12 Seasons: The Most Important Thing (TMIT)
December 31, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 17 Comments
My conversations with Rachel of Truth Is Beauty always anchor down some previously floating piece of information so that I can begin using it. What’s written below, you already know but it’s not completely self-evident.
There are three dimensions or measurable properties of colour that we use for personal colour analysis:
- value – how light to dark
- hue – or heat level, how cool to warm
- saturation or chroma – a colour’s position between the most greyed version of the colour and the purest version of the colour
Your colours don’t zigzag all over the place on any of those scales. They stick to a fairly close setting. Who has colours that are extremely warm and extremely cool at once, or very clear and very muted? Nobody. We can have several positions along the value scale but there is still a logical and consistent range that is respected within each of the 12 categories. The genetic paintbrush is very organized. It decides what your settings are on the 3 scales and from there, faithfully picks the paints for your own personal colour wheel, a predictable slice through Planet Colour.
However, whatever the settings on your 3 scales, which is what decides your Season or natural colouring group, one of those matters more than the others. It’s The Most Important Thing, or TMIT, for that natural colouring to glow with their most perfect skin. Once that attribute is fixed at a certain setting, colours that respect that setting are more likely to work well for you. That setting on that scale is your TMIT. The other two scale settings matter but they are less critical.
Your TMIT setting can’t be known just by looking at you. That’s done with drapes, by knowing the Season first. Sometimes when you’re looking at photographs without seeing the person in various colours, you find yourself thinking about their TMIT. I believe Color Me Beautiful calls these Dominant Traits. They ask themselves “Of Dark, Light, Clear, Soft, Warm, or Cool, which of these is the person MOST?”, or the reverse as “Which of these is the person LEAST?”
Tricky because some people don’t really look like what they are. You might look at a woman of medium-dark complexion, quite dark brown eyes, and fairly dark brunette hair and think that she seems Dark, when in fact, she’s a Soft. Look at this gallery. What do you think about Pics 13 and 28? (As a side note, I wonder if Revlon Lip Butter in Tutti Frutti would look like Pic 15 on a True Spring. Who else could look that good in clear orange?) As you go through all the photos, try to pin down their TMITs.
The intensity of a brown-eyed True Winter can be so undeniable, especially if complexion is dark, that you think “Wow, they’re really a Dark”, when what they are most importantly to perfect their skin tone is Cool. Think about Kim Kardashian, often thought a Dark Winter. She might well be. She doesn’t have the squareness of the Selena Gomez/Salma Hayek Dark Winter jaw. In fact, her long face is more a True Winter shape. She looks terrific in B&W&red. Scroll down the photos, worth the trip in itself, till you get to her. Does she need browner colour? You could say her lips and cheeks are Dark Winter now, quite possible. The point is just that you can’t tell by looking at one photo.
This is one of the weak points of Photo PCA – you never saw it happen. Your mind can’t get completely at ease with the Season. One relative comes along and expresses doubt about your lipstick colour and you feel all unsteady again. You can’t say back to them “I thought I might be Dark Autumn too! But, oh, my dear, you should have seen how drained those colours made me look. And I learned that a Dark Autumn looks near dead in my Summer pastels (so does a Bright Spring)!”
Once your Season is known from a correct in-person draping, your TMIT is most important when you go shopping. And that’s when you’ll begin choosing and wearing your rightest makeup.
The TMITs
Light Summer: Lightness! Saturation (clearness) is low-medium. Neutral cool.
Light Spring : Lightness! “ “ medium. Neutral warm.
Lightness in a colour will help it work well for her. Her eyeshadows, suits, eyeglass frames, nail polish, and shoes are more likely to be beautiful if they’re among the lightest in the selection at the store. It doesn’t mean that every colour she wears must be light, not at all. She has her version of dark tones too, but they’re her version, to look dark on her. Nevermind that they’ll look medium or light on someone else, we’re not talking about them here. Too dark colour on a Light and oldness will happen. Dark colours are not forgiving at all, meaning that she really needs to get them right or they’re way wrong and she is subtracting from herself.
A so-smart reader asked “Since every Season has its best black, does each have its best white?” Sure, yes. The Lights will do raw cauliflower better than latte, but many could get away with latte just fine if it’s mostly milk. Just being light in value raises a colour’s odds of being pretty good. As long as the other scales, of warmth and clarity, stick near the middle, things will probably be quite ok. Once we raise the darkness level to cinnamon or nutmeg, we run into problems with aging, fatigue, and 5 oclock shadow effects and they’re not even dark colours. The woman needs to have her colour analysis swatch book to wear the best suit for her speech.
Soft Summer: Softness! Value (darkness range) is medium. Cool to neutral.
Soft Autumn: Softness! “ “ “ “ .Warm to neutral.
Another so-smart reader pointed me to Cobie Smulders. I see her as Soft Summer. Is her hair too dark for that Season? No. But notice her eyes. Yes, they’re light-medium blue, but what are they MOST? Blue or hazy ? I’d say hazy (at least in this photo). Someone might say icy. The overall impression isn’t light and it isn’t dark, it’s medium. She seems cooler than warm, but more soft than cool. Someone might say “She’s definitely mostly cool. She’s a True Winter.” Who’s right?? Who knows?? Drape the woman already, then you know.
Cobie Smulders Pictures
That white is hard on her. The white is owning the whole picture somehow, it keeps nagging at our attention. A Winter would subdue that white into behaving itself. The same woman in that great soft pine green that is pure beauty for a Soft Summer blue-green eye (we could pretend the beads are not there):
Doesn’t always work. Like that green, not every colour that would look fantastically good on a Soft Summer’s colouring is obviously grayed, though many are. Same as True Autumn can have reds and golds that are so rich and so hot, you’ll think red and gold before you think heat (but with time, you’ll come to think HOT or at least, GOLD, first).
Some Soft Summers have a brown eye that is most perfected by their red wine colour. Some, who lean towards the warm side, can have warmer greens like avocado and army in the eye. Their eye colour is incredible in Soft Summer’s medium taupes and can even look great in Soft Autumn’s greens and browns. As long as the colour stays soft and muted and they don’t try Soft Autumn’s reds, oranges, and yellows, the skin will remain beautiful. I love this effect on Soft Summer and it’s not common. You see it sometimes in Dark Winter too, the very cool skin with the very warm eye, like the last golden-green-brown leaf left before the first snowfall. The contrast looks remarkable and even better when repeated by wearing warm and cool colours from their palette together in outfits.
Dark Autumn: Darkness! Saturation is medium to fairly high. Neutral warm.
Dark Winter : Darkness! ” ” “ “ . Neutral cool.
I find most people cooler than they think they are, but are confused about how to get a little cooler with their colours without going all the way to pure cool. Demi Lovato carries darkness well. She can look Warmer&Dark and Cooler&Dark quite well as long as the Dark takes precedence.
