Kip Is A Light Summer
September 5, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 1 Comment
Kip’s family and ours have known one another for many years. As a child, he had flaxen hair and light blue eyes, and he certainly gave a Spring impression, or at least a very yellow impression.
He’s in his 30s now. His hair has darkened. He has a tan at the moment. Combining the freckles, the fact that his mother, and probably brother, are True Autumns, that his skin resembles his Soft Autumn sister’s, and that there are red tones in the hair (and very much redder on other family members), I wondered if Kip was going to be that Spring/Autumn person that we discussed in a previous article and its comments (see the previous article No Summer+Winter or Spring+Autumn Blends).
Draping
We saw right away that Winter was dominating and severe. The blackened sapphire and emerald took over.
In the True Autumn drapes, Kip might have been up every night for a week looking after his young children. The shadows and unshaved appearance were obvious. The lower half of the face was darker, making the jaw look very severe and the face 10 years older. BUT, his eye color intensity was surprisingly good. For those who are new here, you’ll read often that I do not factor the eye color into determining the Season. It simply does not matter. However, I very much consider which drapes make your eye color the most intense.
In the True Spring drapes, the skin was too yellow and the eye color was dull and greyed out. If I could erase the yellow in the skin, there seemed to be an easing of the lines, a more even luminosity, as is usually seen in any Spring blend. The skin looked healthy and very evenly colored, while True Autumn made the skin obviously worse, even in the very slight Autumn Seasons. So, Kip was not going to be the person who can wear True Spring and Autumn colors equally well.
True Summer was interesting. The yellow caused by True Spring cleared from the skin. The skin retained the good effects the Spring drapes created, of young, clear, ideal skin, but could also intensify the eye color to the same degree that the Autumn drapes did. The whole effect was a little flat, though the balance with the person was the best of the 4 True Seasons.
Light Summer’s bare trace of sunlight gave us the perfectly lit skin, without compromising the eyes. Light Summer is the Neutral Season (so blend of 2), that is mostly Summer with a minor influence from Spring. I guess that the reason the Autumn drapes worked so well to intensify eye color was their low saturation, which is the color characteristic that Autumn shares with Summer. When doing the analysis, always focus on the skin. Once you get that right, the eyes will automatically be their best.
In men, the deciding Season always creates the cleanest, strongest bone structure. They do look younger, the skin clearer, but what I see is just plain “handsome”.
Light Summer’s Colors
Light Summer’s are popsicle colors. No, not quite that bright. Rainbow colors. It’s not just True Summer overexposed. The light and clarity of Spring make the feeling of the whole palette much more lively. Any single color may be similar to some of True Summer’s, but the whole person viewed together, just as the whole Colours Book fanned out, is more energetic than True Summer. That clearance of True Summer’s gentle cloud brings a springy feeling, in more ways than one.
The Light Summer is color in sunlight. Compare this to Soft Summer, which is color in shade. Notice the shirt he’s wearing – color in shade. The chair is probably the true color. In sun, it would be Light Summer’s – so a little bleached out, and better on Kip. Still cool and fresh, like True Summer, but just that mention of clear light.
Watch how the color moves in the image below as it changes from light areas to shaded areas. In our physical world, light is reflected from objects in a continuum of light-true-dark, or warm-true-cool. In 12 Tone, or 12 Season, Color Analysis, the Tones progress from one to the next through the same sequence.
Kip’s most remarkable color was his off-white (the color of the Light Summer white drape in the previous article How Light Summer Goes Grey) . Not a browned off-white, like clamshell, which is Soft Summer’s. This is vanilla ice cream, but not French vanilla, which is too yellow. It took a conscious effort to remove that drape because he just looked so extremely right. Everyone in the room just kept looking. The longer a right color is on you, the more good things come out. The longer a wrong color is on you, the more bad things come out.
Summer’s palette showcases Kip’s gracious intelligence better than any other. Far more a listener than a talker, more peaceful than animated, more caring than needing, the personality of Summer men is admired more for their support of others than their call for self-promotion.
Color that’s too cool or cloudy says nothing about his easy smile and sense of humor, the pleasure he takes in physical activity, his respectful appreciation of Nature, or his capacity for adventure. His essence is quiet and easy to be with, but is made for the outdoors. The feeling is relaxed, sea and sand, boats and bicycles, not formal.
Light Summer Clothing
As important as it is to always look at color in daylight, the Light Seasons have to be especially careful to do so. There is no type of dark color that flatters them. In mall lighting, it’s too easy to go too dark.
A soft white shirt and a silver grey jacket would be outstanding. Pure white will take over, reducing the person, and we do not wear clothes to be diminished by them. A man wearing a coat/shirt in too-strong colors makes him look weak, and makes the size of the head look too small for the shoulders.
Spring/Summer men don’t sing to me in plaid, which can look workday and practical. Corduroy, same. Too much texture looks heavy and dulls the fabric. Light colors belong with light fabrics. Uncomplicated cottons, denim, natural linen, lightweight wool, and knits look smooth and balanced. Autumn’s focus is work and productivity. Spring is lighthearted and lives to enjoy life, to play, to have fun.
