Pantone attempts to define humanity's true colours

Skin colour has always been a contentious topic. Generally, people class the "others" based on their differences. (For example, Imperial Brits called almost everyone with more melanin than them "Black.")

In reality, skin tones are pretty variable. But Pantone, the industry standard for colour, is making an effort to address this with the new Pantone SkinTone Guide.

The guide features  a total of 110 skin tones. 

As the site proclaims:

The PANTONE SkinTone Guide was created by scientifically measuring thousands of actual skin tones across the full spectrum of human skin types. Specially formulated to be the closest physical representations of skin colors, the library is a comprehensive visual reference of human skin tones for use in any market where skin colors are relevant. It's the only internationally available color standard to accurately match skin tones.

...

Uses 

BEAUTY: Matching and coordinating cosmetics to skin color.
FASHION: Bring skin color into the mix when developing colors and palettes for design and producing accessories, foundation garments and intimates.
PRODUCT DESIGN: Develop and control natural skin tones for toys and a variety of products and accessories
PHOTOGRAPHY: Easily match skin tones for accurate photo editing and retouching.
PRINTING/PACKAGING/GRAPHIC DESIGN: Provides quality control standards for consistent and appealing skin tone reproduction.
MEDICAL: Useful for creating baseline color standards for restorative and cosmetic surgery and prosthesis manufacture. 

While this is hardly a solution to the issues of oversimplifying human identity through broad "racial" categories, it certainly provides designers with tools to more accurately represent human diversity.

Tip via Stocklogos

Related: Pantone Humanae

Perfume pill lets women sweat (sorry, "perspire") designer scent

My agency colleague (and part-time fashion blogger) Amanda sent me this "ad" for Lucy McRae Swallowable Parfum:



The McRae blog says,

"Swallowable Parfum is a digestible scented capsule that emits a unique odor through your own perspiration. Excreted through the skin's surface the body becomes an atomizer; a biologically enhanced second skin synthesized directly from the natural processes of the body.
Swallowable Parfum is a provocative campaign developed alongside synthetic biologist Sheref Mansy initialised to open discussion with the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, fashion and technology industries."

So, is this a product or is it art?

McRae describes herself as:

"...an Australian artist straddling the worlds of fashion, technology and the body. As a body Architect she invents and builds structures on the skin that re-shape the human silhouette. Her provocative and often grotesquely beautiful imagery suggests a new breed; a future human archetype existing in an alternate world
Trained as a classical ballerina and architect her work inherently fascinates with the human body. The media call her inventor, friends call her a trailblazer. Either way, she relies on instinct to evolve an extraordinary visual path that is powerful, primal and uniquely Lucy McRae."

From the press release in the Swallowable Perfume site:

"Amid growing rhetoric around the body as the new frontier for technological advancement,
Swallowable parfum by internationally celebrated body architect Lucy McRae, is a digestible
scented capsule that breaks entirely new ground in the science of human instinct.
Once absorbed, the capsule enables the skin to become a platform, an atomizer; A biologically enhanced second skin synthesized directly from the natural processes of the body. Fragrance molecules are excreted through the skins surface during perspiration, leaving tiny droplets on the skin that emanate a unique odor. The potency of scent is determined by each individual’s acclimatization to temperature, stress, exercise, or sexual arousal. 

Swallowable Parfum is a capsule that enables human skin to emit a genetically unique scent
about who we are, and how we perform our identities. A provocative campaign initialised to open discussion with the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, fashion and technology industries, challenges the way we consume parfum in the future. After working for four years as a body architect at Philips Design in a far future research program exploring emotional sensing and part of a team who claims our bodies are a platform for technology, this cosmetic capsule is part of an on going exploration that re-defines the role of skin. 

Lucy McRae teams up with acclaimed synthetic biologist Sheref Mansy and are currently
in research phase to develop a capsule that consists of synthesied fragrant lipid molecules
that mimic the structure of normal fat molecules naturally found in the body. The human body has enzymes that metabolise fat in a series of steps that free lipids and lipid-like molecules from their scaffolds. Swallowable Parfum takes advantage of these natural enzymes found in our bodies to release fragrant molecules from larger structures. Subsequently, the liberated fragrant molecules are excreted through the skin’s surface during perspiration."

Again, product or art? I guess it's up to just what you're willing to swallow.