12 Seasons: The Most Important Thing (TMIT)
December 31, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 18 Comments
My conversations with Rachel of Truth Is Beauty always anchor down some previously floating piece of information so that I can begin using it. What’s written below, you already know but it’s not completely self-evident.
There are three dimensions or measurable properties of colour that we use for personal colour analysis:
- value – how light to dark
- hue – or heat level, how cool to warm
- saturation or chroma – a colour’s position between the most greyed version of the colour and the purest version of the colour
Your colours don’t zigzag all over the place on any of those scales. They stick to a fairly close setting. Who has colours that are extremely warm and extremely cool at once, or very clear and very muted? Nobody. We can have several positions along the value scale but there is still a logical and consistent range that is respected within each of the 12 categories. The genetic paintbrush is very organized. It decides what your settings are on the 3 scales and from there, faithfully picks the paints for your own personal colour wheel, a predictable slice through Planet Colour.
However, whatever the settings on your 3 scales, which is what decides your Season or natural colouring group, one of those matters more than the others. It’s The Most Important Thing, or TMIT, for that natural colouring to glow with their most perfect skin. Once that attribute is fixed at a certain setting, colours that respect that setting are more likely to work well for you. That setting on that scale is your TMIT. The other two scale settings matter but they are less critical.
Your TMIT setting can’t be known just by looking at you. That’s done with drapes, by knowing the Season first. Sometimes when you’re looking at photographs without seeing the person in various colours, you find yourself thinking about their TMIT. I believe Color Me Beautiful calls these Dominant Traits. They ask themselves “Of Dark, Light, Clear, Soft, Warm, or Cool, which of these is the person MOST?”, or the reverse as “Which of these is the person LEAST?”
Tricky because some people don’t really look like what they are. You might look at a woman of medium-dark complexion, quite dark brown eyes, and fairly dark brunette hair and think that she seems Dark, when in fact, she’s a Soft. Look at this gallery. What do you think about Pics 13 and 28? (As a side note, I wonder if Revlon Lip Butter in Tutti Frutti would look like Pic 15 on a True Spring. Who else could look that good in clear orange?) As you go through all the photos, try to pin down their TMITs.
The intensity of a brown-eyed True Winter can be so undeniable, especially if complexion is dark, that you think “Wow, they’re really a Dark”, when what they are most importantly to perfect their skin tone is Cool. Think about Kim Kardashian, often thought a Dark Winter. She might well be. She doesn’t have the squareness of the Selena Gomez/Salma Hayek Dark Winter jaw. In fact, her long face is more a True Winter shape. She looks terrific in B&W&red. Scroll down the photos, worth the trip in itself, till you get to her. Does she need browner colour? You could say her lips and cheeks are Dark Winter now, quite possible. The point is just that you can’t tell by looking at one photo.
This is one of the weak points of Photo PCA – you never saw it happen. Your mind can’t get completely at ease with the Season. One relative comes along and expresses doubt about your lipstick colour and you feel all unsteady again. You can’t say back to them “I thought I might be Dark Autumn too! But, oh, my dear, you should have seen how drained those colours made me look. And I learned that a Dark Autumn looks near dead in my Summer pastels (so does a Bright Spring)!”
Once your Season is known from a correct in-person draping, your TMIT is most important when you go shopping. And that’s when you’ll begin choosing and wearing your rightest makeup.
The TMITs
Light Summer: Lightness! Saturation (clearness) is low-medium. Neutral cool.
Light Spring : Lightness! “ “ medium. Neutral warm.
Lightness in a colour will help it work well for her. Her eyeshadows, suits, eyeglass frames, nail polish, and shoes are more likely to be beautiful if they’re among the lightest in the selection at the store. It doesn’t mean that every colour she wears must be light, not at all. She has her version of dark tones too, but they’re her version, to look dark on her. Nevermind that they’ll look medium or light on someone else, we’re not talking about them here. Too dark colour on a Light and oldness will happen. Dark colours are not forgiving at all, meaning that she really needs to get them right or they’re way wrong and she is subtracting from herself.
A so-smart reader asked “Since every Season has its best black, does each have its best white?” Sure, yes. The Lights will do raw cauliflower better than latte, but many could get away with latte just fine if it’s mostly milk. Just being light in value raises a colour’s odds of being pretty good. As long as the other scales, of warmth and clarity, stick near the middle, things will probably be quite ok. Once we raise the darkness level to cinnamon or nutmeg, we run into problems with aging, fatigue, and 5 oclock shadow effects and they’re not even dark colours. The woman needs to have her colour analysis swatch book to wear the best suit for her speech.
Soft Summer: Softness! Value (darkness range) is medium. Cool to neutral.
Soft Autumn: Softness! “ “ “ “ .Warm to neutral.
Another so-smart reader pointed me to Cobie Smulders. I see her as Soft Summer. Is her hair too dark for that Season? No. But notice her eyes. Yes, they’re light-medium blue, but what are they MOST? Blue or hazy ? I’d say hazy (at least in this photo). Someone might say icy. The overall impression isn’t light and it isn’t dark, it’s medium. She seems cooler than warm, but more soft than cool. Someone might say “She’s definitely mostly cool. She’s a True Winter.” Who’s right?? Who knows?? Drape the woman already, then you know.
Cobie Smulders Pictures
That white is hard on her. The white is owning the whole picture somehow, it keeps nagging at our attention. A Winter would subdue that white into behaving itself. The same woman in that great soft pine green that is pure beauty for a Soft Summer blue-green eye (we could pretend the beads are not there):
Doesn’t always work. Like that green, not every colour that would look fantastically good on a Soft Summer’s colouring is obviously grayed, though many are. Same as True Autumn can have reds and golds that are so rich and so hot, you’ll think red and gold before you think heat (but with time, you’ll come to think HOT or at least, GOLD, first).
Some Soft Summers have a brown eye that is most perfected by their red wine colour. Some, who lean towards the warm side, can have warmer greens like avocado and army in the eye. Their eye colour is incredible in Soft Summer’s medium taupes and can even look great in Soft Autumn’s greens and browns. As long as the colour stays soft and muted and they don’t try Soft Autumn’s reds, oranges, and yellows, the skin will remain beautiful. I love this effect on Soft Summer and it’s not common. You see it sometimes in Dark Winter too, the very cool skin with the very warm eye, like the last golden-green-brown leaf left before the first snowfall. The contrast looks remarkable and even better when repeated by wearing warm and cool colours from their palette together in outfits.
Dark Autumn: Darkness! Saturation is medium to fairly high. Neutral warm.
Dark Winter : Darkness! ” ” “ “ . Neutral cool.
I find most people cooler than they think they are, but are confused about how to get a little cooler with their colours without going all the way to pure cool. Demi Lovato carries darkness well. She can look Warmer&Dark and Cooler&Dark quite well as long as the Dark takes precedence.
The Warm version:
Demi Lovato Pictures
There are cool photos in her gallery. The picture she presents of herself is often cooler than warm. Below, Demi goes too cool and we lose it. She’s become cooler than she is dark. It becomes hard and uncomfortable to be with compared to the molasses cookie above. It’s that dark toasty woman that we want to get close to. We wonder how close we could get and if our intuition is right, could we be singed? Winter is coming in and even in small amounts, a vague sense of unease or jeopardy comes with it.
