A Blonde True Winter Part 2
June 30, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 22 Comments
Perhaps you met Hanka, the newest member of the Sci\ART family of personal colour analysts, in the first article, A Blonde True Winter.
If you have watched an analysis performed, you could accept any result as amazing, surprising, but completely plausible. The Sci\ART process forces you to just see what is, not what you think should be, a reality check.
Your eyes only need to see this once to go through to the other side, where the Season stereotypes have evaporated. You know the feeling of being dragged to your colour frontiers, resisting all the way (because the change we resist the hardest is the one we need to make the most to reach our next level), and surrendering the preconceptions. After that, like with all change, you realize it was harder to think about than to actually do.
But enough philosophy. Hanka responded to some doubts in the Comments of the previous article. People very rightly ask for visual proof. I’m not posting the blonde photo here, I’m hoping you’ll see this one first, and let it imprint itself in your mind (and you’ll turn inwards and find an awareness of the pathways your mind immediately starts to set out on, with so little substantiation; until you’re aware of that, you can’t have a roadblock ready for next time.) Hanka has done a lot of work in voice and theater, and sent me this photo from a performance a short while ago.
I never analyze skin from photos, far too many variables going on, so I look for other things.
1. Am I looking at makeup or the woman? The woman. I see intensity of colouration, whites are sharp, colours appear highly saturated, no soft, misty feeling. No sunshine, no earthy feelings, even in the skin, from what I can see.
2. Did dark eyeliner close in the size of the eye, because it would on someone who couldn’t balance the darkness? No. In fact, the eyes seem bigger with crisper outlines and better definition from the face. Our eyes are the focal point of our body. When our appearance expresses us truthfully and most beautifully to the viewer, others are looking at our eyes and listening to our words, no tensions, no distractions from busy colour F/X elsewhere. The eye wanders around the composition with ease, very happy that all the colours belong reasonably together, no feeling of a colour battlefield.
3. Does the hair colour steal colour from the face, or clear the skin to look clean and fresh, but not yellow or grey? Seems clear and fresh, not older in any way I can see.
4. Does the hair colour dull or drain the eye colour, or intensify it? Intensifies it. The eyes can balance and corroborate that hair colour. They are able to vouch for each other and seem believable on the same head. I’m not saying that Hanka should darken her hair, which I have never, ever seen improve a person. For most of us, our best hair is the colour we had around 25, when we’d settled into our Season but before we darkened with maturity, and then lightened a shade or two to soften the concentrated pigments of chemical colour. My opinion only, very open to being convinced otherwise. Like lipstick, though, wigs are an interesting means of ‘draping’ and seeing what happens. You can be surprised.
5. Do my eyes keep coming back to a too-bright lipstick, or am I looking at eyes, but having the lipstick in the same visual field and feeling good with that? The latter. Is the lip perfect, maybe not, but there are certainly some things about it that work.
6. Flip the lip colour to something nude. Does the face lose definition and freshness, or is it a relief? No relief, it would be boring and flat. I like lip intensity to approximate the intensity of hair and clothing, adjusting darkness a bit for complexion and occasion. On a lighter Season, our eyes would be stuck on these lips and keep coming back to the lips, unless we applied an effort we could actually feel to drag our gaze elsewhere.
7. Look at other things in the photo. They will have an effect, which is why PCA is done in a grey room. That wall plaque behind her may be throwing some heat into the skin. Does it feel like it belongs with her, could she wear a turtleneck that colour and would you feel good, or feel like “Uh, Hanka, have you got anything else to wear?” Maybe I’m not sure. You don’t have to always know. If I can’t make a decision with certainty, I don’t make it. I keep going. It might not be her best outfit, but something about it might work…the darkness level? the rosiness? Not sure. I like it better than the yellow-brown doorframe off to the right, and I feel better all of a sudden when I block it out with my hand.
8. Is the makeup just making the hair colour work? Again, not sure, but the face is not so different from the body, except that it photographs whiter as makeup always does.
9. If you have progressed far enough in your understanding of personal colour to agree that hair colour can be variable (even if you can’t get to admitting that it should have a place in the Season decision), if I showed you this woman first…would you still say Spring? Or were you really just seeing a blue-eyed blonde and got stuck in the trap they taught us oh, so, well, way back when.
