Life’s a Beach: ‘Baywatch’ Lifeguards Inspire New Pantone Red
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PANTONE’S LIFESAVER: Thirty years after “Baywatch” first aired, Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff’s lifeguarding days are still influencing fashion.
To celebrate the TV show’s anniversary, the global producers Fremantle have teamed with the Pantone Color Institute to create “Baywatch Red.” The striking red swimwear worn by the cast for their beachfront lifesaving was synonymous with the pop culture hit. The show debuted in 1989 and chronicled the waterfront work of a group of elite lifeguards in Malibu. The shade is right on trend, considering that another red, Flame Scarlet, led Pantone’s spring-summer 2020 fashion colors.
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In a recent interview, Anderson said she kept her red swimsuit from the show. Carmen Electra, Erika Eleniak, Gena Lee Nolan, Jason Momoa, Alexandra Paul and Yasmine Bleeth helped to make the program an international blockbuster. The show was retooled into HD by Fremantle last year with insight from the show’s creators and executive producers Michael Berk, Greg Bonann and Doug Schwartz.
The series aired in more than 200 countries and reached an estimated audience of 1 billion viewers, according to TV Guide. That reach led to “Baywatch” earning a Guinness World Record for having the largest global TV audience in history. As a sign of the show’s lasting appeal, Hasselhoff headlined a Happy Socks campaign in April. Anderson is more familiar with the fashion crowd, having danced to Virgil Abloh’s tunes at a Chrome Hearts party in Paris in June and lobbied Miuccia Prada and others to stop using fur on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Pantone Color Institute vice president Laurie Pressman said that Baywatch Red is geared to symbolize “the passion and courage displayed by these brave and heroic lifesavers. The powerfully energizing Baywatch Red instantly expresses a message of immediate action and fierce determination.”
To make sure designers and other professionals are well-equipped, Pantone has added 298 trend-relevant colors to the Pantone Matching System. Those additions ratchet up the library’s tally to more than 2,100 colors, which includes improved cross-referencing to Pantone’s Fashion, Home + Interiors (FHI) system and is meant to provide more design flexibility throughout the production and supply chain.
The new hues are the first infusion of colors to the Pantone Matching System since 2016. Adding basic colors such as neutrals, tans, grays, navys and blacks allows for greater achievability of colors through the design process while keeping a close proximity to upcoming trends. Pantone color guides were created to match the master standard digital data with new and updated cross-referenced data to better align physical and digital formats. In addition, designers can access all PMS Colors, including the 294 PMS shades and all FHI colors through the Pantone Extension for Adobe Creative Cloud that is available through the Adobe Exchange for Creative Cloud Marketplace.
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