Can Natural Hair Colour Ever Be Wrong?

November 30, 2011 by · 40 Comments 

First, it’s never wrong. Never. Nature does not colour anybody discordantly. You are always your best match. Your childhood and adult hair, your grey hair, your teeth, your tan, your eyelashes, veins, freckles, the colour you blush, all perfect, all consistent. You were painted with one palette and one brush to be one Season. 80% of the time, probably more, you will stay within that group of natural colouring. Everything was made to go with everything else in mind.

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Light Summer

Even if we are determined to ignore the stereotypes, uncertainty will creep in. How can a Light Summer grey early in life and to a medium dark grey? Wouldn’t that disqualify Light Summer? Let us call our model Linda, one of the many women of such sensitivity and emotional intelligence that colour has brought into my life.

 

For Linda, and she is far from alone, hair becomes our ‘self-defining monstrosity’. It’s never right. We’re subservient to hair stylists and their often-demented tastes, trends, and media, and our own dogged dissatisfaction with everything, most especially what we were given.

Bonaparte said “Good politics is getting people to believe they’re free.” Well, so is good marketing. The industrial revolution learned to create a prototype and then reproduce it as many times as possible with the least inputs. The plan worked rather well in the 20th century. Not so any more.

Bonaparte also said “History is just a series of lies on which we all agree.” Turns out you could substitute the word marketing for many other words in all sorts of contexts.

Linda’s PCA was done IRL with thanks to Sci\ART analyst Julia Dupps of Wish Wardrobe Consulting.

When we look together at your face changing with the drapes, we pay attention to the amount of shadowing under the chin. If there’s none, there’s no distinction between face and neck. They appear to be in the same plane, 2D, giving a heavy double-chin impression. If there’s too much shadow, the darkness bleeds up the sides and front of the face. It looks tired, severe, overly shadowed. On Linda, the lower half of her face is 10 years older than the upper half when she wears black. That’s not just a Summer effect, it’s very often a Light Season effect. Other Summer types handle darkness better.

What helped Linda to see the effect of black was to cover the lower half of the face in the photo wearing black. Let your eyes relax and take in the upper half of the face. Now take your hand away. Not the same, is it? You feel a step backwards, of tension, not the step-forward of relief.

She herself asked it perfectly: “Given that hair colors vary so widely in all the Seasons, why is it that two people are perfected by roughly the same colors but not the same hair color? Or does it have something to do with personal intensity levels and contrasts?”

Right! It’s a great thing when a question snaps straight to the issue. For instance, why can a True Winter who cannot look good in any orange in makeup or clothing get born with seemingly orange hair, as a natural redhead, and look magnificent? Even if we agree that hair colour is not tied to Season, only skin tone is, how can a person without orange in the skin wear an orange hat without clashing?

Short answer: Not sure but I’ve seen it so many times that I’m convinced. I have never once seen natural hair colour not work beautifully with the palette and the skin. It just looks more unique, more unexpected, more individual, a personal signature optical effect. It always looks breathtaking. Even if we agree that hair colour is extremely variable among Seasons, how can orange in hair work when orange in clothes doesn’t?

My longer answer is that there are many ways of using primary pigments (red, blue, yellow) to create colours. You can make the very same orange, say, using many combinations of red, blue, and yellow, as you vary saturation, warmth, and value. It’s the endless play between the 3 primaries and the 3 dimensions (warmth, darkness, saturation) that makes the variety. So perhaps the red-haired True Winter or True Summer got there with cooler pigments. When pure cool Seasons reach their 20s, if they got red hair, it’s not usually Ron Weasley red. There’s often a pink or purple cast, like cinnamon rose, or a lot of darkness. Below is my husband, a True Winter, with our daughter who is now an 18 year old Dark Winter with a million freckles. His eyes are warm amber brown. He ain’t no Autumn, the ruddiness in his skin is out of control in muted colour, warm or cool. He is mostly grey now and still absolutely needs True Winter coolness and saturation to calm his skin and slim his face.

 

The idea that you can make the same colour using many different pigment combinations isn’t new to us. We see certain swatches that are so very similar between Seasons. They were created using different combinations of the primary pigments, and adhere to the particular 3 colour dimensions of their respective Seasons, but the final swatches can look very  alike. As one of Rachel’s recent comments reminded me, what makes the two similar dots ‘belong’ to their different Seasons is the colours you wear them with. Visually there is harmony because at a more fundamental level, all the swatches were created with the same colour properties in mind so they can make a visual connection when seen or worn together. That’s their reason for being together on your body, with your Season’s palette, in each outfit, and with your hair and cosmetic colours. They feel related to one another with a ring of truth and believability. We can perceive it better than we can describe it.

The graphic below was made for an article dedicated to helping True Summers select their best corals. There’s a similar article about choosing blue.

 

Dark Winter above, True Summer below.

