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.”
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:
How Summers Intensify Eye Colour
June 3, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 13 Comments
We often see the attempt to charge eye color with more makeup. When were you not just staring at the makeup? Natural skin and eyes can only compete with so much pigment before the cosmetic takes over. Luckily, when the color is one that already exists in you, you can apply it quite heavily and it will appear as a believable part of your face, but there are limits.
There is a lot more to intensifying eye color than eye makeup.
Clothes
Never underestimate the power of color analyzed clothes colours to amplify eye color. This alone will do more than makeup on anyone. It’s a way bigger block. How much color can you create with a skinny line of liner or a tiny eyelid’s worth of shadow?
I’ll emphasize that it is not only your same-as-eye color clothes that charge up eye color, though those might work best. It’s all the colors in your Personal Colour swatches. Each one will clear the white of the eye, just as it clears the skin. Your pinks, greens, and grays should all intensify eye color.
Brows and Blush
Colour Analysis will bring attention to your eyes like never before, even if you don’t wear makeup. Groom your brows, have them beautifully shaped, and pencil in the thin spots. Think of eyebrows as the picture frames for the eyes. They matter.
Once many women get the right shade of blush, their first comment is most often “It brings out my eyes.” Absolutely it does, instantly and strongly. Look for that effect to happen when you buy blush.
When Good Color Goes Bad
You know I don’t care for purple, green, and blue on eyes if the viewer can perceive the color. I don’t buy that it intensifies eye color. It just looks playful (at least where I live) and it’s usually all people can see. You surrender too much power, not a price I want to pay for beauty.
Eyeshadow Palettes for Eye Colour
Think twice about investing in palettes made for certain eye colours. Have you ever seen them work?Have you ever said to a woman “your eyeshadow makes your eyes look so much greener” and really meant it?
Why don’t they work? Because there is no universal formula. There are 15 greens in a green eye, it’s too confusing to be able to pick out the core ones. Also, any skin can have any eye color or combination. If the eyeshadows are made for the green-eye cool-skin woman, then it dulls the skin of the warm-skinned woman. This is the reincarnation of the same silver bullet we’ve dodged before as “the lip colour that suit every skin tone”.
Off the soapbox, now.
Using the right browns and greys,
And understanding that not everyone can do everything,
And that without a Color Analysis, cosmetic color browns and greys are the hardest of all colours to understand by a long shot,
It’s about repeats and complements and contrasts.
This is 12 Seasonal Color Analysis. There are 3 Summer Seasons, the True, the Soft (blends an Autumn trace), and the Light (a dab of Spring).
True Summer
True Summer eyes look best to me when they are gazing out of a misty pool of cool greys. Soft greys, not sharp greys.
- Soft navy eyeliner, not blackened sapphire. True Summer often has very deep blues in the eye that can be repeated.
- Dark denim eyeliner repeats the overall color and darkness level of the eye. Annabelle’s Blue Grey is one of the best I know for True Summer.
- Cool grey or blue grey eyeshadow repeats the True Summer’s skin’s undertone. Mauve-grey can work, but many Summers have pink in the eyelid rims, and we don’t want to repeat that and make they eye look bloodshot.
- The contrast of a cool blue eye with a warm brown shadow is stunning, so the magazines tell us. Warm brown shadow on the True Summer skin tone is mud. There is no heat in this skin. You can’t fake it. Choose your right, rosy browns since brown is approximately blue’s complement. Sally Beauty Chocolate Truffle Trio is good.
———-
Soft Summer
These eyes look best when they’re gazing out of a misty pool of…mist. Like they’re surrounded by fog, a pale neutral tan-brown. No hard edges, everything quiet, blurred, and diffused.
- Repeat the tan brown in the eye with eyeliner.
The eyeliner is the bodice color. This is odd, but the Canadian Superstores carry a line of clothes/makeup called Joe Fresh. Their Twist Up Eyeliner pencil in Charcoal is the right one.
