Dress For Your Landscape: True Summer
August 18, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 27 Comments
I see human colouring as a continuation of the pigments found in Nature, as if the planet were one big cell. We are as perfectly coloured as every one of Nature’s landscapes and each of their parts.
We all embody a particular landscape, where a landscape is a collection of colours and shapes that fulfill a purpose and belong together.
Natural landscapes make sense to us. We expect certain things to go together to feed all five senses in a way that is consistent. Bark isn’t pink, doesn’t smell like vanilla, or feel like slime. If it made a sound, it wouldn’t be tinkly. A Soft Summer (bark) woman (Princess Kate) dressed in flamingo (Light Spring), a lush jungle aromatic with vanilla and cocoa (True Spring), or seaweed greens and anemone reds (Bright Spring), she just wouldn’t feel quite right. Nothing wrong with any of them, but there’s incongruence, of puzzle pieces made to fit that really don’t.
All of us emanate our own landscape in colour, feeling, and mood. When we wear colours as an extension of our natural appearance, and when those colours appear in the shapes and textures to which they naturally belong, we look plausible, logical, believable, possible, synchronized. You could say harmonious. To the viewer, it is the purest form of eye candy. It feels so damn good that you keep looking. We call that beautiful.
When our embellishments don’t belong in our landscape, to the viewer, we look forced, like an appearance that couldn’t possibly have happened on its own. To ourselves, we feel like we’re somehow stretching our truths. But what are those truths in the first place?
None of this is new to you, from me. Life challenges us to figure out our questions. Real success is when we become equipped to find those answers ourselves. Instead of taking my/everyone/ anyone else’s word, your own word is the last one you need. Our answers really have been given to us, we just don’t always let ourselves hear them.
In the Comments to The Emmas Are True Springs Part 1, Melinda asked a great question about whether the style, textile, and texture associations are true, and what if I don’t always feel like what they say for my Season? You can read what I said and know that your thoughts are welcome. No two persons will wear their Season in the same way. We all want to convey our inner territories and they have a thousand stories to tell. Choose what you love and let personal colour analysis give you a sense of where not to go if you have a job interview today.
In a world too hot and loud, the quiet palettes can feel discouraged. True Summer is a very complicated Season. Indeed, they all are. The palette (ok, every palette) is one that nobody could figure out on their own, without a colour expert’s input. The pure coolness and the particular degree of clearing, without going overboard, that’s challenging. True Summer is a most gorgeous group of colours that takes too many hits by being misunderstood or compared to the boldness we’re bombarded with. I want to make it beautiful for you.
Dress to look like this. Choose colours that would belong in these pictures. The water in the distance, the gentle splash. The freshest greens. The clean soft breeze. Put them together in a way that feels the same. Be Nature herself. Put the scenery of you together to create the feeling you get from the photos that follow.
Don’t fuss the swatches colours till you feel frustrated. True Summer colours should not feel like there’s sun shining on them, or very fogged in, or earthy. They’re just a little cloudy and cool. Let it be relaxed and easy. Just hold the picture in your head when you assemble your decorations. If you say a colour feels good in this scene, then it does. Be who you would love to be and express. I don’t think many would paint a line of black (eyeliner), yellow (hair stripe), or crimson (there is no alarm here) into these landscapes and call them better.
True Summer, boring? grey? I can’t buy that.
Photo credit: Sonja Mason
Photo credit: Sonja Mason
NOTE : To round out this article, a True Summer Polyvore article was added to show you how I might interpret these pictures in clothing.
Our Eye Album: Summer
July 12, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 23 Comments
The previous post, Our Eye Album: Spring, contains a few introductory notes.
Many wonderful Summer pictures. I’ve put them in Light, True, Soft Summer order. Hovering the cursor over each will give you the Season.
Summer eyes are the most predictable, unless they’re brown, in which case I find it very tough to read anything. Look for a flower or ring-shaped space around the pupil that has no lines in it. Look at the iris and notice the gentlest rippling water type lines, no definite serpentines, stars, or petal shapes. The 3rd eye from the top is an exception in that it contains a lot of lines and patterns, like a kaleidoscope.
I’m not getting all worried here that lighting and focus may not be perfect. My explanations are just fun observations. I never look in an eye before or during a PCA, because I don’t want any nagging second thoughts if eye patterns and skin don’t match. The skin absolutely is the deciding factor.
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Light Summer
Can you see the faintest pale yellow light coming out in a ring, out in the iris?
Notice in the above eye that all the colours are soft, light, even watery, and that the skin is faintly yellow(Spring) and pink (Summer)?
Below is the eye of a 12 year old girl whom I draped 2 years ago as a True Summer, with true pure blue eyes. Yellow has come into her skin and her eye has changed dramatically. The overall colour has warmed and the yellow ring is present in the iris.
She’s presently cleanest and freshest in Light Summer, but so very close to tipping over into Light Spring. There were so many beautiful effects in Light Spring that my decision was something of a compromise. By the age of sixteen, I expect she’ll be a Spring of some sort. She’s been able to adjust her own wardrobe accordingly, as children often can. Her hair is yellow-white and has not changed.
The pair of eyes below belong to the same woman. She is a Light Summer, with True Summer as second best but lacking in the ability to refine the features or add a creamy, even-coloured quality to her skin. She wondered if seeming dark to look at, at least from her hair colour which is a darker grey, would exclude her from belonging to the Light Seasons, but she already knew the answer: No!! What matters is which colours make your skin and face the most perfect. Hair colour is only loosely tied to Season.