 

Dark Winter and True Summer have some really similar cool corals. Not surprising since both are cool Seasons and both are slightly muted. The difference is how they’re muted, in that True Summer is muted by blue-gray. Dark Winter is muted by Autumn gold but there’s so little of it out here at Autumn’s outer limits that it just looks like a trace of cool grey in the colours, not unlike True Summer gray. Dark Winter is much more saturated colour but True Summer has some clarity too. Each version of coral belongs with its palette very naturally and easily. No swatch sticks out like a visitor because they were all made with pigments undeviating with the rest of the colours for that group.

Eye colour is more predictable than hair in a Season but there are still surprises. Some of you have taken close-up pictures and couldn’t believe the colours the camera found. Or you try to photograph a Catherine Zeta-Jones golden brown Winter eye and all this black comes out. My conclusion is that we just don’t know precisely how our pigments are combined, or if someone knows, I would be most grateful if they would tell me.

I think there are other variables than just colour. Skin thickness for instance. Summer skin really looks thinner to me, like a rabbit compared to a big dog, for those of you with a fascination for animal surgery. Maybe more venous blue is showing through Summer skin. Winter is thicker-skinned (in more ways than one), more rubber than paper. Fewer colours show through. Winter’s can be an almost colourless skin without makeup except that the red comes out…makes sense, red is a colour whose contribution we perceive more strongly. Munsell’s properties of colour were developed based on how we perceive colour, yellow less and red more.

Many, many True Summers have quite dark hair.  Jaclyn Smith for one. Olivia Newton-John for another (who might be a Light Summer but I say True only because she isn’t a great blonde).

 

Dark hair can be found in Light Summer too. We could call her Lily.

 

She even looks like Jaclyn Smith. Round eyes, full lips, rounded cheekbones, this is a very Summer face. When I look at photos, first thing I do is make a hand window to block out the hair, natural or not. If you screen off the hair from the face, suddenly it’s a much softer look. The bold Winter drapes would be far too aggressive. The faintest, most gentle heat is here.

I can hear someone thinking “Wait a minute? What about Bright  Spring?”  This is when I start flipping makeup colours in my head. Let’s put near-neon-rose lipstick on Lily’s face. What do you see first? The lipstick or the woman? A Bright Spring could not only balance that colour but needs it for her makeup to rise up to meet her natural pigments.  There’s always something a little crisp for me in Spring. Light Summer is crisp as in lettuce, so still soft. Light  Spring is tissue paper. True Spring, hm, taffeta? Bright Spring contains Winter, it has more hardness. It has to snap when it breaks like a matchstick icicle. Bright Winter is a candy cane. Lily’s face has gentle, rounded features and watery (not intense) colours in her eyes. (Not that I do colour by these analogies, just that it’s interesting.)

And yet, Lily’s hair and eyebrows are darker than you’d expect on a Light  Season. In Light Summer’s cool, fresh colours, only warmed exactly as much as her eyes and skin, her skin will be positively blooming, clean, and young. The mantle of darker hair makes a higher contrast than we usually see on the lighter-haired wearer of those colours, the most pleasant surprise. We want to keep looking. That’s her special radiance. Getting back to Linda’s original question, this is also why I don’t talk about contrast very much. There are too many versions of it in any Season. What looks real and right and makes sense for contrast is to repeat what you look like. Lily and Linda will balance more distance between light and darks than Michelle Pfeiffer, but all three women are working from the same Light Summer colour menu.

Our Linda looks perfect with radiant skin and distinctively beautiful eyes in her light, fresh colours. A weight seems to have been lifted from her, even in the expression in her face and eyes. Instead of the eye stalling on the dark colours, we look at her face and are aware of the light aqua in the same eye space and have a good feeling from that. Her hair that could look hard when repeated in Winter’s colours takes on a cool lightness of weight, and gives her face the composure, wisdom, and individuality that she has earned. Light, fluffy, soft grey hair could be lovely too but somehow the darker colour and texture give a self-possession that distinguishes her more, not less.

It sometimes seems as if younger women want permission to be every Season, desperately seeking proof that anything really does work. By the time we’re 45, many just want permission to be Winters. In our 60s, we seem to segue into True Summer. After years of ‘winterizing’ herself, Linda questioned her hair colour for her Light Summer (and she’s not fully winterized – saturate the jacket to full on royal purple and imagine fuchsia lips!). She’s more perceptive than overly sentimental about herself and was able to  realize this : “…the underlying issue was that I did not want to be a Light Summer and was looking for a way out!!  I focused on my hair as the reason why I just could not be a Light – not wanting to remember how lovely my skin looked with that palette. I pictured lights as Cate Blanchett and Naomi Watts – but more defining than how I pictured Lights is how I pictured myself. ”

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The Soft Seasons

A woman who has had every hair colour is very often a Soft Summer or Soft  Autumn. As we said in Soft Summer Landscapes, the medium-ness of this colouring allows it to be swayed in many directions, though seldom with big success if it rocks too far. The owner of said colouring can feel restless and questioning, like “Is this all there is for me? Peacock everywhere and I’m fog?  What am I supposed to do with that?” Hair and  makeup advice is all over the map for these women because without draping, nobody can figure out the common denominator that knits every colour to the canvas.