Demi Lovato Pictures
Bright Winter: Brightness! Value is medium to fairly dark. Neutral cool.
Bright Spring: Brightness! Value is medium, not too dark. Neutral warm.
It’s the pure colour that you should become aware of first, before Thinking Mind engages and starts chewing on “Well, let’s see, I don’t perceive greying down of the colour, it looks neutral and somewhat warm,…” Grab onto that moment before dissecting mode turns on and proloooonnnng it. Spend some time just feeling what’s happening there. Soon, you’ll have more control of it and will be able to slow down that time. Think of fresh basil or parsley. Before you get going on how cool, how dark, what enters your awareness is GREEN.
I don’t get the same feeling here:
True Summer: Coolness! Saturation is medium. Value is medium.
True Winter : Coolness! Saturation is mid to high. Value is mid to fairly dark.
Stand a True Winter next to a Dark Winter and ask someone “Who’s darker?” The TW may have dark hair, dark eyes, but if the complexion level is the same, it’s often the DW that gives the darker overall impression. They seem a little shaded, less shiny, their whites not as blinding, as if their skin were so slightly and evenly cross-hatched with a graphite pencil.
Now, if you’d said “Who’s cooler?”, the TW always seems not necessarily frost-coated like a windshield, but they’re more absolute, more hard, more definite, more clear-cut and less ambiguous. They seem cleaner. Better to ignore the hair colour a lot. Seems to me I see more variation in natural hair colour among the True Winter than any other.
I was asked recently about the difficulty True Summer has in finding shoes (and mascara) in a world of brown and black. Compromise the darkness but not the coolness. In time, you’ll insist on being more discriminating. You’ll have found yourself enough great items to give you confidence in holding out for the right shoes. You won’t need to buy stuff just to have shoes at all. Use soft blacks, navies, and cranberries. Borrow some True Winter greys. Choose textiles that mute colour. Look for medium colours like denim, teals, mauves, and taupes. It takes time for every Season to build a background wardrobe.
True Spring : Warm-ness! The kind added by pure, clear yellow, so the feeling stays warm, bright, and light in that order when you shop. Saturation is mid to fairly high. Value is medium.
True Autumn : Warm-ness! The kind added by darker, duller, richer gold. So the feeling is warm, muted, and mid-darkish when you shop. Saturation is medium. Value is medium to med-dark.
I find these the most difficult people to decide their TMIT just by looking at them or their photos.
People ask “How can I be warm and cool at once?” It depends on how warm and cool you’re talking about. You won’t see really warm and really cool colours together in one person. Nobody’s setting on the Hue scale will swerve around that much. If your inborn colours are all completely warm, you won’t contain any completely cool colours. You might be 90% warm and 10% cool, but for shopping purposes, you’re so much more warm that you would shop as though you’re 100%.
For those people whose colouring is nearer the middle on the cool-warm scale, the Neutral Season folks, they can have slightly warmer and slightly cooler versions of their best colours. “OK”, you say, “how slightly?” That question can’t be answered well with descriptions or numbers. You need to own the palette that the colour expert made for you.
So if you know TMIT, often built into the Season’s name, plus the approximate heat level, the other parameter is a fairly safe bet at medium. Or ‘what I should worry about less’.
Are All 60 Colours Really My Best?
December 15, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
Excellent question #4: Are there people who are really best in only some of their colors and for whom other colors in the palette are a compromise?
Short answer: No, there are no such people. I would say you are best in all 60 colours of your Season’s colour palette, your personal colour analysis swatches, though many women will only partially agree.
From the analyst’s position, what I care about is that no colour brings out the imperfections that we worked for 2 hours to eliminate. In that context, all 60 colours do work. Many others might too. From the question above then, it depends on your definition of “really best”. Mine is the youngest, most flawless, and evenly coloured skin tone possible. Your personal issues with powder pink or baby blue are not foremost in my head as long as I have you in your best pink and blue.
No doubt, women have preferences in their palette. Some will just never see themselves in yellow, especially True Winter and Soft Summer. It may take a woman 10 years to overcome being a green-hater. When we conclude the draping, there are 15 beautiful Final Drapes (not the test drapes) that we look at to begin exposing the client to more of their most beautiful colours. She will always love some and not love others. Few will ever own an item in every colour in their swatch book.
She will always look better in some when we see her colours the second time wearing her perfect makeup colours and the hair down. And she’ll look worse in some because wrong hair colour is detracting from how beautiful and balanced she could look, but it’s important for her to see that. As awful as the gray cap is, it’s a real moment in personal growth when you see yourself looking better in it than in your present hair colour. This is when you truly get it.
You have no worries here. Having something to work towards is empowering in itself. By that stage of the session, you will find your mind supplying you with the colour your hair should be or the colour that will perfect the skin. It’s a brand new voice for everyone, nudging you to make the right change. What the colour should be will appear in your head as soon as you stop trying to be the boss of yourself. It’s a very polite voice. It won’t interrupt the traffic flow in your head till you hold up the STOP sign.
It’s also in how you wear your colours. A Dark Winter in a big block of light colour won’t look quite right. She needs darkness to balance it with the larger proportion of dark colour in her and set up the contrast that every Winter needs. If her complexion is very dark, that block of light will work better because the contrast will already be in place.
Many Soft Summers don’t feel right in some of their lightest drapes. Flip one or two of the medium and dark colours over her shoulder at the same time and the picture clicks. Soft Summer is the queen of the sophisticated colour combinations, where sophisticated can mean “to become less simple and straightforward through experience or education” and “to develop into a more complex form”. Soft Summer is very much about layers of meaning, intention, and nuance, in their thoughts as in their colours. When other Seasons combine colour, they drive up the energy. Soft Summer colours are so gentle that they can be combined and still keep the picture elegant and so refined. For me, this Season’s magic isn’t fully apparent until its colours are combined. I’d say the same about Soft Autumn. They’re not so much speak-for-themselves colours, like True Autumn and True Spring. They seem to support one another with a synergy other Seasons don’t achieve as well, or at least, as graciously.
Many Bright Season persons need time to adjust to the colour brightness and energy if they had no inkling of the outcome. The analyst’s job throughout is to keep them focusing on their face, not the drapes. It’s easy to get scared off if you’ve been dressing like your friends or if your cosmetics salesperson thinks “She’d look unbelievable in this red but there’s no way she’ll try it, let alone buy it.”
True and Dark Autumn usually love all their colours. If they arrived wearing blonde hair and black whatever, they recognize there’s a little work to do but they don’t shy away. They are job-oriented anyhow and now have their better alternatives. The next time you see them, they’re glorious.
Light Summer can be surprised, having lived as a Soft Autumn with warm golden hair for 20 years. Since it is impossible not to like this palette, the adjustment is easy. They look better in the gray hat and their Final Drapes than they do when the hair is down but the problem is plain to see. They are usually just excited to get going though apprehensive about how to explain to the colourist what needs doing. They go in armed with photos of what they do want and what they don’t want.