The Warm version:
Demi Lovato Pictures
There are cool photos in her gallery. The picture she presents of herself is often cooler than warm. Below, Demi goes too cool and we lose it. She’s become cooler than she is dark. It becomes hard and uncomfortable to be with compared to the molasses cookie above. It’s that dark toasty woman that we want to get close to. We wonder how close we could get and if our intuition is right, could we be singed? Winter is coming in and even in small amounts, a vague sense of unease or jeopardy comes with it.
Demi Lovato Pictures
Bright Winter: Brightness! Value is medium to fairly dark. Neutral cool.
Bright Spring: Brightness! Value is medium, not too dark. Neutral warm.
It’s the pure colour that you should become aware of first, before Thinking Mind engages and starts chewing on “Well, let’s see, I don’t perceive greying down of the colour, it looks neutral and somewhat warm,…” Grab onto that moment before dissecting mode turns on and proloooonnnng it. Spend some time just feeling what’s happening there. Soon, you’ll have more control of it and will be able to slow down that time. Think of fresh basil or parsley. Before you get going on how cool, how dark, what enters your awareness is GREEN.
I don’t get the same feeling here:
True Summer: Coolness! Saturation is medium. Value is medium.
True Winter : Coolness! Saturation is mid to high. Value is mid to fairly dark.
Stand a True Winter next to a Dark Winter and ask someone “Who’s darker?” The TW may have dark hair, dark eyes, but if the complexion level is the same, it’s often the DW that gives the darker overall impression. They seem a little shaded, less shiny, their whites not as blinding, as if their skin were so slightly and evenly cross-hatched with a graphite pencil.
Now, if you’d said “Who’s cooler?”, the TW always seems not necessarily frost-coated like a windshield, but they’re more absolute, more hard, more definite, more clear-cut and less ambiguous. They seem cleaner. Better to ignore the hair colour a lot. Seems to me I see more variation in natural hair colour among the True Winter than any other.
I was asked recently about the difficulty True Summer has in finding shoes (and mascara) in a world of brown and black. Compromise the darkness but not the coolness. In time, you’ll insist on being more discriminating. You’ll have found yourself enough great items to give you confidence in holding out for the right shoes. You won’t need to buy stuff just to have shoes at all. Use soft blacks, navies, and cranberries. Borrow some True Winter greys. Choose textiles that mute colour. Look for medium colours like denim, teals, mauves, and taupes. It takes time for every Season to build a background wardrobe.
True Spring : Warm-ness! The kind added by pure, clear yellow, so the feeling stays warm, bright, and light in that order when you shop. Saturation is mid to fairly high. Value is medium.
True Autumn : Warm-ness! The kind added by darker, duller, richer gold. So the feeling is warm, muted, and mid-darkish when you shop. Saturation is medium. Value is medium to med-dark.
I find these the most difficult people to decide their TMIT just by looking at them or their photos.
People ask “How can I be warm and cool at once?” It depends on how warm and cool you’re talking about. You won’t see really warm and really cool colours together in one person. Nobody’s setting on the Hue scale will swerve around that much. If your inborn colours are all completely warm, you won’t contain any completely cool colours. You might be 90% warm and 10% cool, but for shopping purposes, you’re so much more warm that you would shop as though you’re 100%.
For those people whose colouring is nearer the middle on the cool-warm scale, the Neutral Season folks, they can have slightly warmer and slightly cooler versions of their best colours. “OK”, you say, “how slightly?” That question can’t be answered well with descriptions or numbers. You need to own the palette that the colour expert made for you.
So if you know TMIT, often built into the Season’s name, plus the approximate heat level, the other parameter is a fairly safe bet at medium. Or ‘what I should worry about less’.
Colour Equations Dark Winter
December 24, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 10 Comments
Many people have no interest in their colours, but not just blandly so. They’re defensively so. They don’t mind being advice about other fashion guidelines but they do not want to be told there are certain colors that might not be best for them. Why colour? Because colour gets below the surface. Colour gets into the hard-wiring. There’s more at stake if you let someone in. Let’s spend some time in Dark Winter’s personal space.
Ellen Page is an example of a very commonly seen Dark Winter face. Autumn’s squaring of jaw is often present (True Winter’s is longer and narrower, like Cher) but the colouring is cooler and clearer than Dark Autumn. The trace of Autumn heat is surely here in the hair, eyes, and skin unless the person is quite close to True Winter.
Sure, she could be a Bright or any Season for that matter, but this face is the dance of Dark Winter to me. This is the very rare client that gets out of the car and I have to fight with myself not to push her into the one Season that’s fairly singing its own name. This is a far more difficult analysis, with much more second thinking, than with a person whose natural colouring group is less obvious.
And God love the girl for the natural hair and brows. She looks strong, young, healthy, and smart. The blue in the eye makeup isn’t blue enough to say BLUE EYE PAINT and it complements the orange tones in the eye. I think she looks simply great and you know how much it takes for me to say that. As women, we lose the sense of this being enough. We need to manipulate as if media’s solutions could make it better. Learning to see what is right in front of us as special is the PCA version of living in the moment.
Click to visit Teen Idols 4 You.
I see this face over and over in Dark Winter. The size of Winter, fathomless and colossal as a galaxy, the space they need and demand, with the human warmth, the comfortable welcome, and the great generosity of Autumn. Tell me this is not (Sci\ART analyst) Maytee Garza‘s face.
Some Dark Winters have a longer face or softer colouring or lighter eyes, lots of variations. Some have a more gamine feel, like Victoria Beckham or Winona Ryder. We don’t do colour analysis based on these traits but every type of natural colouring repeats certain facial features a lot.
I talk about liking lips with colour more on Winters than the erased lip that mostly looks good on the almost-children in magazines. A young Winter is an exception. Even in her medium pinks and purples, there’s so much colour already that she can look like she’s dressing up as Mom. An icy lipgloss can really be great (Bobbi Brown Sugar Lilac – I’m pretty sure that’s the name. It looks more iced violet than grey in the tube.). Not pastel (more greyed, there’s tons of these frosty greyish pinks, don’t buy them). Not medium darkness, should go on very light. Icy is hard to find but it’s good. More age appropriate, conveys a coolness, and better at letting the beauty of the face speak for itself without cosmetic getting in the way, which is the best kind of beauty and the best use of cosmetics.
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I tried to do a Polyvore. And failed. I couldn’t even get a single one together. I’ve seen what’s there too many times. Going to try something new. For those who have, or will have, my book, you’ll see a section in each of the Season chapters that describes how I see the colour palette being used to best effect. Dark Winter is the first chapter we talk about so let’s begin with it here.
For me, these colours have an austerity, perhaps because they are dark and cold. They feel serious. Soft effects (draping, smocking, cute collars, floppy bows and sleeves, unfinished edges) or busy details (wildly random prints, buttons and stuff for no reason like insets or logos, tons of ruching), styles that show a lot of skin (because sex and power are opposite currencies, the more of one, the less of the other. Dark Winter is the oldest soul Season and look better dressed more quietly, as the philosophers they so often are), clothes that seem too big (batwing and dolman sleeves, shapeless) – well, you can read the book but I don’t care for this on a Dark Winter. This person takes all that and makes it look unimportant, trite, and fussy. Peter Pan collars belong in Spring’s Neverland for a reason. On someone else, those styles can be flattering, slimming, and fabulous. On Dark Winter, it looks like those projects where your kids took your antique silver vase to school and brought it back with beads and macaroni glued all over it.