This pattern is fantastic. It reminds me of being underwater and looking up at the sun, especially the lower photo where the yellow seems to serpentine through the iris. In the upper eye, the sun is mostly seen in the points, arranged in a circle out in the iris. This leaves the appearance of a grey rim round the outside of the iris, a very frequent Light Summer effect, which is very striking in person and can be heightened a lot with right-coloured clothing and makeup.
The eyes have that open, line-free, very distinct floral shape round the pupil which is Summer. The ability to see some lines and the more defined geometry from 8 to 10 in the upper eye are not uncommon in Spring blends. Both contain a lot of yellow (Spring). There is some orange but it’s clear, not clouded as Autumn’s is, and it’s not uncommon to see it in Spring influenced-eyes. A Spring effect can put irregularity in the eye patterns, I find them the least predictable, maybe because I haven’t looked at enough Spring eyes. The lashes are light and have warmth. Also a fair bit of yellow and pink in the skin.
The thing that would surprise you most about the Light Summer people to whom these eyes belong is that about one third of them are dark haired. They may be iron grey or medium dark brunettes, not the stereotypic blonde and light beiges you expect. And yet, the supremely beautiful eye below is classic for Light Summer, though the woman’s hair is fairly dark brown. The overall colour is watery with lots of grey (Summer), the lines are like gentle ripples in water (Summer, not Winter’s heavy spokes and serpentines), and the faintest yellow sun is coming in as a wreath in the iris close to the pupil, to signal the Spring presence. Light Summer is the doll’s face come to life, the big, round eyes and small, beautiful mouth. The woman below is the dark-haired doll, petite face with girlish features, big eyes, smaller perfect mouth and chin. You can see Spring’s faint yellowness and youthful perfection in her skin.
Below, you can see an eye with truly exceptional colour. Not only is the blue actually a cool turquoise, you can see the yellow beams of pure sunshine coming out from the ring around the pupil. Imagine Nature giving one person so much in common with the planet of water and sunshine we live on. On its own, you might think this eye belongs to a stronger Spring. The clarity of the blue and the upward tilt of the eye would certainly feel that way. On the other hand, the skin has yellow but it has more pink. The brows are an ash brown, neither very pale nor yellow, hinting at some coolness. The face in which these eyes live is seen in the photo beneath the eye. Isn’t it amazing when it comes together? You can see a cooler skin and the incredible effect of the Light Summer blouse at repeating many of the blues in her eyes. I wonder if her eyes look more green when she wears green. I find that the Spring-type eye changes colour according to clothing more than any other.
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True Summer
Classic True Summer, the eye above. The open space, the greyed colour, the pink skin, the medium sandy brown lashes. The camera picked up the odd orange fleck is floating around, an Autumn influence, but there is no heat in the skin.
Blue, blue eye, no apparent heat, pink skin and blood vessels. The brown around the pupil is cool greyed taupe. I don’t see any heat here.
Below, we see an eye with a lot of line pattern. This woman would probably be overwhelmed in Winter’s blackened, intense colours, but she has some darkness in her. The white of the eye is a soft white, not the intense blue white you see in the Winter Eye Album. Nonetheless, we would have to drape carefully for Winter.
The eyes below are those of a woman who draped as a True Summer. Sandy brown lashes, a soft white of the eye, and beautiful clear water effects in the iris corroborate that. What’s special is the amount of heat (meaning warm colours like golds and browns) that have found their way into the iris. Like the eye just above, there’s also a fair bit of line pattern and the lines begin just at the edge of the iris, effects seen more in Spring and Winter. As magnificent as it is, these are a lovely reminder of why we don’t do colour analysis by eye colour.
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Soft Summer
Very muted colours, little line pattern, could be similar to the 4th Light Summer, except the skin seems greyer, not sunny.
More warmth in this eye. This woman wondered if she was a Soft Autumn, and the heat is coming in, but she drapes better in Soft Summer.
The 2 photos below go together. This very beautiful woman was recently analyzed (online) as a Soft Summer. 20 years ago, an analysis said Soft Autumn. A later PCA said a Dark Winter, but the makeup and colours felt too dark and aging. This threesome of Seasons is one of the most commonly confused. The eye supports one of the Soft Seasons. I’ve talked before about the particular facial geometry of many Soft Summers, with the delicately carved cheekbones and jawline and the very symmetric and beautifully fine-edged outline of the face. Here you see a perfect example. No other palette than Soft Summer will reveal these. In Soft Autumn colour, the edges are far less defined and the features seem blunted, not nearly as delicately clean as this.
Are you finding that Soft Summer eyes are fairly consistent? Though the ring of warmer colour right round the pupil varies from taupe to light amber, from a distance the eyes look cooler than warm – just like the person and every colour in their body. Eyes are pure magic.
Light Summer Looking Serious
June 10, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 15 Comments
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, the Light Seasons are the Neutral Season blends of True Spring and True Summer. These people are often not as light to look at as you’d expect, certainly not blue-eyed blondes by necessity. Colour Analysis is not about what you look like. It is about what the colours that make your skin the most perfect have in common.
What’s not to like about the Light Spring and Light Summer? Agreeable in every way, reminding of sunshine, mild weather, pleasant temperatures, and easiness.What if you want to express the serious contender side of yourself, and not a dally in a rowboat?
You can dress like the boss, but he/she probably has no idea what to wear either. Two shades lighter than the men in that business seems reasonable. Can color be used to make women less threatening in male dominated workplaces? Or be seen more as equals?
When you want to be heard, it’s easy to forget that whispers work better. They clear the air like an early morning rain in a world where everyone seems to be yelling. A beautiful, natural face like the one below relaxes everyone around them. They ease the tension in a room just by being there. Light Summer personifies the breath of fresh air like no other.