A light cotton shirt with a colorful stripe in a single color, which I think is called a Bengal Stripe (below from Savile Row Co), cool tan chinos, now that looks good. His temperature looks cool (he needs to, he’s a Summer above all), but there’s that little effervescence that elevates him to another frequency.
Love it in pink and in turquoise. Do not love the tie so much.
Purple and yellow
He definitely has a yellow look, though less than in his teens, and yellow in his skin. Any Spring blend needs to get comfortable wearing purples, though Light Summer hasn’t as many choices as the purer Springs. Because purple and yellow intensify one another, and the Colours Book shows you the right purple swatches for your particular type of yellowness, it looks remarkable. The shirt below is at Paul Fredrick. The white is that trace-of-vanilla off-white and all the purples are right.
Women love feminine colours on men. OK, I love them. It doesn’t need to be a mauve turtleneck. One stripe in a tie will get the room’s attention. Women keep looking at the one guy who can wear a cherry popsicle stripe in a sky blue tie. Men respect it because so few men know how to do this and accentuate their masculinity, rather than seem to compromise it.
Before you turn 30
This was a very interesting PCA for me. It reinforced what is easily forgotten, to never drape a person with predicted ideas of the outcome. Never start guessing. Go into the analysis with a blank slate, do the driving, and let the drapes give you the answer.
About finding that Spring/Autumn flow…the instrument I use to measure color, the Sci\ART drapes, are not designed to help me find that coloring. I don’t think it matters.
As a professional community of Personal Color Analysts, our strength will not be in fragmenting ourselves over linguistic and detail. We are already exclusive enough. Whatever system analyzed you, you’ll still look way better than you did before. Wouldn’t a world where everyone had a PCA by the time they’re 25 be beautiful? If a PCA were as automatic a grad gift as a laptop? If PCAs were part of everyone’s life like gym memberships?
Kathryn Kalisz’s passing in January was a loss to our entire community. Too much knowledge is lost when one person passes, unless we share our strengths. As Kathryn once said to me, “There’s plenty of business for everybody.”
Understanding A Color 1
September 1, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 14 Comments
Clients often bring an item of clothing or makeup to ask if the color is right for them. It helps me to have a way of answering the question that I use each time.
Personal Colour Analysis is about looking better on less wasted money. 80% of this venture involves correctly talking yourself OUT of wrong color items.
Process
These are the questions I ask myself. There’s no particular order, though I usually start with “Is it clear?”, since that can be the hardest call.
..Is it clear? Is it clear = blossoms/candy/fruit punch/popsicle OR is it muted = grayed, dulled, not-vivid, not-bright?
.. Is it light? If yes, is it pastel and heathery Summer, OR icy and frosty Winter?
..Is it warm? If yes, is it orange-brown-Autumn leaves OR yellow-tropical-Spring?
Example 1
We’re looking at the brown hoodie. I always step back see a color, allowing it to be surrounded with other things. Color is understood by comparison to other colors. A proper Personal Color Analysis is based entirely on comparing one color’s effects to another. We’ve all played the games of seeing ghost colors when our brain adds in complementary color around an object, of seeing items of the same size appear bigger and smaller next to other colors…all optical illusions. That is exactly what colors are doing next to your face and body, making your features appear yellow, oilier, bigger, smaller, etc. Your Personal Colour Palette is determined by which colours make you look most perfect.
Back to the hoodie.
Clear or dusty? >> dusty.
Light? >> no, more medium, I think.
Warm?>>no, not obviously orange or yellow.
So, the item is dusty, not clear. Therefore, Summer or Autumn or one of their blends are more likely.
It’s medium in darkness, not overly helpful.
It is neither orangey or yellowed. In fact, it’s almost pinkish. Therefore, Autumn and Spring are not likely. Is a weak Autumn blend possible? Sure, but then it won’t belong to one of the 3 Autumn Seasons.
Seems likes we’ve narrowed it down to Summer.
Trying to categorize it to its exact Season in the 12 possibilities isn’t really useful. This present exercise is more valuable as a way of EXcluding items from your shopping cart. Nobody whose main Season is Winter, Spring, or Autumn would buy this. The fine tuning is left to matching it to the Colours swatch Book.
Dominant Characteristics
There are color analysts who use this Color Me Beautiful technique very successfully to analyze human coloring. In my hands, that method seems to shake out a few snakes in the weeds. For analyzing clothes and makeup though, I like it. I could see how someone might call that hoodie dark and set off on the wrong track, but if you stick to the characteristic you’re absolutely most sure of, here being heathery-grayed-muted, it’s a good way of classifying an item.
So Sometimes, I’ll start with “What is most obvious?” on the 3 Colour Scales? The light/dark, warm/cool, hi/lo sat? To me, the most obvious thing about Example 1 is that it is dusty (low saturation). You could say cool too. There is a tendency to call all browns warm at the outset, like we tend to call all greys cool.
Example 2
So often, it’s the browns that mix us up. OK, mix me up. Another tendency is to give browns to Autumn. Autumns do look unequalled in their browns, but they’re usually wearing another Season’s shade of brown (before their PCA, of course).