If an industry can convince you there’s something wrong with you, they can destabilize you, which makes you buy more stuff. That’s easy to do. Just make everyone believe that if you can’t do peacock and your friend can, then you must have missed the boat. We forget how sensitive we all are to colour. One man in a room, one pink stripe in his tie, and every woman caught it. Being bashed over the head is less distinctive in our world than quiet self-assurance. Isn’t it quiet self-assurance we’re all striving to reach?

I won’t say a lot about Soft Season hair because it’s been covered. Ask me where if you can’t find it. Hold the faith that every colour is beautiful. Worn by a human being who contains those very same colours, it becomes miraculously beautiful. The person is elevated to a version of themselves that even their second best Season colour-analyzed swatch book can’t achieve, no matter how close you are between the two. A Soft woman’s best hair grows out of her head as a slightly warmed ash, maybe darker, maybe lighter.

The next four are photos of (let’s say) Micaela. She is a Soft Autumn, though to me, looks closer to Soft Summer than True Autumn.

Blonde (and wearing white):

 

Dark:

 

Red:

Natural:

 

Did you feel the relief when you got to the last picture? It takes an effort to go back to the first three. Micaela feels it too, you see the ease in her face when she releases the struggle and simply wears what she was made to wear. How could she possibly make herself more lovely to look at than in the final photo? Why would anyone be given so much pure beautiful light and proceed to conceal it? As she said, we all look back at past photographs and wonder “Why couldn’t I see it before?”

Once a colour analysis is done, it is undeniable to have seen your own face change with your own eyes. Many women keep the result to themselves for a few days. They feel a mental and emotional shift taking hold that feels quite precarious at first. It’s always vulnerable to come out of a hiding place. Eventually, you carefully give way to the delight of finding a secret garden in your interior, a cautious ‘hard to believe this could be as good as it looks’. Soon enough, the need to protect it and keep it private evaporates. Nobody is happier for you than me. Not because you’ll wear better lipstick. Everyone should find their garden.

Mr. Springsteen said “You can’t start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart.”

But this is more fun.

 

The name of the album is You Get What You Give. Very apt.

Listen to the song.

…change your geography.

…when you lose yourself, you find the key to paradise.

 

With great thanks to the women whose grace and generosity in allowing their photos to be shared helped us to see and learn. And with recognition of their achievement in having outgrown their hiding places.

 

 

Filed under: For All Seasons, More Topics For The 12 Seasons, Summer Colours
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Return to Your Natural Colours

November 22, 2011 by · 15 Comments 

A Guided Tour of Personal Colour Analysis

 

 

Colours, shapes, textures, and designs can enhance one another. Your colour palette looks most beautiful when it’s interpreted in certain style, textile, and accessory choices. When the apparel, makeup, hair colour, jewelry, and every other item of decoration are in perfect harmony with each other and with you, the composition looks and feels as beautiful to see as it does to be.

Your Season’s palette is like a chart of the exact colours with which Nature painted you. The colours are all connected to each other and to you because you share certain properties. That is one fantastic start. An analysis with a Sci\ART colour analyst places the world’s most accurate 12 Season colour layout in your hand. What next? This book is about how to make this incredibly powerful tool work for you with every single thing you buy.

Learn how to make the absolute most of your incredible natural colouring.

The book

…believes that the most beautiful, believable, young, flattering colours you can wear ON your body are those that are already IN your body.

…takes us on a trip together, through places, times, and the colours that belong there and compares each to one of the 12 groups of natural colouring, or Seasons.

…celebrates the colours of our world and how they are repeated in our own colouring.

…explains colours, styles, texture, contrast, cosmetics, hair colour, accessories for each Season.

…covers my personal observations and beliefs about personality, undertone, best makeup colours.

…includes a section for men of each Season.

…includes colour layouts for each Season, understanding that they are for comparison purposes only, not accurate enough to take shopping. The most important role of the palettes is to express the language of the colours collectively, not one swatch at a time, because that’s how others see us.

…gives you a sense of all 12 Seasons, one of the most effective ways to more correctly position and understand your own.

…ends with a glossary and a Resource section for finding great books, analysts, makeup, and other helpful information.

 

 

Nothing is for everybody. You should give this book a miss if

…you hope to figure out your natural colouring or Season; there are no photographs of people.

…you want accurate 12 Season palettes to make purchase decisions. This book would have been another 2 years in the making and cost  10 more dollars for that. There are 12 28-colour layout, one for each Season, intended for comparative purposes only. You shop with  an accurate colour swatch book, nothing else.

…you are hoping to learn how to become a colour analyst or would like cast-iron rules about the behaviour of colour and how it applies to human beings (Kathryn Kalisz already wrote an essential background textbook for aspiring colour analysts, here). This is a story of my taste and my interpretation of the language of each palette.

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The Price (all prices in Canadian dollars)

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$2.60

 

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The cost of the book, shipping, and tax are calculated by PayPal when you click the button below.

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CLIENTS, please note that this is NOT the address for the colour studio. Don’t set your GPS for it!

 

Returns

Sorry, but no. If you’re not sure about this purchase, request that your local library buy a copy.