Your medium and dark eyeshadows are all contained in this dress (linked to Jones New York, but no longer available).
Paula’s Choice, the one and only skin care company I place my full trust in, was making an eyeshadow called Granite awhile back. It was custom-colored for this skin. They were making the best colored, best matte, best priced eyeshadows around, but not many people knew it, I guess. A certain direction as to who should use what…
2. That tan brown can be repeated again in the highlight colour in the hair. Lots of bleachy blonde highlights do not work, they look like grey stripes, like a strange intended aging effect. The right highlight is browned down. All the Autumns can repeat hair color and eye color. This is beautiful, real, natural hair for a Soft Summer, on Jennifer Aniston. They often get her too blonde and her eyes fade immediately.
3. Any contrasts? The whole concept of the Season is low contrast, so you have to be exceptionally subtle with all makeup. Neutral Seasons have a little heat in their skin, and cooler and warmer choices in their palette. We’re still mostly cool here though, still muddy in warm brown colors. The skin looks heavy and the heat of warm brown in the eyeshadow can yellow the white of the eye in a subliminal way, looking unhealthy. There is no contrast I know, not light/dark, warm/cool, or hi/lo saturation.
4. Any complements? I’m often asked if orange-toned eyeshadows work on blue eyes, or purple tones on green eyes, etc. This is usually a blue eye, sometimes surprisingly pale, or a blue-green eye, where the eye color becomes very strong in pine green clothing. The orange-toned brown eyeshadow for the blue eye is deadly. That green eye could be accentuated with a dusty plum shadow, but it’s soft. The viewer should not see purpleness.
———-
Light Summer
These are the eyes that get more makeup piled on, hoping to make them “pop”. Either that, or there’s the hope that a dark line will look good against the light eye color. That’s altogether too much hope. The eye can’t balance it, the end result being to close in the eye. Once again, all we see is makeup.
This is a Light Summer eye below. Black mascara has no place here. You could barely find any colours that are even medium in darkness. Gentle light colors are key. Airy and fresh is what will look healthy and young.
In the middle swatch, Photoshop extracted the grey shade from the middle of the iris around the 4 o’clock position. The lower one is the colour of the eyeshadow I like to apply after an analysis (Shu Uemura M Beige 815, I believe; why get specific, it’s no longer available; Paula’s Choice did a color called Moonlit, also quite perfect, also unavailable). Both swatches are very close to the Personal Colours palette.
- Eyeshadows are mostly gray, not brown. Use very light colors because the eye color is very easily overwhelmed.
- Repeats ? None I can think of in makeup. Some people have a much stronger turquoise in the eye and can repeat it in clothing.
- Complements? Not in eyeshadow. However, since there is heat in the skin, it can support some bronzer believably, especially as Spring’s contribution is sunshine and the outdoors. A light application of a peach-gold will bring out the eyes without looking artificial. Remember, the best beauty looks like it could have happened by itself. I like Cover f/x Bronzer f/x in Gold. Also, wearing your mauve and purples in clothing will bring out the pale yellow sunlight you may have in the eye, which is pretty.
- Contrast. None I can think of. The whole Season’s concept is “not dark”.
Don’ts
Not doing the things that detract from eye color is important too.
1. Avoid yellow in the hair unless Nature gave it to you. Your most delicate of all skin will go red or yellow. Your eye will dull and gray out when the white of the eye goes yellow. Your highlight is just on the neutral beige side of silver if you’re a True or Light.
2. Big dark lashes. The viewer can’t peel their eyes away from the lashes – maybe that’s what you were going for with the Diorshow and the Telescopic. To paraphrase Isak Dinesen, when God wants to punish us, he grants our wishes. Summers should wear grey mascara, which is all but impossible to find. Try “Soft Navy” or “Soft Black”, smearing it on a tissue first to be sure it’s not too dark black.
Ask me some questions.
Anyone know the eyeshadows that match those Light Summer swatches?