This very cute shoe is at ShoeMall. The photo is linked
It’s clearly light. Heathery- grayed or clear and intense? Not sure, grayed I guess, like a pastel beige, but it’s hard to decided how gray a grayish color is. Maybe somewhere in between the two. (See Icy Colours and Pastels to understand the distinction between grayed and clear color.)
Warm or cool? I’d go with cool because I can’t see sunshine yellow or dull rust in it.
So it’s cool-side and light. Therefore, we’ve EXcluded True Autumns (orange-warmed and medium-dark), Springs (yellow-warmed and light), or Winters (icy lights, never pastel, and cool). Disqualified too are their strong blends (meaning, the 3 variations of each of those True Seasons). If you’re one of those 3, you probably wouldn’t buy this.
There is still room for error because all 3 of those True Seasons have some lighter colors in their palette. Maybe this is a color that any of the 12 Tones (Seasons) could wear, though not in shoes if the hair is a really different color. Could this be an example of a color that anyone could wear, that would be pulled together by the rest of the outfit?
If I’m really not getting a fix on a color’s position in the 12 Tones, I’ll switch to how it makes me feel. This beige feels cool, light, fresh, clean – Summer. The triangles and funky design say Spring. So I’ve probably EXcluded Autumns and Winters based on that.
Lesson : Check the Colours Book. Some colours are tougher to classify and unexpected in that Season. Some are also quite close between all the Seasons and very versatile workhorse colours.
Example 3
This great sequined doublet cardi is at J.Crew. I adore J.Crew’s way with color, but I had to think about this one to find its Season.
At first glance, I can see how you might say Autumn, because it’s golden-like. You might even see that shiny doublet piece peeking out and think “…and that dazzle is incongruent with Autumn’s feeling”.
Autumn is the nectar. Spring is the juice. This top might seem cider. Doesn’t help.
But Autumn doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel heavy or dulled enough. Nor does it convey mellow, cozy, or strong, all Autumn sensations. It might be orangey, but somehow the color feels too clean, maybe even a little sharp. It’s not greyed, certainly, in fact it seems quite saturated. The color is more strong than weak. It would be hard to saturate it more (remember that saturation is quite different from darkness), to make it more intense.
If we were looking at a landscape, would this color be in the foreground or melting away in the background? It would be near because it’s still vivid. It’s worth noting here that this element of saturation can give color a third dimension, a position of depth in space. Our brains understand that far away color is greyed, less brilliant, lower in saturation.
[A question for the color experts among us : Could the same be said of cool and dark colors? Both recede. A mountain range’s colors are cooler near the horizon. A forest is darker in the distance. Are all 3 parameters, hue, value, and chroma equally able to be the 3rd dimension of depth?]
Since the clarity of it might be confusing, though I see it as very clear (not at all cloudy) (apple juice, not peanut butter-a comparison I’m using to compare degrees of clarity, not the precise color itself), could we work it out based on its warmth? So, yes, it is a warm color. Is it warmed by Autum’s dull rust or Spring’s daffodil-buttercup yellow? I don’t get dull rust here. It’s more some kind of yellow-ness, right?
Does its lightness or darkness help us? Well, it’s more light to medium. Since it’s warm, we don’t talk about icy or pastel. Not really helpful.
My feelings tell me it’s clear (high saturation) and yellow. I look in the Colours Books. I find it among Bright Spring’s colors, with a gentler version in True Spring. The whole outfit is outstanding for Bright Spring, with the small but important element of black, yet overall light effect. Suddenly, the sequins make sense.
The Lesson is : Never shop without your Book.
.. you won’t remember color accurately, though you think you will; after 6-9 months, you’ll be better at it
.. for Including items in your cart, there are in-between levels of light/dark, warm/cool, and hi/lo saturation. For the 8 Neutral Seasons, you won’t get the degree of in-between-ness correct. The color analyzed swatches can be unpredictable. The color variations in the 12 Seasons are quite unique, to a level that the fashion industry has not nearly caught up with.
Your Suggestions
I enjoy this type of exercise because color is surprising and we all learn. If any of you have been confused or intrigued by a color, LMK. We’ll do another one of these articles.
The Color Version of the Law of Attraction
August 27, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
Today, we’re doing things a bit back to front and visiting my other website, A Greener Tea.
I did a very fun talk for our local Red Hat Society. From the speaker’s perspective, this is a uniquely beautiful experience. Everyone wears a red hat, often marvelously decorated with liberal use of a glue gun, and purple clothes. It’s brilliant to behold.
Some look out at the world and see the hand of God. I see color. It connects me to everything else somehow. In the article linked here, called “Personal Color Analysis and the Law Of Attraction”, it strikes me that in knowing and fully accepting ourselves, we find the peace and beauty we all carry inside. LoA and PCA are both about knowing that so-elusive truth about ourselves. Until we see how we sabotage our own happiness, calm, and success, and we all do it oh, so well, we can only attain a very weak version of each of those.
