Hey,

For the first time in a long time, a “Color of the Year” felt less like a forecast and more like a mirror, reflecting what we refuse to normalize. We know what it means when the world tries to strip itself of color. When “neutral” becomes the aspiration, “simplicity” is sold to us as virtue, when really it’s a request for us to take up less space.

But, women are done shrinking. Done fitting into palettes chosen by those who don’t live in the worlds women do. And instead of that we turn the volume up, laugh louder, and push back with color, with critique, with audacity.

#Edition9 is about that refusal - When you control color, you control imagination. And when you control imagination, you control what people believe is possible.

Inside this edition:
🎨 When They Say “Quiet,” Look for Who Benefits
📚 What she’s reading, listening & scrolling this week
🗞 5 headlines shaping women’s world
🧰 One ritual to reset your Insta algorithm
✨ Her Spotlight

Take what you need. Leave what you don’t. But always rebel. 

It’s funny the way institutions talk to women. They never say “shrink.” They say “simplify.” They never say “mute yourselves.” They say “seek quiet.”

When Pantone declared a shade of white as the Color of the Year, something everywhere instinctively twitched. Not because white is bad, minimalism is evil. But because timing is a language. And this year, the world isn’t neutral. White is the color of “don’t make noise,” “stay agreeable,” the color brands reach for when they want you to behave. Pantone called it Cloud Dancer, and said, “...

But whose chaos are we soothing? Because women, especially women of color, haven’t been complaining about too much color but about too much erasure. Minimalism didn’t begin as a wellness aesthetic but as a cultural tool of “refinement,” a visual silence designed to signal class, whiteness, and power. Much of it was to erase culture. And, this still lingers in how the American design treats ornamentation as “loud,” color as “unsophisticated,” maximalism as “too much.”

Meanwhile, across so many cultures from South Asia to Latin America to the Caribbean and Africa, color has always been language. Not chaos, but identity. 

White’s the color of the year when colors are having a renaissance from Zohra Mamdani’s bold campaign visuals to fashion to interiors to packaging desig & people feel the subtext. 

Women have been pattern-recognizers by survival. The pattern this time is: Every era leaning toward authoritarian control also leans toward desaturated aesthetics. Color is anti-fascist. Always has been. Vibrancy signals imagination, plurality, contradictions, appetite, and dissent.

When society’s palette shrinks, so does its permission to express. When things get whiter, things get quieter. When things get quieter, someone benefits. And it’s rarely a woman.

Don’t cancel Pantone but read culture in between. When a multimillion-dollar company chooses “white” the same year a white supremacist-coded denim ad goes viral, gains traction, and boosts stock prices… you’re allowed to ask questions. 

What exactly are we being soothed into? Because the world is not actually asking women to be calmer but to be easier to manage. This wasn’t a color announcement. It was a quieting device. But, we didn’t shrink. We turned up, stitched resistance into fashion, color palettes into our moods. We reminded the internet that culture doesn’t move because Pantone chooses a shade; culture moves when women choose themselves.

So, wear your color, name your color, defend your color.

Every time someone tells you to “simplify,” “quiet down,” “neutralize,” or “be minimal”… they’re not protecting your peace. They’re protecting their power.

💬 Ideas to tune into when the world’s too loud.

📚 Read: Chromophobia — David Batchelor
If you’ve ever wondered why color gets treated like a misbehaving child, Batchelor unpacks how our culture has long feared, controlled, and sanitized color, calling it feminine, foreign, excessive ➝ Perfect read for anyone reclaiming color as clarity, identity, rebellion.

🎧 Play: Tyla – Live World Tour Playlist
Tyla is touring right now, and the clips circulating online are pure kinetic joy ➝ Put this on when you want to feel rhythmic, feminine, unbothered.

🎁 Try: Pixory — The Travel Photobook Series
Your camera roll won’t hold your whole life forever. Pixory turns your memories into hardcover photobooks that feel like souvenirs from your own story. These books turn scattered pixels into a keepsake that lasts ➝ A deeply personal holiday gift for you, your partner, your friends.

✨ Consider these your cue to notice what’s being muted— and choose differently.

🧰 Her Toolkit

✨ One small ritual to help you pause, reflect, and protect your energy.

This week: Try a new color pairing.

We pulled together a sheet of unexpected palettes for you. Screenshot it and keep it close. Use one pairing - in your work, your clothes, your makeup, your layout, anywhere.

✨ A tiny reminder that your world doesn’t have to stay desaturated just because the season says so.

5 stories shaping the week for women everywhere.

🚀 NASA finally looks at menstruation in space: As more women join long missions, NASA is testing sustainable menstrual products so astronaut health isn’t designed around male bodies anymore.
📝 Japan moves toward letting married women keep their surnames: A new gender-equality plan signals the first real step toward ending the rule that forces couples to share one name — a change women have waited decades for.
🏙️ The city that treats unpaid care as real work and it’s changing everything: Bogotá built 25 “care blocks” where women get time to study, work, or rest while professionals care for their kids or elders. The aim: end “time poverty.” Now the model is spreading worldwide.
📈 Gen Z women are leading the investing wave: 77% of Gen Z women now own stocks — starting younger, outperforming men, and reshaping the future of wealth with confidence.
✝️ New York Archdiocese sets up a $300M survivor fund: The church will sell major assets to compensate over 1,300 sexual-abuse victims — one of the largest accountability payouts in U.S. history.

Found her. Loved her. Needed you to see her.

Jewel Ham (@whateverjewel) Back in 2019, as a Spotify intern, she dreamed up an interactive, story-driven version of Wrapped: The design. The name. The thinking. All hers. Spotify Wrapped became a cultural event. 

Sometimes the most influential ideas don’t come from boardrooms. They come from the boldness of a woman who decides to make something better than the world asked her to.

✨ If Spotify Wrapped made your year feel a little more like you, thank the woman who imagined it first.

→ Explore her @whateverjewel
→ Learn more about her practice & projects.

If this edition made you see some colors, Tuesdays and Fridays will take you further — with stories that make our lives colorful.

✨ P.S. Know someone who needs this change? Send her weekly download. Because the best kind of wisdom is the one we pass woman to woman → Send it her way

💚 Join the social circle ↓