They'll be talking about you at the Color Marketing Group's (CMG) fall international conference in Palm Springs, Calif.

The sometimes-heated discussions there will be directly about you and your taste; the color of sheets in your bedroom, the plates in your kitchen, the clothes on your back, and the car you drive.

In fact, your taste in color and design is at the heart of the meeting.

It's not truly a secret meeting, but restricted to the 1,500 or so color and design professionals in the United States who have paid $650 annual dues to CMG to be there. In private, these powerful color and marketing experts will "forecast" the new colors of consumer products you will buy in the marketplace a year or two from now.

The color of a product in a highly competitive marketplace can be as important to manufacturers as feathers are to a rooster. Today colors are "inter-industry-dependent," which means colors appearing in one industry influence others - light blue or green on cars slips over onto refrigerators, or bold colors from pro sports uniforms are modified for cars.

"We have been accused of being the color mafia," says Pat Verdolt, president of Color Services and Associates of Huntley, Ill., who has attended CMG conferences for 20 years. "People think we dictate colors, but if you know the process, you know this is impossible."

At one of two CMG meetings each year, members gather behind closed doors in some 45 industry-category workshops - including fashion, transportation, home living - for a day and a half of discussions. They interpret the trends that influence colors.

As colors emerge out of the discussions, they are finalized into a palette of perhaps a dozen colors. A steering committee finalizes the list into an official CMG forecast. Among the commercial colors forecast by CMG in l998 for wide appeal in 2001 are the following delicious-sounding colors:

*Bon Soir: "a tinted blue-black that is a diamond in the rough."

*Provence: "a rich, clean, Mediterranean red-base blue."

*Van Gold: "a burnished, opulent, malleable metallic."

*Wasabi: "a nonacidic, minimalistic, muted green, similar to an Asian green."

*Aquarelle: "a clear, refreshing water-influenced green/blue."

*Royal Plum: "an icon of royalty and wealth; spirituality and ceremonial ritual inspire this hue."

No photos, swatches of fabric, or samples of the colors are released to the public. "The palette is exclusive to the membership for a year," says Ms. Verdolt, "and after a year we can reveal it. The reason is because the members do all the work, and if we released it right away, everybody else would get it for free."

The forecast becomes a design tool for professionals. "It's one more bit of information that we use to develop colors for specific products for specific markets," says Nada Napoletan Rutka, of Nada Associates in Pittsburgh, a former president of CMG.

"A handful of people do not decide the colors," she says. "CMG's primary purpose is to provide a forum for the exchange of color information."

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