Colour, Complements, Clothes, and Cosmetics
December 20, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 10 Comments
You met Louise in Louise and Stevan Are Light Springs. This is a closeup of her eye.
Every human being is a colour story. The eyes are indeed the window of the soul because the colour story resides in them.
Your season is present in the colours and patterns of your iris design. Sometimes, the season can be read from the eye, it’s so classic. The eye might also contain traces of several seasons, not all of which will matter in how colour affects the skin in the colour analysis.
Colours and line patterns
The iris is predominantly blue or blue-gray. All the webbing radiates out likes waves. That’s a Summer eye.
But the skin at the inner corner and outer corner is yellowish. There is a yellow sunshine around the pupil, though separated from the pupil by a space. These are Spring’s traces.
Eyelashes are brown, indicating a lighter season.
Louise is a Spring, but she tends towards the cool side, close to Light Summer.
OK, so what good is all this information?
Clothing
Since yellow and purple are complements on a color wheel, meaning they’re opposite one another, each colour is intensified in the presence of the other. All the violets and orchid colours look beautiful with soft yellows. When Louise wears these colours, that yellow circlet around the iris looks like a garland of sunshine beaming out of her eyes. It illuminates the entire eye area, which looks healthy and youthful.
There is the slightest touch of green with the blue here. Turquoise, very much a Spring colour, looks remarkable on Louise. Nobody but Spring can do it so incredibly well. The right shade of turquoise, which she finds in her personal colour swatches, will detect and repeat the precise shade in the eye. The eye colour can become extremely powerful simply by repeating it exactly in clothing.
Makeup
Eyeshadow hilite should be cream with a tinge of soft pale yellow. This will repeat the yellow crown in the eye design more effectively than a cooler shade.
If you look at the yellow wreath in the iris, it has a light tan colour. From the 2 to 5 o’clock positions, it is a darker and less yellow shade of brown. This is very similar to the hair colour. If opportunity allows, matching eyeshadow to a brown or gray in the eye accentuates the eye in a way that appears very natural and blended. Colours diffuse, repeat, connect, and the whole flow feels very pleasing.
When you plant a garden, you repeat the same colour over and over. A garden made up of 1 appearance of 10 different plants requires far more visual effort, like a flea market. When the mind sees balance and repetition, it sees harmony, and so beauty.
I like brown eye makeup best on Louise. The article The Mystery Of Brown, the second of the 3 posts in this series, explained how different Spring and Autumn browns are from one another. If your mind says dull, earthy, heavy, brown-peach, brown-orange, gold-orange, muted, or drab gray, do not buy it. If it looks like a metal (copper, gold), do not buy it. If it looks like Autumn leaf colours, put it back.
Finding complementary colours
The web is loaded with free, small, simple downloadable programs to help you work with colour more precisely.
If you Google “digital color meter”, you’ll find lots of choices for little charts that tell you the precise web codes for whatever colour your mouse is hovering over.
I like simplicity. Too many bells and whistles are like cell phones with 1000 menus. Who knows how to use more than 10 of them?
I like this tool for finding complementary colours. The page features all kinds of colour picking tools, in the right margin. Play with them, they’re easy and interesting.
Type cdd87e into the box under the left square. That’s close to the yellow colour in Louise’s eye. See the purple show up opposite? Cool, hey?
Less is more. It looks expensive and organized. Begin by understanding precisely what you have, what you ARE, and you know everything. The rest is easy.
Soft Summer Jewelry 1
December 15, 2009 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
It always begins with the same question. What does this person feel like?
How we decorate what’s INside on the OUTside?
The Soft Summer person
These people are very True Summery in most ways. They are not reclusive, shy, or introverted. They don’t need to be the boss, though they could be good at it. They don’t require center-stage attention. Theirs is a more subtle, serene, quiet energy.
The trace of Autumn puts a different spin on things. The Soft Summer is usually more sporty, with faster and more focused physical energy. They have a cut-to-the-chase practicality that gets the story told or the job done sooner, without True Summer’s inclination to dwell on details.
