermes released more
dark brown in the SS season.
As it has already seen in Figure 3, the long term features of
the luxury brands were similar to the features of the fast
fashion brands in 2013 (Figure 5). The ratio of achromatic
colors mostly exceeded 50%, and the seasonal rule seemed
clearly: white was more in the SS season and black was more
in the AW season, red and brown were darker in the AW
season than the SS season. It was also found that the luxury
brands used a large number of clear bright colors with high
purity in both the SS and the AW seasons, for which colors
looked more active than the fast fashion brands.
Figure 5: Color distribution ratio of female clothing colors of fast fashion in 2013 [6]
Figure 6: Color distribution ratio of clothing colors of luxury fashion in 2013
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4. CONCLUSIONS
In this study, clothing colors of the five representative
luxury brands: Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Gucci, Chanel and
Prada, presented between 2006 and 2015 were collected,
then the characteristics of color selections and changes
were discussed. It was summarized as follows.
The color selections of each luxury fashion brand were
different. Warm colors, such as red, orange, brown and
yellow were often used by Louis Vuitton, in both the
spring-summer (SS) and the autumn-winter (AW) seasons.
Hermes used brown a lot, for using a large number of
leather in their clothing. Gucci and Prada which come
from Italy used more bright green and bluish green colors.
Chanel continued to use a high proportion of black and
white for ten years, making a strong visual contrast to
present a simple and elegance impression.
During the ten years, most brands used achromatic and
chromatic colors with the ratio of 1:1 on average, except
Chanel which makes black and white as their main color
theme, thus used achromatic colors up to 80%. In the
achromatic colors, black was the most used color.
In chromatic colors, the vivid and bright tones were used
more in the SS season, and the dull and dark tones were
used more in the AW season.
The luxury brands which held collection twice a year,
had a specific theme for each collection, so that there were
noticeable differences in the use of the colors between the
SS and AW seasons in a year. The result of annual color
changes in ten years showed that the color selections of
Hermes and Chanel did not change much year on year. On
the other hand, the color selections of Gucci and Prada
changed dramatically year on year. Louis Vuitton had
relatively similar color selection in ten years, except 2007
and 2014.
Comparing the luxury brands with the fast fashion
brands, there were some differences between the two
fashion styles in the color selections. In the fast fashion
brands, the color selection between the SS and AW
seasons of one year didn’t change too much. However,
luxury brands presenting new clothing twice a year had
clear differences between the SS and AW seasons, and
luxury brands use brighter and more vivid pink, orange,
yellow, and green, which were rarely appeared in the
fast fashion brands. Furthermore, the similarity between
the luxury brands and the fast fashion brands were that
the vivid and bright colors were more used in the SS
season than the AW season, while the dull and dark
colors were more used in the AW season than the SS
season.
This study discussed color feature of the luxury brands’
clothing presented in the recent ten years between 2006
and 2015. The comparisons between luxury brands and
also between the luxury brands and the fast fashion
brands were carried out. However, the relationship
between trend colors suggested by Intercolor was not
investigated. The trend colors were considered to have a
large influence to textile manufacture on forecasting
colors. Therefore, it is interesting that to explore the
relationships between the color selections of luxury
brands and trend colors by Intercolor.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant
Number 24220012. We thank JSPS for the fund support.
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Color Feature of Luxury Brand Clothing, and its Change in Recent 10 Years
Advance Publication
Qian XIONG (Non-member)Qian Xiong is a Ph.D. student at Design Engineering Department, Kyoto
Institute of Technology, with the research direction for Kansei Engineering
and Color Science. She has been researching on fashion color from her
master course in Kyoto Institute of Technology, to seek the color features
of different styles of clothing fashions and attempt to express data visually.
She is currently interested in color visual performance, color psychology,
and fashion color of clothing.
Saori KITAGUCHI (Non-member)Saori Kitaguchi is a lecturer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. She
obtained her M.Sc. at Colour & Imaging Institute in University of Derby
in 2003, and her Ph.D. at Department of Colour Science in University
of Leeds in 2008. She has been researching about modelling visual
attributes in special-effect coatings, visual and tactile senses of textile
products and color fastness evaluation, and fashion items consumer
behavior and its background.
Tetsuya SATO (Member)Tetsuya Sato is a professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology, the head
of Department of Design Engineering and Management, and the head
of International Division at the Center of Fiber and Textile Science.
He graduated from Kyoto Institute of Technology with M.Eng. degree in
Color Chemistry Post-graduate Course, and obtained his Ph.D. from
Otsuma Women’s University in 1994 with his research on colorimetric
method for assessing color fastness of textiles. Currently, his research
areas are color technology, color chemistry, and textile engineering.