Your attention please: Dump that basic black.

The fashion world needs to get past the dark cloud of the recession and look to a brighter day when the shopping public will be excited to buy new styles and try new colors instead of merely replacing the basics. And that new attitude is largely being carried on the back of hot pink.

"I love fuchsia. I'm always drawn to it," says designer Thakoon Panichgul, who has had success with a hot pink lip print in recent seasons. "It's a reaction color, and that's what fashion is. You can't quantify it, it's just you know what you like. You can't analyze it."

But you can try.

It seems hot pink is aiming to do this summer and into fall what yellow did for last fall. The industry is using bright, happy, smiley face-worthy color to draw customers back into stores. Sure, there are browns and blacks on the racks, and that could very well be what people end up with in their bags, but eye-catching they are not.

"Hot pink is all over the place right now," says Hope Greenberg, the fashion director at Lucky. "Right now, designers need to do something that will capture your attention at retail. ... You really need clothes that are going to jump out at the customer."

And the choice to use fuchsia, bright berry or highlighter pink makes sense twofold, she says: They're colors most women don't already have in their closets, but they look good with the shades they do have.

"From neon to fuchsia, hot pink is very versatile. It goes with gray, brown, navy, army green ... there are a million things to wear it with," says Greenberg, whose magazine dedicated its entire July issue to buys for less than $100. There was a lot of pink.