Clear and Muted Orange in Eyes
August 23, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 6 Comments
I am very excited about this post because eyes are so magically beautiful. If Personal Color Analysis is a window into our truest self, then eyes are the lenses through which those colors are projected back out into our world as our feelings, memories, and histories.
On our Facebook page, I once called a dark green-brown eye ‘swampwater green’. The eye color is particular to some people in the Bright Spring and Winter Seasons. One day, I will find you that eye color, but today is not the day. (The article How Springs Intensify Eye Color gives a link near the end to Heather at coloruza.com; her eye is as close a photo as I’ve found.)
It’s this particularly confusing concept of eye clarity where people get hung up. In 12 Season, or 12-Tone Color Analysis (I’m working at changing my terminology), these ‘clear eyes’ are often found among members of the clear (high saturation) Tones, namely Winter and Spring, and their 2 blends of Bright Winter and Bright Spring.
The fascination with these Tones is because of their rarity, and that very arresting quality of clearness. We recognize that it’s different, but it’s hard to describe verbally.
Here is a man’s eye. You’ll meet him in another article. For now, notice the color of the eye. Look at the quality of the orange tones.
Now, look at this woman’s eye. She is a Soft Autumn.
And now these 2 items.
Can you see which item matches the orange in which eye?
I once said that Spring’s eye makeup browns are not orange-y, which is true, because orange-browns tend to look earthy, the bane and blight of a Spring’s color existence. However, Springs certainly can wear many oranges in clothes and respect their tropical palette quite gorgeously. So too can there be orange in a Spring eye, but it’s not the same orange as Autumn’s.
Autumn’s is a dull rust, right? It’s the opaque, heavy-feeling, quiet, solid brick. Even in a faraway Autumn blend like Dark Winter, the orange has this same thicker, denser quality.
The orange in a Bright Spring or Bright Winter (or True Winter or Spring) eye is the beer bottle. Clear Tones (Seasons) have clear colors. They are reflective of light, not absorbing, as the Autumn seems to be, and more fragile looking perhaps.
The orange (because brown is just dark orange) of a True Winter eye is usually not as clear as that in a Bright Winter eye. That’s because the Bright Winter palette is even more highly saturated (i.e. clear) than True Winter’s. Is is so in every single case? No, there are always exceptions and degrees.
A reader sent me this most amazing eye photo.
Medium-dark brown hair, reddish in the sun. Lashes are light. The orange is beer-bottle clear, right? Notice too the yellowness of the skin tone (quite possible that it’s just from the lighting) and the generous heaping of sunshine yellow in the rest of the eye color (unlikely to be as influenced by lighting, though transparency might be). Without drapes, this could be a True Autumn for all I know, but I sure get a Spring feeling.
Eye effects are much easier to see in a light colored eye. Green can be more complicated. Brown is downright difficult.
Can you draw conclusions about Season from eyes? No. Many saw the man above as Dark Autumn before the drapes. In shade, the clarity of that orange was all but lost and it seemed more hazy.
I try so hard not to look at eye color during a PCA, because the drapes don’t always confirm those leading assumptions that objective color analysts should never make. ANY of the 12 Tones can have ANY hair and ANY eye color. That’s Rule No. 1.
When Your Season Doesn’t Feel Right
August 19, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 23 Comments
Anna (name changed) has just been told that she’s a Soft Summer. She expected Soft Autumn. She is 30 years old.
Anna heads home, reads the document that explains the color analyzed clothes/cosmetic/hair/jewelry that harmonize most beautifully with her natural coloring, looks at her clothes, and sees that nothing is as flattering as it could be. Just like everyone else after a PCA. She looks at the pictures of what her hair color should be and starts buying the new makeup.
None of it feels right. She can’t see the greyed brown undertone in her palette. Her mother always said she was a redhead. Her husband calls her his Coppertone girl and I suggested that Soft Summer isn’t flattered by traditional bronzers. Suddenly it’s all wrong. In her own words, she feels “like a bird that’s fallen out of its nest”. She knows she’s making it be hard when it’s supposed to make her life easier, but how to relax into it?
Confirm the result
I can be wrong. Anyone can be wrong anytime, doing anything. I usually, but not always, go with my first impression. A new set of eyes, a new day, and I might see something else.
We went ahead and did the drapes again.
For a second draping, I always have someone sit in who is not a colour expert but is sensitive to the optical effects. Everyone can tell when you look better, but not everyone is visually perceptive enough to watch a face blur and focus, or the eyes and teeth yellow and whiten. I try not to talk much because I usually see what I saw the first time. Soft Summer was confirmed.
The tangle is mostly between the 2 best Seasons. Nobody can see their own face that objectively, including me, which is why a makeup purchase decision is so often wrong if you test it on your face. Anna’s confusion was valid, in that she felt the shadows around the eyes were less visible in the Soft Autumn drapes. You have to be careful here. If the face turns yellow, then (my theory is that) the yellow is canceling some of the purple in the shadows, just as we choose yellow concealer.