When we look at the colour palettes fanned out for any Season, our eye tends to be drawn to the colours. If you planted an acre garden and it contained a single bloom, your eye would be drawn to that spot of colour. We have to make a conscious effort to notice all the other colours, meaning the neutrals. They’re the spine of the whole wardrobe, the items that the real colours are added to. Use them a lot. You don’t need an item in everyone of your greens, but owning each of the greys is a good investment. For Light Summer, they are the colour of breath, shade, and shadows.
Monochromatic (all one colour) and analogous (neighbour colours on the colour wheel) colour schemes look organized and work very well on Summers and their blends, though Spring will use more colour difference and brightness in their prints and combinations. Pair a blue-grey with a blue, or a lilac-grey with a colour from the pink-violet family. This quiets the colour but introduces the friendliness, creativity, and confidence that colour does, and is very appropriate at work.
Avoid child like details, like pintucks, gathers, bows, or dots, unless the colour is quite serious and the effect is low key. These can look great on any Spring blend, but we’re trying to look less pediatric. Smocked blouses or hippie/tie-dye tunics can look as fine as peasant and folk styles on Autumn, but best worn on days off.
Keep in mind the most essential aspect of your colouring: it never gets darker than medium, so your clothes don’t either. There is always a light block somewhere to give an overall light feeling, because that’s how looking at you feels. Get too dark and your clothes take over your face, your body, your size, your presence. You have room to move with warmth and coolness, and with mutedness or clearness, because as long as colour stays light, it is very forgiving to your skin tone’s perfection.
Light Summer is gentle colour, misty light, an early sun, and an airiness that’s still cooler than it is warm. Silver and gold would both be fine in the photo above, but silver feels more at home. There is no stark white (I know the boat is white, but that’s your left brain telling you so; if you were to paint this picture, the sky and boat are grey, and silvery grey at that). And black? Put one black spot anywhere here and your eye would see nothing else.
I set the max price at 100 for most items. Your workplace may be more glam than mine, so you may see this as a casual look.
I liked the cardi because it reminds me of how planet Earth looks from outer space, a water planet, all swirling greens, blues, and whites.
Nothing gets very dark. There would be more white tops but they publish with odd reflections.
The blue jacket on the left – too muted? Maybe. It could be sunnier, but sometimes you’ll love something that will be close enough, or you won’t be able to find the perfect thing with the time and money you own. It all has to work in the real world. Light Summer is Summer above all. Denim blues are all pretty good.
The silver watch too chunky? Better suited to a Winter? Maybe, but I like a big watch. The strap is a brushed silver and the stones, numbers, and details set in the face are small. It balances well enough.
As ever, I’m more interested in what you don’t agree with because it helps me learn. I never take anything personally, trust me.
Next post will be Light Spring.
Feeling Right With True Summer
June 3, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 6 Comments
No palette seems harder to accept as one’s own than True Summer, with Soft Summer second. Both are hard to guess and assemble without help. These women usually arrive believing themselves to Soft Autumn if they’re Soft Summer, or a Winter if they’re True Summer. Where does the doubt come from?
From the women I’ve known, watched, shopped with, and listened to, these ideas recur :
1. You know it’s all about the colour feeling on this site. Many misinterpret the personality that the colours invoke. True Summer’s profound morality, planning, gracious demeanor, attention to detail, consideration of others, and strong self-discipline are all well and good, but where are the passion and commitment? We have this idea that strong colours express these better.
Here’s the choice: Do you want to wear royal purple, or do you want to look good? Compare True Summer’s deepy hospitable blue with Winter’s cold and darkly receding ultramarine. Summer’s lighter blue is psychologically easier to associate with wisdom, peace, trust, and commitment, as dependable as our ancient affiliations with sky and water. Winter’s blue is unapproachable to say the least. It stands on its own and needs nobody for nothing.
Winter’s in on the left because
- the colour is strongly saturated; Summer’s are not at maximal intensity
- the colour blocks are distinct; in Summer, the colours flow together
- the pattern is bold, geometric
2. Thinking that the colours all look dowdy, not expressive of the power today’s women know. It’s not all Wedgewood blue. Among sky, orchid, wisteria, watermelon, raspberry, soft teal, turquoise, eucalyptus, clover, pearl, and moonsilver, there is no dowdy. There is unwavering strength and kindness.
As a True Season, True Summer has been around longer, so the stereotype is more deeply entrenched than say, Bright Spring, where there is very little old baggage to displace and is usually learned from the ground up. True Autumn labored under the similar fallacy of army, khaki, and brown until 12 Season personal colour analysis extracted and clarified the Soft palettes.
True Summer is mired in fashion concepts that feel outdated for the self-determination that women today wish to convey (small prints? are you telling me to wear calico? dainty?? are you kidding me?). Boston- based Image Consultant Valeria Chuba resolved the dilemma in this way : “We tend to make the link between color and emotion very easily, but things like pattern, texture, and shape have the same effect as color. Body conscious clothes, silk and cashmere, your version of animal print – these are some of the things that will express that inner passion and still allow you to use your best colors. ”
True Summer’s shares a subtext of grace and strength with classical ballet. Women love to embody this essence, but modern women also sense a submissiveness, or modesty, that they do not identify with. Any Season is only as restrictive as the woman’s vision and what she can seem at home in. Professional, sexy, cool, modern, intruiguing – it can be done with every palette. Get the colours right. Don’t forget how much is conveyed by style. Ruffles feel like someone else’s clothes? Don’t wear them.