I’ve had Dark Winters see their palette and hear the way I see the colours interpreted on this person and feel un-represented. They wanted Bright Winter. They say “Oh, but I love colour!” Believe me, colour analysts are not trying to tell you not to wear colour. We are trying to help you avoid colours that make your face look oily, old, heavy, and unevenly pigmented. As pretty as a colour is, it won’t be so pretty after that happens. Wear YOUR colours any way YOU see them. Could you meet me halfway and say that Mrs. Obama might not be doing herself favours in frosted coral eyeshadow, peacock blue eyeliner, and hot fuchsia lips? Even one at a time, she is not that person, regardless of her position in the world.
I tried to keep the negatives out of the book, but with maturity comes an easier acceptance that every quality we have is in equal measure our flaw. We will excel and surpass at some things, which must be balanced by those places where we are weaker. This is a self-contained individual, not one who shares a lot of the internal stuff or leans on others easily. Some have incredible intensity, far more than the situation warrants, while some are much more passive. Once the cage is rattled, the fun times are over, because once they let go…Dark Winter draws a very clear line at anything that smells like B.S. Unlike the Summers, they will not necessarily keep your feelings safe. In colour, this translates as heavy, humorless, dark, unfriendly, morose, somber, and solemn. Don’t email me to say that this vision is grim and depressing. I’ll email back to say that your interpretation forgot the counterbalances that the hawk brings to the kingdom. Piercing focus, deep introspection, and the majestic, solitary stand-apart-ness that gets noticed first.
There is a core of stillness and hardness in Winter people. You can feel the steel rod down the center, and if tested, it will not bend, no matter how lightweight they seem on the surface. The palpable presence of that steel rod is the source of the strong vertical line element that I find works so well in the appearance of Dark Winter clothing. I think many of them sense this hard place too and translate it as “Earth”, that type of un-movable rock-solid center. For me, Earth energy (and I’m not an energy specialist) means secure comfortable homey regular everyday practical common-sense resilient considerate fair. That’s not Winter, that’s Autumn. Perhaps my misunderstanding, since analysts I respect enormously (Angela Wright in The Beginner’s Guide to Colour Psychology) attribute earth to Winter, where the world turns into itself, gathering power from the earth for the coming growing season, and the person of that colouring is similarly inwardly directed. I feel Winter’s need for big elbow room more strongly and feel an air association, as in space rather than breeze or wind.
At the center of Winter is a titanium wire – wait, this is Dark Winter, make that a tungsten cable. Its strength is not in Autumn’s sturdy squareness, but rather in its thin linearity. Winter is the conflict, even the contradiction, of everything and nothing, black and white, playing themselves out at the same time. Winter is the superstar who never feels good enough, who thinks herself a loser. In True Winter, where the polarities are most widely apart, the line between the two becomes thinnest, near invisible, just a fold in a force field. You can feel the hinge but you can’t see it, like the flip side that must always be, eternal and joined as matter and anti-matter.
From the book, the section is here:
Colour Equations
- Black + white + a third colour block from the palette
- A medium-dark to very dark colour (or black) + a white or an icy colour
- A medium-dark to very dark colour (or black) + a brighter colour from the palette
- A neutral (grey, brown, or black) + one other colour + possible third colour in small area
- Two dark colours of the same or analogous colours
- Two colour maximum, where black, white, black-navy, black-brown, and neutrals count as colours. Third colour possible, as small area only, in an accent or accessory item.
- Overall medium-dark to dark effect
(Note: For the equations above, and those in the following Seasons, the terms light, medium, and dark signify the darkness level within the palette itself, not on a full white to black scale.)
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From the top graphic:
Your hair and makeup are already a colour. When you look at others, you register every colour, meaning them plus their stuff. Chemical hair colour and makeup already add a lot of colour activity for the viewer’s eyes. Clothes and jewelry beyond that and the eye has nowhere to land, nowhere to focus, and nowhere to rest. Dark Winter looks good with a lot of still territory. Gray, white, black. Perhaps the lipstick in the tuxedo image (#1) is enough, imagining in the earrings, hair, and eye colour adding three more colours.
#2: We’re always needing big separation between lightest and darkest. And an overall dark look.
The red and navy (#3) – feel how much more energy there is just by adding the blue. That navy is so close to black but it feels a lot busier. Not wrong, might be great in your eye, just a different feel. Anything added would be white, gray, black.
When the lower block changes to black, it’s such a small thing, but the feeling for me is sharper, cleaner, calmer, and could accept another small block of colour better. With black (#4), as with white and gray, there’s a feeling of settling that is right, as life settles at night, as moving water settles to frozen ice. Contrast is always high. Winter is not a tone on tone look. Contrast can be high without sparks flying, as large blocks of purple and yellow could achieve, and more so if they’re very bright and clear purple and yellow.
I like a lot of red on Winters. Red is a big colour on Winter. When you get your red right, it becomes a neutral, like gray in your wardrobe. We wear a version of it in lipstick every day. I think Jennifer Butler said that everyone has their neutral red and I agree with her. We are conscious of the colour red in every other person, though not the same red. Dark Winter could wear Bobbi Brown’s Rum Raisin lipstick and cover it with her Sugar Lilac gloss (to clear and purple and lighten that lipstick a touch more) or White Brightening gloss and that would be very good. If you want lips that last till noon, put a good coating of Lauder Double Wear Ruby on, then another coat, then cover it MAC Fast Play which dulls and browns it that tiniest trace to accommodate the Autumn influence that lives here.
Complimentary colours together are very energizing and heated, so work better on the hotter Seasons. When the feeling is colder and stiller, the teal (blue) and brown (orange) in small areas bring in that mutually elevating effect without being revving the motor more than a dark and quiet group logically would. The lower block in #5 is black-brown. That’s your eyeliner, clean, red based, dark, Cover Girl Vivid Ruby. The teal could equally be a stone in an earring, a necklace, a clutch, a laptop case and can go much darker.
Two darks together are aferocity that Dark Winter does well. It’s become hard for me to discuss this character and separate myself, but they seem able to generate a strength of intention to be reckoned with. This isn’t a warm and fuzzy person at all. They’re business and move to the power position pretty fast. All black is kind of too mafia. Two dark but different colours works for me. The Dark Seasons do an overall dark look very well (#6). It’s their thing. For DW, I like when the colours are close if not the same, like a tuxedo, like a pinstripe suit, all those linear vertical elements. All black is, well, you know, never amazing.
I love grey a lot on all 8 Neutral Seasons. And T. Rex gray is right about perfect here. Pants, jackets, eyeshadow, socks, wristwatch bands, it’s all part of the final picture and it’s all getting noticed. Bobbi Brown’s Rock eyeshadow mixed with the darkest colour in Clinique’s Totally Neutral trio and you’re there. Make lighter versions for the lid and darker version to put above the crease.