Light Spring is usually happy too. Springs are very natural people with lots of spunk and spirit and a good bit of daring. These personalities are not caught up in the complicated inner quests. There is often something very spiritual in their life. Emotion runs close to the surface. I seldom find Springs bury a lot of themselves, much more WYSIWYG. They’re hard to repress and anxious to get going. Black’s not good? Fine, give me grey then. They’ll be sending me links to gorgeous products they unearthed within about 2 weeks of their PCA.
Does The Darkness Range of My Colours Matter?
December 12, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 11 Comments
David Chilton wrote The Wealthy Barber and the recent The Wealthy Barber Returns to help people understand how financial planning is do-able by everybody. Securities analysts can discuss financial theory till Wall Street freezes over but for consumers, the answer to all that is “Yeah, great. Show me how to use it. Show me how I’m supposed to make it work.” The same applies to colour analysts.
We know from How Can I Be 3 Seasons? that the field of colour analysis will be a sure-fire appearance asset for 100% of consumers once we sort a few things out. Already now, when it works, it REALLY works. When it’s good, it’s VERY GOOD. It is THE BEST thing that could ever happen to how you look and how you shop. The problems and questions need to be hauled out in the sunshine so we can get a good look at the cracks so we can seal them up for you.
This week, we’re sharing some of the questions I receive most by women who phrased the issue really well. Any changes I made are to preserve anonymity.
#3: …what I really would like to know is, what is the range for a Soft Summer when using the [swatches]? I mostly mean in terms of value. For example, there is this one random rose brown that is unlike the rest of the browns. Do I need to buy rose-browns that are that depth? A few months ago I purchased a set of Soft Summer paint chips from Mary Steele Lawler and since I’m [interested in home decor], I found it quite interesting. When I found the rose-brown in a paint strip card, I believe it was the second darkest color and it had several lighter colors on that card. None of these are in my Soft Summer fan. Does that mean that they are also allowed since they are just darker and lighter versions of the same color? Can I take any of the colors to my darkest and lightest range?
Good, good question. Short answer: No, you can’t go fully to the lightest and darkest versions of your colours. Why not? Because they have to be lightened or darkened by adding or changing something. As soon as you do that, you change value (lightness/darkness) but you also change some other colour dimension too, either warmth or saturation. And then, poof, they look better on somebody else who matches the new settings better.
Soft Summer can go a tinge lighter than the swatches but not a lot before you trip into another Season. If colours become too light by having too much of the greying effect subtracted, the colours get too saturated and they don’t work with the person or the rest of the clothes. If you lighten the colours by adding white, they get too light for the person to balance. If you lighten them by adding yellow, you add too much of the wrong kind of warmth, plus you increase the saturation.
Photo by Dominic Morel, South Africa.
But.
You might be able to move a little in value depending on your Season.
Whatever your Season, always observe The Most Important Thing about your Season’s colours. For the Lights, it’s lightness of colour, where even the darker colours would look light on people of non-Light-Season natural colouring. For the Darks, it’s that colours be quite dark overall, without saying that every colour is dark. Lightness and darkness respectively is what makes the skin of these groups most young and evenly coloured. They cannot compromise on these key points. Warmth/coolness of colour is less stringent unless you’re a True Season. A Light could go a touch warmer and that might work, as long as she stays light in the colour. A Dark might go a little warmer or cooler, but darkness is what the viewer should recognize first overall.
Does this mean that a Light Season person can go as light as they want? No, it doesn’t. If you fan out a Winter and a Light Summer colour swatch book, you’ll see that Winter’s lightest colours are actually lighter than Summer’s. To satisfy Winter’s requirement for light colours to be icy, they contain very little colour pigment. Summer’s lightest colours are more ‘colourful’. To create the very high contrast Winters all need to look their very best, their icy colours must be very close to white. A Summer’s lightest tones are called pastel, meaning more pigment and greyed a little bit. Colour analysis wants to establish ‘How light are your lights and how dark are your darks and let’s get your wearing your full range’. Summer’s range of lightest to darkest is narrower, Winter’s goes to the very ends at white and black. A Light person can go a little lighter but needs to keep it pastel.
Awareness of what you see first takes practice. It may be easier to learn this by looking at an entire person. A Dark Season outfit will make the first impression of being darker than medium on a white to black scale. There may be (there should be) light parts that are very light, but what sinks into your sight center first is dark. A Bright Season person’s first ping on your consciousness should be clarity. One speck of dust, one little puff of cloud floating through, a trace of haze, and all those other great colours she’s wearing just got neutralized a little bit, and so did the glow of her face.
For the Softs, your eyes should register grayness, mutedness, fogginess, dullness before they check-in what the colour is. It’s gray before it’s yellow or purple or blue. Soft Summer’s greying will be more perceptible, might strike your consciousness before how warm/cool or how light/dark. It’s that softness that matters most to perfect this skin and to meld what you wear with what you are. The position on the warm/cool scale isn’t quite so tight, there is a little fluctuation. The degree of lightness or darkness isn’t very tight either. A pretty wide range of each exists, though not all the way to white or black.
Even the lightest colours have a fair amount of pigment, more than the other two Summer Seasons. The Soft Summer represents the Summer palette seen in the shade. A little gold is added, though so little this far away from True Autumn that its effect is to complement Summer’s blue and make greyness. It will warm too, but out here, it doesn’t look gold or yellow, it looks like a fog brown overlaying True Summer.
Soft Summer is capable of many colours besides what’s in the Book as long as they hold the saturation position very low (and of course, adhere to the warmth and darkness ranges). It’s a balancing act. If the colours are changing their lightness/darkness level and changing the saturation too, then it wouldn’t look so good. If the colour is becoming lighter/darker and is staying very soft and muted and is staying cooler than warm, the harmony for Soft Summer should be pretty good. You’re always balancing the 3 scales of colour at once. If you see a rosy brown outside your fan but your taste tells you it would look fine with your other fan colours, then it probably would, especially if it’s not a big area.
We often try to change one parameter of colour in our questions, forgetting that as soon as you change it, the other 2 change right away.
This is how it works in my eyes and thinking. If ever I find a colour mixing course to teach me in more detail, I’ll be there, brushes and mixing pots in hand. Something I’d like to know is this: Is there a lower limit to Soft Summer’s saturation? Does the Season occupy all the cool-neutral, mid-value colour space back to the starting point at the all grey axis? I’d say not because that axis is made of Winter greys, meaning composed only of B&W. To be a Summer Season grey, some pink, mauve, or blue should be definitely discernible. To qualify as a pastel at all, a fair bit of pigment must be present, more than for an icy colour. Hey. Either I’m wrong or I just answered my own question.
Is ONE Season Always The Best?
December 10, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 15 Comments
Good question, for our week of questions. #2a: “Can someone, even in the 12 [Seasons], fit in-between a couple of Seasons, (e.g, between True and Bright Winter) or will they absolutely ONLY fit into one category?”