The colour on the left is (Dark) Winter’s because
- you can feel the presence of black
- it doesn’t feel fresh or refreshing, like the Summer on the right; it feels imposing
3. The frequently encountered pink phobia. Many True Summers would not wear it. Why is pink so bad? It is the undeniable and proven force of feminine power, not savagery. Winter’s red is more raw, barbaric power. (Are Winter people more ruthless? Not going there, but give anyone 3 words to describe me (Dark Winter) and nice would place between 6 and 10.) True Summers hear gentle and decide that must exclude brave, innovative, potent, powerful, but it doesn’t. Even the most darkly coloured True Summer wears decency and kindness very near the surface and would not be prepared to give that up. Two of the funniest women I know are True Summers.
4. “I can’t wear black”. Enough with the black. There’s too much of it out there and it owns too much of our attention. Black is too easy, too mindless, a uniform, and not more interesting than any other uniform. It requires zero imagination. It sucks every colour of light into itself and gives nothing back. It can be dramatic and selfish. Those people who can wear it don’t look so hot in jeans. Get your head into a stormy grey sky space and move on.
5. True Summer’s nature is to question rules, categories, and restrictions. It rubs against their profoundly held standard that every human presence is individual and unique and sacred and worthy of respectful treatment. Who is anyone to tell anyone else what they can and cannot wear? They will rebel against any infringement on another’s human rights. (Winter will rebel against encroachment on their own human rights 
.)
6. Remembering what is most important: coolness. The print below is one that True Summer and True Winter could wear because colours are cool. Some are saturated, some aren’t. The colours flow and blur together to a medium degree.
Dark Winter adds a drop of dark chocolate. Bright Winter adds a drop of yellow sun. No Winter ever compromises very high saturation.
7. Don’t use darkness as a gauge. Many will look at Summer’s colours and think “Wow, those are dark, don’t they belong to Winter?” Darkness doesn’t make Winter colour. Saturation does. Winter colours are shocking, intense, bold, loud. Think of the Winter person. Big theater with big analysis. Think of a Winter landscape. It gets everything and more from barely nothing at all. In every respect, including emotion, character, style, form, and design, Winter is at the far ends of every scale. They wear one colour at a time, but that colour is deafening. Wearing two such colours at once would feel tiring, which is where B&W come in.
Winter:
If you look at the garment and think “Gosh, I’m not sure”, it’s probably Summer. If the thought bubble says “I can’t really wear this, can I?”, you may well have a Winter colour.
Summer:
7. I think this is the biggest one: To understand True Summer, you have to understand True Winter.
Many True Summers can wear Winter’s light colours. Why wouldn’t they? They’re light and they’re cool. That’s two things that True Summer is. What tells a Winter from a Summer is the ability to wear Winter darks. Winter is colour right out of the tube, straight pigment. Few would even want to take it on.
A Brown-Eyed Summer
May 14, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 17 Comments
And not just a Summer, but a Light Summer!
Geoff was one of the people I analyzed as part of my training, with Terri there to guide me. Though I wasn’t tuned into people’s colouring back then, his impression seemed very medium and still is in my memory. He had medium-dark sandy brown hair and eyes that seemed twinkly somehow, but light or medium in depth, no idea what colour.
It has been pointed out that if I believe that eyes and hair are irrelevant to Season (and I do), then why do I keep talking about them? Because skin is hard to talk about. In a previous article, Jocelyn Is A Bright Winter, I had watched her at work for years, so I had some idea of how her skin reacted to colour. Geoff and I just met that day, which is the case with most clients.
His Season was Bright Winter. At the time, I had no idea what the significance of that was. He could have been any Season and it would have seemed perfectly plausible. Every one of the 12 Seasons had an exactly equal outcome probability. That precious trust is one of the hardest things to hang onto as experience brings expectation, complacency, and ruts. The beginner is far more willing to wander off the beaten path, too naive to know what the implications are.
As time passed, I often wondered if I would ever have the confidence to a call a medium-colouring person a Bright Winter without Terri standing beside me. Terri had analyzed hundreds of people, probably thousands, having been an analyst since the 80s, first with one of the biggest brands in PCA, and eventually settling more comfortably with Sci\ART.
In PCA, the average is the exception. The general population, the people at yoga class, your family, nobody quite looks like the pictures in books. Those perfect averages are as rare as the patient with a disease who shows up with all the textbook signs and symptoms. At least, I never see them. Most everyone has something that seems not to fit.
Let’s call this lovely woman May. She had been analyzed many years ago as a Summer, in a 4-Season system. It was closer than the other choices, though she did wear some Spring colours, especially the robin’s egg blues. May is remarkably colour perceptive, even to the fine details, and could decide even with the first drapes which was better. She is one of the few women I see who came in wearing her best colours.
We began as Light Seasons always do. Terrible, but terrible in Autumn. We could have counted 15 different problems. Overwhelmed by Winter’s aggressive darks. No surprise so far. True Summer made the skin a bit greyed, but it looked younger and more evenly coloured. True Spring brought an easing of lines and that typical smoothness of skin of this Season, but she was too yellow. Very typical of the Light Seasons. Seen this many times.
And I’m feeling a bit nervous because those eyes are brown and they are not changing, though the skin and eyelids around them are changing dramatically. Eye colour intensity or crispness of outline of the iris don’t change equally in everyone, but as I get to the better Seasons, these factors are usually helpful guides. Contradictions can happen, as the Soft Autumn eyes in skin that has cooled and softened to Soft Summer in a woman in her 60s, and skin always matters most. The eyes won’t change in a face while the skin remains the same, it’s just easier to see in the eye as we refine the very best colours.In May’s case, we seldom looked at her eye colour or sharpness. We did it entirely by looking at skin.
Life often teaches us what we most need to know at the time we are truly receptive. I get challenged a fair bit about ignoring eye and hair colour, and sometimes I question myself. May came along, I believe, to teach me to stick to my guns. If eyes don’t matter, and ANY Season can have ANY hair and eye colour, then it was time for me to put my money where my mouth is.