Best Makeup Colours : True Summer
April 26, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
Makeup is the look factor that most confuses women. Our choices are all over the place. Our wardrobes, though not always correct, often follow more order.
Among makeup products, lipstick is the single item that most women want to learn to get right. We know that we can’t all wear each other’s makeup, but where do we go after that?
There has to be a logical method driving the choice. It cannot be just random, buy what I like, hit-and-miss. That will miss, by a little or a lot, but it will miss.
The only sensible place to start when decorating your house has to be considering what’s already there. The only sensible starting point for makeup has to be an understanding of YOUR own coloring, the canvas that you’re going to paint the makeup on. It has its own inherent colour scheme. It’s easier and much prettier to go with it, instead of against it.
Instead of lining up fairly parallel with your own coloring when you choose makeup, what if you could wear an identical match? A mesh so seamless that nobody could tell where the makeup ends and your face begins? When the alignment is that good, the makeup looks custom-colored for your face.
For True Summer, it looks like this.
In Seasonal Color Analysis, this Season’s cosmetic colour palette is “cool, soft, and light”.
There is a simple system that matches up every piece of the makeup puzzle so it works together, and with the person, with their clothes, with their hair. The legwork is done for you forever more. You have a map of your own coloring. Personal Colour Analysis is the GPS that points you directly to your best makeup colours. This degree of color precision can’t be reached any other way.
To know what you are, you need to know what you are not. 90% of what is at the makeup counter is what you are not.
Matching The Swatch Book : Coral
April 3, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
This is Part 2 of the post that answers a client’s question re: deciphering her blues and corals when shopping with her Colours Book.
Part 1 is at Matching The Swatch Book : Blue. Today is about True Summer corals. This would not apply to Soft Summers, who have very different colours. Light Summer may have an occasional similar swatch, but not a whole page.
Coral is one of the more difficult colors to predict in 12 Seasons Personal Colour Analysis. Any color, like turquoise or peach, that has an inherently warm AND cool component, is tougher to grasp confidently.
As we said in the Blue post, it’s often the colours in more distant, seemingly unrelated, Seasons that can be most similar. I looked for the most similar corals to True Summer’s.
They are not among the 3 Summers (except maybe the odd one in Light Summer). No coral in the Spring or Autumn palettes would confuse you if you had your Colours Book.
The corals of True Summer and Dark Winter are similar tones. Side by side, Dark Winter certainly has a dark brown element that takes away the rose-petal freshness of True Summer’s but they are quite close.
Wow, ay? So, how might you tell them apart?
1. True Summer is absolutely cool. You should be able to find no heat, no yellow, no brown. OK, but hard to do with coral, since it always seems a little warmish.
2. If it’s a cosmetic colour, don’t compare makeup colours on your arm or face. None of us can ever be objective enough about our face and arms get messy. Paint it on white paper to compare it to your Colours Book.
3. Does the item convey a feeling? True Summer should express cool, serene, fresh, feathery, and delicate. Choose a visual to help. Rose petals, watercolor, mist, water are True Summer. It should feel true to one of True Summer keywords : gentle.
For True Summer, it’s watermelon, not geranium. Soft plum, not deep eggplant. Soothing, not strong. The personal swatch book may feel hard to interpret, but when you see it in the entire piece of clothing, the colour is easier to figure out.
If you see a trace of sunshine, it’s wrong, it’s Spring. True Summer is absolutely cool.
Ask yourself “can I see black in the shadows?” . If yes, it’s Winter’s. And this is a good way to make a colr go one way or the other. If it’s a tissue or sheer fabric, wearing a white or dark tank underneath can pull it towards Winter or Summer very effectively.
4. Compare it to 2 items that you KNOW to be warm and cool. It will be easier to position yours accurately when you have a range with endpoints.
5. Consider the fabric. Colour is an emotional expression that is conveyed by weight, by combination, by style and stitching lines, as well as hue.
If you feel a heavy or somber presence, it’s probably off. Even when True Summer gets darker, the feeling is still graceful and fine. Winter colours look (and feel) aggressive on a True Summer.