Look at the whole face. It should not be yellow at all. Even a trace of yellow gives the effect of mild jaundice, the features seem a bit erased. Neither should there be a greyness in the face, where the drape is pulling color out of the skin, but be careful here too. In its milder form, that chalkiness can give the “clearing the skin” impression. The crispest, freshest, healthiest skin was in Soft Summer. That perfect, delicate, aristocratic bone structure definition that Soft Summer does ultimately well was clear.
It was as though I told her she’d been switched at birth. Her identity, her safety net of what it meant to be Anna, was pulled out from under her.
Expect to need time
Start with knowing what to never look at in stores again. That alone will exclude so many distractions that the right items will become more obvious. Look at the item and think about why you should NOT buy it. “The grey is too blue”, “I see yellow in it”, “the white is stark”. Try to talk yourself OUT of it.
Match your Colours Book the best you can. Don’t be distraught if the precise fog brown isn’t obvious. Don’t try to classify every garment you see to its Season. You’re already looking a zillion percent better than you used to. Your eye is learning. The Book does the mixing and matching for you. Remember your principles for how to combine the colours (these are sent to clients after a PCA).
Accept that you will keep making better and better decisions. The effect will get stronger. I get that doing your job is hard enough. This is like asking you to do your job AND learn a new computer system. Don’t worry. You now understand where you came from and you know where you’re going. This is empowerment beyond describing. The branches can’t help but grow when the roots are this strong.
You’ll make a few mistakes. In your first windsurfing class, the guy in the water most is the one trying the hardest, progressing the fastest, working on moving to the edge of the technique. Mistakes are good. Allow them to be good. This is how we learn.
Leave the hair to last
Hair is the hardest to get right, hardest to adjust to quickly, and often the most sensitive (and least objective) self-acceptance feature. Get used to the clothes and makeup first and your brain will be much more compliant when you correct the hair color. Do it in small steps and your mind will say “OK, fine, she’s done this before and I survived”. If you did a big hair adjustment on day 1, your mind would say “Wrong, off, can’t be right, looks weird, change it back, need to go find someone and pester them till they confirm that I looked better before, get me to a phone, I’ll see a different colorist, can’t be, can’t be, can’t be.”
As a child, the hair was a warm toffee blonde. Nevermind. Anna has different skin now and that hair might not work at all. Besides, children’s hair takes more money to replicate than I’m willing to spend on my hair and searching out that rare colorist who could create it.
She is now more the pine cone in the highlight (should she choose to have them), than the wheat field. Her natural base, just visible at the temple below, is not very dark, a medium ash brown. Her eyebrow is light-medium ash brown. Letting the red fade till she can go back to her natural base color, with those watery grey-green eyes, would be like looking into a misty forest.
(See Soft Summer’s Best Hair Color for more on this Season’s most skin-flattering hair color).
Breaking emotional ties
You can’t get rid of your color luggage that fast. Letting go of the past is shaky for all of us. “I always saw myself as…” needs to be uprooted but it’s dug in deep. Doing something different is always destabilizing, even if it’s driving a new way to work. You can’t hold your balance and your position. It’s uncomfortable.
Release who your parents expected. Never look back over your shoulder again. You’re not her anymore. You can choose what she has that you want to keep. Allow the calm, strong feeling of finding, and speaking, in your own true voice.
Learning to repel the marketing all around us is part of the journey. A much more difficult question, that may take a lifetime to answer, is whether we intentionally, but subconsciously, sabotage ourselves. As women, we seem awfully good at undermining our full potential in beauty, as well as in personal strength, more than we could just blame on our marketing culture. Everyone who saw Anna commented on the beauty in her face, and in her person. We women are better at cataloguing our faults. Inadequacies that nobody else sees becomes our security blanket.
If it were given to you at this moment to become everything you could be, how many would take it? Marianne Williamson’s words are repeated so often to let us marvel at the truth of them. It is our not our darkness that we are afraid of. It is our light. (If you don’t know the full passage, read it here).
It is THAT fear that must be entered. PCA is not for everyone. It takes a courage that you didn’t expect would be asked of you. Your view of the world will be challenged. The responsibility to make it as you want it to be will feel forced on you, unless you choose to see it as Opportunity.
Anna will be treated differently as she separates from her past and realizes that she may have to step up to how beautiful the world sees her to be. It will take about a year.
This is what I saw. Go back and look at her eye.
Anna said,
…the whole experience has given me peace. Not initially, obviously, but upon reflection, I feel at peace. It was like meeting myself for the first time. Or finding out something major about myself, that caused me to have to reintroduce myself to myself. (if that makes any sense). And now that the ”fog” has settled, the “muted and dulled fog” : ), I am relaxed at meeting the new me. And I enjoy to know myself that much better. This was another, fairly large piece of the puzzle I found in me. There are less questions. Less self doubt. And I feel like I can forge ahead now, equipped with a better sense of self. I have been enjoying the last few weeks, walking into stores and looking for the “real me” in there somewhere. And when it is not there, I don’t compromise anymore. It’ll be fun. It’ll continue to give me direction, as now I know the destination. There are lots of ways to get there, but I will always arrive at the same place. Within my palette. Whereas before, I had no direction, no sense of self, little confidence, and depended on second opinions a lot. I am getting there. It will take time. But I feel much better already.
