What Are The Most Popular Colours in Fashion?

Black is the most popular colour in the Fashion industry. But is it though? How do we know? Do we even know? Let's find out.

What Are The Most Popular Colours in Fashion?

Black is the most popular colour in the Fashion retail market. But is it though? How do we know? Do we even know?

I was speaking with a colleague recently about shopping and I passively mentioned how black is the most popular colour in the Fashion industry. I could immediately tell from her countenance, the slight sense of doubt she had for my claim.

Of course I didn't provide her with data to back it as I was merely glossing over it to make a different point. However, I did have data to back it because this was something I had been constantly familiar with from inspecting Fashion retail analytics data.

After having that experience, I decided to put together this Article which will run through Fashion market data to identify the most popular colours in the following Categories:

  1. Tops (T-shirts, Shirts, etc.)
  2. Pants/Trousers
  3. Dresses
  4. Shorts

To achieve this, I will be using Woven Insights' Fashion Market Analytics Module. It contains data from various Fashion markets (UK, US, CA, AU, etc.), and comes with helpful data visualisation graphs that can give you an overview of the state of the Fashion Retail Market.

Starting with Tops, the leading colours in the Category are Black, White, and Grey, in that order (see screenshot below).

Woven Insights showing Black, White, and Grey as dominant colours for tops in the fashion market
Woven Insights showing Black, White, and Grey as dominant colours for tops in the fashion market

Moving over to Trousers we see a slight change with the leading colours coming out to be Black, Blue, and Grey. So Black still comes out top, but White gets relegated from the list and and is replaced by Blue. I'm guessing this is the case because there'll be a lot of Jeans in this category.

Woven Insights dashboard showing Black, Blue, and Grey as dominant colours for pants/trousers in the fashion market.
Woven Insights' Retail Market Analytics dashboard showing Black, Blue, and Grey as dominant colours for pants/trousers in the fashion market.

Ok, so now we are in the Dresses Category and it presents an interesting twist. This time, it's Grey who gets relegated, with the leading colours coming out to be Black, Blue, White, and Pink respectively. I guess it makes sense that Pink appears here because because for the Dresses category, the Gender is narrowed down.

Woven Insights showing Black, Blue, White, and Pink as dominant colours for dresses in the fashion market.
Woven Insights showing Black, Blue, White, and Pink as dominant colours for dresses in the fashion market.

In the Shorts Category, order is restored for colour Grey, with the most popular colours coming out as Black, Blue, Grey, and Green.

Woven Insights showing Black, White, Grey and Green as dominant colours for shorts in the fashion market.
Woven Insights showing Black, White, Grey and Green as dominant colours for shorts in the fashion market.

Based on the data so far, there's no doubt that Black is the most popular colour here, but what would make the top 3 colours altogether? Judging by how the colours have tussled from Category to Category, it seems the colours that came out tops overall were Black as 1st, Blue as 2nd, and the 3rd position being a little ambiguous between White and Grey (talk about Grey area).

But no worries here, there's an option on Woven Insights to see the leading dominant colours overall and the output is as seen in the screenshot below.

Woven Insights showing Black, White, and Blue as the overall dominant colours in the fashion market.

So interestingly, the overall top 3 popular colours in Fashion are actually Black, White, and Blue, in that order.

Conclusion

Data is King, but so is Black!

About Woven Insights

Imagine if you had access to real-time fashion retail market and consumer insights, from more than 60 million real shoppers and millions of analyzed fashion items from global fashion brands.

That's basically what Woven Insights offers fashion brands and manufacturers of all sizes - with the best pricing in the industry.

Introducing Woven Insights

But don't take my word for it - learn more about Woven Insights here