 

e-book

This is certainly possible but only a few readers show colours. If there were enough interest, understanding that you’d miss the colour pages entirely, I can look into it.

 

US Version

Maybe one day, but that would take another 6 months. For now, it’s spelled in Canuck and British. Colour, honour, favour, you know.

 

Questions/Concerns

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Filed under: For All Seasons, More Topics For The 12 Seasons
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Cocktail Dresses For 12 Seasons

November 16, 2011 by · 8 Comments 

When I search Polyvore, I normally set the price less than 250 because that’s the world I live in. Not today. My apologies to all, especially the Springs and Summers, but there is no price limit here.

Today, I was looking for something I would notice the hot minute it walked in the door if the right woman wore it. The other requirement was that I’d feel comfortable in it, could eat, drink, and dance, wouldn’t be constantly hitching up or pulling down. You know how that goes.

 

Spring

3 Spring Cocktail Dresses
3 Spring Cocktail Dresses by christinems featuring bright dresses

 

Light Spring is across the bottom right. Pretend you don’t see the orange belt. Replace with gold, silver, violet, so on. Summer’s flowing water is here, making peace with the larger fraction of Spring’s livelier colour and unrivaled ability to sparkle. Is the sequined dress too browned? Could be, but I’m trading on the sequins delivering lighter colours in the highlights, making it Spring, and a colour that is not oranged, so the dress doesn’t convey earthy (Autumn).

True Spring takes up the left side. Notice how the colours are yellower and more activated than the Light. The styles are also more energized. Though this person is far more resort-relaxed than manic, she can easily dominate colours that are less vivacious. The whole effect then goes dull. Her makeup is equally way up there. Lip and cheek colours are noticeable and she looks alive like there’s no tomorrow. She’ll be up till dawn, the smile won’t leave her face all night, and she’ll do it all again the next night.

Bright Spring is shown in the top right. In 12 Season colour analysis, this colouring is a blend of Spring’s with Winter’s pigments. Its very ability to confuse makes it all the more flexible. This woman often looks very Winter, seeming cool and dark, and yet her natural colouring is far closer to Spring’s yellow light than to Winter’s red and dark blue. Because of that, she can cheat black in very nicely, though better in small blocks and not too near her face. The rest of the outfit should have Spring’s movement, whether in beading, ruffles, a play of light on fabric, like flapper styles. The elements of play and frivolity are so good on Spring, but toned here by Winter’s seriousness.

 

Summer

3 Summer Cocktail Dresses
3 Summer Cocktail Dresses by christinems featuring a floral print dress

 

Light Summer is in the bottom left. A stronger water rippling effect than Light Spring. The feeling of being inside a cloud or a bouquet of flowers. As Summer arrives, Spring’s foot on the gas is letting up even more. Summer is appropriate always, though in Light Summer, daydreams are still about play. If Autumn’s around, daydreams are about the next job. Summer’s water has a sequence, a cascade, a fall, a flow, like the lines of a ripple or wave, like a ruffle, or even the colour wheel sequence of monochromatic colour schemes. Spring disorganizes, even though there’s only a little. In Light Summer, the dance feels like the wings and flight patterns of butterflies.

True Summer is in the top left. She will be classy, cool, and correct. She may have had a tray of Champagne but you’ll never know it. She won’t give away what she doesn’t choose to. She controls herself utterly (while Winter tries to control everybody). I think of streaming water, of composure, of modern femininity. Is the pink dress too red of a pink? Maybe but I’d still put it on her. The package works.

Soft Summer is on the right side…that navy dress, is that not greatness? I have sat and stared at that dress. Just knocks me over. The muted mauve-raisin-quid semper (Latin for what ever, now that you ask), that is the most interesting colour. I’m pretty sure its pinkness pulls it into Soft Summer but it sure borders Soft Autumn closely (and is a match for Dior Addict Londres lipstick). I love an interesting colour and I love it to pieces on the exact right person. A match made in absolute heaven for the eyes. Then the makeup that jives so right…you cannot stop looking and couldn’t repeat what was said when you spoke with her. Your sense of sight took over your whole brain.

 

Autumn

 

3 Autumn Cocktail Dresses
3 Autumn Cocktail Dresses by christinems featuring a pleated dress

 

Soft Autumn is on the left. I left the dress in the bottom left that is in Soft Summer too. That’s a fascinating colour, rather halfway between both palettes. I think it’s a little purpler than orange, but a Soft Autumn who is a bit darker or not too freckled and apricottish, and maybe even if she is, could look beautiful. All black parties are deathly. They’re like a boredom and a depression all rolled into one. All these beautifully coloured humans swarming around dressed like a cloud of black insects. Especially at a party! It’s a celebration. Even the Softs should shine a little. One day, we’ll have traveling PCA & A Party, a block of hotel rooms, too much wine, too much song…the admission ticket, no solid black. Don’t care if you’re a Winter. Digression done. As Summer leaves and Autumn comes in, fabric has more weight, more structure, still with the feminine grace of Summer.