We knew True Summer and True Spring weren’t right. I kept seeing those dark eyes and going back to Bright Spring. Bernice Kentner of CMAS, whom I hold in highest esteem, has said that a brown-eyed Spring is mostly a Winter blend, and that has been my experience so far. There was no way. May is not crisply cool to look at, and Bright Springs usually are. Those drapes were not only draining, but they looked crazy, like the woman and the colour were separate and had been Photoshopped together.
I thank May for sitting there so patiently, Summer that she is. PCA is like a video game. It doesn’t let you see any level of clues till you’ve mastered the previous level. It holds back knowledge you’re not ready to use correctly. We tried Light Spring and Light Summer a few times and couldn’t choose. I never belabor these moments, I change the energy. We went backwards, tried Soft Summer and the True Summer and Spring again, just to give our eyes more ways of seeing. Then, it was obvious. Light Summer was clearly and obviously the one. Her skin was the absolute youngest, without being yellowed as Light Spring caused. In a 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis system, Light Summer is the person whose inborn colouring is predominantly Summer’s, with a trace of Spring’s clear, light, yellow sunlight.
I wonder if she was a Light Spring as a younger woman. Her skin may have cooled and softened into Light Summer. But a brown-eyed Light Spring is still most uncommon. And those eyes are brown, but fascinatingly so. A blue-eyed Light Summer has a very clear open wreath around the pupil, like this:
See the browner doughnut around the pupil? And see also the absence of lines and spokes and specks and other detail throughout the iris? Very typical of all 3 Summer groups.
In May’s eyes, substitute all the blues for browns and you’re there. Same very prominent open wreath, actually even wider doughnut than the eye above, same absence of strong lines, and of a darker brown than the very slightly lighter brown outside the wreath.
What else was fascinating? Her eyelashes are light-medium blonde, about like the eye above or perhaps a bit lighter, and far lighter than her eyes. Her eyebrows are extremely fair.
Her hair colour is lighter than her natural light brown was in her earlier years, and her natural is now gray. Hair is hidden during the analysis, so imagining her in darker hair would not have made a younger face.
If you can’t buy a brown-eyed Summer, what else can you picture? Nothing I can think of. Try putting other Seasons’ makeup on her. I can’t see it. She is wearing the lightest silvery taupe eyeliner I have. Even through tinted lenses, can you imagine darker without the eyeliner being an obvious dark line on this skin? Not really. May is wearing quite a bit of light gold-peach bronzer and carnation pink blush and lipstick, but the white analysis lights are still on so the skin seems a bit whiter.
Rimmel Lip Gloss for 12 Seasons
January 15, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 26 Comments
Some folks take exception to my swatching makeup on white paper. They say you can’t tell how the colour would look on your face. They’re going to love the way I swatch lip gloss.
I find I can see the subtleties of the colours way better on paper. On paper, you can be more detached about the colour. It’s still far enough from you to be perceived as separate from you, and only on its own merits. Once it enters your Personal Zone, all kinds of meta impressions start happening.
The hot second you try to evaluate a colour on your own face, you’ve lost objectivity. Your imagination alters your face, and everything on it. We have no idea what we look like to others. The only thing we decide when we look at a new makeup colour on our face is whether it could be consistent with how we’re used to seeing ourselves.
The Sci\ART Colours Book is outstanding for matching makeup colours, the trickiest part of working with your Season. Good thing there’s lots of help to get you started once you get your Season ID. The swatches in the Book are on white canvas. At the store, I can smear the makeup on a white page. Back home and decide, in daylight, if the colours are the same. Any client who has done this with me during a PCA appt knows that she can look from the makeup palette we create on paper to her Colours Book, and find every swatch in her Book immediately. Her eye just goes to it, and she is right every time. This system works.
These Rimmel Stay Glossy lipglosses impressed me because of the good colour selection – or was it that I found Winter colours, usually so hard to do? So often, a line will have 3 good colours, and you stand there looking at the rest of them, thinking “I have no idea who would wear these colours.” In this line, the fairest and darkest have a choice, the most muted and clearest, and the Winter colours are actually wearable.
The gloss is supposed to last 6 hours, or 8 hours, or some big, impressive number.
Critical Thinking : the ability to discern what is probably right and what is probably wrong. A 6 hour lip gloss? You didn’t even expect that to be true. There’s no 2 hour lip gloss out there, unless you’re a mannequin, the plastic kind. Forget 6.
The product is plenty nice, and reasonably priced, whatever that means in cosmetics. Heavens, I’m being snarky today, but there is too much undeserved cosmetic raving going on out there. Every week brings a new rave. That’s how you came to have a used-it-once drawer. I’m just trying to keep the reality glasses in place so you never add one more item to that drawer. I am nice enough to say that there was nothing about the application that I didn’t like, besides the sinking ship of 6 hour expectations. This is also a nice product to apply over a lipstick, long wear or otherwise to keep it going till lunchtime without needing a mirror.
I swatch lip gloss between 2 pieces of tape to avoid having gunk all over my purse. I can spread it around and look at the nuances of the colour when I get home to daylight. I can see the colour next to other tones, because colour is all about comparison.
Once you see a colour you like on paper, and it seems to match your Book, I absolutely suggest you put it on your face. There’s more to a makeup buy decision than its colour. Also, no two women in the same Season look quite the same or will interpret their Season in the same way, or have the same comfort level with colour on the face.
I match the color analyzed swatches from the middle darkness colours, or the lighter ones for the Light Seasons. The darker swatches work fine in clothing but most light-medium complected women find them dark. The Sci\ART system is 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, because 12 is enough without being too much, but you’ll refine your position within your Season with time.