Soft Summer’s Best Hair Color
August 15, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 3 Comments
This is really Part 2 of the previous article, Shannon Is A Soft Summer.
For reasons of hair chemistry that I do not understand, this seems to be the hardest hair of all to attain at a salon. This is the Season that most often arrives with the wrong hair color. It is the color that colorists resist creating, in favor of blonde or red or something much too perky on a low-key energy and a very muted, grayish skin.
Soft Summer can balance more darkness than one might think. The hair base colour is usually fairly dark but there is no black in the hair, lashes, or eyes. Shannon has her right hair, or the closest I’ve seen at the PCA appointment. The odd yellow bit is a growing-out highlight, but it’s not really interfering because the rest of the head is so good.
They need some dimension or the woman can feel “plain brown” or mousy, next to her friends. They feel more themselves with another color in the hair. So add a highlight. Be sure that it is never yellow. The yellower the hair, the more the eyes turn grey and dull. Don’t fool with red, it’s the easiest color to regret and the hardest to fix after ink black.
Choose a highlight that is light brown. Too much ash will look flat. Too light will look striped and jarring. Pick a medium to light ash brown with a little warmth, only a couple of shades lighter than the base. Not apricot, not toffee, not butterscotch. They’re all too warm. It should be pine cone brown, maybe a cool caramel at the lightest.
That landscape we saw in the previous post is here again.
Put a daffodil yellow streak through it. Doesn’t feel good. Feels crazy.
Now put a streak this color through it.
Did you feel your guts relax? Said in a prettier way, did you feel a sense of relief? The sense of belonging and being right is palpable.
See the same color around the pupil of the eye? See how the good hair repeats the center of the eye? Is human coloring not the best thing ever? Fills me with wonder, it does.
Hair effects should never be obvious on anybody. There are too many processed-looking heads out there already. This Season should NOT look radiant, or luminous. Soft Summer is NOT sunshine. Don’t listen to ideas about brightening the whole head anymore than you would listen to pops of colour in makeup. Just as people will only see the dark eyeliner, the too-bright lips, they’ll only see the grating hair effects (and ignore every word you speak).
Does everyone in a Season have the same hair, or should they? Of course not. But the skin’s reactions to color are the same within a Season, so their best clothes, makeup, and hair will be the same shades. Common things are common, but there are always exceptions.
Nature creates lots of variations. Adjust your darkness level to be 2 shades lighter than the brows, or both will look fake and hard and angry to children. Shannon’s brow is cooler than the hair, but it works, and we chose an eyeliner to match it since it’s more perfecting to the skin tone. Some Seasons can wear a dark brow with much lighter hair, but Soft Summer is not it. The whole concept here is the opposite of bold or sudden.
This Season is NOT trendy because trend is by definition fleeting. The all-out glamour that everyone woman thinks she seeks, is momentary. You can only be glamour for a few moments. Fleeting belongs to Spring, and glamour to Winter, so only the Bright Seasons can look right in it.
The Soft Seasons are constant and even.
Shannon Is A Soft Summer
August 11, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 16 Comments
Imagine sitting at a kitchen table on a warm summer day, drinking tea, doing some writing. Rainclouds have covered the sun. Shadows seem a bit darker. The door is wide open to let the breeze in. You notice that a few raindrops are coming through the screen. The air is fresher already, your skin feels a bit tighter. Before you get up to close the screen, you look out at the landscape. The rain really starts coming down now. You notice what happened to the colors that were sunlit an hour ago.
The colours are greyed, right? They are still cool, but there is an overlay of grey with a trace of brown, like fog, like watching colour through a raincloud. This Season is Summer’s version of colour in shade. The whole personal colour palette shares this very faint grey-brown common denominator. Light Summer begins with the True Summer palette too, but the colours are seen in pale sunlight.
Every Season has a True note, a higher note, and a lower note. Noise can’t exist without quiet, or light without shade. Soft Summer is Summer’s quieter, lower tempo. In 12 Season Color Analysis, this is the Neutral Season where Summer is beginning to integrate a breath of Autumn.
Drapes
Seldom do I meet such a perfect example of a Season. The skin, the eye colours and patterns, and the hair and brow colour are very much in the middle of the curve for Soft Summer. What made this PCA fun was that Shannon understood the theory and could see the color effects instantly. She was able to do her own analysis, which I love because the doors open fast and easy and the resistance wall crumbles.
Because this coloring is so medium, it seems the most misdiagnosed. The draping was straightforward. A tired face we saw in Winter colours, completely dominated by the drapes. Quite good in Summer colours, but a sense of being incomplete, of not having located the magic. A yellow face in Spring colours, with no benefit that Summer didn’t offer. A slightly yellow face in True Autumn, less so than in Spring colours, with a good eye color intensity, and a sense of “something here is working”.
There was no contest between Soft Summer and either neighbor, placing Shannon in the middle of her Season. Often, Soft Summer has a remarkably fragile bone structure that doesn’t achieve hi-def till it’s in the right colors. The warm neighbor of Soft Autumn color looks queasy, flat, pasty, blunted, and out-of-focus. The cooler True Summer was too blue-shadowed and pink-lidded.