True Autumn is in the top right. Words fail me with the red dress but that would be way too much red for many a TA. That could sure be your lipstick with the other two dresses. Is the skirt on the golden one too gathered? It’s very important when you read these ideas of mine to think about whether you feel it the same way and not just accept it. All I’m really trying to do is have you hear, smell, taste, link, and feel what these particular colours awaken in you. Connect your five senses together and trust that what they say to you is true. What I like about the gold dress is the overstitch pattern which reminded me of a quilt, an Autumny association. Jacquard says Autumn to me most of the time.

Dark Autumn, bottom right, like Bright Spring, can impersonate someone whose natural colouring contains black. If the area is small and the rest is hot and dark, what comes across is mostly hot and dark, which is just right. The dress in the center has lace. On a woman who is not really all that lacy, its effect is overridden by the solid dark bands. It’s interesting how a detail can make a feeling. A light grey cardigan could be Summer’s if it’s sheer or ruffled or has same colour buttons. It can be Winter’s if the buttons are more prominent and hard and shiny, like big diamonds studs. Here, those very ordered lines bring more structure than the lace softens down.

 

Winter

3 Winter Cocktail Dresses
3 Winter Cocktail Dresses by christinems featuring couture dresses

 

Yes, I know it’s 3/4 black. It is a colour that Winter’s style just looks right in. And, as every woman reading this knows all too well, choice is limited at any price point.

Bright Winter is the group on the right. There’s no stopping with dress-up looks for Bright Winter. Hopefully, she has an excuse to wear many dresses in the next three months, this is her time to shop and to shine. I was looking for intense sugarplum which I didn’t find (but did see yesterday in a fleece at Old Navy and I can guarantee it would cost less).

 True Winter‘s dresses are in the top left. True Winter is so cold and clean that it has an edge that cuts. Without Spring’s delicate flirtiness and Autumn’s blunter touch seen in Dark Winter, True Winter is unadulterated biting cold. Associations of cut or bite: knife, sharp, snake, scrape (as in diamond edge). So why the flowers? To me, they were edgy and abstract.

Dark Winter is bottom left.  I wasn’t sure about the dress with the roses, but there was something Spanish about it that I kept coming back to. Winter isn’t really a traditional floral type of woman but it’s interesting to see a style rendered in a way that makes it untraditional. The textile felt too heavy for a Bright. I’m also thinking about ‘matte glamour’, hardware, cannon black, gun grey, always the Winter edge but one dulled by Autumn here. Bright Winter is the laser relative to DW’s cannon. Dark Winter’s is the simplicity that can own a room full of more is more. A Bright could wear the gold leaf but I put it here because the gold seemed deeper and browner, rather than the BW’s titanium type of brightness. A braided rope belt is Autumn’s touch.

 

Filed under: For All Seasons, More Topics For The 12 Seasons
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Soft Summer Landscapes

November 10, 2011 by · 57 Comments 

Such a pleasant and sensible personality. I adore these people. Like any relationship, those who live with them may have plenty to deal with, but true to Summer’s politeness, the rest of us have it easy. There is a great equilibrium in this person, equal opportunity analytical and emotional processors and completely adaptable to your personal preference.

Autumn’s determination is coming on board. Settled by Summer’s consideration for others, it feels more like stability. Ask a Winter what they think. Ask a Summer how they feel. This person gladly answers to both, easily exploring both worlds, allowing them to flow in and out of one another, calm and safe, without the need to erect or protect boundaries between them. This is Part 1 of why we analyze so many of them.

The darkest of the Summers, Soft Summer does not look like a light person. They look like Kate Middleton and Angelina Jolie, like Christy Turlington and Fergie. Their very mediumness makes it strangely easy to mistakenly place them in almost any Season. And that’s Part 2.

This is the group that feels dusky to me. Many appear to have a natural tan year round. Dark Winter is often called dusky but they have too much hardness and clarity for that. Think of Demi Moore, Cindy Crawford, Hilary Swank, or Sally Field compared to Ellen Pompeo where the hair to skin to eyes transitions are incredibly gradual or not even there.

Telegraph Interview by Steve Marsi at TV Fanatic

 

How The World Feels

 

So very comfortable. Not mild exactly, that feeling is more in some of  Light Spring’s colours. Just easy to be with. The Soft Seasons are surely the least demanding. These are the days when the heat and humidity of summer have passed recently enough to still feel them. Not too hot or too cold, too squinty light or too dark. The air is cool enough that clothes don’t stick and faces don’t shine. Our limbs move through downy silky air. Being outdoors is the relief it was intended to be. The easing that comes with simply being in our Nature home is denied in our lifestyle. Yet, the restoration is undeniable when we make time for it. We come from earth and are balanced and completed by intimacy with it. In Soft Summer, Nature is the shelter, support, and contentment of the bed of moss under the canopy of pine branches.

>> in clothing, the translation is in maintaining the mediumness; no piece should demand attention over any other, not eyeliner, not jewelry, not lipstick, not shoes. If you wear a light or a dark, balance it with a medium.

