How swamp, olive and brat came to rule 2024

As with many of this year’s big political predictions, the pollsters got it wrong. Pantone declared last December that “peach fuzz” – a honeyed-take on the previous Barbified year – would be the colour of 2024. Instead, this has been the year of green in all its glory.

I thought I was being original when I re-covered my sofa in a velvet moss green only to discover that the rest of middle England were also at it. John Lewis reported that sales of green sofas shot up by 32% this year. Sofa company Loaf says similar – it launched the colour “pressed olive”, which has been its most popular to date. Independent fabric brand Colours of Arley say “lime” and “swamp” were its most-requested shades, while fashion designerturned ceramicist Henry Holland says he has spent the year “constantly remaking [olive] green-and-white striped mugs and chalices to keep [them] in stock”. Even 1970s avocado bathroom suites were back and, by autumn, Pinterest reported that searches for green home decor had risen by almost 3,000% in a year.

Fashion nodded in approval. Prada’s spring/summer 2025 show had emerald cardigans, collars and tights, while olive tones and military greens were tripping down the catwalks at McQueen and Gucci. The food world also approved – cucumbers went viral when TikTokers like @logagm made his ubiquitous cucumber salad, which saw Iceland (the country) run out of the veg in August, and Deliveroo reporting that it was its most-ordered item in London. Then there was the matcha takeover, from matcha beer (Monkey Trio Japanese bar in Manchester), to matcha caramel foam (Abuelo in London), to just about every teen clutching an iced matcha latte.

So far, so classy. Until June, when the shade that would come to be known as brat green exploded out from Charli xcx’s new album cover – she had apparently narrowed it down from a choice of 65 shades to “like the most WRONG out of all the options we had”. Suddenly the brash, lurid Nickelodeon slime-green was everywhere, including Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Talons were tangified: east London salon Wild Beauty says green was so regularly requested that they had to order in more shades (garish “rio” was the most popularshade). In short: green was everywhere.

But what about my segue – along with the rest of the world – into that brash, bright green? I started my own year of green with a desire to move away from clinical grey towards something more cosseting and natural – namely, my velvet sofa. Before long, though, I found myself coordinating my often all-black looks (or navy when I was feeling daring) with slime-coloured green nails. In doing so, I felt a slight frisson of rebellion; this wasn’t the shade my mother wore on her nails the year she turned 40.

“I think it is simultaneously a nod to the 90s and the reclaiming of a ‘nasty’ colour: a rejection of having to be tasteful, soft and beautiful,” says Kassia St Clair, author of The Secret Lives of Colour. It’s helpful to remember that it’s a throwback – even if I was mainly crawling through soft plays and building sandcastles at the time. Clair also thinks our sudden interest in green tracks with “our anxieties around increasingly digital culture”. It is, she suggests, “wholesome” and a desire to “hark back to a simpler time”.

But by the time it went mainstream, green had become a nod to the political upheaval that we all desperately wished for. According to colour psychologist Lee Chambers, green is actually related to a desire for change and unrest. Was it a coincidence that the Green party reached a new high this year, winning four seats in the general election? Either way, it made results from across pond, where things took on a more orange hue, all the more devastating.

The other seismic green event this year started back in March, when Wicked star Cynthia Erivo dressed for the Oscars in a dark teal Louis Vuitton leather dress with a frilly trail that looked like a dragon’s tail. It was a precursor to many months of Wicked promotion – tears and finger holding – that would expose our retinas to various shades of Elphaba green. There was a pistachio LV dress ahead of the New York premiere, archival Marc Jacobs glittering green trousers for talkshow appearances andm finally, a hyperbolically greeny-green latex LV bodycon paired with a green Big Bird style cape (pictured below). It was a colour-drenching we hadn’t seen since Barbie – and thankfully a far more inclusive, less gender-specific shade.

Like all fashion trends, this is of course cyclical. With the festive season in full swing, there’s green all around us right now. But will this green’s moment in the spotlight last? Perhaps. John Lewis predicts that pistachio green is going to be the colour of 2025. But Pantone has other ideas, having just revealed that “mocha mousse”, a light, silky shade of brown, is its colour of 2025. Fashion seems to agree: suedes and chocolates are already edging blacks and greys out of ourwardrobes. It’s often maligned as being boring and safe, but after a slightly too manic 2024, perhaps brown feels like the subdued colour we need.

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