PCA is about skin and one photo tells you next to nothing about skin. Colour is understood by comparison because pigments x, y, and z in your skin, though they look like everyone else’s skin, will react totally differently to colour A than Hanka’s pigments, or your BFF’s. Skin may all look similar, but it reacts differently. It can’t be predicted, expected, or assumed. Stereotypes are assumptions.
Soft Autumn Darkness Adjustments
June 24, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 24 Comments
Every Season makes darkness adjustments for hair colour one woman at a time. There will always be individuals who don’t look right in the median colour, and fare better along the outer edges of the curve. I love hair colour that looks believable, like it happened by itself, and that flatters the skin to the utmost. This is when the viewer feels most relaxed.
Depending on depth of complexion, personal taste, and occasion, cosmetic darkness is adjusted too, though always staying inside the personal colour palette of the Season, and aiming for the same goals as with the hair.
In 12 Tone personal colour analysis, Soft Autumn is the name given to the type of natural colouring that contains colours mostly characteristic of the Autumn group, but cooled and grayed by a smaller measure of Summer.
In previous posts on Soft Autumn hair colour, I showed a coppery apricot colour as being quite lovely. In every Season, many hair colours are not only possible, but better and righter. Sometimes the freckle colour is the perfect highlight, even in the Dark Autumn or further out in the Autumn family, at Dark Winter.
Soft Autumn is a typical Neutral Season in that they have a range of warmer and cooler colours, but none fully warm or cool. The value (meaning, Light>>Dark) range that perfects the skin has some movement too, though never extends to extremes of either one for the Soft Seasons. What this woman strives for most importantly is very muted, soft colour. Muted and warm, that is, because maximally muted (greyed) and cooled belongs to Soft Summer, peanut shell and misty mauve respectively.
The element of coolness means that they are not especially orange-tolerating. Hair and freckling can skew the perception. The woman above (all 3 photos) has many apricot brown freckles. She adds those colours to her hair, giving a warmer appearance, as you see in the lower photo where natural medium warm brown and apricot highlight are visible. She can wear soft golden-oranges beautifully in makeup as long as they’re not very dark. Regardless of hair colour, darkness in makeup is a caution point for Soft Autumn, often appearing darker than expected from the pencil or tube colour.
Some Soft Autumns are harder to imagine in apricot, like Kate Moss, who does not seem orangey at all. (I only know she gives a Soft Autumn impression). Though the blonde that Charlize Theron wears well never flatters her, and warm blonde does, she is neither very orange or dark. Some of these seem almost too orange. She can do more darkness and warmth than we usually see and look far more interesting with less paint. This feels just beyond the upper darkness limit where colour is being pulled from the skin.
Kate Moss has smaller, sharper features and wears darker hair better than what we normally see, but does not do very dark so well. This is a good gallery. 6 and 8 seem very good, while the rest make your insides tense up. Or, go back even farther.
The less well blonde works, the more Autumn presence there may be. Kathie Lee is a good example of a woman who was beautiful with deeper, warmer hair colour.
Google Kelly Macdonald. Though you’d think she’d be better in the lighter warm brown hair, I prefer the darker. Many have a naturally quite dark hair colour. They might be expected to be darker Autumn, but they’re drained out by those drapes. On Kelly, orange hair is overheated, not as good as a more neutral brown.
On Kelly, we again see those sharper features that are more often seen (by me) in Soft Summer, where the facial architecture resembles Candice Bergen’s who is probably a Summer of some sort. Soft Autumn usually carries more squared, slightly blunted features like Claire Danes, but there is interchangeability in this. Is that to go with Autumn’s blunter personality? I never said that. I would go as far as direct.
I wonder if so many models are Soft Autumns because their very medium-ness of colouring makes them versatile and that particular bone structure is so pretty when it shows up in this Season. Molly Sims, Drew Barrymore, Gisele – it’s in the fine nose, high round cheekbones, defined jaw, and feminine mouth. The example of Rene Russo came up on Facebook recently, and I can’t think of a better illustration of this combination of facial geometry and colouring.
