Prince Edward Island Holiday
July 14, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 3 Comments
When I was 11, my family moved to this tiny province from Montreal. Having been raised here has been one my life’s blessings. Those of us who left are drawn back and have no will to resist, so strong is the gentle magic of the place.
I will be here for a short while. We’ll get back to our great color discussions in the first week of August. I look forward to it.
I hope that all of you find some time in the ease of summer to refuel and to reflect on your own life’s journey.
Thanks to my sister, Sonja, for the photo.
Handbags for 12 Color Analysis Seasons
July 10, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 18 Comments
This may be as close as we’ll get to the dream of all going shopping together.
These are obviously my own taste. I don’t care for very slouchy bags that are just one big hole to rummage around in endlessly. If I had my way, handbags would be full of zippered pockets and would light up when you open them.
I like a bag to have a certain size to it, because I carry a lot of stuff.
The images are linked to their source websites. Hover the mouse over the image to see the store. Nordstrom’s site never takes you to the product page, so you may have to search it. LMK if you can’t find any of them.
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True Spring
They call this color “cream”. I liked it because it is light and the color gives the eye a place to rest. Springs look so good with color on their body, even 3 at once, that a quieter accessory still coordinates without amplifying the “color riot” effect.
The tassels bring in a little movement. Spring is buoyant with movement, happiness, and enthusiasm. With both legs in a cast, they’re still smiling. Their serious side can come and go very suddenly.
Any Season with a Spring element would do fine with this. True Spring somehow felt the most unexpected, which drew me to it.
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True Autumn
In mocha, this bag sold out the first time round, but seems to be available again.
Not dark. That’s a big thing for True Autumn. Warm, yes. Bit drab, yes.
Nice heavy fixtures, it’s practical, comfortable, natural, and strong – all Autumn.
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Soft Summer
No words needed. Uncommonly chic.
“Quietly fabulous” is the particular radiance of the Soft Seasons.
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Light Spring
It is one big hole, but it’s so dang purdy. I kept coming back to it.
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Dark Winter
It’s like a dream come true.
I’m going to be fighting Dark Autumn for it.
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Bright Winter
I don’t normally wear logos, they can pay me if they want me to advertise. Logos are blingy, and can look cheap on anyone but the Bright Winter. Even Bright Spring looks intimidated by them.
This bag is avant-garde, it’s edgy and exaggerated, and it’s cold and shiny. All very Bright Winter.
The details and charms add Spring’s movement and fun. If you’re not comfortable with knock-out glamour on your body, do it in your purse.
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Bright Spring
Check the bright pink on the site!!
The simplicity of the bag allows the color. It’s not for the office, but the the patent gleam, the light shiny gold metal, I’d notice this bag.
Problem is that no Bright Spring I know would buy this. They have far too much Winter reserve, much more than you’d think, considering they’re primarily Springs.
Would they do this?
Doubt it. They’re usually toting something black and frumpy, when they themselves are anything but.
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True Summer
In a quieter color, you don’t notice all the interlocking C’s. There’s an elegance and restraint here that doesn’t require the spotlight, all Summers have it. There’s none of the excess that True Summer so dislikes.
This is a smaller purse, but I like the circles as Summer’s essential shape. The textured silver is nice also. It comes in many styles.
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Soft Autumn
We can use words like muted, grayish, low saturation, soft, all day long. Until Soft Autumn gets their head around the word “dull”, they don’t totally get the palette.
The Light/Dark and Warm/Cool positions are medium. There is not a single extreme in the Season.
And I love this bag. Quiet, steady, calm, balanced, everything Soft Autumn is.
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True Winter
Simplicity incarnate.
True Winter often look a bit Asian. This reminds of a pagoda shape. It’s contained, but it is dark and has drama.
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Light Summer
Again, one big hole, but I have a rose-gold obsession for Light Summer. The horizontal fabric reminds me of waves. Every color may not be perfect, and Light Spring could do this as well, but I like the bag.
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Dark Autumn
Chanel meets Vuitton.
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Wow. This was as much fun as shopping with someone else’s money.
If any are sold out, call the company and bug them.