Answer: Only ONE. I have never met anyone who isn’t most perfected by one palette alone. One group of colours has the ability to bring out a never-before-seen version of every person that no other group of colours can do so well. Based on 100 PCAs, that is a truth. (Would other analysts concur?)
#2b: “What does it mean to be on the warm or cool side of my Season?”
During a draping, some people are No Contest better in their Season than any other. There’s no hesitation in making the choice of the best colour. I find this happens often with the True Seasons.
With other people, the call between the best Season and the 2nd runner-up is harder to decide. There might be flattering effects with both, though one will always be better. The person will fit into their Season but edge a little closer to whatever that 2nd runner-up was, cooler or warmer. I see this more often with Neutral Seasons. Why?
Seasons are a continuum of 3 colour qualities (light/dark, cool/warm, soft/clear) that continuously change as they progress along a circular road with 12 cities on it. On that road, every city’s climate is either warmer or cooler than those on either side. For those who bought my book, you’ll see that in The Season Circle diagram. Your colouring, your personal Season marker, can sit right in a city or anywhere along the road between two cities.
The Neutral Seasons are those 8 groups of natural colouring that contain some warmer and some cooler versions of their particular best colours. How much of both can vary. It’s not 50:50 or 75:25 or fixed among the members of any group.
You might have two Light Springs, persons whose colouring is found in the colours of the Spring group that is influenced by a little of what Summer does to colour.
One can be 80% Spring and 20% Summer, so they are warmer and run very close to the next Season on the warm side. They might wear some of that warmer neighbor’s colours successfully.
The other person might be 60% Spring and 40% Summer, so closer to the cool side. They’ll share cool colours better.
Both are most perfect in the Light Spring palette because that’s where the majority of their pigmentation is found. You’ll find people who are 51% of one Season and 49% of the neighbor.
#2c: If I’m close to my warm neighbour Season, can I wear their colours fairly well?
Sometimes yes. If you know you’re on the warm side, when you have to make colour compromises from your perfect Season in a store, opt to trend towards the side your colouring moves towards, that is a trace warmer.
How much warmer? Not a lot. There is a definite heat shift between any 2 neighbour Seasons but if you overstep it, you’ll turn your skin, eyes, and teeth yellow.
I talk a lot about The Most Important Thing (TMIT). It really helps me make good judgment calls. Some people fit into the Lights, Brights, Darks, or Softs, and tend towards the other neighbor in that same group. That means both Seasons share the same TMIT so they can borrow some of those other colours that comply with TMIT. For example:
A Light person does well in light colours, they’re very forgiving. Lightness is TMIT for both Light Summer and Light Spring. So a Light Summer might wear some of the other Light’s (Light Spring) lighter, cooler colours. Even better if she tends on the warmer side of the Light Summer anyhow.
A True Summer’s TMIT is coolness. If she’s fairly dark or contrasting looking, she can wear sometimes wear some of True Winter’s light to medium colours because they’re cool too. Many True Summers will be lost in the saturation of Winter, whether the icy lights or bold darks, but some can pull it off in a small surface area. The coolness shared by the two palettes will help create some unity with the rest of her True Summer clothes.
The draping will tell you how well she’s likely to work this. True Summer and True Winter are quite a ways apart, further in my mind that the Softs, Lights, Brights, and Darks are from each other. I think that’s one reason why Kalisz arranged them not to share or be neighbors (the other reason being “What for? Kalisz made 12 UNIQUE palettes which a shared Season between True Winter and True Summer would revoke. It would be a null Season.) The other attributes of Light, Bright, Dark, and Soft seem more reasonable as neighbours that could share some colours.
Short answer, IMO, the Softs, Lights, Brights, and Darks who are very close to the neighbour of that same type can borrow some colours, the warm ones if you’re on the warm side, the cool ones if you’re on the cool side. Lights will do better borrowing light colours, and Darks, the darker colours. It won’t always work. You need to be way over there, very near the neighbour you hope to borrow from. The last contest with that runner-up Season should have taken some careful observation. Don’t expect to be as beautiful as in your own palette because you’re borrowing from your second best Season. The heat difference alone may create more disharmony with the rest of the appearance than the item is really worth.
How Can I Be 3 Seasons?
December 7, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 26 Comments
I get many emails with many terrific questions. I may not always know the answer but I’m better for trying to find it. Thank you for sharing your perspectives with me. To maximize the usefulness of PCA for you, it’s important for us to know where it lets you down.
This week’s posts are aimed at a 3 of the most frequently asked questions.
How can you be 3 Seasons?
Definite answer: You can’t. You’re not. You’re ONE Season ONLY. Everybody, all the time.
As many of you know, this topic gets emotional, inflammatory, even explosive. Even defamatory. So, a little digression:
#1 : Getting different results from different analysts…
I’d like to say I’m always right. I’d like to say everybody’s always right. About everything.
I’d like to say that I’ve never met a woman who got 3 different Season verdicts, and this is from 3 different Certified Sci\ART analysts, in person even. Not in this reality. Shouldn’t even step out our door if that’s what we’re expecting.
Of course I think Sci\ART is the most correct system or I’d have changed lanes by now. I never hear the places we disagree as criticism and I never intend it that way.
I sure have read some rants aimed at analysts whose Season IDs disagree or who use other systems – and this from members of the public, not even other analysts. It’s fine to point out mistakes, it’s vital, so we can all learn and grow, but there’s a way to do it without fanning the fire more than necessary. Everyone’s just trying their very best. That should be respected. Colour is real hard to do, even with a great set of drapes. Accusations drag everybody down. Kurt Vonnegut: “Rage and loathing over a book is like wearing a suit of armor to attack a hot fudge sundae.” If you have vented or accused, consider taking down your comment – and I don’t mean on this site, where I have no problem with rage and loathing.
I very much appreciate the many ” Please help me understand how I can be 3 different Seasons?” emails I get regarding every PCA system, including Sci\ART. They’re a valuable reminder that every belief system needs to be open to questioning and that every ideology is potentially flawed. I also appreciate women of intelligence who can react with composure and curiosity, rather than falling to pieces and succumbing to their evil twin’s inclination to point fingers and fling insults and curses. That looks bad on all of us and the whole world of colour analysis. Knowing we behaved elegantly feels so much better.
——
Time to lighten the mood.
#1a. So, the question was: “How can one analyst see me as 100% cool and another as 100% warm?”
An in-person analysis is surely best but it’s still a bit of a minefield.
First, there’s the accuracy of the drapes if the 2 PCAs systems were different. The test drapes aren’t intended to be pretty. They need to create reaction in the skin and be exactly suited to the colour parameters of only ONE Season.
Second, what might be very accurate but being called True Autumn in one system might correlate better with another system’s Soft Autumn colours. So maybe Company A’s Cool Winter would contain many colours shared by Sci\ART’s True Summer. Or Company B’s drapes for True Autumn would have fit better into Sci\ART’s Soft Autumn and Color Me Beautiful’s Warm Spring.
I haven’t studied every other company’s palettes but I’ve seen quite a few. It was Kalisz’s work as Sci\ART that got the 60 different colours in the 12 palettes nailed down. Finally, there was exactness and consistency in all 3 dimensions of colour in every colour in every one of the 12 palettes. A division line, almost a physical curtain, appeared to separate what PCA was and what it is now.