The mediumness on the heat scale (75% cool/25% warm) is factored into the personal colour swatches automatically.  A no brainer for you. The genius of Kathryn Kalisz was to create these 8 Neutral Seasons with 60 specific and exclusive colours that are unrepeated in the other Seasons and harmonize exactly within each Season. You have to see these colour collections to appreciate how singular and extraordinary the palettes are and how special this system of PCA becomes as a result. In this and other aspects, it is unique, correct, and quite magnificent.

The clarity level isn’t medium, it’s way low. That doesn’t mean colourless, look at the photos and Polyvore below, it just means not as colourful as the others. When life assaults our senses from every angle to get noticed, what we feel here is gratitude and a place to relax. The choice of where we direct our attention is ours for a change. In a cloud, edges are shadowy, they vanish and reappear continuously. Lines can wave, surfaces can shimmer.

>> in a composition, an outfit, there’s an undercurrent of grey that unites the elements and provides the visual continuity. Prints blur from a distance like tricks of the light. No big transitions between colour elements exist so objects blend into one another so gradually, as hallucinations, being inside a dream, a watercolour mirage.

Peaceful because sounds are muffled, the air is velvety, and intrusive presence is always veiled. Secluded tranquility enfolds us as we are lulled into believing that the only company is the one we choose.

Relief in the stillness that cushions and absorbs. Like Soft Autumn, Soft Summer’s colours are all giving and no taking

>> in clothes and makeup, colour pops don’t belong here. Stay inside the palette and keep colour subliminally gradual. Soft Summer is never explicit.

See the deer? In a B&W photo, you’d miss it. The precise edges of Ellen Pompeo’s features would be very hard to identify too.

Notice the tree trunk colour, a good blued grey. There are some great pinks and greens here to provide the feeling of gentled strength. I know one reader at least will be thankful that the quantity of pink in this photo is so small because she couldn’t bear to wear more than this. She is very much a Soft Summer in her feelings about how pink she is, a colour many have the most trouble identifying with, far more so than True Summer, while Light Summer has no trouble at all.

Colour Scales

In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, the Soft Summer comprises those whose natural colouring is

Quieted by the fog gray that settles over the True Summer swatches – this is the Most Important Thing. The Season is not muted, it’s MUTED+cool. Gotta see the grey, as opposed to True Summer where it’s COOL + muted. Look at the pictures until you can be consciously aware of the greying that flows through each element, joining it to every other as if by a barely  visible web. Like the forest in the movie Avatar, every piece is connected by a grey neural net in our perception.

Cooler than warm and a little warmer than True Summer, but it doesn’t feel like warmth yet. It feels like dull. In How The 5 Springs Add Yellow, you saw that the heat isn’t that hot yet. What Autumn adds to the palettes it influences is really gold, but there’s so little of it still that the effect is more to cloak some brightness (add Autumn gold-orange to Summer blue and you get gray by the effect of complementary colour, right?)

Medium darkness, no black or white. They are jarring. You saw this photo in Soft Summer’s Best Hair Color. If you had to pick a highlight, would yellow really be the one that feels best? And that’s a soft yellow. Bleach that up a few notches and add a chemical glint and the result would not fall from the beautiful tree. By comparison, the taupe feels good. It feels like it belongs (because it does).

 

Soft Summer Clothing

If anyone ever needed proof that accomplished Season beauty is not about going out and buying anything made in your colours, Polyvore would have to be it. Pick a colour and look at the selection. Even if you ignore the utterly silly and the stuff a 5’11″, Size 2, 20-year old couldn’t look good in, there’s still too much that makes no sense. The image below is set up as little Soft Summer vignettes.

Soft Summer 1
Soft Summer 1 by christinems featuring a cableknit sweater

Other than a few greiges, there is a fair bit of colour. It happens to be a bit faded compared to the other Seasons.We’re not sure if it’s the lighting, but it feels as though less colour is really light than we expect for Summer. On a sunny day, some of the colours might be quite light, but not today. Like a rainy day, there is a sense of glad acceptance, of productivity, of dressing for a charity lunch at the museum or an afternoon symphony. I’m pretty sure she gets there in a brushed silver Camry.

There needs to be darkness somewhere, not a lot, just a touch. Very light isn’t what she looks like. Isn’t natural hair colour the best? If ever a Season should emanate cool un-complication, it is this one. The hair is too often called mousy and interfered with.

Photo: Splash News.

We’re trying to continue the flow between how you look and what you add to yourself. If you’re lighter, you’ll wear an overall lighter effect than a darker woman would. If your hair is dark and skin light, you’ll wear more lights with darks and not strive to incorporate a medium block. The overall palette remains the same, the one that made your skin the most perfect, that made you look youngest. In women over 30, I could almost do the whole analysis just across the eye band (the client and I divide her face into three horizontal bands when we evaluate the changing drapes), so much are age effects evident in wrong colour. We all lose objectivity within 4 feet of a mirror. Try taking some photos or video of yourself to see how widely separated your light/dark span appears to others. It’s better.

Reckoning the amount of warmth is hardish. See that red cardigan center just south of middle? See how it’s not really blued? It’s more fogged? Take berries, almost any sort, and fog them. Not sugar dusted, rather dust dusted, the colour of the object still coming through. Look for the layer of good old house dust.