From the second graphic:
As my friend and Sci\ART analyst, Mary Steele Lawler, from Mississippi, pointed out from her colour mixing courses: ” If one paints a warm bright color in a landscape background the painting will be distorted. This is a color fact, because in real life distance causes colors to cool down and become mellow while Bright and Warm make colors advance.” So, you get what she’s saying, that it would look like foreground-type colour plopped into the background for no good reason. The picture makes no sense. The viewer doesn’t get what they’re supposed to make of the whole thing or get past the question: “Why in the world did the artist do that? What can I be missing here?” That’s yellow highlights on a Soft Summer head whose natural pigmentation is of coolness and distance, so background colours.
Therefore, the coolness level has to be the same throughout the elements of a composition that are in the same plane for you not to look dizzy. Nobody understands the concept of colour consistency better than artists. Colour is just as disciplined as drawing. Until the vanishing point in drawing was understood, nothing looked anchored down. This is a set of rules artists don’t break if they want their work to look real. They don’t take liberties with the natural physics of colour behaviour either if they’re aiming for a believable work of art. Kalisz explained her PCA system by simply saying that it adhered to “how colour is”. She didn’t add or invent arbitrarily. She stuck to those rules that Nature put in place long before colour analysis came along.
#1 – somber, grave, looks good on these people, on this personality.
Since this is a Neutral Season (in 12 Season personal colour analysis, these are the 8 groups of natural colouring that are made up of blends of 2 True Seasons; their personal colour palettes contain just slightly warmish and just slightly coolish versions of every one of their most perfect colours), I set the saturation to pretty high. I stay on the halfway-to-cool side of a colour’s warm to cool spectrum. The dark cool olive and the cool yellow (#2) are the same at the same coolness and provide a high value (light/dark)contrast. Any added colour block is quiet. Picture a colour here, it’s too agitated.
In the next one (#3), I was aiming to show a print. Though the two greys are quiet, the print adds energy and so does a saturated cool coral pink, a variation of red, a colour to which humans are highly perceptive. The lower block is inert, or has no inertia, if you think of each element as having a momentum, a propulsive capacity to itself. Because each one of us is an energy field made up of light. Our appearance should have inertia, moving towards other people, our future, our goal. Isn’t that person just more fun and memorable than the static one (whose foreground colours are plopped in their background – does that look like you’re moving in reverse?) ? That lighter gray, I’d even take to cool light oatmeal or champagne, outside the swatches, but the Autumn blend makes those colours very convincing. If that’s what’s in the store but the pink is perfect, fine.
The purple and black (#4) is overall dark, where the purple energizes, warms, and dulls the black to the right extent (which is to say not a lot for DW). The clutch is meant to convey silver. Could be earrings, cuff, watch, necklace. Substantial diamonds are good because they add big presence without putting in another colour block.
#5 is there to remind that A. we can do a lot without black, that B. all teals are important colours on Autumns as turquoises are to the Spring blends, and that C. white is fine but not alone unless you’re very cool and near True Winter.
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Dark Winter does say December to me.
Photo by Leocub.
To all of you and to those in your lives who remind you of how much there is in you to love,
I wish you the happiest holidays of all!
The True Spring With Dark Hair
December 20, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 28 Comments
Or
Tension Vs. Relief
Or
Learn To Trust Your Feelings
A fascinating draping experience recently.
A woman of Northern Italian descent. Her overall appearance was of a mid-range darkness level. From the nose down, she had an Old World Mona Lisa face shape. Dark beige hair and eyebrows (hair growing out an orange-red dye), light brown lashes. Her eyes are large and a green brown colour that glowed yellow if lit from the side. Baby perfect skin that seemed fairly clear, more translucent than restrained in colour clarity. Her mind could spin in three directions at once. This lady could change topics on a dime.
One of my reasons for loving the Sci\ART analysis system is that it self-checks as it proceeds. No Season is canceled until we have multiple sources of corroborating evidence, meaning many different comparisons that always gave consistent results. We were sure she was a True Warm. Our choices were down to True Spring and True Autumn.
This is where it got difficult. She was one of the few women I’ve met who was not even slightly drawn to Autumn colours. My gut feeling was always Spring in every contest. In the end, True Spring brought out a delicacy in the features that Autumn would blunt. We saw darker shadows under the eyes in Autumn drapes. The edge of the iris was fuzzier. It was the Spring brown that most intensified eye colour, not Autumn’s camel brown.
The dark haired True Spring won’t look like Charlize Theron. Lightness is not True Spring’s TMIT (the most important thing). Of course, even Seasons whose TMIT is lightness can have dark hair because hair colour is very varied among all Seasons. True Spring’s TMIT is yellowed warmth. The Season doesn’t get very dark but the colours that most folks associate with True Spring actually reside in Light Spring. When we finally wrap ourselves around True Spring’s palette, we say “Oh, wow, I didn’t get how much colour there is.” Most people would be physically fatigued after an hour of trying to match the energy of True Spring colours. When we’re dealing in brown, there’s a lot of brown.
The richness of colour and the high degree heat give True Spring’s colours much more intensity that we expect. The darker colours are so saturated that on a person of fair skin, they can appear to be fairly dark. Put that hair on the head of a dark person and it would look lighter, like sandy brown. The same colour that looks quite dark on Helen Mirren will look just medium on Sandra Bullock. The question we want to answer is “What are your darks? Which colours make up your perfect set of just-right-darkness darks?”
Natural hair colour isn’t always typical of the average for any Season. Indeed, there’s very little yellowed hair growing from heads over 35. If that colour were added to the hair, it would look great on most True Springs but not all. Many True Springs don’t have Uman Thurman’s Nordic genes. They are inherently darker of hair and eye. Highlights are never a necessity nor do they flatter everyone in any Season. As we saw in The Emmas Are True Springs Part 1, the result of a PCA can be quite unexpected, and never more than for True Spring.
I try to think of resemblances because I often see people for 3 hours and never again. I can’t always remember faces for future email questions. Also, it helps us picture changes on ourselves if we can apply them to a look alike. This woman made me think of Lucrezia Borgia. There was a Renaissance quality to her face.
The facial progressions to find a modern day version landed on Spanish actress Sophia Valverde. She could be a dark Winter for all I know, but could you agree that she doesn’t seem an automatic Autumn? There’s a lightness of colour and a delicate bone structure. She is more streamers (Spring) than building blocks or bricks (Autumn). Is that just because she’s 20 and beautiful? Yes, sure, very possible.
Here she is as Lucrezia.
And another version of the same woman.
María Valverde Pictures
What does streamers and building blocks tell you about a person’s colours? Nothing. Season can only be known by in person draping. I’m not trying to prove Maria is a Spring. It’s just fun to think about. Have a look through this evolution of Maria. I found Picture 9 most interesting. Then, let’s compare her to Jillian Michaels (watch the video clip) and go through our Autumn vs Spring question list.