Why Does Makeup Change Color On Your Face?
June 19, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 13 Comments
Because not all the pigments in the makeup can find a match in your own skin. Those that find a match just blend away into your face. Those that don’t sit on top, separate from the rest, looking like a color change happened. That’s why.
The discussion in the Comments to Skin Undertones is what led me to finally understand why this happens. For those who helped work through this, we won’t cover any new ground. This separate article is just to make sure nobody misses this point.
It’s fundamental to the essential reason and purpose of 12 Season Personal Color Analysis : to uncover the precise shades of every color that already exist in you. Only then can we repeat them exactly in clothes, hair, makeup. The result is perfect harmony. To the viewer, that looks and feels like “What have YOU got going on? How can I be finding it hard to look away when you’re just wearing a tank and shorts from Old Navy??”
We’ve all put on cosmetic colors that turned orange or bubblegum pink. Why?
I knew 2 things :
- When I got my color analysis makeup colors, the color change (everything used to turn orange) stopped happening – because I no longer bought makeup with orange in it.
- When you apply the right makeup color for the skin, it virtually disappears. It fuses with the face. Even with a heavy application, the makeup seems to diffuse away and mesh with the face – because those colors are already in the face.
When makeup changes color, my belief is that it’s because those pigments that can find no match in your natural pigmentation sit on top, separated or isolated from the rest of the product that blended in because it found a match. This effect gives the appearance of a color change.
What else could it be? I’m open to all suggestions.
Your own lip or skin color causing a bizarre combination color? Sheer gloss maybe. Not likely though, other than what I described above. The concentration of pigment in skin can’t compete with a cosmetic.
Skin pH? Medication? Possible. We’ve all heard this at the makeup counter. Color-change lipsticks have ingredients that change color based on body temperature and skin pH. Are those ingredients included in every lip/blush formulation? I doubt it, or all makeup would change color. That would be crazy.
Lighting. All makeup looks bluer in morning’s bluer wavelengths. In general, I think our brains adapt for that, just as they see white walls as white, though they’re usually influenced by light or furniture. I don’t look at people and think “That’s afternoon lipstick”.
Other variables, hair and clothes? Hm. Maybe. Every color on you will affect how a given color looks. So even if you have the hair color that will perfect your skin tone, it will never look as good in wrong-colored clothing or makeup. The answer must be to have your right hair color when you buy makeup, but I think our brains adapt for that too.
Turquoise For 12 Seasons
June 15, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
Turquoise is an IT color this year.
Q: If there’s a shade than flatters both Reese and Julia’s skin tone perfectly, what is it?
A: Trick Q. There isn’t one.
Better to find the precise shade(s) that looks riveting on you. Have an accurate 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, and you will know for sure, forever after.
The colors shown are by no means the only turquoise option you have, whatever your Season (except True Winter). Since this is a blue and yellow based color, Seasons intimate with those colors, the Summers and Springs respectively, have more choices among their Color Analysis swatches.
Turquoise is warm and cool at once, so every Season has at least 1 choice.
True Spring’s colours are juicy and intensely happy. They’re ripe and dripping with pigment.
Bright Spring’s are clean, crisp, and pure. They are found in compositions that are the same, like this dress. These persons are deceptively Wintery in their appearance, and they wear clothes that are not-quite-Winter. The overall effect is light, not dark.
Light Spring is a Carribean shoreline on a sunny day.
True Summer is gauzy sheer, but not particularly light. Refreshing but gentle, like Blue Fescue grass.
Light Summer’s are icing colors.
Soft Summer is very grayed. When you add Autumn’s brown to Summer’s blue, you’ve mixed complementary colors. The result is gray, like sage.
True Autumn turquoise is greener.
Dark Autumn’s turquoises are dark enough to be teal.
Soft Autumn turquoise is how color appears in the desert.
True Winter only has the one. I wonder why. No heat-from-yellow (or heat-from-orange) tolerance? No, because Summer has many. Because yellow is light? Because there are other ways to make turquoise?
Dark Winter is bluer and sharper than Dark Autumn.
Bright Winter is electric acid turquoise.