I still see colour collections from other systems that contain imprecise colours, shared colours, or the use of materials that make colour accuracy near impossible. If the colours aren’t right to begin with, the whole system becomes debatable and the tools are moot. This will be among the most common causes of misdiagnosis. Those 12 Sci\ART palettes that Kalisz began with, and the 8 Neutral Season colours she developed, are very VERY exact. She eliminated terms like pale yellow, Chinese blue, sienna brown, or cool red and replaced them with 12 exact different versions of each one. This is what raised the benchmark. Her achievement was no small thing and the importance of it for a correct Season ID can’t be overstated. It really is huge. Whether they’re called flow or Neutral or whatever, it’s not the various names or number of Seasons that are the sticking point between companies. That becomes “My philosophy is better than your philosophy.” “Is not.” “Is so.” The issue drills way deeper than that to the very colours themselves.
In her excellent comment to Can Natural Hair Colour Ever Be Wrong?, Denise suspects that different analysts look for different things. I’m certain she’s right. The thinking process that decides how the drapes are used, in what order, to draw which conclusions, will vary among analysts and how they were trained. The logic tree guides the conclusions so it has to follow a consistent path.
I use drapes that contain only a single colour at a time because every single colour is telling you something. Too many colours at once overwhelms the logic system. Might be that True Winter’s drape set looks acceptable until we get to the darker ones. The meaning of that would be lost with too many of a Season’s colours being evaluated together. Would I get the same results with napkin-size drapes than the larger ones I prefer? Maybe.
Even with custom-dyed drapes, the eye of the analyst and their interpretations will vary. This does happen. As you know if you’ve had a Sci\ART analysis, the drapes were hand selected by a master and are freakishly accurate. Despite that, I’ve had a woman leave one Sci\ART analysis a True Spring and leave me a Dark Winter from the very same drapes.
More power to the people who can standardize the colour system – but even then, even if the palettes and the drapes were custom-coloured and you could convince every analyst to sign up, how you remove the human element of error, I do not know. Computers can’t do this, only a human eye can pick up the subtleties. Towards the end of the session, when the worst colours have been excused, the answer is unveiled among layers of subtlety. Could any colour analyst, Sci\ART or not, honestly claim that they got every single person right? I’m sure some could. Perhaps they could add their name and business link to the Comments at the end. You should go see them, not me.
It’s not practical to have 2 analysts weigh in on every person’s session, which is why I’m so happy when people arrive with a friend whose character won’t just agree with everything I say. The more eyes, the better. Re-draping or continuing the following day is useful but many people make travel plans to come just for one day. The analyst has to wrap it up that day.
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#1b. Another good question: “If I was analyzed in another system and I trust the result, does the information from other companies or websites like this one still pertain to me?”
I don’t necessarily believe my way is the only way. It’s just that those are the results I understand and those are the palettes I can move around in. Those are the people and palettes in my head when I pick makeup and hair and clothing. But they can only apply to Sci\ART colours and therefore people analyzed in that system. How useful are my words if you were analyzed by a different system? I guess they’d have some value. But for choosing items to buy, you might rather stick with the company that analyzed you.
For the consumer, this is, of course, a complete frustration. As CCR sang, “…clouds of mystery pouring confusion on the ground.” How could it be otherwise? But you know, every industry is this way. This doctor gives you diagnosis A, the other one is convinced of diagnosis B. This makeup artist swears you’re cool, the other that you’re warm. What’s the answer? I think it’s to pick one system and stick with it. Hopefully, they have support materials to help women analyzed with those drapes make decisions about their appearance. You can pick whomever appeals to you but then you need to commit to that system afterwards too. They’re not interchangeable, though I know women would love it if they were.
All this colour talk is an academic exercise unless it helps you make better purchase decisions. You should be able to walk into any store, salon, boutique, or makeup counter, announce your Season, and trigger a whole set of clues in the sales staff’s mind. For store staff to bother learning it and feel successsful using it, one regulated system must prevail. I expect that work is underway to equalize colour analysis once and for all. I hope it works – and that the producers reach out and survey some analysts for ideas. They would hear many a good suggestion.
As ever, I’d be very grateful to hear your viewpoints. They always add to the conversation.
Can Natural Hair Colour Ever Be Wrong?
November 30, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 40 Comments
First, it’s never wrong. Never. Nature does not colour anybody discordantly. You are always your best match. Your childhood and adult hair, your grey hair, your teeth, your tan, your eyelashes, veins, freckles, the colour you blush, all perfect, all consistent. You were painted with one palette and one brush to be one Season. 80% of the time, probably more, you will stay within that group of natural colouring. Everything was made to go with everything else in mind.
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Light Summer
Even if we are determined to ignore the stereotypes, uncertainty will creep in. How can a Light Summer grey early in life and to a medium dark grey? Wouldn’t that disqualify Light Summer? Let us call our model Linda, one of the many women of such sensitivity and emotional intelligence that colour has brought into my life.
For Linda, and she is far from alone, hair becomes our ‘self-defining monstrosity’. It’s never right. We’re subservient to hair stylists and their often-demented tastes, trends, and media, and our own dogged dissatisfaction with everything, most especially what we were given.
Bonaparte said “Good politics is getting people to believe they’re free.” Well, so is good marketing. The industrial revolution learned to create a prototype and then reproduce it as many times as possible with the least inputs. The plan worked rather well in the 20th century. Not so any more.
Bonaparte also said “History is just a series of lies on which we all agree.” Turns out you could substitute the word marketing for many other words in all sorts of contexts.
Linda’s PCA was done IRL with thanks to Sci\ART analyst Julia Dupps of Wish Wardrobe Consulting.
When we look together at your face changing with the drapes, we pay attention to the amount of shadowing under the chin. If there’s none, there’s no distinction between face and neck. They appear to be in the same plane, 2D, giving a heavy double-chin impression. If there’s too much shadow, the darkness bleeds up the sides and front of the face. It looks tired, severe, overly shadowed. On Linda, the lower half of her face is 10 years older than the upper half when she wears black. That’s not just a Summer effect, it’s very often a Light Season effect. Other Summer types handle darkness better.
What helped Linda to see the effect of black was to cover the lower half of the face in the photo wearing black. Let your eyes relax and take in the upper half of the face. Now take your hand away. Not the same, is it? You feel a step backwards, of tension, not the step-forward of relief.
She herself asked it perfectly: “Given that hair colors vary so widely in all the Seasons, why is it that two people are perfected by roughly the same colors but not the same hair color? Or does it have something to do with personal intensity levels and contrasts?”
Right! It’s a great thing when a question snaps straight to the issue. For instance, why can a True Winter who cannot look good in any orange in makeup or clothing get born with seemingly orange hair, as a natural redhead, and look magnificent? Even if we agree that hair colour is not tied to Season, only skin tone is, how can a person without orange in the skin wear an orange hat without clashing?