Petal and pearl necklace. Love it in charcoal too. Love it.
Jewelry for the personality
To speak for them, their jewelry must follow the same tendencies. The pieces are less lacy and feminine than True Summer. There is a feeling of more solidity, but they’re by no means chunky. Autumn and Summer combined can make for a very headstrong individual. The jewelry should not feel retiring or lightweight. These can be among the most persistent, immovable personalities so a persevering quality in the jewelry is appropriate.
The metal is silver, unless they border their warmer neighbor of Soft Autumn quite closely. Theoretically, as a Neutral Season, gold could be worn in small proportions. It would be the deeper, more mellow gold of Autumn, rather than Spring’s very yellow gold that just looks cheap on anyone else.
Good behaviour and personal restraint are the hallmarks of the Summer personality. What better jewel to define that sophitication than pearls? I think they suit the Soft Summer colours even better than the True Summer. The colours of a misty morning, of a foggy harbor, with the light of day coming through…I love the feeling of that with a seashell- coloured pearl. Creamy pearls would even work well, just not too yellow.
Soft Summer’s colour code
Just as clothing colour combinations can venture further from True Summer’s best monochromatic (several shades of the SAME colour) look, so can jewelry. Different colours can be combined, as long as they all remain true to the personal colour swatches in the Colours Book.
Remember that while you may mix different colours from your personal colour palette, such as antique rose and jade green or pearl with orchid, how beautiful would that be, all the colours themselves are of low saturation. The whole look of this season revolves around that concept. We saw in What Are Clear And Soft Colours? that these colours are all closer to grey than in the Clear Colour seasons. Are they dull and drab? No way. They’re just relatively a little grayer. They’re willow, sage, and clover, not grass.
I’m so happy to be doing this season, I get to talk about one of my favorite companies, J.Crew. All the pictures are linked back to their site.
Shadow facet bracelet at J.Crew.
The bracelet above is gold, but there’s not much of it. The colours are of low saturation. This mauve or brown-tinged gray is basically your eye shadow. The weight is heavier but there’s a classic and understated feeling.
I’ve been wanting to put these up. They are so sweet. You’ll find many types of pearls on this site, but these are so pretty.
A dainty but more solid pearl.
The Pearl Twisted Hammock necklace is stunning.
J.Crew doesn’t do a lot of silver in jewelry or I would have posted it. Also, keep watches in mind for all 5 seasons comprising some Autumn, or jewelry that DOES something. Autumn’s song is the “search for the truth and get the job done”. Functional pieces represent the efficiency they exude.
You’ll find more of these pieces. Look for classic with a kick, the summary of the Soft Summer person.
Emily is a True Winter
December 11, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
Emily has passed the milestones of her first 20 years. The next 20 years will involve marriage, career, and family, often all at once. It’s in these years that women have the least amount of time to spend on themselves, both inside and out. The demands can be overwhelming and once we emerge on the other side, many of us still look like the students we were when we last bought age-appropriate makeup.
Like so many women, in every age group, Emily doesn’t wear makeup. It’s easy to understand. Very few women can accurately choose what cosmetic colours suit them best. Many have tried but the result didn’t speak for them, so they felt like impersonators; or the sales pressure was too intense, and the upsells too mind-boggling, to honestly express uncertainty. We’ve all seen, or been, the woman at the makeup counter looking completely overdone. You can FEEL her thinking “Get me home before someone sees me.”
Emily would like to know what clothes look best and some help choosing makeup that doesn’t make her feel painted. She has the sense and good taste to want to be noticed for the right reasons.
When the colour is wrong, you can never achieve the magic, no matter how lightly or heavily you apply it. When you start hearing “Just apply a thin layer and blot it to a stain”, forget it. If you need all those shenanigans, the colour is wrong and besides, it won’t last 10 minutes. We all know what makeup- sitting-on-top-of-skin looks like. When the colour melds with the skin, you can apply quite a bit before it starts looking fake.