Choosing The Ideal Bridal White
May 24, 2010 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
The colour of bridal satin is as important (more important!) than the style.
The yellowing effect of ivory on Summer skin…
The drained, tired skin of an Autumn in soft white…
The disappearing Summer bride in Winter’s aggressive, hard, cold, frosty, sharp white…
Know your perfect white with a Personal Colour Analysis. Achieve your skin tone perfection on this of all days. Your wedding gift to yourself.
Have your Colour Analyst send 3 e-mails.
One to your dress shop, so they can choose the perfect color and style.
One to your makeup artist. If she works with a PCA, there is a cosmetic colour palette and particular radiance in her head instantly.
One to your florist. If he understands PCA, he makes a composition, knowing the flowers to use and not use.
Your jeweler, your hair colorist, everyone needs to know. When the team works together, you become extraordinary.
Are you getting warm? I am.
We look at the colours of satin for the 4 True Seasons. In correct Seasonal Colour Analysis, there are 12 personal palettes. The other 8 are Neutral Seasons, or blends of the 4 Trues.
(I do not own the Sci\ART Bridal Drapes Set of 12.)
Did I say grey when I should have said white? Yup.
Did I say Summer when I should have said Spring? Yes again.
I was trying to be animated, you see…
Skin Undertones
April 15, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 58 Comments
You may want to skip this post. There will be no concrete answer at the end. It will be a thought repository for my ramblings till someone helps me understand this. If you can’t stand the nitpickiness, I’ll understand entirely.
I realize that I’ve been referring to “undertones”, as in the Eyeglass Frames videos too randomly. I said that the dusty plum of the Soft Summer frames was essentially the undertone of that skin.
Traditionally, undertones are thought to be either cool, neutral, or warm, not coloured.
Overtones are the outside colour of the skin, like the names of foundation, porcelain, bisque, buff, natural, warm beige, etc. Light/medium/deep also refers to overtones. The overtone must be in the top epidermal layer, presumably the relative melanin/hemoglobin/carotene amounts.
You can get any combination of undertone and overtone. So warm undertone + ivory overtone, or cool undertone + ebony overtone, etc. Porcelain and ebony overtones can share the same cool undertone.
Worth noting too is that you can have a false overtone. The red flush in the skin of women with too-yellow hair, or the yellow overtone in the cool dark Seasons when they wear too-warm colour, these are just effects created by bad colour.
Where is the undertone and what exactly is this colour that we are calling cool-neutral-warm? I mean, cool what? Cool grey? Cool blue? A cool colour that varies by Season, but is of the cool classification?
I looked for input from respected sources.
1. Bernice Kentner of Color Me A Season, always ahead of her time, describes undertone as a real colour, a combination of 4 variables. From her book, The Magnificent Eye, she describes undertone as the result of an equation made up of 4 variables:
. the thickness of the skin which varies by Season and determines which colours show through
. the yellow-brown colour of all skin, beneath the top layer
. the meshwork of oxygenated (red) and non-oxygenated (blue) blood vessels beneath the skin
. the velocity of blood flow in those vessels; so Autumn’s faster blood flow shows more red of arterial blood
I don’t know about the blood flow velocity. I would think that ultrasound would have detected those differences among people. If she means how fast the capillary beds are cleared, well, I don’t know.
I absolutely agree with her that Seasonal Colour Analysis is not about overtones. If it were, women who wear the same foundation would be of the same Season. If it were, yellow skin would wear warm foundation, but it often does not (or should not).
2. Lauren Battistini at Color My Closet makes the fundamentally important point in this post, that undertone refers to how skin reacts to color. If your skin is most perfected by cool colours, then your skin’s undertone is cool. Not certain if I can extrapolate Lauren’s words this far, but maybe this means that undertone is not a real colour at all, and isn’t located anywhere in the skin’s biological layers. It is a reactionary term.
Personal Colour Analysis is about identifying the precise degree of darkness, warmth, and saturation in the colours of your body, and so in the colours that perfect your skin when you wear them. It has nothing to do with overtone really. We’re looking for the skin’s reactions, or undertones.