The pictures are a bit randomly organized, and seem a bit sloppy (that’s part of the reality theme), but they cover all the colours, with some opportunity to compare. In Canada, we did not have Endless Night, Unlimited Gold, or Endless Summer, unless they are here with a different name. I haven’t adjusted any settings. Photos were taken at 11AM on an overcast day, on a sheet of white paper.
True Winter : Yours Forever
Dark Winter : All Night Long
Bright Winter : Timeless Allure, Fuchsia Fever
Finding a clean red-violet that has that purple pivot that True Winter hovers around is challenging, especially in a cheaper product. I like this one.
For many darker Season women, they don’t always want a dark lip. I’ll never (or not soon) be convinced that Sandra Bullock (probably Dark Winter), Liza Minelli (True?), or Audrey Hepburn (Bright W?) look their best in browned, flesh toned lips. Dark W wears a browned deep rose as a disappearing lip (NARS Dolce Vita), but it has little impact. A very good option to nude lips for Winters, which the intensity of the person’s coloring can still dominate too easily, is a sheer lip.
I hope you can see that Dark Winter’s colour is browner. Bright W’s is lighter and clear.
As a Dark Winter, I tried All Night Long. It’s quite similar to the Dark Winter always-in-your-purse anchor of Merle Norman Stolen Kisses.
Light Summer : All Day Seduction, Stay My Rose, Dare To Say, Eternal Flirt
True Summer : Captivate Me, Dare To Say
Soft Summer : My Eternity, Stay My Rose, Captivate Me
With the sheerness of a gloss, several of these colours will work across categories. Your own lip colour will come through and help adapt the shade to your face.
All Day Seduction has a gold glimmer in it, it felt best for Light Summer. Soft Summer can do gold shimmer sometimes, as in MAC Plumfoolery blush, but the base colour is deeper in that blush than this light pink gloss. Soft Summers are much cooler than they are warm and not especially light.
Light Spring : Non Stop Glamour, Always Lovely, All Day Seduction
True Spring: Here To Say? , Non Stop Glamour
Bright Spring: Fuchsia Fever, Timeless Allure, All Day Seduction
True Spring gave me some trouble. Here To Say may be one those colours that is too browned for a Spring and not browned enough for an Autumn. It is orange and yellow enough that it may work well, with just enough brown to make it more nude/flesh coloured. I try to picture it on Wayne Gretzky…not sure. I was hoping it might look like this.( I think Uma may be a Light Spring because pale lips look so good on her. True Spring does better with a shot of real color).
The beauty of a gloss is that it tempers brightness (as in Fuchsia Fever) and darkness (as Timeless Allure), allowing Bright Spring to wear both. They could also do All Day Seduction, because it’s a clean pink with a gold shimmer. Light Summer had this colour too, because there are similarities between it and Bright Spring (both can do well in medium-darkness colours, both have a trace of Spring yellow).
So Fabulous is a slightly yellow caramel beige. It is not orange, nor is it as heavy as butterscotch sundae sauce. It is a Spring colour, perhaps a good flesh-toned lip for Light Spring, a Season that is exemplary in the various beiges of nuts and their shells.
Soft Autumn: Here To Say?
True Autumn: Immortal Charm
Dark Autumn : Everlasting Crush, Still Gorgeous
A Soft Autumn will probably find Here To Say too orange. I’m usually looking for a color like the pink in a flowerpot, and this is not it, but they do have a warm side, especially when the hair has an apricot highlight, and they do look great in nude/flesh lips, a la J.Lo. This is a line where the Autumn colours are less plentiful, while the pinks are over-represented.
Still Gorgeous could be lovely on Dark Autumn, and very natural on women of deeper complexion.
Black Diva, well, y’know. Oh, I forgot that one.
Lockets for the 12 Seasons
December 12, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 15 Comments
Lockets come in so many styles for one type of jewelry. They are at once classic, Victorian, and vintage. Styles vary from very time-honored simplicity to jewel-encrusted modern. They emanate a sense of ancestry that feels grounding, well-bred, and perfectly belonging to this time of year of tradition and family.
At Heartsmith, I found a wealth of styles and a poverty in my ability to choose just one style for each Season, which I failed to do in many cases, as you’ll see. The name of each design and the photo are linked back to the product page.
A sincere thanks to Heartsmith for allowing me to reproduce the photographs.
Let’s look at some very beautiful jewelry.
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SPRING
Heart shapes are in keeping with Spring. They are young, romantic, pointed, and delicate. The adjectives romantic and delicate are often given to Summer, but they are appropriate here too. Spring’s romance is more magical than Summer’s Bosoms&Roses style (as a young friend of mine once described her True Summer Mom’s reading taste). Spring is delicate as youth and fairy wings.
True Spring
Mrs. Potter 3/4 Gold Locket&Diamond.
Because True Spring is the sun.
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Spring is airy, floaty, skyward-directed like growing new plants reaching for the sun’s light. Many members of all 3 Spring groups have small features and a petite aspect to their features. A small, floating heart is so pretty, for any Spring or its blends.
The Alia Floating Heart Pendant.
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Light Spring
Juliet Gold Heart Locket has a brushed center to integrate the Summer element, but the flower petals could be the wings of butterflies. For the Light Spring who resembles a Summer, this style is also available in a white gold.
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Bright Spring
For me, this Season is crisp but delicate, like frozen lace. They are the frost on the window, the ice that coats evergreens and bare branches after an ice storm, the pattern in the thin ice over a puddle when you step on it. In the Season that blends Spring’s sparkle and Winter’s polish, metal must shine.