Candice Bergen Life Magazine, USA, July 24, 1970
There was a request for a formal look for Soft Autumn. I visited my latest happy place and made this. Our Polyvore craze has been a great thing. In practicing to be my own Season (Dark Winter), I didn’t realize how capably I had learned to exclude everything else. Now, the DW imprint is strong in my head. It is high time to reopen the windows to register the many choices on the shopping landscape.
Maybe you will think, those colours are all too similar. When I do this, I’m essentially following the guidelines of your natural colouring, how it feels to look at you. I dress you as you already are, to be consistent with the light you already emanate. On Soft Seasons, there are no big jumps from one colour to the next. Transitions exist, but as the eye moves from the skin to hair to eyes, it doesn’t encounter anything bold or sudden in the colours themselves or how they are combined.
The purse is the warm hair highlight. The lighter woman might choose from the right side, the darker from the left. The darker shoes could be worn by any of the three Autumn Seasons. The metals are not very hot. I love wood, shell, and muted bead on Soft Autumns, in keeping with the female-earthy feel. Natural fibers and textures are fabulously good on them, which drew me to the linen-and-flax feeling of the jacket, but it might be too casual for this ensemble.
Pearls? I love femininity on Soft Autumn. In this regard, Summer leaves a strong trace. The curve-hugging rippling fabric of the dress…. But everything is very medium. There are no extremes, the swatches all hug the center in Warm>>Cool (but tipping over to warm) and Light>>Dark. Only saturation is low and soft.
Colouring hair may enable wearing warmer or cooler choices from the Neutral Season swatches, but you’d still stay within that Season’s own colour menu or the skin’s perfection will pay a price. I do not believe that anyone can convincingly and flatteringly colour her hair to take her outside her Season. I know for a fact that many will disagree. OK.
Recreate the light you already cast. Make the wavelengths you add be synchronous with the ones you are. To the viewer, it feels effortless as floating.
A Blonde True Winter
June 19, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 30 Comments
Kathryn Kalisz’s Sci\ART 12 Tone system revolutionized personal colour analysis in many ways. By conforming only with how light and colour behave in Nature (instead of restructuring), by creating 8 Neutral Seasons (whose colours were exclusive to each), and by insisting on a level of colour accuracy not previously attained, a new standard was set. She also shook up the status quo by ignoring, even denying, the entrenched beliefs and the stereotypes. Hair and eye colour are variable in every Season and will mislead if allowed into the Season decision. Season can only be known with certainty by observing the skin’s reaction to specific colours placed adjacent to it.
Hanka Kralikova is a newer member of the Sci\ART family of colour analysts. I’d like to introduce her to you by letting you read her story, in her words. Even colour analysts have to climb the wall of who they think they are and who they’ve been told they are, to meet themselves as they really are. We have also stared dumbfounded as the evidence that comes from our own colouring, that has always been there to be unveiled and understood, becomes less and less deniable. For an analyst, I think it’s extremely important to have personally lived this experience. I expect that many readers will recognize Hanka’s journey.
Hanka is opening a studio in Prague. Should you wish to have a consultation, she can help you with accommodations, another reason to visit this most beautiful city. You can email at hanka@topimage.cz. A website is in the works.
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Here are older photos to show my natural colouring.
I have been a freelance make-up artist for several years and became a certified Image Consultant last year. I realized that I needed to get the colours right as they are the core for everything. I first tried colour analysis as a client about ten years ago – not the best experience. The analyst told me I was a warm Season and since I am blonde and blue-eyed, I must be Spring. Full stop. I bought some make-up for Spring, used it several times, did not like it, and left it at the bottom of my cosmetic drawer. I decided colour analysis was good for nothing.
Couple of years later, during my make-up artist course, we also talked about colours. The tutor even analyzed us. This time it was different – they were already using the 12 Season analysis system. The only problem was – someone translated it from English and misinterpreted bright as shiny. Again, I was blonde, there were no standardized drapes (everybody trying to do analysis picked their own or bought them from someone who did so), no proper lighting, no neutral surrounding. So the result was: I am light and more cool than warm but True Summer colours are too muted for me – I am probably Light Summer.