If the colour feels like it would have to be velvet because the feeling is so solid, that is not True Summer. If it feels made of gauze or linen, it is right.
If the colour were curtains, the True Summer would let light through. Dark Winter is occlusive because of its degrees of saturation and darkness, both way higher than Summer.
6. What story is being told by the colour? What background does it create? a watercolour or an oil painting? a sheer or a tapestry?
7. In a swirl with Summer’s other colours, would it be dominant, or too aggressive, and overshadow all the more delicate colours?
All True Summer’s colours are very slightly faded. Spring has the odd similar swatch but it is distinctly more saturated, a clearer colour. In the graphic above, I could have softened (reduced the saturation, grayed) the Summer colours even more. As soon as Spring appears, the colours become rainbows to parrot plumage, but they’re clear, not dusty colours. True Summer is just the slightest bit washed out.
If you love the item and your instinct is that the colour is right, buy it if you can return it. Try it with the rest of your palette, in different lighting. Often, a colour that is extremely close can be made to work well because of what it’s combined with, since so much of Season harmony is conveyed by how your colours are worn together.
I believe these are the last stages before becoming completely colour confident. Don’t do it from memory, you’ll lose money. Always consult your Colours Book.
You’re still moving forward.
Matching The Swatch Book : Blue
March 21, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 5 Comments
Jelena asked a question we can all learn from:
I need some suggestions for shopping with my [Personal Color Analysis Swatch Book]. Some of the colors in the True Summer book (especially the blues) seem quite saturated and (almost) bright. When shopping, I’m always wondering how I can tell the difference between a True Summer blue versus the Winter blue and even the Spring cobalt blue??
Another question is about the cool-ish coral. I found a lot of similar colors when out shopping, but it was difficult to tell if the colors were cool enough. The artificial store lighting complicates things as well. I noticed that some of the things that were perfect matches to my Book in the store were totally wrong once I took them home and saw what it looked like under natural lighting (and the same applies to make-up colors). Do you have any suggestions for making color matching easier?
What to try:
1. Pick a few items in the store of similar color to compare, rather than just 1 item. It’s by comparison that we understand color. I learned a lot about color and textiles at Value Village because they group 20 reds, blues, etc. together, so the differences become easily apparent.
2. If there are no similarly colored items (often stores work with just a few dye lots each season), hold it against a white item, or better a white and an off-white item.
3. Look in daylight. Jelena is very right about that. Even before your PCA, you probably find that you buy something only to find it wasn’t what you thought.
4. Be sure you can return things.
5. Assume the color of the item and the swatch are NOT a match until you can convince yourself they are. For True Summer, ask yourself:
“Do I see any heat (orange, tan brown, dark brown, gold, yellow) in the color”? go through them 1 by 1. I get in a hurry, or I want to believe it’s the right color, so I make myself slow down.
Every time I listen to a dog’s heartbeat, I assume there is an abnormality till I can convince myself it is normal. I use the same approach here.
6. Flip the concept and see if you can come at it the other way. Ask yourself “does it appear less intense than it COULD?” or “could I imagine a MORE saturated version of this color?”
Instead of “is this soft?”, ask “could it be MORE pigment-rich?”
If the color COULD be MORE intense, it’s probably a soft color.
Here are the 3 closest blue matches among True Summer, Winter, and Spring.
From top, True Summer, True Winter, True Spring.
True Summer is not hard to pick out. It’s always some version of faded denim, even the darkest wash. True Summer is not necessarily obviously grayed; it is just relatively less saturated than Winter. True Summer is not dull or drab, and some of the colors have some strength to them.
When you see a highly saturated color, you usually know it. It is more common to see Winters walking around in color that is too soft because saturated color is hard to find and after a few washings, it’s softened.
Surprisingly, it’s Winter and Spring that are closest for this color. It makes sense for blue. Both are saturated Seasons. Blue is darkish at high saturation so this is one of Spring’s darker colours. The Spring is a bit yellower. On the 3 Colour Scales of Light/Dark, Warm/Cool, and Clear/Soft, we’re matching all 3 very closely.