Less eyelet and lace than True Summer, though she can wear bits of both, and a little more bulk. Still Summer sheer but a bit straighter though not yet sturdy. Still quite ladylike, though she doesn’t really emphasize that part of herself.  Pearls and cameos certainly work, in the rosy, fleshy browns of the inside of red grapes. She is not heavy in texture. She does tasteful ruffle cascades beautifully. Some women are very feminine, others feel conspicuous in girlishness and want to get back to their hoodie and yoga pants or cargo shorts. She will almost always take the time to put in earrings.

Her song, being around her, can feel like this (sorry, couldn’t embed it). That slowed-down, soothing way she moves, the softness of the way she moves her mouth and the sounds she makes, those are very characteristic of Soft Seasons. Ever heard Jennifer Aniston interviewed? Lots of soft oo and mm sounds. Angelina Jolie is similar.  She’s quiet, controlled, unhurried, loving but forthright. She is more reserved than Spring spunky. She’s exactly halfway between emotional and analytical.

More colours apart than True Summer, ie: less monochromatic.  Not all over the map but introducing some variety absolutely works. The combinations in this Season are particularly amazing to me. Maybe they just sound amazing. Hold these colours together in your head till you see them clearly: antique turquoise with grey pearl ; dove grey and cocoa rose; sage and stormcloud blue ; pewter and softest rose. Feels good, doesn’t it?  Always softness with strength. The two, together at once, in colour, texture, and design, are the very heart of Soft Summer.

She is Vivianne and Nimue, ruling priestess, Lady of the Lake, loving and seducing Merlin, and granting Arthur Excalibur. She is a moon goddess and the caretaker of Arthur’s dead body on its journey to Avalon. A Camry?? What am I talking about? She lives in a land of chivalrous knights and drifting mists. She drives a Phantom Silver Ghost, of course.

The taupes are tremendous and there are many. In everything from eyeliner to shoes, this is a neutral to be worn and worn. Entire outfits can be based on light dark variations, since any Summer does well in monochromatics.

People ask about maintaining best contrast in their Season. You know, the Colour Book does the thinking for you. If your best look is low contrast as here, the palette won’t give you black, white, or any extremes that are are outside your range in the first place. You’d have trouble setting up max contrast in Soft Summer if you tried. You do want colours to flow easily. That means that you can wear your darkest and your lightest, sure, but insert a medium darkness element to bridge the two ends and bring them closer.

Soft Summer fabric can be matte. The makeup should be. With artificial frosting, this complexion ends up going more muted (read, greyer) by comparions while the frost look hard and glittery. Fabric is also gorgeous with a soft sheen, lustrous like the inside of an oyster and the surface of the pearl within.  Some gleam on the lips repeats this just right. As Autumn arrives, gently textured textile, like a light boucle works well, so a little more weave, a little more grain.

The greens are completely magically beautiful. For any Autumn, your teals are transformative, workhorses of your wardrobe. The greener colours can be underdone once Soft Summer is able to spot her teals.  That light lustrous shirt, I love it a lot.

Seasonal Colour Analysis Makeup Colours

Kidney purple was a description I loved from a reader regarding the excellence of Dior Addict lipstick Londres. We have some brilliant shoppers, experts in their colours, among our readers. If they’d add their favorite cosmetic colours to the Comments, many women will be grateful, I as well. I would try NARS Tokyo Duo eyeshadow. MAC Syrup lipstick and eyeshadows MAC Shale, Yogurt, Aria are good. Their Malt is a great eyeshadow to reduce frost and saturation in other eyeshadows you may own. Lips? Clinique Voluptuous Violet, Lauder Soft Amethyst, Bobbi Brown Rose Petal, Cover Girl Honey Plum Glow, could all be good. The great red lip with a little more depth for evening? You might look at Mercier Dry Rose.

We’re after believable beauty, not the kind that obviously came from a bottle. Attention getting elements are not believable here. Whispered suggestions, uncertainty about what you heard and thought you heard, Soft Summer colours and shapes move in and out of your perception like ghosts of their original form.

There is no point in reading someone else’s lines when it’s so much easier and more real to play your own part. Heidi described it brilliantly as dialing in the tuning band on a radio to find your own frequency. Stay close to who you are and far from who they want (or tell) you to be.

 

Filed under: More Topics For The 12 Seasons, Summer Colours
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If We Came To Your Town

November 6, 2011 by · 40 Comments 

A small number of Sci\ART colour analysts, and I among them, have an interest in traveling with our drapes and bringing the life-changing experience of colour analysis to women and men everywhere. In my life, I am about a year away from having this flexibility. Others are ready now.

How to start? We would begin in the cities with the longest list of interested clients in areas where this service is not represented. If you have an interest, type your city, state, province, or country in the Comments or send it to me personally (email to christine@12blueprints.com) and I’ll add the numbers and post them for other analysts to see. Vancouver, Chicago, and Seattle come to mind because I’ve had so many requests from these places.

Getting there is the easy part. The most challenging aspect is in finding a place to do the PCA. We need a room at least the size of a large dressing room with a mirror. Four people, 2 chairs, and a rack of drapes should fit in the space without getting crowded or claustrophobic.