Next time at a style course I was told (without any draping at all) that I was Light with no predominant warmth or coolness. I could choose if I wanted to be Light Spring or Light Summer. I tried both since each had something that worked. I liked the brightness of the Spring and coolness of the Summer but never was able to find a good lipstick for myself. I should have realized by then – cool and bright are quite good indications, but first I was blonde and second, hardly anybody can be objective about themselves. I always thought about myself as kind of wishy-washy, light and quite soft looking.
At the end of 2009 I was searching the Internet for some information on colour analysis, convinced there must be some system that could tell me exactly who I am. I really mean that. Knowing my colours really helped to better understand and accept my personality. I found it. It was called Sci\ART, it was based on real science (both my parents are physicists so I must have some science somewhere in my genes) and it made sense. I bought the book Understanding Your Colour and received it with a personal note from Kathryn. I loved the book and at the beginning of 2010, I put the money together to go to States and learn it. Unfortunately I was too late. Kathryn was not there anymore. I had never met her but still I felt as I had lost a friend.
I struggled with colours for another year when I gave it another try. I searched the Internet again and found several people who were Sci\ART certified trainers. I was lucky that one of them, Terry Wildfong, had been thinking about retiring and she was looking for someone to train who could then buy the business from her. We exchanged several e-mails and in the end of March, I was in Grand Rapids waiting for my life to change. And it did.
At the end of the first day of my training after we went through all the theory, Terry did my draping and showed me how to perform the analysis. I was expecting her to confirm I was Light, finally decide between one of the two Light Seasons, hoping that the Sci\ART ‘scientific’ palettes would have the right colours for me. I had my hair and clothes covered with grey so I could see just the face. The draping began. Terry did not need to say much. The first test drapes showed I was cool – there might be a little warmth but not much (“so, I will most probably be Light Summer”, I was thinking to myself). But then came the shock. We compared different Seasons drapes in between each other and I could see which ones were better but still was not able (or did not want to) to put it together. I looked great in brighter colours – I had never realized how bright my eyes were – and much better in cool colours then in warm ones. Black was not bad at all, crisp white looked perfect. Still, my brain was not willing to accept it. Then Terry said “So, do you know which Season you are?”
I went through all the results one more time – cool and quite bright, I can handle quite dark colours, I look great in icy pastels, there might be a little bit of warmth but not enough to make me a Neutral Season. No, it cannot be – but what else? Can I be a True Winter? Terry agreed. I was in shock. “It is not possible, I am LIGHT. How can I be WINTER?” Terry put some winter make-up on me and we went through “Ooh and Ah” session with a set of luxury drapes. I have never looked so good in my whole life. Thank you, Terry.
What was I going to do with my wardrobe full of pastels, those coral T-shirts, and a jacket I bought only recently? My head was swirling around when I was leaving that day. I slept very poorly that night. When I woke up the following morning, first thing I did was hold up my new True Winter palette next to my face and looked in the mirror. “Ok, I am True Winter, then. Let’s start new life.” That day I was analyzing people Terry had scheduled for me. I was very happy that I learned my lesson the day before. Some people can be very obvious – the moment you see them you know what Season they are and the draping just confirms it. With others you get surprised. I do not try to guess anymore, I wait for the drapes to tell me.
Instead of lunch I went shopping. I bought a pair of black jeans, white T-shirt, black tunic, bright blue, white and black dress with geometric pattern, and a bright pink lip gloss. It felt great. I had not worn black for ages and I fell in love with the deep berry lip gloss I never dared look at before. When I got back to Prague I spent a day sorting my clothes and found out one interesting thing. There were some pieces, mostly impulsive buys, which were spot on or very close to my Winter palette, mostly in purple, my favorite colour. I also had some brighter blue T-shirts and tank tops, one pink sweatshirt, and a dark chocolate jacket and suit. The jeans could stay, too. In the end I got rid off of some clothes, mainly in coral and some soft colours that I never wore. I could wear and combine what was left easily.
I still want to add some black and white, new for me, and also some other colours. I never go shopping without my True Winter palette anymore. I do not bother looking at things that are not in my colours. And above all I get compliments on how well I look even from people I would never expect to notice such things 
And one more thing – I have started to experiment with my hair colour (naturally mousy medium blond somewhere between 7 and 8). I got rid of the highlights and tried something a bit darker than my natural colour. It is still not perfect but I am getting there. I have got several comments that my eyes are looking brighter with the darker hair so I think I am heading in the right direction. BTW I had always thought my eyes were dull.