The Destiny Lace Set Diamond Locket.
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Audrey is stunning too, larger and less yellow in the metal.
If the Wishing Star pendant comes back into stock, put your name on a list.
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SUMMER
True Summer
True Winter is minimal in its ornamention. Pieces are important but they don’t move. I see True Summer as more detailed and decorated. The circle is Summer’s essential shape. The metal is brushed.
Elizabeth Sterling Silver Victorian Locket expresses the gentle strength of this group. Summer is highly capable without needing to control everything around it (like another Season we know).
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I loved this one too. I like it when I have to think about it a bit. This design felt a bit unexpected, and others may have a different interpretation of the look of a True Summer. Pushing the limits of your own taste is an expression of your creativity, of thought becoming matter.
True Summer is often a reflective, pensive personality.I loved the darkness, because True Summer is so often stuck in lightness, and they are not that light. The weight felt good, because True Summer is not light by weight any more than it is by colour. The swirling ivy lines are perfect. The peaceful message of the dove is highly Summerish, as is the grace and flow of wings in flight.
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Light Summer
Alternating polish and matte silver integrates the Summer muted and Spring shiny elements. The size is small and there’s a minimum of fuss to allow the essential heart shape to take center stage.
Laurie Chasing Hearts bracelet
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Soft Summer
In this Season that is essentially Summer, with a dusting of Autumn, the refined sophistication of Summer becomes more solid, thanks to Autumn’s strength. I love the weight of the chain, the pearl, and the stronger closure. The small blue stone in the heart is perfect. I find this piece gorgeous.
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AUTUMN
True Autumn
The Brandy Bracelet is fantastic. It is muted in colour and shine, antiqued, of mid-darkness, with good weight.
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Soft Autumn
Autumn’s lights and darks give a sense of depth. We see this in plaid, for instance, where there are advancing and receding elements. Autumn’s strength is expressed here, as we look for more sustenance in this Season (as we do in the foods we eat as the cold approaches). This is muted in colour and metal, not too hot or cold, feminine but substantial.
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We’ve been talking about which Season is which element in our Facebook group. The symbolism of the Seasons, and how these are depicted in their human examples, fascinate me. Sometimes, an association gets stuck in my head and I can’t dislodge it. For me, Soft Autumn is the tree. Are they the wood element? Yes, probably, I could make that extension.
This piece is perfect for a Neutral Season, with the gold and silver. Both are muted, as looks best on Soft Seasons. If you wear metal (or makeup, or clothes) that are shinier than you, you just got duller by comparison. The gold is earthy, not light and shiny. Love this piece.
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Dark Autumn
Beautiful, in silver with gold accents. You can see how absolutely lovely this item is in the video on the product page. (With citrine, topaz, or diamond options).
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WINTER
True Winter
True Winter is controlled and controlling. They are not all over the place. Floppiness is hopeless. They do not move their bodies in a floppy way. Like the royal family, they are contained and ceremonial when they look their best. Pieces are symmetrical and balanced, an exact equilibrium.
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Bright Winter
Yes, the metal is yellow, but Bright Winter is a Neutral Season. They have yellow in the skin, and it is this light, shiny gold. It is well balanced by the darker lower half. The jaw-dropping opulence, especially in a piece of this size, is balanced better by the Bright Winter than any other.
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Safety is nowhere on Bright Winter. It disappears completely. If you are brighter than your jewelry (or makeup, or clothes), they are duller by comparison. This is the ultimate go-big-or-stay-home Season. Glamorous hairstyles, dramatic necklines, they just look better.
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Dark Winter
Lenore Garnet and Pearl Pendant
The contrast of blood and snow is always Winter. The medieval weighted hardware of Autumn. The imperial luxury of Winter. The deep red undertone of Dark winter skin. The darkness in the metal. The overall feeling of cold and hard. Not too shiny, as Autumn mutes textures as well as colours. An amazing piece of jewelry.
Eyeglass Frames 2 Nov 2010
November 20, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 1 Comment
Frames for True Winter, Light Spring, Dark Winter, Light Summer x 2, and Bright Spring, chosen using the colours and principles of 12 Season (Tone) Personal Colour Analysis.
Or here on YouTube.
The Glasses
True Winter
Light Spring
Light Summer
Light Summer
Bright Spring
The make of the glasses can be seen on the lens, except Bright Spring’s which are Soho. Mine are Joop!
Holland Optical is in SW Ontario at 519-352-8632.
Eyeglass Frames 1 Nov2010
November 14, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 7 Comments
Recently at our Facebook meeting place, Valeria described her Personal Colour Analysis as having allowed her to “claim my identity”. Sometimes, you hear a small string of words that crystallizes a world of meaning into a little strand of sounds.
I haven’t stopped thinking about the many implications of that phrase since I read it. I’m happy enough to find you the perfect lipstick for your skin tone, the most believable color analyzed hair colour, and the clothing colours that announce the real you. When everyone else is buying a black dress for the Christmas party, you will be wearing a color that so becomes you that conversation will stop when you walk in. That’s all great stuff. Looking completely right is personally, professionally, and financially powerful dexterity to have on your side. I can talk about it all day.
Whether I’m in the room or not, the conversation always comes round to the topic I love even more: How To Find Your Own Voice.
Colour is electromagnetic vibration. So are we. The vibrations of our colours cannot NOT be an identical match for those of our inner being, or some part our total energy. They must be an exact duplicate. It is impossible for our colour vibrations to be spinning falsely and still be part of us because the same DNA decrees the physics of both. The colours in our body are a true and accurate representation of our most fundamental person.