In the Comments, Lauren says that each Season has a “core color”, using the example that Autumn is orange. Each Season does have a signature or core colour (Winter=red, Summer=blue, Spring=yellow), but that is not quite the same concept as skin colour, though there’s some overlap.
3. Imogen Lamport at Inside Out Style Blog writes an excellent blog with practical real-world advice. In this post on skin tone and makeup, a client writes in with a question. Imogen offers several examples from her experience as a colour analyst.
If I understand this right,
Now you may be more obvious and have a warm yellow or goldish undertone and overtone and therefore warm colouring, or you may have a pinkish undertone and overtone and be cool.
…means the pure Seasons are those where overtone and undertone accord. She cites examples where the two may conflict – but I’m still confused.
4. Beauty School Blog is written by makeup artist, Jen. I find it a fresh take on makeup blogs, with good lessons, a genuine voice, and a wider spectrum of topics. I found this article very thorough. But I’m still confused. If the undertone is a real colour, then which colour is it exactly, and where is it?
5. The colours of melanin. This, at Dead Dog Cafe, doesn’t fully attack the topic but does implicate different forms of melanin.
Pheomelanin, yellow to red-brown (ie: orange) : small quantity + blue vessels > green or sallow of some cool Seasons.
” ” ” : large intensity + blue vessels > warm gold of Autumns and Springs
Eumelanin is the black/brown pigment of non-Europeans.
6. The 12B concept of undertones. The pictures posted along this article show how undertones appear in my head. There is no scientific testing here, only what I see when I look at this skin. (Dark Autumn could be redder. Bright Winter could be lighter and yellower. Light Summer, I couldn’t decide. Close enough to make the point.)
What use is it?
Foundation is matched to undertone (cool/neutral/warm) AND overtone (ivory to ebony). These images don’t help with that.
But these are your fundamental lip and blush colours. These are your from-within, most intrinsic colours. Using them for eyeglass frames, ties, scarves, and accessories looks good, though the viewer would never know why.
Am I way off? Have I over-simplified or over-complicated?
I’d surely love to hear your opinions. This feels like a linchpin in my understanding of skin and colour. It’s really just a theoretical point, but I think about it.
5 Sunglasses For 5 Seasons
April 7, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
Some sunglasses for Soft Summer, True Spring, True Autumn, Bright Spring, and Dark Winter.
The principles of 12 Season Colour Analysis guide us in so much more than just what colours flatter your skin the most. Those make you look younger than all the other colours.
It’s in how you combine the colours that you express all the images and feelings of that Season, that harmonize best with what your natural coloring is already doing.
By choosing the style that reinforces the colours properly, you become quietly fabulous.
Aim for the heart. You will love the trip and find a new soulmate in yourself.
2 points in this video are confusing. Maybe more than 2.
1. The plum colour of the frame for the Soft Summer glasses doesn’t show up well. The colour is here. Fabulous blush and lipcolour for the Soft Summer, straight out of the personal colour swatches.
2. The point about using frames to balance an unbalanced face shape could be interpreted in various ways.
For one, as I’m sure you’ve seen, people with small faces, or heart shaped faces, wearing big shiny lenses…well, it can look like a bug, you know?
On the other hand, if the face narrows at the chin, a frame that gets wider at the bottom of the lens would counterbalance that.
Since there is no such frame as triangular, another option may be to use a frame where the lines curve from the center out to pull the eye outward, but without curving from the outer edge inward as the aviators do.
This concept is illustrated nicely in this short video. I watched this whole series and learned a heck of a lot.
Bottom line, try them. Bring someone brutally honest with good taste. The first rule of being my shopping partner is to NOT tell me everything looks good. Luckily, I have teenage daughters built-in for this purpose.
All the glasses for these videos were provided by Holland Optical in Chatham, Ontario. Call them at 519-352-8632. Seriously outstanding selection, in a marketing world where so many retailers are just repeating the same thing.
The Draping Process in Colour Analysis
February 28, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 7 Comments
To be accurate, Seasonal Colour Analysis requires:
- that the drapes be precisely coloured to proceed through each level of the 3 properties of colour, namely Light>>Dark, Warm>>Cool, and Clear>>Soft
- that the drapes be used in a logical order so the results can be evaluated accurately
It is a bonus if:
- the system checks itself, so you don’t wander down the wrong road
- the system allows you to find several ways of solving a question, should you arrive at an impasse.