Impression
This is a Summer more than anything. The watery feeling of the colors still applies, as does the coolness and delicacy. Watermelon, clover, and many water colors. Water and hostas can get quite dark, but they’re never crayon.
Soft Season means that not only is the person Soft to look at, with no big jumps between skin/hair/eyes, and so that is how they wear their clothes. Low saturation colours in low contrast combinations. Gentle colour movements. No trends (too exaggerated) or sudden transitions and dark lines (too severe). Related shades work well, but not necessarily monochromatic. Classy. Subtle.
The Colours Book gives you all your swatches, automatically mix-and-matchable. Your analogous, complimentary, and monochromatic colours are all in there. How they are combined depends on the energy of the particular Season. Neutral skin has warmth and coolness, so they have a warmer cosmetic colour palette (Desert Rose type) and a cooler selection (Dusty Plums). Color analyzed makeup colors are in your Book as well.
The Summer personality is seldom overly demanding. Refreshingly pleasant personalities prevail in all 3 Summer Seasons. Children adore their steady and straightforward manner. The loudest voice won’t belong to a Summer. They are highly civilized and have no problem with impulse control.
Autumn inserts practicality, speed, and strength into the Summer core of these people. The moment Autumn is invited to the party, Summer’s soothing way is replaced by Autumn’s determination. The straightness of the brow conveys it in the eye photo alone. As a triathlete, this woman is nothing if not determined.
Soft Summer Hair
This is an article in itself. It is harder to understand and harder to achieve. It’s coming next. Note that the hair is photographing more red than IRL. In the next part, I’ll show you the real color.
Shannon
Your face, Photoshopped, can be yours for the draping. It’s easy to look at and easy to be. After years of feeling uncomfortable with makeup, Shannon said this,
The colors in my swatch feel right to me, as does the description of the Soft Summer personality – it all fits in terms of how I know myself. The make-up application looked and felt fantastic and, for the first time, made me want to buy and wear make-up.
How Light Summer Goes Grey
August 8, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 5 Comments
Effortlessly.
These women were often blond as children. They like being blondes and feel right that way. It seems sometimes as though everyone wants to be blonde, but the question is “Do you want to be blond or do you want to look good?”. As long as it’s the right blonde, and not a toffee color, Light Summers make great and very believable blondes.
In 12 Season Color Analysis, the Light Summer is a Summer more than anything else. Spring plays a small role, so the personal colours palette become lighter, clearer, as though lit by the earliest sun.
The highlight
Their best highlight is beige to light yellow, interlaced in the natural base color. For some, a more yellow highlight works better than others. Staying closer to beige than yellow is better. On all Summers, too yellow hair flushes the skin tone red.
Louise, in Louise and Stevan Are Light Springs, has this same base color. She could look odd in an overall head as light and yellow as some Light Summers. On the other hand, a highlight that’s too ash would be draining because of the amount of yellow in Light Spring skin. The variations among individuals are endless. This game is all and only about how the skin drapes. That’s the key that gives you answers that might surprise you.
L to R, Light Summer, True Summer, True Winter
The test drapes for Light Summer show the best highlight color for this Season. I put True Winter’s stark white on the right side, just for comparison. This Season looks fantastic in their pale vanilla white.
The base hair color
The natural base is usually a medium ash brown, not golden blonde (which implies red and warm). On everyone, the more of the base that shows through, the less harsh and processed the whole head looks, and the more real and effortless the woman appears. Dealing with roots takes a fraction of the time and money, especially if the colorist didn’t start the highlights right at the part in the top layer. For many women, highlights can often get bigger and bigger till the head is one big highlight. They’re supposed to be woven in like fibers of light, but it gets away from us.
This is my favorite Light Summer hair, before she got over-blonded and over-yellowed.
Going grey
The skin cools with age and it’s expected that the hair cools. Grey feels inherently cool so it’s more difficult to make this transition for the pure warm Seasons of True Spring and True Autumn. It’s easier for the other 10 Seasons, once your mind is in a place where you can accept yourself with gray hair. The pure cool Seasons are already there. Dyed hair may be competing more with the skin than grey would.
The Neutral Seasons have warmth and coolness in the skin. They can wear silver jewelry. They might choose more grey clothes and makeup as hair grays. Gray hair virtually disappears into this head. It just looks like more blonde. They can be in their 60s with still a lot of color left in the hair, because “gray hair” is just white. Light Summer just asks for less and less highlight, and eventually just goes to the salon for a cut.
This is my sister Sonja’s hair, from Sonja Is A Light Summer. She’s 47, with some gray in there. She’ll probably look much like this when she’s 57.
There is nothing that can make it better. It’s fresh, light, and real. There is no tension in the viewer of feeling like they have to react to an exaggerated effect. Where highlights are concerned, no good comes of being an overachiever.
Remember that ANY Season can have ANY hair color. I’ve seen Light Summers with very cool, medium dark, red hair. Almost more of a pinkish brown. Leave that gift alone.