Put a light, wishy-washy colour on a True Winter and unattractive things happen. Their eyes are dull, almost empty. The person so dominates the colour with their inherent colour intensity, that all you see is a face that appears ill. The skin is dull and shadowed. What happens to the skin happens to the whites of the eyes. As they yellow or grey, the crispness of the eye colour is terribly diluted. It makes you FEEL sad to look at that face.
Emily’s colouring is so strong that she wore many of the Bright Winter drapes well, the most brilliant shock colour there is. Bright Winter requires a little heat in the skin, which Em doesn’t have. As a result, the Bright Winter drapes drained the colour from her face and turned her skin grayish, like the walls of the room.
Though I’ve often said eye colour isn’t relevant to Season, I want to clarify that. Any Season can have any eye colour and that remains a fact. But just as the drapes are looking to make a connection with the skin, so are they searching for the like colours in the eyes. They are astonishingly and precisely coloured to A. force a reaction in the skin, and B. to detect an exact colour match in the person’s skin. When the association is made, it’s electrifying. Em has navy blue in her eye. Watch it come out when like colours find one another.
Lessons
1. If you’re not used to lipstick, use sheer colours but stay true to your swatches. The blue-eyed winter with a soft feeling about her may do better in soft fuchsia than red, but too much colour would be outside Em’s comfort zone. We used Cover Girl Amazemint in 615 (Cozy Plum) and it’s lovely.
2. Even young people should use shimmer makeup very carefully, if at all. Even on a young True Winter, it makes Emily’s upper eyelid too prominent. Frost is attention-getting. It says “Lookit me! Lookit me!”. Classy makeup doesn’t do that. It’s your supporting player but it is not YOU. Let your makeup be a diffusion of your own colours floating over your face, but let people look at your eyes because they are the shine in your face.
3. Here is an example of Winter who might deepen her hair to match the brows, but always remaining true to the base shade. Nature will never colour you wrong. Her hair is the right colour but Emily could enhance the dark brows/milk skin effect more by deepening her own shade a touch. It will look real because the brows are dark, but more dramatic (not necessarily better, just a stronger visual effect).
4. This is also a place to think about how bad it looks if a Winter were to lighten her hair. The dark brows become more prominent, and look severe. Severe=aging.
For any Season, even if you don’t do much with your brows, there will be more attention on your eyes than ever before. Finding a stylist who can remove stray hairs without altering the shape to look like Pamela Anderson is good.
5. As a Dark Winter, my eyeliner is browner and lighter (MAC Grey Utility). Em will wear a crisper darker grey (Graphiti). I don’t believe anyone of lighter complexion than Frieda Pinto can wear black eyeliner, certainly not in the daytime. True Winter’s grey consists of black and white. It’s a pure, true grey.
6. You all know I think blue/green/purple on a face that can be seen as a color is a cartoon, right? Don’t ever wear it to a job interview, and only to work if you are an artist of some sort. Estee Lauder Black Plum and Merle Norman Sapphire are examples of colour that doesn’t look like colour. They are less hard than black and the viewer doesn’t strongly perceive purple or blue.
When she saw her pictures, she didn’t recognize herself.
It takes a certain courage to step up to a personal colour analysis. Like having your fortune told, as empowering as it is, you may hear some things you’re not ready for. I’ve been told that I read palms. What I really read is potential. To see yourself as you never have, both inside and out, takes endurance. It also brings the responsibility of answering the question “What are you going to do with it?”
Em will travel her own colour journey. It won’t look like mine or yours or anyone else’s. Some of it may not gel for years. Doesn’t matter. She’s got a lifetime to refine it. She’ll feel confident and beautiful wearing makeup and know that people see the real Emily. It takes more time to convince yourself of all that it can be, and how powerful the final effect is, when every element meshes.