If there is a window that’s not too big, we can bring fabric to cover it depending on the time of day. The walls cannot have pink, yellow, or blue tones of any sort. White or pale to medium grey would work. We will bring our own lights, a part of the process that must be controlled. A rolling rack of some sort to hang the drapes would help. The room or space would have to be reasonably private. Many find this experience too personal and surreal to want an audience.

Renting small meeting rooms in hotels is possible but drives up the cost enormously. We would already be at $US 250- 300 or more, though this may vary depending on travel distances and costs. It’s still cheaper than what you would pay for the analysis and travel costs to get to us in our hometown. If you have connections in clothing shops, clubs, or other salons, this eases the way.

If a boutique is hosting the space, we’d be happy to discuss discounted PCAs for the owner. It sure helps if this person is open-minded about new ideas. As you well know, there will be those retailers who will feel their creativity is stifled. Some may feel defensive or see PCA as competition, rather than the great marketing of experts in their fields coming together to help customers, you, make the best choices. We’re looking for the first kind, those with curiosity and intelligence, so that we can return again and again.

There will be a learning curve for all of us. We will all get better at it, the inevitable outcome of trying something new with love, indeed passion, and determination. Some of us already travel to locations where the perfect space exists and so enjoy showing people this unforgettable process. We want to do more. It will happen faster if your resources can cooperate with ours.

Could you give it some thought? Once women collaborate, everything suddenly becomes possible. We welcome your suggestions also regarding venues, events, learning sessions, evenings…what do you want to learn and how do you want to learn it?

 

Filed under: For All Seasons, More Topics For The 12 Seasons
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PCA U.K. January 2012 Date Revision

November 5, 2011 by · Leave a Comment 

The dates for Nikki’s trip to London have been changed. They are January 19 – January 22, 2012.

If this trip is not fully sold out, it will be very close. Nikki will not be back in the U.K. for several months. Don’t let this chance go by.  I expect that gift certificates can be had and there’s your Christmas gift sorted. Remember not to buy so much as a lipstick till you have your very best colours in hand.

Please contact Nikki Bogardus with questions or to book appts. at www.mycolorrx.com

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True Summer Polyvore

November 2, 2011 by · 8 Comments 

To fill out the Dress For Your Landscape: True Summer, we had a request for a Polyvore. You know I can never just show a picture. There has to be words. And then too many words keep happening.

True Summer is particular. There are no scratches or smudges on her glasses. She keeps special cloths and fluids at home and office and purse and car. And watch her clean them or take off her nail polish. Like she’s in her own private hell. If Winter wants control, True Summer wants precision.

She’s helpful and tailored but not excessive, like a flight attendant. At all times, gun to her head, she is well behaved and ready to negotiate. In one word, and I know I’ll take some heat, the word I hold in my head when I search is ladylike.  There it is, the word we all love to hate. 50% of readers would swear I just said prissy.

Not prissy, prude, prim, proper, whatever. OK, maybe a little bit proper. Therefore she has personal restraint enough for all for us. Etiquette does make the world a better place and if everyone had more of it, oh, how good that would be. For this woman, a tub of Haagen-Daz really does have 4 servings.

This is a challenging clothing style to find in our Lady Gaga world. Ballet flats are too sweet. This woman isn’t that. She takes life pretty seriously, not as competition but as a force for good. She won’t have the bag in the shape of a frog and probably not a pink or yellow one either.

True Summer is least harmonized by menswear influences. This is a rounded body with many curved lines that glides when it walks. Boxiness, straight lines, rigid designs, they are not nearly as good as swirls. I think this is where the constant searching and feeling of unrest stems from that women have about shopping. The clothing industry has all these gaps it could fill instead of making more of the same. Women know what’s out there isn’t right and can’t quite put their finger on why.

I tried to think in terms of outfits so there are groups within groups here.

True Summer sets

True Summer sets by christinems featuring strappy sandals

Colours are a little muted. White white jeans will positively glisten next to the rest of the colours. They appear aggressive on a part of our body where that can send the wrong message unless that’s what you’re trying to do. Jeans in the very colour and texture of chalk would be perfect. No heat, no shine. Part of what holds the whole picture together is that little bit of greyness that hovers over it. No greyness and the item won’t fit under the umbrella so it sticks out there, getting wet, which looks neither strong or attractive. Pretend you can’t see the orange purse.

Some darkness is necessary. This person is usually quite medium in darkness, but some seem quite dark. The odd one has white blond hair, quite an effect next to the navy blue eyes, but there the eyes hold the dark.

Green is underdone because it’s hard to find. There are several. The prototype is clover, blued and a very smidgen dusted. Still a lot of colour. You know that background feeling of a grey fluff round the outer edges of a clover leaf? That’s very much the essence of True Summer, that  gentle blurring of the overall effect. The moon is like that, a very effective grey- white glow on this Season.

I won’t say too much. Ask if you wonder what I was thinking.

Filed under: More Topics For The 12 Seasons, Summer Colours
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