My feeling here is that it’s too close to matter. The difference will come from the other elements of the outfit and how the person wears and combines the color.
Eyeglasses for the Seasons : Spring and Summer
March 17, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
When every element of your clothing, makeup, and accessories works together AND supports who YOU are, you look very attractive.
The colours should be your most perfect. It is just so beautiful to look at.
How you combine them can be consistent with how colours are combined in your person. The harmony and balance with YOU feels very relaxing to the viewer.
Your style of clothing can enhance your colours and your communication with the world. When it looks unrehearsed, you are looking amazing.
Cosmetics should be your supporting player, not steal center stage. The look you create should feel the way it feels to interact with you. Now, your appearance is really coming together. You look organized, intelligent, and uncluttered. You’re getting taken more seriously.
Glasses, jewelry, and purses should replicate your face and body shape and your clothing style. That’s called “Easy on the eyes”.
Isn’t it time that beauty look like it might have just happened that way, instead of like it took a lot work? As my friend Gina says, Lord have mercy, YES!
With 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, the what-to-buy decisions become easy. Today, some choices for the Spring and Summer colour palette.
Matching The Swatch Book : Light Grey
March 13, 2010 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
Once we isolate your place or Season in Personal Color Analysis, the next step is to look at the swatches in your Colors Book, and those of your warmer and cooler neighbors.
When we’re dealing with 12 Seasons, each with a palette of 60 unique colors, there will be some colors that are very close. Surprisingly, the difficulty is not usually between your Season and your immediate neighbors. More often, the catch will be with a more distant Season.
2 examples:
1. The excellent example of this jacket at Ann Taylor came up on the Facebook page. I took a quick look and thought “light, clear, cool = Light Summer”. An astute reader pointed out that the grey is so light that it should qualify as icy, and so a Winter color. She is completely right.
True Summer greys are easy to pick out because they’re blueish or pinkish.
Light Summer presented a learning moment, nothing I love more to deepen and sharpen our understanding.
Light Summer and True Winter are both cool Seasons. When a color, light grey in this case, is cool AND very light, AND clear, as the Spring element brings to True Summer’s dusty shades to produce the Light Summer palette… well, when does it become Winter’s icy grey?
Summer colors are pastels, which means they are not so extremely light as icy colors. (see Icy Colours And Pastels) A pastel, by definition, has more pigment and is softened with gray. This applies also to gray itself.
Light Summer left, True Winter right.
The picture above shows the closest matches from the 2 Seasons’ Colors Books. Light Summer is yellower, or less absolutely crisp and cool, but it’s subtle. Light Summer also has more pigment, more “color”.
If any of you see the faintest blue tone to the Light Summer grey, you’d be right. This is a leftover from the True Summer greys which has been partially extracted by Spring’s color clarity. Winter’s greys are made of black and white only.
Notice too that the lightest grey in the True Winter Book, basically the color of the jacket, has no similar value (or lightness) in the Light Summer. Winter’s icy colors are even lighter than the lightest colors in a Light Season.
2. The Trace of Autumn’s Brown in Soft Summer and Dark Winter could be confusing because both Seasons have a similar relative position in the order.
For these 2 Seasons, both are one Season away from a pure, cool Season (True Summer and True Winter, respectively).
Both are removed from that True Season in the same direction, meaning both blend with Autumn.
In fact, there are no similar colours in the 2 Colour Swatch Books. I’m not even putting a picture here because not one of the 60 tones is close. Soft Summer’s very low saturation and Dark Winter’s much higher saturation make the choice clear.
The lesson
Shop with your Book. Never think you’ll remember a color correctly or be able to judge it accurately.
Don’t feel overwhelmed, thinking you have to keep 12 Seasons’ worth of colors in your head. I don’t, but I never buy before checking my Book. I still put a lot of things back.
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