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Here are the ‘dull’ eyes, dearest readers. They contain stars.
And since this amount of cuteness would brighten any day, here is the child’s colouring.
Don’t let your left brain see patterns it is convinced that it recognizes, and proceed to dictate to you what they mean. Left brains try to do that, but they’re best relegated to data processing. Data assimilation is better done by the right side. Your eyes see snow and your left brain tells you that you are seeing white. Your right brain sees what really is, that snow is affected by the colours around it, including that of the light, and can be blue powder, a violet cloud, a sparkling yellow carpet. Patterns led to confusion and lack of trust in colour analysis, but they sure are hard to resist, even when you’re aware of their ambush. Approach every person as though they could be any of the 12 Seasons.
If you have questions or comments for Hanka, please add them to the Comments. She’ll be checking in here and on Facebook.
Light Spring Looking Serious
June 14, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 13 Comments
We talked last time about how Light Summer conveys a professional, adult image with a palette that can feel like rainbows and fairy tales.
Light Spring (of the 12 Seasons, this Neutral Season is mostly Spring with a little Summer) is in the same boat. Although creamier and less misty blue, you would use Light Spring’s palette to paint the Fountain of Youth. How we dress, how our faces and bodies look, it’s just the light we give off. Light Spring’s is the creamy green, pink, and white light of a tree in bloom (not just one little flower, as has been suggested ; this is the whole glowing magnificent tree, radiating a clear, young, vital light).
I could suggest that you to aim to project this light when you choose what to buy, but it doesn’t help much at a mall.
Let’s call this beautiful woman Lynn. Light is not the first thing you’d say when you look at Lynn’s face or her overall apperance. She knows from a Sci\ART personal colour analysis that the Light Spring palette created the most perfected skin she could achieve – but skin is difficult to illustrate, so we get caught talking about hair and eyes, though we know neither has a definitive place in deciding Season. This hair colour is a bit darker than her natural colour, but not by much. Lynn’s eye colour is not dark or intense, rather similar to the soft green leaves behind her. There is a great misconception that the Light Seasons are all blue-eyed blondes. Rachel addressed this topic better than anyone in her article on revising our idea of Spring and Summer.
Notice the perfection of the earrings, dress, sweater, both in style and colour. These people look younger than anyone else, for longer, a marvelous gift. But they don’t necessarily want others to think Barbie, Tinkerbell, cupcake, candy heart, Mother’s Day Cake, or anything else with a pediatric drift, when they assemble an outfit. This can be challenging with a palette that is sunny and delicate to the point of enchantment.
Light bounces everywhere, though not full on squinty light. The overall feeling is distinctly warmer than Light Summer’s, but lightness of colour is shared as the most important aspect of perfecting skin tone. Every item need not be perfect, is not in the collection below, and will not be in stores. The overall impression pulls single items into a cohesive Light Spring feeling.
Don’t get too playful. Though a coloured bag or jacket is so good on Springs, the brighter the colour, the plainer the style, at least for professional impressions.
Make big use of neutrals, and remember that they are luminous too.
The green blouse would be better with ivory than white, but the overall feeling is light. The pants with the yellow blouses are not part of the collection. Pants are very light neutral. Most khakis and chinos are too orange, heavy, and/or yellow-brown for Light Spring. Light beige pants are quite fine, but camel can look almost like furniture, bulky and solid on this airy lightness. It just put friction into the system that doesn’t feel good. Notice in the set above that you can feel some restraint still where heat is concerned.
In response to the Light Summer Looking Serious post, a valid point was raised that I want to share. Why does the Light Summer coat look so light (from the previous post), and this suit so much darker? Is there a difference in how dark the two Light Seasons can get? Great questions.
In my head, they went to about the same level of darkness, or not enough that it would matter in stores, though Light Spring would be the lighter of the two, with the main difference in side-by-side swatches being that Light Spring is yellower and a touch clearer (less grey). That was true of the pre-2010 books I still have. When I looked at my post 2010 swatch books (no idea when in 2010 they were made, if they were old stock or new formulas), Light Spring is definitely the lighter palette of the more recent books. A sincere thanks to the woman who pointed this out.