Who is an unattractive blonde? Maybe both women are. Jillian has great Autumn hair colour. Blonde would not be nearly so good, though not as rough as on a Dark Autumn. There, if she’s 30, she looks 50, and if she’s 50, she looks a much older woman, as if she’s frosted her hair with grey for some reason. The pale pink lip they put on Jillian looks grey, as every pastel does on Autumn.
Who feels like bricks? Jillian does, perhaps part of her media persona, but it doesn’t feel a big stretch. Maria looks to have a lighter, more playful touch.
Who wears corduroy, who taffeta? I’d suggest J and M in that order.
Who wears toffee lips, who clear salmon? I don’t see J in clear salmon. Maria? Well, I’d be open to either. You don’t have to know the answer to every question just as the winner in every drape contest won’t be obvious or easy. Maria in toffee lips makes me feel like I did when Leslie Stahl of TV’s 60 Minutes wore a curry lipstick. Goodness gracious, it wasn’t good.
Whose energy is best described by ‘solidly grounded’? Ms. Michaels definitely is. Maria seems too delicate. If one of these is the little coloured glass figurine that sits on a little mirror, it’s Maria.
Photo galleries are a good exercise in learning to recognize tension and relief. Don’t think about shadows or makeup and so forth. Only think about when looking feels most relaxed. Only think about where your guts don’t tighten up at all. Where do you need zero internal adjustments, where is it all acceptance and no resistance? Where is there no distraction of external stuff to process before you get through to the real person? Every time you change the photo, every time I change a drape, tune into your first response – did you feel a step forward or a step back? Maria’s gallery is here. Lightness or golden-blond, as the photo leaning on white wall never feels so good, too heavy or thick. Something about the long peach dress works.
Renata’s recent post on Ivanka Trump shows another woman who reminds me a lot of Maria. Similar face structure, like the singer, Dwight Yoakam. They sure could be Soft Autumn, but I’d sure be keeping True Spring in mind till they’re draped.
A most astute True Spring reader sent me this photo of Nicole Richie. That seems a True Spring red, maybe even more saturated than that depending on your monitor (which would push it into the Brights). I have no idea what Season the woman is, though the stereotype pushes you to drawing Soft Autumn assumptions and maybe that’s correct. I’m just saying that you have to stay very open to the possibilities. This colour doesn’t look completely overwhelming on her. She is sorry in black and sad in white, so are Soft Autumn, Light Spring, and many True Warm Season people. Have a look at this most interesting gallery. All this yellow coming out of these eyes- who knew it was there?
Michelle Williams is similar. Many blonde hair green-eyed celebs like Hilary Duff and Kate Moss seem Soft Autumn to me. Not this woman. The pixie face, the general sense of lightness, dimpled cuteness and youth, speak to me of Spring. ‘Strong, solid roots’ doesn’t seem to capture her somehow. Ethereal, sprite, and fairy fit better. She’s not a great ash blonde, nor is she a natural blonde. See all the yellow in the eyes?
She is a great honey blonde. She can go incredibly yellow and just gets prettier.
Photo linked to Allure Beauty Trends blog.
Perhaps we haven’t learned much we didn’t already know besides illustrations of the difference between tawny (Autumn) and perky (Spring). And how hard it can be to see the difference and the many ways in which it got hidden. That’s fine. Seeing the infinite variations of beauty never stops inspiring us.
We often look at one another’s photos. The fascination and the problem with them is that until we see you in person and in your right colours, we haven’t really seen you. I find this with every woman whose photos I’ve looked at many times, then finally see in her right colours at a draping. It took those colours to fill in the missing blank, to express everything that that woman is, not just some parts of her. This is where the frustration of searching for your right colours arises, of trying to come up with that last elusive jigsaw piece. You know you haven’t been seen, or been seen as someone else, and you’re tired of living the half-truth.
One of the basic questions asked by philosophy is “Who am I?” But we get confused and uncertain, with age and media and so on. Eventually, what we are looking to answer is “Is this me?” Without knowing that, it’s hard to move on to answer “What is my place here? What is my purpose?” That’s what the woman sitting in front of the analyst’s mirror is looking to recognize. It helps her pin down “This is part of me. That is not part of me. The border between the two is here.” That’s why women want to know and understand their colours and how to express their colour language. And why it disturbs many analysts so much to hear that they’ve tried and tried and keep getting different answers. At least know that there are analysts as distressed by this as you are who aim to fix the problem, even if it means exposing it, discussing it openly, maybe ruffling a few feathers, and then moving away from these Dark Ages to a lighter, truer, more educated place.
PS – about a question on differentiating Spring and Autumn’s peach:
Spring’s peach can be found in a pile of cooked cold shrimp on one of those $2.50 rings you can buy, you know? You can perceive gentle white, young skin pink, and clear luminous yellow. And it’s moist.
Autumn’s peach is more likely to be in a bouquet of dried flowers. It will look duller and drier. If asked whether you pick up the same colours as the shrimp ring or let’s say, the presence of tapestry beige, brick red, and muted gold, you’d choose the latter.
In the Comments, Renata asked for a visual of the comparison. Huge thanks to Margo for creating the graphic below, a gift of creativity and time.
Note: I do not own the photos on this page. Wherever possible, they are linked to the site of origin. If you own these images and would like them removed from this page, I would be happy to do so.
Are All 60 Colours Really My Best?
December 15, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
Excellent question #4: Are there people who are really best in only some of their colors and for whom other colors in the palette are a compromise?
Short answer: No, there are no such people. I would say you are best in all 60 colours of your Season’s colour palette, your personal colour analysis swatches, though many women will only partially agree.
From the analyst’s position, what I care about is that no colour brings out the imperfections that we worked for 2 hours to eliminate. In that context, all 60 colours do work. Many others might too. From the question above then, it depends on your definition of “really best”. Mine is the youngest, most flawless, and evenly coloured skin tone possible. Your personal issues with powder pink or baby blue are not foremost in my head as long as I have you in your best pink and blue.
No doubt, women have preferences in their palette. Some will just never see themselves in yellow, especially True Winter and Soft Summer. It may take a woman 10 years to overcome being a green-hater. When we conclude the draping, there are 15 beautiful Final Drapes (not the test drapes) that we look at to begin exposing the client to more of their most beautiful colours. She will always love some and not love others. Few will ever own an item in every colour in their swatch book.
She will always look better in some when we see her colours the second time wearing her perfect makeup colours and the hair down. And she’ll look worse in some because wrong hair colour is detracting from how beautiful and balanced she could look, but it’s important for her to see that. As awful as the gray cap is, it’s a real moment in personal growth when you see yourself looking better in it than in your present hair colour. This is when you truly get it.
You have no worries here. Having something to work towards is empowering in itself. By that stage of the session, you will find your mind supplying you with the colour your hair should be or the colour that will perfect the skin. It’s a brand new voice for everyone, nudging you to make the right change. What the colour should be will appear in your head as soon as you stop trying to be the boss of yourself. It’s a very polite voice. It won’t interrupt the traffic flow in your head till you hold up the STOP sign.