Short answer: Not sure but I’ve seen it so many times that I’m convinced. I have never once seen natural hair colour not work beautifully with the palette and the skin. It just looks more unique, more unexpected, more individual, a personal signature optical effect. It always looks breathtaking. Even if we agree that hair colour is extremely variable among Seasons, how can orange in hair work when orange in clothes doesn’t?
My longer answer is that there are many ways of using primary pigments (red, blue, yellow) to create colours. You can make the very same orange, say, using many combinations of red, blue, and yellow, as you vary saturation, warmth, and value. It’s the endless play between the 3 primaries and the 3 dimensions (warmth, darkness, saturation) that makes the variety. So perhaps the red-haired True Winter or True Summer got there with cooler pigments. When pure cool Seasons reach their 20s, if they got red hair, it’s not usually Ron Weasley red. There’s often a pink or purple cast, like cinnamon rose, or a lot of darkness. Below is my husband, a True Winter, with our daughter who is now an 18 year old Dark Winter with a million freckles. His eyes are warm amber brown. He ain’t no Autumn, the ruddiness in his skin is out of control in muted colour, warm or cool. He is mostly grey now and still absolutely needs True Winter coolness and saturation to calm his skin and slim his face.
The idea that you can make the same colour using many different pigment combinations isn’t new to us. We see certain swatches that are so very similar between Seasons. They were created using different combinations of the primary pigments, and adhere to the particular 3 colour dimensions of their respective Seasons, but the final swatches can look very alike. As one of Rachel’s recent comments reminded me, what makes the two similar dots ‘belong’ to their different Seasons is the colours you wear them with. Visually there is harmony because at a more fundamental level, all the swatches were created with the same colour properties in mind so they can make a visual connection when seen or worn together. That’s their reason for being together on your body, with your Season’s palette, in each outfit, and with your hair and cosmetic colours. They feel related to one another with a ring of truth and believability. We can perceive it better than we can describe it.
The graphic below was made for an article dedicated to helping True Summers select their best corals. There’s a similar article about choosing blue.
Dark Winter above, True Summer below.
Dark Winter and True Summer have some really similar cool corals. Not surprising since both are cool Seasons and both are slightly muted. The difference is how they’re muted, in that True Summer is muted by blue-gray. Dark Winter is muted by Autumn gold but there’s so little of it out here at Autumn’s outer limits that it just looks like a trace of cool grey in the colours, not unlike True Summer gray. Dark Winter is much more saturated colour but True Summer has some clarity too. Each version of coral belongs with its palette very naturally and easily. No swatch sticks out like a visitor because they were all made with pigments undeviating with the rest of the colours for that group.
Eye colour is more predictable than hair in a Season but there are still surprises. Some of you have taken close-up pictures and couldn’t believe the colours the camera found. Or you try to photograph a Catherine Zeta-Jones golden brown Winter eye and all this black comes out. My conclusion is that we just don’t know precisely how our pigments are combined, or if someone knows, I would be most grateful if they would tell me.
I think there are other variables than just colour. Skin thickness for instance. Summer skin really looks thinner to me, like a rabbit compared to a big dog, for those of you with a fascination for animal surgery. Maybe more venous blue is showing through Summer skin. Winter is thicker-skinned (in more ways than one), more rubber than paper. Fewer colours show through. Winter’s can be an almost colourless skin without makeup except that the red comes out…makes sense, red is a colour whose contribution we perceive more strongly. Munsell’s properties of colour were developed based on how we perceive colour, yellow less and red more.
Many, many True Summers have quite dark hair. Jaclyn Smith for one. Olivia Newton-John for another (who might be a Light Summer but I say True only because she isn’t a great blonde).
Dark hair can be found in Light Summer too. We could call her Lily.
She even looks like Jaclyn Smith. Round eyes, full lips, rounded cheekbones, this is a very Summer face. When I look at photos, first thing I do is make a hand window to block out the hair, natural or not. If you screen off the hair from the face, suddenly it’s a much softer look. The bold Winter drapes would be far too aggressive. The faintest, most gentle heat is here.
I can hear someone thinking “Wait a minute? What about Bright Spring?” This is when I start flipping makeup colours in my head. Let’s put near-neon-rose lipstick on Lily’s face. What do you see first? The lipstick or the woman? A Bright Spring could not only balance that colour but needs it for her makeup to rise up to meet her natural pigments. There’s always something a little crisp for me in Spring. Light Summer is crisp as in lettuce, so still soft. Light Spring is tissue paper. True Spring, hm, taffeta? Bright Spring contains Winter, it has more hardness. It has to snap when it breaks like a matchstick icicle. Bright Winter is a candy cane. Lily’s face has gentle, rounded features and watery (not intense) colours in her eyes. (Not that I do colour by these analogies, just that it’s interesting.)
And yet, Lily’s hair and eyebrows are darker than you’d expect on a Light Season. In Light Summer’s cool, fresh colours, only warmed exactly as much as her eyes and skin, her skin will be positively blooming, clean, and young. The mantle of darker hair makes a higher contrast than we usually see on the lighter-haired wearer of those colours, the most pleasant surprise. We want to keep looking. That’s her special radiance. Getting back to Linda’s original question, this is also why I don’t talk about contrast very much. There are too many versions of it in any Season. What looks real and right and makes sense for contrast is to repeat what you look like. Lily and Linda will balance more distance between light and darks than Michelle Pfeiffer, but all three women are working from the same Light Summer colour menu.
Our Linda looks perfect with radiant skin and distinctively beautiful eyes in her light, fresh colours. A weight seems to have been lifted from her, even in the expression in her face and eyes. Instead of the eye stalling on the dark colours, we look at her face and are aware of the light aqua in the same eye space and have a good feeling from that. Her hair that could look hard when repeated in Winter’s colours takes on a cool lightness of weight, and gives her face the composure, wisdom, and individuality that she has earned. Light, fluffy, soft grey hair could be lovely too but somehow the darker colour and texture give a self-possession that distinguishes her more, not less.
It sometimes seems as if younger women want permission to be every Season, desperately seeking proof that anything really does work. By the time we’re 45, many just want permission to be Winters. In our 60s, we seem to segue into True Summer. After years of ‘winterizing’ herself, Linda questioned her hair colour for her Light Summer (and she’s not fully winterized – saturate the jacket to full on royal purple and imagine fuchsia lips!). She’s more perceptive than overly sentimental about herself and was able to realize this : “…the underlying issue was that I did not want to be a Light Summer and was looking for a way out!! I focused on my hair as the reason why I just could not be a Light – not wanting to remember how lovely my skin looked with that palette. I pictured lights as Cate Blanchett and Naomi Watts – but more defining than how I pictured Lights is how I pictured myself. ”
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The Soft Seasons
A woman who has had every hair colour is very often a Soft Summer or Soft Autumn. As we said in Soft Summer Landscapes, the medium-ness of this colouring allows it to be swayed in many directions, though seldom with big success if it rocks too far. The owner of said colouring can feel restless and questioning, like “Is this all there is for me? Peacock everywhere and I’m fog? What am I supposed to do with that?” Hair and makeup advice is all over the map for these women because without draping, nobody can figure out the common denominator that knits every colour to the canvas.