Once you get to the makeup counter and are told that you don’t really need to follow your personal colour swatches, you really have to dig deep and find some fortitude. Why would you NOT use them? Why would the sales assistant NOT use them? If they’ve never had a PCA and watched the process, they don’t understand why you’re holding the book you have, or what the other Books look like. They’re tremendously good at what they do, but colour analyzed skin tone perfection is a key that can only be turned one way.
You have become empowered to know things about your skin and colouring that they simply can’t know. But YOU know. YOU saw it. This is one situation where close enough is NOT good enough.
True Summer Jewelry
December 1, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
Presuming that cameos and pearls have been done, though they’d be most appropriate, what does the most feminine season of all wear?
True Summer word pictures
I find True Season personalities more faithful to their Season than are Neutral Season characters, who show far more variability.
True Summer is deeply decent, sensitive, and so civilized that they put the rest of us to shame. For Summer, the word pictures are flowing, the most beautiful blues and roses, pastel, still water, hazy, graceful, precise, detailed, refined, fine, and understated.
Just as Summer’s colours are soft, so is the feeling and reflection of the jewelry. Nothing moves or changes quickly. Matching elements and pieces are in keeping with the monochromatic scheme that suits Summer best.
Multiple different styles : feels too much like a miscellaneous assortment on Summer’s soothing ambiance.
Sparkle, dazzle, and movement : excessive energy variation feels inexpensive and random.
Summer is quiet, focused, and particular. The message on their answering machine is slowly and clearly enunciated. Ask for directions, and you will be awhile listening, but you’ll get there on the first try. Ask a Spring to meet you at a certain time and you’ll be lucky to see each other the same day.
Big, heavy, chunky pieces : no (proportionate to the person wearing them) . The size of Summer’s jewelry is small. It does not insist on the spotlight. The size is intended to convey an uncommon jewel of extreme value.
Metals
The metal is certainly silver, though you could veer towards the warmer white gold if you approach the warmer Soft Summer (like Jennifer Aniston), or rose gold if your 12 Season colour analysis showed your skin tone to drift the other way, towards Light Summer (Princess Diana gave that impression). If you have a Wintery air, you can harden the metal to platinum.
Sapphire
Stones from your personal colour palette always work. Sapphire in pink or blue are perhaps the best. This brooch was custom-created, but it perfectly represents the rarity, the investment piece (as Searcy said) quality of this Season.
Diamond, fine cut
If you once thought yourself a Winter and live in the True Summer’s darker realm, as do many Summers that I see, you can integrate a Winter element. Jaclyn Smith and Farrah Fawcett gave that impression. Both dramatically weakened their impact when they chose yellow in their hair over dark ash brown and ash brown, respectively. Use diamond, but choose one that is more delicately cut. You can also use blue sapphire with diamond, but choose a piece that is exquisite and detailed, rather than heavy or bold. Summer is not an attention-seeking presence.
Tourmaline
Tourmaline is not a single mineral, but a group with similar properties. There are many perfect colour options among these stones.
For green-eyed summers, there are some uncommon options among these stones. Watermelon Tourmaline is a rare and beautiful gem.
Rose Quartz
For the lighter women in this group, rose quartz is very beautiful. It is perfect in its soft lustre and very compatible with your colour palette.
Look at the purple amethyst while you’re there.
Basics
What if you shop at Sears? Circular silver hoops are a staple. Where the classic shape of the oval defined Winter’s Jewelry, Summer’s circle is associated with childhood and grace.
These hoops are silver. I like the wavy lines. They feel flowing and smooth, but have more substance if you’d like something less delicate. Lacy filigree fulfills the criteria for Summer’s jewelry but as Searcy points out, it doesn’t always look expensive.
Opal
Opal, of course, must belong in this group, as do turquoise and aquamarine. The Shades Of Blue wire necklace feels right to me. These are made upon request by the artist, Janine Antulov. Follow the link to read her description of the creation of this piece.
It doesn’t have to feel like ultraconservative Grace-Kelly jewelry. The rules are guidelines, intended for you to add your own spin. That’s how we speak for ourselves subconsciously. Design something unique that resonates most strongly with your True Summer colouring and personality.
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