It’s also in how you wear your colours. A Dark Winter in a big block of light colour won’t look quite right. She needs darkness to balance it with the larger proportion of dark colour in her and set up the contrast that every Winter needs. If her complexion is very dark, that block of light will work better because the contrast will already be in place.
Many Soft Summers don’t feel right in some of their lightest drapes. Flip one or two of the medium and dark colours over her shoulder at the same time and the picture clicks. Soft Summer is the queen of the sophisticated colour combinations, where sophisticated can mean “to become less simple and straightforward through experience or education” and “to develop into a more complex form”. Soft Summer is very much about layers of meaning, intention, and nuance, in their thoughts as in their colours. When other Seasons combine colour, they drive up the energy. Soft Summer colours are so gentle that they can be combined and still keep the picture elegant and so refined. For me, this Season’s magic isn’t fully apparent until its colours are combined. I’d say the same about Soft Autumn. They’re not so much speak-for-themselves colours, like True Autumn and True Spring. They seem to support one another with a synergy other Seasons don’t achieve as well, or at least, as graciously.
Many Bright Season persons need time to adjust to the colour brightness and energy if they had no inkling of the outcome. The analyst’s job throughout is to keep them focusing on their face, not the drapes. It’s easy to get scared off if you’ve been dressing like your friends or if your cosmetics salesperson thinks “She’d look unbelievable in this red but there’s no way she’ll try it, let alone buy it.”
True and Dark Autumn usually love all their colours. If they arrived wearing blonde hair and black whatever, they recognize there’s a little work to do but they don’t shy away. They are job-oriented anyhow and now have their better alternatives. The next time you see them, they’re glorious.
Light Summer can be surprised, having lived as a Soft Autumn with warm golden hair for 20 years. Since it is impossible not to like this palette, the adjustment is easy. They look better in the gray hat and their Final Drapes than they do when the hair is down but the problem is plain to see. They are usually just excited to get going though apprehensive about how to explain to the colourist what needs doing. They go in armed with photos of what they do want and what they don’t want.
Light Spring is usually happy too. Springs are very natural people with lots of spunk and spirit and a good bit of daring. These personalities are not caught up in the complicated inner quests. There is often something very spiritual in their life. Emotion runs close to the surface. I seldom find Springs bury a lot of themselves, much more WYSIWYG. They’re hard to repress and anxious to get going. Black’s not good? Fine, give me grey then. They’ll be sending me links to gorgeous products they unearthed within about 2 weeks of their PCA.
Does The Darkness Range of My Colours Matter?
December 12, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 7 Comments
David Chilton wrote The Wealthy Barber and the recent The Wealthy Barber Returns to help people understand how financial planning is do-able by everybody. Securities analysts can discuss financial theory till Wall Street freezes over but for consumers, the answer to all that is “Yeah, great. Show me how to use it. Show me how I’m supposed to make it work.” The same applies to colour analysts.
We know from How Can I Be 3 Seasons? that the field of colour analysis will be a sure-fire appearance asset for 100% of consumers once we sort a few things out. Already now, when it works, it REALLY works. When it’s good, it’s VERY GOOD. It is THE BEST thing that could ever happen to how you look and how you shop. The problems and questions need to be hauled out in the sunshine so we can get a good look at the cracks so we can seal them up for you.
This week, we’re sharing some of the questions I receive most by women who phrased the issue really well. Any changes I made are to preserve anonymity.
#3: …what I really would like to know is, what is the range for a Soft Summer when using the [swatches]? I mostly mean in terms of value. For example, there is this one random rose brown that is unlike the rest of the browns. Do I need to buy rose-browns that are that depth? A few months ago I purchased a set of Soft Summer paint chips from Mary Steele Lawler and since I’m [interested in home decor], I found it quite interesting. When I found the rose-brown in a paint strip card, I believe it was the second darkest color and it had several lighter colors on that card. None of these are in my Soft Summer fan. Does that mean that they are also allowed since they are just darker and lighter versions of the same color? Can I take any of the colors to my darkest and lightest range?
Good, good question. Short answer: No, you can’t go fully to the lightest and darkest versions of your colours. Why not? Because they have to be lightened or darkened by adding or changing something. As soon as you do that, you change value (lightness/darkness) but you also change some other colour dimension too, either warmth or saturation. And then, poof, they look better on somebody else who matches the new settings better.
Soft Summer can go a tinge lighter than the swatches but not a lot before you trip into another Season. If colours become too light by having too much of the greying effect subtracted, the colours get too saturated and they don’t work with the person or the rest of the clothes. If you lighten the colours by adding white, they get too light for the person to balance. If you lighten them by adding yellow, you add too much of the wrong kind of warmth, plus you increase the saturation.
Photo by Dominic Morel, South Africa.
But.
You might be able to move a little in value depending on your Season.
Whatever your Season, always observe The Most Important Thing about your Season’s colours. For the Lights, it’s lightness of colour, where even the darker colours would look light on people of non-Light-Season natural colouring. For the Darks, it’s that colours be quite dark overall, without saying that every colour is dark. Lightness and darkness respectively is what makes the skin of these groups most young and evenly coloured. They cannot compromise on these key points. Warmth/coolness of colour is less stringent unless you’re a True Season. A Light could go a touch warmer and that might work, as long as she stays light in the colour. A Dark might go a little warmer or cooler, but darkness is what the viewer should recognize first overall.
Does this mean that a Light Season person can go as light as they want? No, it doesn’t. If you fan out a Winter and a Light Summer colour swatch book, you’ll see that Winter’s lightest colours are actually lighter than Summer’s. To satisfy Winter’s requirement for light colours to be icy, they contain very little colour pigment. Summer’s lightest colours are more ‘colourful’. To create the very high contrast Winters all need to look their very best, their icy colours must be very close to white. A Summer’s lightest tones are called pastel, meaning more pigment and greyed a little bit. Colour analysis wants to establish ‘How light are your lights and how dark are your darks and let’s get your wearing your full range’. Summer’s range of lightest to darkest is narrower, Winter’s goes to the very ends at white and black. A Light person can go a little lighter but needs to keep it pastel.
Awareness of what you see first takes practice. It may be easier to learn this by looking at an entire person. A Dark Season outfit will make the first impression of being darker than medium on a white to black scale. There may be (there should be) light parts that are very light, but what sinks into your sight center first is dark. A Bright Season person’s first ping on your consciousness should be clarity. One speck of dust, one little puff of cloud floating through, a trace of haze, and all those other great colours she’s wearing just got neutralized a little bit, and so did the glow of her face.
For the Softs, your eyes should register grayness, mutedness, fogginess, dullness before they check-in what the colour is. It’s gray before it’s yellow or purple or blue. Soft Summer’s greying will be more perceptible, might strike your consciousness before how warm/cool or how light/dark. It’s that softness that matters most to perfect this skin and to meld what you wear with what you are. The position on the warm/cool scale isn’t quite so tight, there is a little fluctuation. The degree of lightness or darkness isn’t very tight either. A pretty wide range of each exists, though not all the way to white or black.
