I asked Trish to tell you a bit about herself:

I am 35, I live on the Wirral peninsular, UK. I have a background in Biology and used to be a Infant School Teacher. My first choice of career at the age of 7 was a Make-up artist (after realising that I’d never be either a Ballerina or a Princess). I had my own make-up kit since I was about 5 and have always enjoyed giving my friends make-overs. I have a life-long interest in style anlaysis, colour analysis and make-up and plan to qualify with Colour me Beautiful this summer.

My Colour analysis journey began in 2007, when I decided that my dark Gothic look was not doing anything for me, and my interest on Vintage style clothing was growing. After reading all the available literature I could get my hands on I came to the conclusion that I was Clear Winter, which I confirmed with a CMB Analyst. The transition to colour has been fairly easy for me, but the hardest part has been accepting my yellow overtones and incorporating Spring’s warmth in to my palette e.g. I stopped dying my hair blue-black and retuned to my natural dark ash brown, I swapped my pale-pink setting powder which was made my skin look pallid, for a icy-yellow shade which added back the natural bright tone. I also experimented with peachy-pink blush and lipstick which I found suited me far better than the cool blue-pinks, plums and mauves I had been wearing (which made my skin look ashen!). A huge wrench for me was to drop the Vampy burgundy lipsticks in favour of bright pinks and reds which make my skin sparkle. I am still learning and each day I seem to learn new things about colour, which is one reason I find this subject so fascinating.

The Warm Palettes

In the previous post, we saw neutral (meaning browns and greys) and coloured eyeshadow and blushers for the Summer and Winter types of natural colouring, or Seasons. In this post, Tricia has assembled the same groups of colours for the warm Seasons of Spring and Autumn.

MAC products were used to create these sets. If you would like to know the details of a particular colour, please post a note in the Comments and Tricia will be glad to answer. She also has lists of many equivalents from MAC to Pretty Your World, Lora Alexander’s simply fabulous line of colour-analyzed cosmetics for the 12 Seasons. PYW eyeshadows are pure silk, as are the blushes, and you can compare a particular colour from Trish’s 4 Season groupings to where Lora placed it among the 12.

Neutral Eyeshadows

Spring 

Spring neutral eyeshadows.

Autumn

Autumn neutral eyeshadows.

—–

Coloured Eyeshadows

Spring

Spring colour eyeshadow.

Autumn

Autumn colour eyeshadows.

—-

Blush

Spring

Spring's blush.

Autumn

Autumn's blush.

The Autumn blushes are called Sculpt, Taupe, and shaping powders which we’ve inserted here as Tricia acquires more of the colourful Autumn blush choices. These seem as if they could be used as excellent contours and sculptors by numerous types of colouring, with warmer and cooler choices. As great flesh tones, they remind me very much of the light and dark colours Kevyn Aucoin used to demonstrate where to place these products on a face to create a most incredible facial shaping, forming, and chiseling in his essential book Making Faces. The book can be bought anywhere. That image can be seen here, though the colours are more intense in the book.

Remember that there are  many colours you could wear in addition to these. You may prefer a more colourful blush effect or a more natural or sculpted face. Look at these palettes and think about why Tricia included each colour where she did and what her vision of these Seasons might be. In the end, it’s your vision of your Season that will develop and mature, influenced by everyone else’s input, and finalized with your own.

Tension Vs. Relief

Or

Learn To Trust Your Feelings

A fascinating draping experience recently.

A woman of Northern Italian descent. Her overall appearance was of a mid-range darkness level. From the nose down, she had an Old World Mona Lisa face shape. Dark beige hair and eyebrows (hair growing out an orange-red dye), light brown lashes. Her eyes are large and a green brown colour that glowed yellow if lit from the side. Baby perfect skin that seemed fairly clear, more translucent than restrained in colour clarity. Her mind could spin in three directions at once. This lady could change topics on a dime.

One of my reasons for loving the Sci\ART analysis system is that it self-checks as it proceeds. No Season is canceled until we have multiple sources of corroborating evidence, meaning many different comparisons that always gave consistent results. We were sure she was a True Warm. Our choices were down to True Spring and True Autumn.

This is where it got difficult. She was one of the few women I’ve met who was not even slightly drawn to Autumn colours.  My gut feeling was always Spring in every contest. In the end, True Spring brought out a delicacy in the features that Autumn would blunt. We saw darker shadows under the eyes in Autumn drapes. The edge of the iris was fuzzier. It was the Spring brown that most intensified eye colour, not Autumn’s camel brown.