The Sci\ART system provides all 4 elements of a methodical approach to Personal Colour Analysis. There are 12 Seasons, which allows for the subtle variations in colour levels without providing more choice than an eye could really distinguish.
PCA systems with more than 12 Seasons are probably distinguishing the Seasons based on how colours are combined, rather than the colours themselves. That is perfectly valid. Seasonal Colour Analysis is not just about your skin perfecting colours. It is very much about how the colours are worn to best harmonize with the energy of the person wearing them.
The video below is at YouTube, at 12 Blueprints Personal Colour Analysis The Draping Process, if the embedded video below doesn’t work.
The Right Shade Of Peach
February 28, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 3 Comments
A video blog today.
Peach may be the cosmetic colour that everyone owns in some shade or other. Is yours right for you? Most of the time, it’s too earthy and brown. On a light or clear complexion, that looks heavy and dominating and dull.
For eyeshadow, lipstick, and blush,
The Spring wears a light, yellow-based, very clear peach.
The Summer will fare better in a pastel pink.
Autumn colours mesh best with an earth, golden or browned peach.
Winter colours request icy pink or cool white instead of peach when choosing light colour tones.
A Colour Analysis gives you the knowledge of precisely which shades of all cosmetics colours (and clothes colours) is perfect for your skin tone.
Clearing Skin With Colour Analysis
February 9, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 4 Comments
Clearing the skin is a very fundamental concept in Personal Colour Analysis. Very hard to describe though.
We watch for this effect across all the Seasons. Just like all the optical effects during the draping sequence, it is more obvious in some people. In many situations, we’re looking at a person of cool coloring, and watching for some kind of sallowness to clear away the instant the warm drapes are switched to cool.
The sallow effect may look orange, green-beige, yellow, blotchy and uneven, thick and opaque, muddy, or variations of those.
When the drape changes, it looks as though a yellow filter is suddenly made transparent. The evenly coloured milky calm returns to the skin tone.
Watch Jocelyn in this video.
If your browser won’t play it, watch it on YouTube at 12 Blueprints Personal Colour Analysis Clearing The Skin.
Jocelyn is a Bright Winter. As the Analysis proceeded, we knew she would not be an Autumn because of the yellow overtone in the skin that drained away in the cooler yellow drape. Her ultimate skin perfection is nowhere in Autumn colours.
Take care with these interpretations. Clearing the skin is always a positive thing, but it may happen that when the yellow clears away, what replaces it appears clearer because the yellow is gone, but it’s not necessarily better. In Joce’s case, her skin becomes evenly grayed in the Summer drapes, making the skin look ashy. Because it’s a pale grey, about the colour of her hat and my coat, it can be deceiving. You think ‘the skin is evenly coloured, so that’s good, right?’. In some people, that greyness makes them look truly corpse-like, it’s that strong.
It’s not good but it’s different. The photos below show Joce in the Autumn very yellow drape again, with the blotchy yellow skin, pronounced shadows under the eyes, and cheeks that are too pink.
One could say that the brown eyes come out in the yellow drape. Going down that road would lead you wrong. The skin comes first. The eyes and NATURAL hair colour will automatically be PERFECT. On EVERYONE. The Light and Soft Seasons can do things to make the hair more interesting, but the base colour is automatically the right one for you and what YOU are supposed to look like. The other Seasons usually have their right colour and nothing from a bottle can improve on it. Without Kate Hudson’s skin tone, you can’t believably pull off her hair.
The black drape creates an evenly coloured skin. It looks calm. It FEELS calm. The shadows are gone. Most of us are wearing too much concealer and foundation to fight the effects of bad clothes and hair colour. Yes, you’re right, Joce is 20-something and blessed with remarkable skin. Even what she wears makes a difference.
The black tones in her eyes snap. Here eyes no longer bloodshot and red-rimmed. You’ll see Joce again in an upcoming post. The eyes on this girl have to be seen to be believed.
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