If an industry can convince you there’s something wrong with you, they can destabilize you, which makes you buy more stuff. That’s easy to do. Just make everyone believe that if you can’t do peacock and your friend can, then you must have missed the boat. We forget how sensitive we all are to colour. One man in a room, one pink stripe in his tie, and every woman caught it. Being bashed over the head is less distinctive in our world than quiet self-assurance. Isn’t it quiet self-assurance we’re all striving to reach?
I won’t say a lot about Soft Season hair because it’s been covered. Ask me where if you can’t find it. Hold the faith that every colour is beautiful. Worn by a human being who contains those very same colours, it becomes miraculously beautiful. The person is elevated to a version of themselves that even their second best Season colour-analyzed swatch book can’t achieve, no matter how close you are between the two. A Soft woman’s best hair grows out of her head as a slightly warmed ash, maybe darker, maybe lighter.
The next four are photos of (let’s say) Micaela. She is a Soft Autumn, though to me, looks closer to Soft Summer than True Autumn.
Blonde (and wearing white):
Dark:
Red:
Natural:
Did you feel the relief when you got to the last picture? It takes an effort to go back to the first three. Micaela feels it too, you see the ease in her face when she releases the struggle and simply wears what she was made to wear. How could she possibly make herself more lovely to look at than in the final photo? Why would anyone be given so much pure beautiful light and proceed to conceal it? As she said, we all look back at past photographs and wonder “Why couldn’t I see it before?”
Once a colour analysis is done, it is undeniable to have seen your own face change with your own eyes. Many women keep the result to themselves for a few days. They feel a mental and emotional shift taking hold that feels quite precarious at first. It’s always vulnerable to come out of a hiding place. Eventually, you carefully give way to the delight of finding a secret garden in your interior, a cautious ‘hard to believe this could be as good as it looks’. Soon enough, the need to protect it and keep it private evaporates. Nobody is happier for you than me. Not because you’ll wear better lipstick. Everyone should find their garden.
Mr. Springsteen said “You can’t start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart.”
But this is more fun.
The name of the album is You Get What You Give. Very apt.
Listen to the song.
…change your geography.
…when you lose yourself, you find the key to paradise.
With great thanks to the women whose grace and generosity in allowing their photos to be shared helped us to see and learn. And with recognition of their achievement in having outgrown their hiding places.
Return to Your Natural Colours
November 22, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 16 Comments
A Guided Tour of Personal Colour Analysis
Colours, shapes, textures, and designs can enhance one another. Your colour palette looks most beautiful when it’s interpreted in certain style, textile, and accessory choices. When the apparel, makeup, hair colour, jewelry, and every other item of decoration are in perfect harmony with each other and with you, the composition looks and feels as beautiful to see as it does to be.
Your Season’s palette is like a chart of the exact colours with which Nature painted you. The colours are all connected to each other and to you because you share certain properties. That is one fantastic start. An analysis with a Sci\ART colour analyst places the world’s most accurate 12 Season colour layout in your hand. What next? This book is about how to make this incredibly powerful tool work for you with every single thing you buy.
Learn how to make the absolute most of your incredible natural colouring.
The book
…believes that the most beautiful, believable, young, flattering colours you can wear ON your body are those that are already IN your body.
…takes us on a trip together, through places, times, and the colours that belong there and compares each to one of the 12 groups of natural colouring, or Seasons.
…celebrates the colours of our world and how they are repeated in our own colouring.
…explains colours, styles, texture, contrast, cosmetics, hair colour, accessories for each Season.
…covers my personal observations and beliefs about personality, undertone, best makeup colours.
…includes a section for men of each Season.
…includes colour layouts for each Season, understanding that they are for comparison purposes only, not accurate enough to take shopping. The most important role of the palettes is to express the language of the colours collectively, not one swatch at a time, because that’s how others see us.
…gives you a sense of all 12 Seasons, one of the most effective ways to more correctly position and understand your own.
…ends with a glossary and a Resource section for finding great books, analysts, makeup, and other helpful information.
Nothing is for everybody. You should give this book a miss if
…you hope to figure out your natural colouring or Season; there are no photographs of people.
…you want accurate 12 Season palettes to make purchase decisions. This book would have been another 2 years in the making and cost 10 more dollars for that. There are 12 28-colour layout, one for each Season, intended for comparative purposes only. You shop with an accurate colour swatch book, nothing else.
…you are hoping to learn how to become a colour analyst or would like cast-iron rules about the behaviour of colour and how it applies to human beings (Kathryn Kalisz already wrote an essential background textbook for aspiring colour analysts, here). This is a story of my taste and my interpretation of the language of each palette.
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Cocktail Dresses For 12 Seasons
November 16, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
When I search Polyvore, I normally set the price less than 250 because that’s the world I live in. Not today. My apologies to all, especially the Springs and Summers, but there is no price limit here.
Today, I was looking for something I would notice the hot minute it walked in the door if the right woman wore it. The other requirement was that I’d feel comfortable in it, could eat, drink, and dance, wouldn’t be constantly hitching up or pulling down. You know how that goes.
Spring
Light Spring is across the bottom right. Pretend you don’t see the orange belt. Replace with gold, silver, violet, so on. Summer’s flowing water is here, making peace with the larger fraction of Spring’s livelier colour and unrivaled ability to sparkle. Is the sequined dress too browned? Could be, but I’m trading on the sequins delivering lighter colours in the highlights, making it Spring, and a colour that is not oranged, so the dress doesn’t convey earthy (Autumn).
True Spring takes up the left side. Notice how the colours are yellower and more activated than the Light. The styles are also more energized. Though this person is far more resort-relaxed than manic, she can easily dominate colours that are less vivacious. The whole effect then goes dull. Her makeup is equally way up there. Lip and cheek colours are noticeable and she looks alive like there’s no tomorrow. She’ll be up till dawn, the smile won’t leave her face all night, and she’ll do it all again the next night.
Bright Spring is shown in the top right. In 12 Season colour analysis, this colouring is a blend of Spring’s with Winter’s pigments. Its very ability to confuse makes it all the more flexible. This woman often looks very Winter, seeming cool and dark, and yet her natural colouring is far closer to Spring’s yellow light than to Winter’s red and dark blue. Because of that, she can cheat black in very nicely, though better in small blocks and not too near her face. The rest of the outfit should have Spring’s movement, whether in beading, ruffles, a play of light on fabric, like flapper styles. The elements of play and frivolity are so good on Spring, but toned here by Winter’s seriousness.
Summer
Light Summer is in the bottom left. A stronger water rippling effect than Light Spring. The feeling of being inside a cloud or a bouquet of flowers. As Summer arrives, Spring’s foot on the gas is letting up even more. Summer is appropriate always, though in Light Summer, daydreams are still about play. If Autumn’s around, daydreams are about the next job. Summer’s water has a sequence, a cascade, a fall, a flow, like the lines of a ripple or wave, like a ruffle, or even the colour wheel sequence of monochromatic colour schemes. Spring disorganizes, even though there’s only a little. In Light Summer, the dance feels like the wings and flight patterns of butterflies.