Sci\ART analyst Maytee Garza has posted all 12 Tone palettes on her Shutterfly page, along with photos of people in each Season. It’s a gorgeous page, one you will want to bookmark. Light Summer’s value limit is darker. The Light Spring palette looks the same as my post (not a typo) 2010 books. To look at the two, Light Spring’s look a bit hazier (as in misty,rather than grey), though those are the clearer, less muted colours. My explanation: as they lose Summer’s greyness and take on more of Spring’s yellow light, they become creamy. The purer the yellow, increasing as we move into Spring, the lighter the colour. Muted means closer to grey, a Summer characteristic. If True Summer is skim milk and True Spring is real cream, Light Summer is still only about 1%, whereas Light Spring is what? half ‘n half, not as heavy as whipping cream.
Light Spring colours must be tints, with more white added to them, or that’s how it seems, though I am no colour mixing expert. There may also be a photographic factor here, since the Light Spring swatches are the clearer (less grey) ones to look at IRL, perhaps a bit like the effect of being photographed while wearing sunscreen. In thinking of how to describe the difference, overexposed came to mind.
These articles are not intended to show the colour extremes. Only the swatch books can do that. These sets are more trying to communicate an overall feeling and simulate a real shopping experience. The coat in the Light Summer post was among their mid-darkness level browns. Is the coat above too dark for Light Spring? You may feel that it certainly is. To me, it is OK, though they would not go even one degree darker. I left it there for the illustration.
Is the colour too something-not-right, better suited to an Autumn? A Soft Autumn could probably wear it, though I don’t see a lot of orange in the colour, it seems more a Spring yellow-brown on this screen.
The issue for me is whether a Light Season would wear the jacket and pants together or if the overall look would be too heavy and somber. I still think it would work with a light blouse, but some of the very fair women may feel otherwise. Every woman will have to make a darkness adjustment within her palette, based on the darkness of her natural colouring and her own preference, how much makeup she likes, etc. The model wearing the suit is holding her own in it. The model in the photo to her left probably could as well.
How could I, I forgot handbags for the Lights?!
Interchangeable for the Light Seasons. Not too much hardware, which looks heavy. Light means light by every connotation of the word.
Light purses get dirty, I know, but I still prefer the look with this woman, clothes, and makeup.
The right column, 2nd from top, though a nice colour, may feel too clunky and heavy. May also depend on the size of the woman carrying it. Purses look good when they kind of match our body shape. Rounded with rounded, boxy with boxy, big and little with big and little.
No brown bags, which feel too weighed down and utility for Spring, especially Light Spring, even in a workplace look. I apologize to anyone with brown purses and respect, indeed welcome, your right to disagree with me as long as you tell me why so I learn something. Left column, 2nd from top, is also a bit heavy, but if something qualifies as cute, it’s probably Spring.
Middle column bottom, the blush pink may not be for the day you chair the meeting, but great for the business lunch the meeting-after-the-meeting. I believe we should find a way to wear our undertone colour every day. Others get that something is going on that their eyes are not often given.
Once again, I set prices at 100 for most items, double what I spend on anything, because beauty is not about how much money you go through.
Light Summer Looking Serious
June 10, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 15 Comments
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, the Light Seasons are the Neutral Season blends of True Spring and True Summer. These people are often not as light to look at as you’d expect, certainly not blue-eyed blondes by necessity. Colour Analysis is not about what you look like. It is about what the colours that make your skin the most perfect have in common.
What’s not to like about the Light Spring and Light Summer? Agreeable in every way, reminding of sunshine, mild weather, pleasant temperatures, and easiness.What if you want to express the serious contender side of yourself, and not a dally in a rowboat?
You can dress like the boss, but he/she probably has no idea what to wear either. Two shades lighter than the men in that business seems reasonable. Can color be used to make women less threatening in male dominated workplaces? Or be seen more as equals?
When you want to be heard, it’s easy to forget that whispers work better. They clear the air like an early morning rain in a world where everyone seems to be yelling. A beautiful, natural face like the one below relaxes everyone around them. They ease the tension in a room just by being there. Light Summer personifies the breath of fresh air like no other.