Amidst the endless chatter of advice, the person in whom we need to learn to trust is ourselves. Colour Analysis is like the translator that gives that buried deepest being a Voice that you and others can understand.
If PCA is new to you, don’t get caught up in these concepts. It takes time to reach them. Start with finding the best reds, blues, greens, and yellows for your person. You may be on the ground floor, but this elevator only goes up.
Glass frames are a multifactored decision because you have the frames, and Season, and facial features to take into account. We could find the color analyzed cosmetic items that every member of the Season could wear beautifully, but not likely the eyeglass frames.
Wispy faces do better with wispy hair and finer accessories.
Small bodies look better with proportionately smaller accessories.
Use the frames and ideas here give a sense of how each Season is positioned among the 11 others and how it is best exemplified in the physical world.
This first series looks at a series of frames for Autumn blends. Notice the progression in the heat of the metal, in the darkness, in the type of decoration, and in the overall feeling. In 12 Season (12 Tone) Colour Analysis, there are 5 Seasons that contain some Autumn influence.
You can watch it here on YouTube as well.
I’ll add the photos of the glasses after the video, since the recording doesn’t go around the frames.
Soft Summer
Soft Autumn
True Autumn
Dark Autumn
Best Makeup Colours : Soft Summer
October 18, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 9 Comments
It’s a good thing Soft Summers are so wonderfully even-tempered. A certain fortitude helps for the group who have most often been assigned 2 or 3 different Seasons. The very fact that the coloring is not obvious is precisely the concept of this Season. Therefore, nothing else about the appearance should be blatant either. Dark liners, yellow highlights, or golden bronzers might be ineffective or undetectable or other Seasons. On Soft Summer, they are shrill.
At her most aligned, Soft Summer dresses for an art gallery opening. She wears her makeup the same way. Ultimately tasteful and sophisticated, she would be invited anywhere. She is never inappropriate, bold, or abrupt, and her makeup is not either.
In 12 Season Colour Analysis, Soft Summer is the Neutral Season that is basically a Summer, incorporating the earliest feeling of Autumn. Still more an intuition than a very obvious shift, True Summer’s cool/soft palette is now observed through a veil of light grey smoke. Here on the outskirts of Autumn, the light taupe that settles over the entire palette is not yet warm enough to heat these colors. What it does is dull them. (See How The 5 Springs Add Yellow for more on how heat is added to the warm Season personal colour palettes).
If you looked at True Summer’s colours through the sky in the picture above, they might look like the cosmetic colors palette below. Look at the effect the mauve-grey-taupe has on the grass and trees, relative to the colors in the foreground. A little warmer, certainly more muted and quiet.
I could have sworn those blocks were lined up when I made this. Let’s not notice that. Instead, we could notice that the entire palette seems to fogged, even a bit blurred. If I’d really been on the ball, I would have softened the edges of all those squares and put the lightest mushroom color over the background.
There are no extremes of darkness or brightness. The overall effect is cooler than warm, so no gold, warm beige, or orange. The feeling is gentle but not fragile, an oak tree rather than a crystal vase (which would be Bright Spring). Soft Summer could share their cooler makeup palette with True Summer, but not with their warmer neighbor, the Soft Autumn, whose colors are much too golden to perfect this skin tone.
The most beautiful eye appears to be coming out of a misty lake. Eyeshadows and liners are hazy tan greys and mauve greys. The eyeliner is not much darker than the eyeshadow, to avoid creating an obvious line which only looks severe. In this Season, liner can distinguish itself by being a different color than the shadow, instead of a darker color.
The tan browns can be used to fill in brows as well. Eyebrows should never be the first thing people notice on anyone, or they’re overdone. On this group especially, brows may be darker or lighter than the hair depending on the individual, but they should diffuse into the face. It’s the eye color we’re trying to energize. Brows, blush, lipcolor, and hair are there to support, heighten, and accentuate eye color. When the natural features flow so seamlessly into one another, makeup must be exceptionally undemanding to not take over.
The lip and blush colors are interesting. Soft Summer and Dark Winter share certain characteristics. Both add neutral brown to a pure cool Season, True Summer and True Winter respectively. Dark Winter’s brown is much darker as Winter imposes blackness. Both are Neutral Seasons, so have cool and warm choices. Cool for Soft Summer is dusty plum, while warm is tan rose (still definitely a cool version). Cool for Dark Winter is not dusty or greyed at all, quite the opposite, but it is a browned plum; warm is saturated coral pink, dulled a bit with a drop of dark brown.
I love Soft Summer’s red. It is not fire engine, scarlet, blood, or anything else that activates. Summer is restorative, not catalytic. We’re still in the realm of rose petals, they just live on a dusty road.
There are 2 makeup items that are truly out of place on this type of natural coloring. The first in bronzer. You might think it would work, since a light touch of it can be quite outdoor-glowy on Light Summers. The difference is that the heat is so not-obvious in Soft Summer that bronzer stands out. You can’t find taupe bronzer, and who would put a grey layer on their skin anyhow? You’re so much easier to look at in a powder that respects the coolness of the skin and is two shades darker than a match. Use it with restraint, more to contour than to add heat, or skip it altogether.
Shimmer in makeup is the second means of over-gilding this lily. A satin finish in a lip product, maybe, so much easier to find. This Season is an exception where matte choices are actually plentiful. High shine is insistent and feels too childish to fit into this supremely elegant atmosphere. Add shimmer to many Soft Summer eyeshadows, and they become Dark Winter’s.
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Let your natural colouring guide you to your most flattering clothing, makeup, and hair colour choices.12 Seasons of practical, affordable information on the styles, cosmetics, hair colour, and jewelry that each palette wears most beautifully and the comparisons you need to wear your Season perfectly!
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