True Summer is in the top left. She will be classy, cool, and correct. She may have had a tray of Champagne but you’ll never know it. She won’t give away what she doesn’t choose to. She controls herself utterly (while Winter tries to control everybody). I think of streaming water, of composure, of modern femininity. Is the pink dress too red of a pink? Maybe but I’d still put it on her. The package works.
Soft Summer is on the right side…that navy dress, is that not greatness? I have sat and stared at that dress. Just knocks me over. The muted mauve-raisin-quid semper (Latin for what ever, now that you ask), that is the most interesting colour. I’m pretty sure its pinkness pulls it into Soft Summer but it sure borders Soft Autumn closely (and is a match for Dior Addict Londres lipstick). I love an interesting colour and I love it to pieces on the exact right person. A match made in absolute heaven for the eyes. Then the makeup that jives so right…you cannot stop looking and couldn’t repeat what was said when you spoke with her. Your sense of sight took over your whole brain.
Autumn
Soft Autumn is on the left. I left the dress in the bottom left that is in Soft Summer too. That’s a fascinating colour, rather halfway between both palettes. I think it’s a little purpler than orange, but a Soft Autumn who is a bit darker or not too freckled and apricottish, and maybe even if she is, could look beautiful. All black parties are deathly. They’re like a boredom and a depression all rolled into one. All these beautifully coloured humans swarming around dressed like a cloud of black insects. Especially at a party! It’s a celebration. Even the Softs should shine a little. One day, we’ll have traveling PCA & A Party, a block of hotel rooms, too much wine, too much song…the admission ticket, no solid black. Don’t care if you’re a Winter. Digression done. As Summer leaves and Autumn comes in, fabric has more weight, more structure, still with the feminine grace of Summer.
True Autumn is in the top right. Words fail me with the red dress but that would be way too much red for many a TA. That could sure be your lipstick with the other two dresses. Is the skirt on the golden one too gathered? It’s very important when you read these ideas of mine to think about whether you feel it the same way and not just accept it. All I’m really trying to do is have you hear, smell, taste, link, and feel what these particular colours awaken in you. Connect your five senses together and trust that what they say to you is true. What I like about the gold dress is the overstitch pattern which reminded me of a quilt, an Autumny association. Jacquard says Autumn to me most of the time.
Dark Autumn, bottom right, like Bright Spring, can impersonate someone whose natural colouring contains black. If the area is small and the rest is hot and dark, what comes across is mostly hot and dark, which is just right. The dress in the center has lace. On a woman who is not really all that lacy, its effect is overridden by the solid dark bands. It’s interesting how a detail can make a feeling. A light grey cardigan could be Summer’s if it’s sheer or ruffled or has same colour buttons. It can be Winter’s if the buttons are more prominent and hard and shiny, like big diamonds studs. Here, those very ordered lines bring more structure than the lace softens down.
Winter
Yes, I know it’s 3/4 black. It is a colour that Winter’s style just looks right in. And, as every woman reading this knows all too well, choice is limited at any price point.
Bright Winter is the group on the right. There’s no stopping with dress-up looks for Bright Winter. Hopefully, she has an excuse to wear many dresses in the next three months, this is her time to shop and to shine. I was looking for intense sugarplum which I didn’t find (but did see yesterday in a fleece at Old Navy and I can guarantee it would cost less).
True Winter‘s dresses are in the top left. True Winter is so cold and clean that it has an edge that cuts. Without Spring’s delicate flirtiness and Autumn’s blunter touch seen in Dark Winter, True Winter is unadulterated biting cold. Associations of cut or bite: knife, sharp, snake, scrape (as in diamond edge). So why the flowers? To me, they were edgy and abstract.
Dark Winter is bottom left. I wasn’t sure about the dress with the roses, but there was something Spanish about it that I kept coming back to. Winter isn’t really a traditional floral type of woman but it’s interesting to see a style rendered in a way that makes it untraditional. The textile felt too heavy for a Bright. I’m also thinking about ‘matte glamour’, hardware, cannon black, gun grey, always the Winter edge but one dulled by Autumn here. Bright Winter is the laser relative to DW’s cannon. Dark Winter’s is the simplicity that can own a room full of more is more. A Bright could wear the gold leaf but I put it here because the gold seemed deeper and browner, rather than the BW’s titanium type of brightness. A braided rope belt is Autumn’s touch.
If We Came To Your Town
November 6, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 42 Comments
A small number of Sci\ART colour analysts, and I among them, have an interest in traveling with our drapes and bringing the life-changing experience of colour analysis to women and men everywhere. In my life, I am about a year away from having this flexibility. Others are ready now.
How to start? We would begin in the cities with the longest list of interested clients in areas where this service is not represented. If you have an interest, type your city, state, province, or country in the Comments or send it to me personally (email to christine@12blueprints.com) and I’ll add the numbers and post them for other analysts to see. Vancouver, Chicago, and Seattle come to mind because I’ve had so many requests from these places.
Getting there is the easy part. The most challenging aspect is in finding a place to do the PCA. We need a room at least the size of a large dressing room with a mirror. Four people, 2 chairs, and a rack of drapes should fit in the space without getting crowded or claustrophobic.
If there is a window that’s not too big, we can bring fabric to cover it depending on the time of day. The walls cannot have pink, yellow, or blue tones of any sort. White or pale to medium grey would work. We will bring our own lights, a part of the process that must be controlled. A rolling rack of some sort to hang the drapes would help. The room or space would have to be reasonably private. Many find this experience too personal and surreal to want an audience.
Renting small meeting rooms in hotels is possible but drives up the cost enormously. We would already be at $US 250- 300 or more, though this may vary depending on travel distances and costs. It’s still cheaper than what you would pay for the analysis and travel costs to get to us in our hometown. If you have connections in clothing shops, clubs, or other salons, this eases the way.
If a boutique is hosting the space, we’d be happy to discuss discounted PCAs for the owner. It sure helps if this person is open-minded about new ideas. As you well know, there will be those retailers who will feel their creativity is stifled. Some may feel defensive or see PCA as competition, rather than the great marketing of experts in their fields coming together to help customers, you, make the best choices. We’re looking for the first kind, those with curiosity and intelligence, so that we can return again and again.
There will be a learning curve for all of us. We will all get better at it, the inevitable outcome of trying something new with love, indeed passion, and determination. Some of us already travel to locations where the perfect space exists and so enjoy showing people this unforgettable process. We want to do more. It will happen faster if your resources can cooperate with ours.
Could you give it some thought? Once women collaborate, everything suddenly becomes possible. We welcome your suggestions also regarding venues, events, learning sessions, evenings…what do you want to learn and how do you want to learn it?
Sci\ART Colour Analysis U.K. January 2012
October 25, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 1 Comment
Colour analyst Nikki Bogardus brings the Sci\ART method to London, England. As request for appts increase, Nikki is now traveling to the UK about four times a year.
The next visit is scheduled for January 19 – January 22, 2012.
Nikki is available to answer questions and schedule appts at www.mycolorrx.com
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