When we look at the colour palettes fanned out for any Season, our eye tends to be drawn to the colours. If you planted an acre garden and it contained a single bloom, your eye would be drawn to that spot of colour. We have to make a conscious effort to notice all the other colours, meaning the neutrals. They’re the spine of the whole wardrobe, the items that the real colours are added to. Use them a lot. You don’t need an item in everyone of your greens, but owning each of the greys is a good investment. For Light Summer, they are the colour of breath, shade, and shadows.
Monochromatic (all one colour) and analogous (neighbour colours on the colour wheel) colour schemes look organized and work very well on Summers and their blends, though Spring will use more colour difference and brightness in their prints and combinations. Pair a blue-grey with a blue, or a lilac-grey with a colour from the pink-violet family. This quiets the colour but introduces the friendliness, creativity, and confidence that colour does, and is very appropriate at work.
Avoid child like details, like pintucks, gathers, bows, or dots, unless the colour is quite serious and the effect is low key. These can look great on any Spring blend, but we’re trying to look less pediatric. Smocked blouses or hippie/tie-dye tunics can look as fine as peasant and folk styles on Autumn, but best worn on days off.
Keep in mind the most essential aspect of your colouring: it never gets darker than medium, so your clothes don’t either. There is always a light block somewhere to give an overall light feeling, because that’s how looking at you feels. Get too dark and your clothes take over your face, your body, your size, your presence. You have room to move with warmth and coolness, and with mutedness or clearness, because as long as colour stays light, it is very forgiving to your skin tone’s perfection.
Light Summer is gentle colour, misty light, an early sun, and an airiness that’s still cooler than it is warm. Silver and gold would both be fine in the photo above, but silver feels more at home. There is no stark white (I know the boat is white, but that’s your left brain telling you so; if you were to paint this picture, the sky and boat are grey, and silvery grey at that). And black? Put one black spot anywhere here and your eye would see nothing else.
I set the max price at 100 for most items. Your workplace may be more glam than mine, so you may see this as a casual look.
I liked the cardi because it reminds me of how planet Earth looks from outer space, a water planet, all swirling greens, blues, and whites.
Nothing gets very dark. There would be more white tops but they publish with odd reflections.
The blue jacket on the left – too muted? Maybe. It could be sunnier, but sometimes you’ll love something that will be close enough, or you won’t be able to find the perfect thing with the time and money you own. It all has to work in the real world. Light Summer is Summer above all. Denim blues are all pretty good.
The silver watch too chunky? Better suited to a Winter? Maybe, but I like a big watch. The strap is a brushed silver and the stones, numbers, and details set in the face are small. It balances well enough.
As ever, I’m more interested in what you don’t agree with because it helps me learn. I never take anything personally, trust me.
Next post will be Light Spring.
Feeling Right With True Summer
June 3, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 6 Comments
No palette seems harder to accept as one’s own than True Summer, with Soft Summer second. Both are hard to guess and assemble without help. These women usually arrive believing themselves to Soft Autumn if they’re Soft Summer, or a Winter if they’re True Summer. Where does the doubt come from?
From the women I’ve known, watched, shopped with, and listened to, these ideas recur :
1. You know it’s all about the colour feeling on this site. Many misinterpret the personality that the colours invoke. True Summer’s profound morality, planning, gracious demeanor, attention to detail, consideration of others, and strong self-discipline are all well and good, but where are the passion and commitment? We have this idea that strong colours express these better.
Here’s the choice: Do you want to wear royal purple, or do you want to look good? Compare True Summer’s deepy hospitable blue with Winter’s cold and darkly receding ultramarine. Summer’s lighter blue is psychologically easier to associate with wisdom, peace, trust, and commitment, as dependable as our ancient affiliations with sky and water. Winter’s blue is unapproachable to say the least. It stands on its own and needs nobody for nothing.
Winter’s in on the left because
- the colour is strongly saturated; Summer’s are not at maximal intensity
- the colour blocks are distinct; in Summer, the colours flow together
- the pattern is bold, geometric
2. Thinking that the colours all look dowdy, not expressive of the power today’s women know. It’s not all Wedgewood blue. Among sky, orchid, wisteria, watermelon, raspberry, soft teal, turquoise, eucalyptus, clover, pearl, and moonsilver, there is no dowdy. There is unwavering strength and kindness.