Even the lightest colours have a fair amount of pigment, more than the other two Summer Seasons. The Soft Summer represents the Summer palette seen in the shade. A little gold is added, though so little this far away from True Autumn that its effect is to complement Summer’s blue and make greyness. It will warm too, but out here, it doesn’t look gold or yellow, it looks like a fog brown overlaying True Summer.
Soft Summer is capable of many colours besides what’s in the Book as long as they hold the saturation position very low (and of course, adhere to the warmth and darkness ranges). It’s a balancing act. If the colours are changing their lightness/darkness level and changing the saturation too, then it wouldn’t look so good. If the colour is becoming lighter/darker and is staying very soft and muted and is staying cooler than warm, the harmony for Soft Summer should be pretty good. You’re always balancing the 3 scales of colour at once. If you see a rosy brown outside your fan but your taste tells you it would look fine with your other fan colours, then it probably would, especially if it’s not a big area.
We often try to change one parameter of colour in our questions, forgetting that as soon as you change it, the other 2 change right away.
This is how it works in my eyes and thinking. If ever I find a colour mixing course to teach me in more detail, I’ll be there, brushes and mixing pots in hand. Something I’d like to know is this: Is there a lower limit to Soft Summer’s saturation? Does the Season occupy all the cool-neutral, mid-value colour space back to the starting point at the all grey axis? I’d say not because that axis is made of Winter greys, meaning composed only of B&W. To be a Summer Season grey, some pink, mauve, or blue should be definitely discernible. To qualify as a pastel at all, a fair bit of pigment must be present, more than for an icy colour. Hey. Either I’m wrong or I just answered my own question.
Is ONE Season Always The Best?
December 10, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 15 Comments
Good question, for our week of questions. #2a: “Can someone, even in the 12 [Seasons], fit in-between a couple of Seasons, (e.g, between True and Bright Winter) or will they absolutely ONLY fit into one category?”
Answer: Only ONE. I have never met anyone who isn’t most perfected by one palette alone. One group of colours has the ability to bring out a never-before-seen version of every person that no other group of colours can do so well. Based on 100 PCAs, that is a truth. (Would other analysts concur?)
#2b: “What does it mean to be on the warm or cool side of my Season?”
During a draping, some people are No Contest better in their Season than any other. There’s no hesitation in making the choice of the best colour. I find this happens often with the True Seasons.
With other people, the call between the best Season and the 2nd runner-up is harder to decide. There might be flattering effects with both, though one will always be better. The person will fit into their Season but edge a little closer to whatever that 2nd runner-up was, cooler or warmer. I see this more often with Neutral Seasons. Why?
Seasons are a continuum of 3 colour qualities (light/dark, cool/warm, soft/clear) that continuously change as they progress along a circular road with 12 cities on it. On that road, every city’s climate is either warmer or cooler than those on either side. For those who bought my book, you’ll see that in The Season Circle diagram. Your colouring, your personal Season marker, can sit right in a city or anywhere along the road between two cities.
The Neutral Seasons are those 8 groups of natural colouring that contain some warmer and some cooler versions of their particular best colours. How much of both can vary. It’s not 50:50 or 75:25 or fixed among the members of any group.
You might have two Light Springs, persons whose colouring is found in the colours of the Spring group that is influenced by a little of what Summer does to colour.
One can be 80% Spring and 20% Summer, so they are warmer and run very close to the next Season on the warm side. They might wear some of that warmer neighbor’s colours successfully.
The other person might be 60% Spring and 40% Summer, so closer to the cool side. They’ll share cool colours better.
Both are most perfect in the Light Spring palette because that’s where the majority of their pigmentation is found. You’ll find people who are 51% of one Season and 49% of the neighbor.
#2c: If I’m close to my warm neighbour Season, can I wear their colours fairly well?
Sometimes yes. If you know you’re on the warm side, when you have to make colour compromises from your perfect Season in a store, opt to trend towards the side your colouring moves towards, that is a trace warmer.
How much warmer? Not a lot. There is a definite heat shift between any 2 neighbour Seasons but if you overstep it, you’ll turn your skin, eyes, and teeth yellow.
I talk a lot about The Most Important Thing (TMIT). It really helps me make good judgment calls. Some people fit into the Lights, Brights, Darks, or Softs, and tend towards the other neighbor in that same group. That means both Seasons share the same TMIT so they can borrow some of those other colours that comply with TMIT. For example:
A Light person does well in light colours, they’re very forgiving. Lightness is TMIT for both Light Summer and Light Spring. So a Light Summer might wear some of the other Light’s (Light Spring) lighter, cooler colours. Even better if she tends on the warmer side of the Light Summer anyhow.
A True Summer’s TMIT is coolness. If she’s fairly dark or contrasting looking, she can wear sometimes wear some of True Winter’s light to medium colours because they’re cool too. Many True Summers will be lost in the saturation of Winter, whether the icy lights or bold darks, but some can pull it off in a small surface area. The coolness shared by the two palettes will help create some unity with the rest of her True Summer clothes.
The draping will tell you how well she’s likely to work this. True Summer and True Winter are quite a ways apart, further in my mind that the Softs, Lights, Brights, and Darks are from each other. I think that’s one reason why Kalisz arranged them not to share or be neighbors (the other reason being “What for? Kalisz made 12 UNIQUE palettes which a shared Season between True Winter and True Summer would revoke. It would be a null Season.) The other attributes of Light, Bright, Dark, and Soft seem more reasonable as neighbours that could share some colours.
Short answer, IMO, the Softs, Lights, Brights, and Darks who are very close to the neighbour of that same type can borrow some colours, the warm ones if you’re on the warm side, the cool ones if you’re on the cool side. Lights will do better borrowing light colours, and Darks, the darker colours. It won’t always work. You need to be way over there, very near the neighbour you hope to borrow from. The last contest with that runner-up Season should have taken some careful observation. Don’t expect to be as beautiful as in your own palette because you’re borrowing from your second best Season. The heat difference alone may create more disharmony with the rest of the appearance than the item is really worth.
PCA U.K. January 2012
December 8, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 1 Comment
This is a reminder that Sci\ART trained colour analyst Nikki Bogardus will be in London, England, from January 19 – 22.
This is your opportunity to experience the amazingly accurate analysis system of your natural colouring that you’ve read about on this website. This is THE most honest and profound change you can make in your appearance and your shopping decisions.
Contact Nikki for appts. at www.mycolorrx.com
How Can I Be 3 Seasons?
December 7, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 25 Comments
I get many emails with many terrific questions. I may not always know the answer but I’m better for trying to find it. Thank you for sharing your perspectives with me. To maximize the usefulness of PCA for you, it’s important for us to know where it lets you down.
This week’s posts are aimed at a 3 of the most frequently asked questions.