Edit August 11: I was asked to show Sonja’s part. Here it is:
No Summer+Winter or Spring+Autumn Blends
July 31, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 21 Comments
Hi, everyone. Let’s begin with a hot topic to rev our color motors back up.
In the comments for the article “Handbags for the 12 Color Analysis Seasons”, Donna Cognac, a highly certified color and image professional, said this.
I just wish that you could also address the 4 types that get ignored in 12 type color systems. The types that are a blend of Winter/Summer; Summer/Winter; Spring/Autumn and Autumn/Spring….with the first word the dominant harmony in each type.
In the Sci\ART Twelve Tone System, there are no categories that combine any of the 3 Summers with the 3 Winters, or Autumns with Springs. Most other PCA systems disagree.
Logic would have me begin with Munsell facts, but that’s not the reason that resonates most strongly with me, so I’m going to go evangelical first.
Extensions of Our World
We are children of this planet. Its colors live in us and through us. So do its patterns, its clocks, its and yearly rhythms, from the molecules on up. There is a very strong repetition of the way humans look and how it feels to interact with them, and the Season they represent. They seem almost as extensions of their particular month in appearance and behavior.
If True Winter begins January 1, then
Bright Winter is February
Bright Spring = March
True Spring = April
Light Spring = May
Light Summer = June
True Summer = July
Soft Summer = August
Soft Autumn = September
True Autumn = October
Dark Autumn = November
Dark Winter = December
True Autumn looks, dresses, and behaves as “comfortable, abundant, strong, productive, natural”. Spring, holy cow, does not.
Sure, of course, some people may have both Spring and Autumn characteristics. Some people don’t seem to behave like their Season at all, so the relationship between color and personality isn’t tight. Still, if anyone is going to behave or look like their Season, it’s more often in the absolutes, or True, Seasons, making them harder to merge.
For some, consistency with the planet’s color cycles has no relevance. They might say “If that were true, then why isn’t every color you see in August right for Soft Summer?”
Fair question, but I can only answer it as I see it. Our accord with our Earth’s own palettes and her cycles means that flowing between the 2 warm or 2 cool Seasons doesn’t make sense. Autumn and Spring are on opposite corners of the world’s phase clock. So are Summer and Winter.
Color in Nature
Kathryn Kalisz is the artist who created the Sci\ART system. Prior to her tragic death, I asked her why there are no pure warm and pure cool blends.
She answered,
There is a natural order of color that we cannot and should not change. It follows the spectrum of light (as seen in the rainbow) and when connected at both ends, the color circle is created. In this natural order of color, color moves from cool to warm, or warm to cool. An object never reflects just one single hue, but always three visible tones of the color, from cool (usually the shadow side) through the neutral or true color, to the warm tone where the light hits it. Complementary colors are based on this natural order of color. The 12 tone color system is a natural color order system, which reflects the way colors move in nature.
Color never moves from cool to cool, or warm to warm.
Shopping Well Is Hard Enough
We can talk about how adding to blue to cool must also darken, meaning we move towards Winter as we cool color more. We can talk about how 12 distinguishable tones are sufficient. You could have 40 Seasons but who could tell them apart? Seasonal colour analysis clothing and makeup colour is already hard to match because they’re usually colored in random, market-driven shades. They’re not in the business of making real women look strong and lovely, they’re moving garments off racks and colored powder out the door.
For me, the point is this: No new classification is needed. Sci\ART uses the Munsell system’s 3 dimensions of color. They’re enough. Kathryn created a set of drapes whose colors are calibrated to move through 12 levels of the 3 dimensions of color in all the possible combinations. Straightforward, easy to understand, easy to explain, just like Warren Buffett’s investment strategy.
You get a personal palette that matches YOUR level of the 3 dimensions, no borrowing, no crossing over, no overlaps.
Sci\ART Color Measuring Tools
A.k.a., the drapes. Someone reading this (and disagreeing) might argue that the Sci\ART drapes just aren’t set up to reveal these cool/cool blends. Well, what would that look like?
The cool/cool would be bluer than True Summer, but not so blue as to darken to Winter? And fairly saturated, but not at Winter’s level? I suppose you could create such a palette, but me, I’m not convinced that it’s necessary. Women already have trouble telling Summer’s reds and blues from Winter’s, let alone finding them to buy with confidence. This all has to be learn-able and use-able by real people in real stores.
What about the warm/warm blend of Autumn+Spring? This one, I really don’t comprehend. Autumn and Spring are warmed in completely different ways, one with dull rust and one with clear yellow. A recent client looked to me like he might set this issue to rest. We’ll be looking at him soon.
Prince Edward Island Holiday
July 14, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 3 Comments
When I was 11, my family moved to this tiny province from Montreal. Having been raised here has been one my life’s blessings. Those of us who left are drawn back and have no will to resist, so strong is the gentle magic of the place.
I will be here for a short while. We’ll get back to our great color discussions in the first week of August. I look forward to it.
I hope that all of you find some time in the ease of summer to refuel and to reflect on your own life’s journey.
Thanks to my sister, Sonja, for the photo.
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