As a True Season, True Summer has been around longer, so the stereotype is more deeply entrenched than say, Bright Spring, where there is very little old baggage to displace and is usually learned from the ground up. True Autumn labored under the similar fallacy of army, khaki, and brown until 12 Season personal colour analysis extracted and clarified the Soft palettes.
True Summer is mired in fashion concepts that feel outdated for the self-determination that women today wish to convey (small prints? are you telling me to wear calico? dainty?? are you kidding me?). Boston- based Image Consultant Valeria Chuba resolved the dilemma in this way : “We tend to make the link between color and emotion very easily, but things like pattern, texture, and shape have the same effect as color. Body conscious clothes, silk and cashmere, your version of animal print – these are some of the things that will express that inner passion and still allow you to use your best colors. ”
True Summer’s shares a subtext of grace and strength with classical ballet. Women love to embody this essence, but modern women also sense a submissiveness, or modesty, that they do not identify with. Any Season is only as restrictive as the woman’s vision and what she can seem at home in. Professional, sexy, cool, modern, intruiguing – it can be done with every palette. Get the colours right. Don’t forget how much is conveyed by style. Ruffles feel like someone else’s clothes? Don’t wear them.
The colour on the left is (Dark) Winter’s because
- you can feel the presence of black
- it doesn’t feel fresh or refreshing, like the Summer on the right; it feels imposing
3. The frequently encountered pink phobia. Many True Summers would not wear it. Why is pink so bad? It is the undeniable and proven force of feminine power, not savagery. Winter’s red is more raw, barbaric power. (Are Winter people more ruthless? Not going there, but give anyone 3 words to describe me (Dark Winter) and nice would place between 6 and 10.) True Summers hear gentle and decide that must exclude brave, innovative, potent, powerful, but it doesn’t. Even the most darkly coloured True Summer wears decency and kindness very near the surface and would not be prepared to give that up. Two of the funniest women I know are True Summers.
4. “I can’t wear black”. Enough with the black. There’s too much of it out there and it owns too much of our attention. Black is too easy, too mindless, a uniform, and not more interesting than any other uniform. It requires zero imagination. It sucks every colour of light into itself and gives nothing back. It can be dramatic and selfish. Those people who can wear it don’t look so hot in jeans. Get your head into a stormy grey sky space and move on.
5. True Summer’s nature is to question rules, categories, and restrictions. It rubs against their profoundly held standard that every human presence is individual and unique and sacred and worthy of respectful treatment. Who is anyone to tell anyone else what they can and cannot wear? They will rebel against any infringement on another’s human rights. (Winter will rebel against encroachment on their own human rights .)
6. Remembering what is most important: coolness. The print below is one that True Summer and True Winter could wear because colours are cool. Some are saturated, some aren’t. The colours flow and blur together to a medium degree.
Dark Winter adds a drop of dark chocolate. Bright Winter adds a drop of yellow sun. No Winter ever compromises very high saturation.
7. Don’t use darkness as a gauge. Many will look at Summer’s colours and think “Wow, those are dark, don’t they belong to Winter?” Darkness doesn’t make Winter colour. Saturation does. Winter colours are shocking, intense, bold, loud. Think of the Winter person. Big theater with big analysis. Think of a Winter landscape. It gets everything and more from barely nothing at all. In every respect, including emotion, character, style, form, and design, Winter is at the far ends of every scale. They wear one colour at a time, but that colour is deafening. Wearing two such colours at once would feel tiring, which is where B&W come in.
Winter:
If you look at the garment and think “Gosh, I’m not sure”, it’s probably Summer. If the thought bubble says “I can’t really wear this, can I?”, you may well have a Winter colour.
Summer:
7. I think this is the biggest one: To understand True Summer, you have to understand True Winter.
Many True Summers can wear Winter’s light colours. Why wouldn’t they? They’re light and they’re cool. That’s two things that True Summer is. What tells a Winter from a Summer is the ability to wear Winter darks. Winter is colour right out of the tube, straight pigment. Few would even want to take it on.
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