How can you be 3 Seasons?
Definite answer: You can’t. You’re not. You’re ONE Season ONLY. Everybody, all the time.
As many of you know, this topic gets emotional, inflammatory, even explosive. Even defamatory. So, a little digression:
#1 : Getting different results from different analysts…
I’d like to say I’m always right. I’d like to say everybody’s always right. About everything.
I’d like to say that I’ve never met a woman who got 3 different Season verdicts, and this is from 3 different Certified Sci\ART analysts, in person even. Not in this reality. Shouldn’t even step out our door if that’s what we’re expecting.
Of course I think Sci\ART is the most correct system or I’d have changed lanes by now. I never hear the places we disagree as criticism and I never intend it that way.
I sure have read some rants aimed at analysts whose Season IDs disagree or who use other systems – and this from members of the public, not even other analysts. It’s fine to point out mistakes, it’s vital, so we can all learn and grow, but there’s a way to do it without fanning the fire more than necessary. Everyone’s just trying their very best. That should be respected. Colour is real hard to do, even with a great set of drapes. Accusations drag everybody down. Kurt Vonnegut: “Rage and loathing over a book is like wearing a suit of armor to attack a hot fudge sundae.” If you have vented or accused, consider taking down your comment – and I don’t mean on this site, where I have no problem with rage and loathing.
I very much appreciate the many ” Please help me understand how I can be 3 different Seasons?” emails I get regarding every PCA system, including Sci\ART. They’re a valuable reminder that every belief system needs to be open to questioning and that every ideology is potentially flawed. I also appreciate women of intelligence who can react with composure and curiosity, rather than falling to pieces and succumbing to their evil twin’s inclination to point fingers and fling insults and curses. That looks bad on all of us and the whole world of colour analysis. Knowing we behaved elegantly feels so much better.
——
Time to lighten the mood.
#1a. So, the question was: “How can one analyst see me as 100% cool and another as 100% warm?”
An in-person analysis is surely best but it’s still a bit of a minefield.
First, there’s the accuracy of the drapes if the 2 PCAs systems were different. The test drapes aren’t intended to be pretty. They need to create reaction in the skin and be exactly suited to the colour parameters of only ONE Season.
Second, what might be very accurate but being called True Autumn in one system might correlate better with another system’s Soft Autumn colours. So maybe Company A’s Cool Winter would contain many colours shared by Sci\ART’s True Summer. Or Company B’s drapes for True Autumn would have fit better into Sci\ART’s Soft Autumn and Color Me Beautiful’s Warm Spring.
I haven’t studied every other company’s palettes but I’ve seen quite a few. It was Kalisz’s work as Sci\ART that got the 60 different colours in the 12 palettes nailed down. Finally, there was exactness and consistency in all 3 dimensions of colour in every colour in every one of the 12 palettes. A division line, almost a physical curtain, appeared to separate what PCA was and what it is now.
I still see colour collections from other systems that contain imprecise colours, shared colours, or the use of materials that make colour accuracy near impossible. If the colours aren’t right to begin with, the whole system becomes debatable and the tools are moot. This will be among the most common causes of misdiagnosis. Those 12 Sci\ART palettes that Kalisz began with, and the 8 Neutral Season colours she developed, are very VERY exact. She eliminated terms like pale yellow, Chinese blue, sienna brown, or cool red and replaced them with 12 exact different versions of each one. This is what raised the benchmark. Her achievement was no small thing and the importance of it for a correct Season ID can’t be overstated. It really is huge. Whether they’re called flow or Neutral or whatever, it’s not the various names or number of Seasons that are the sticking point between companies. That becomes “My philosophy is better than your philosophy.” “Is not.” “Is so.” The issue drills way deeper than that to the very colours themselves.
In her excellent comment to Can Natural Hair Colour Ever Be Wrong?, Denise suspects that different analysts look for different things. I’m certain she’s right. The thinking process that decides how the drapes are used, in what order, to draw which conclusions, will vary among analysts and how they were trained. The logic tree guides the conclusions so it has to follow a consistent path.
I use drapes that contain only a single colour at a time because every single colour is telling you something. Too many colours at once overwhelms the logic system. Might be that True Winter’s drape set looks acceptable until we get to the darker ones. The meaning of that would be lost with too many of a Season’s colours being evaluated together. Would I get the same results with napkin-size drapes than the larger ones I prefer? Maybe.
Even with custom-dyed drapes, the eye of the analyst and their interpretations will vary. This does happen. As you know if you’ve had a Sci\ART analysis, the drapes were hand selected by a master and are freakishly accurate. Despite that, I’ve had a woman leave one Sci\ART analysis a True Spring and leave me a Dark Winter from the very same drapes.
More power to the people who can standardize the colour system – but even then, even if the palettes and the drapes were custom-coloured and you could convince every analyst to sign up, how you remove the human element of error, I do not know. Computers can’t do this, only a human eye can pick up the subtleties. Towards the end of the session, when the worst colours have been excused, the answer is unveiled among layers of subtlety. Could any colour analyst, Sci\ART or not, honestly claim that they got every single person right? I’m sure some could. Perhaps they could add their name and business link to the Comments at the end. You should go see them, not me.
It’s not practical to have 2 analysts weigh in on every person’s session, which is why I’m so happy when people arrive with a friend whose character won’t just agree with everything I say. The more eyes, the better. Re-draping or continuing the following day is useful but many people make travel plans to come just for one day. The analyst has to wrap it up that day.
—–
#1b. Another good question: “If I was analyzed in another system and I trust the result, does the information from other companies or websites like this one still pertain to me?”
I don’t necessarily believe my way is the only way. It’s just that those are the results I understand and those are the palettes I can move around in. Those are the people and palettes in my head when I pick makeup and hair and clothing. But they can only apply to Sci\ART colours and therefore people analyzed in that system. How useful are my words if you were analyzed by a different system? I guess they’d have some value. But for choosing items to buy, you might rather stick with the company that analyzed you.
For the consumer, this is, of course, a complete frustration. As CCR sang, “…clouds of mystery pouring confusion on the ground.” How could it be otherwise? But you know, every industry is this way. This doctor gives you diagnosis A, the other one is convinced of diagnosis B. This makeup artist swears you’re cool, the other that you’re warm. What’s the answer? I think it’s to pick one system and stick with it. Hopefully, they have support materials to help women analyzed with those drapes make decisions about their appearance. You can pick whomever appeals to you but then you need to commit to that system afterwards too. They’re not interchangeable, though I know women would love it if they were.
All this colour talk is an academic exercise unless it helps you make better purchase decisions. You should be able to walk into any store, salon, boutique, or makeup counter, announce your Season, and trigger a whole set of clues in the sales staff’s mind. For store staff to bother learning it and feel successsful using it, one regulated system must prevail. I expect that work is underway to equalize colour analysis once and for all. I hope it works – and that the producers reach out and survey some analysts for ideas. They would hear many a good suggestion.
As ever, I’d be very grateful to hear your viewpoints. They always add to the conversation.
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