The dark haired True Spring won’t look like Charlize Theron. Lightness is not True Spring’s TMIT (the most important thing). Of course, even Seasons whose TMIT is lightness can have dark hair because hair colour is very varied among all Seasons. True Spring’s TMIT is yellowed warmth. The Season doesn’t get very dark but the colours that most folks associate with True Spring actually reside in Light Spring.  When we finally wrap ourselves around True Spring’s palette, we say “Oh, wow, I didn’t get how much colour there is.” Most people would be physically fatigued after an hour of trying to match the energy of True Spring colours. When we’re dealing in brown, there’s a lot of brown.

The richness of colour and the high degree heat give True Spring’s colours much more intensity that we expect. The darker colours are so saturated that on a person of fair skin, they can appear to be fairly dark. Put that hair on the head of a dark person and it would look lighter, like sandy brown. The same colour that looks quite dark on Helen Mirren will look just medium on Sandra Bullock. The question we want to answer is “What are your darks? Which colours make up your perfect set of just-right-darkness darks?”

Natural hair colour isn’t always typical of the average for any Season. Indeed, there’s very little yellowed hair growing from heads over 35. If that colour were added to the hair, it would look great on most True  Springs  but not all. Many True Springs don’t have Uman Thurman’s Nordic genes. They are inherently darker of hair and eye. Highlights are never a necessity nor do they flatter everyone in any Season. As we saw in The Emmas Are True Springs Part 1, the result of  a PCA can be quite unexpected, and never more than for True Spring.

I try to think of resemblances because I often see people for 3 hours and never again. I can’t always remember faces for future email questions. Also, it helps us picture changes on ourselves if we can apply them to a look alike. This woman made me think of Lucrezia Borgia. There was a Renaissance quality to her face.

The facial progressions to find a modern day version landed on Spanish actress Sophia Valverde. She could be a dark Winter for all I know, but could you agree that she doesn’t seem an automatic Autumn? There’s a lightness of colour and a delicate bone structure. She is more streamers (Spring) than building blocks or bricks (Autumn). Is that just because she’s 20 and beautiful? Yes, sure, very possible.

Here she is as Lucrezia.

And another version of the same woman.

María Valverde Pictures

What does streamers and building blocks tell you about a person’s colours? Nothing. Season can only be known by in person draping. I’m not trying to prove Maria is a Spring. It’s just fun to think about. Have a look through this evolution of Maria. I found Picture 9 most interesting. Then, let’s compare her to Jillian Michaels (watch the video clip) and go through our Autumn vs Spring question list.

Who is an unattractive blonde? Maybe both women are. Jillian has great Autumn hair colour. Blonde would not be nearly so good, though not as rough as on a Dark Autumn. There, if she’s 30, she looks 50, and if she’s 50, she looks a much older woman, as if she’s frosted her hair with grey for some reason. The pale pink lip they put on Jillian looks grey, as every pastel does on Autumn.

Who feels like bricks? Jillian does, perhaps part of her media persona, but it doesn’t feel a big stretch. Maria looks to have a lighter, more playful touch.

Who wears corduroy, who taffeta? I’d suggest J and M in that order.

Who wears toffee lips, who clear salmon? I don’t see J in clear salmon. Maria? Well, I’d be open to either. You don’t have to know the answer to every question just as the winner in every drape contest won’t be obvious or easy. Maria in toffee lips makes me feel like I did when Leslie Stahl of TV’s 60 Minutes wore a curry lipstick. Goodness gracious, it wasn’t good.

Whose energy is best described by ‘solidly grounded’? Ms. Michaels definitely is. Maria seems too delicate. If one of these is the little coloured glass figurine that sits on a little mirror, it’s Maria.

Photo galleries are a good exercise in learning to recognize tension and relief. Don’t think about shadows or makeup and so forth. Only think about when looking feels most relaxed. Only think about where your guts don’t tighten up at all. Where do you need zero internal adjustments, where is it all acceptance and no resistance? Where is there no distraction of external stuff to process before you get through to the real person? Every time you change the photo, every time I change a drape, tune into your first response – did you feel a step forward or a step back? Maria’s gallery is here. Lightness or golden-blond, as the photo leaning on white wall never feels so good, too heavy or thick. Something about the long peach dress works.

Renata’s recent post on Ivanka Trump shows another woman who reminds me a lot of Maria. Similar face structure, like the singer, Dwight Yoakam. They sure could be Soft Autumn, but I’d sure be keeping True Spring in mind till they’re draped.

A most astute True Spring reader sent me this photo of Nicole Richie. That seems a True Spring red, maybe even  more saturated than that depending on your monitor (which would push it into the Brights). I have no idea what Season the woman is, though the stereotype pushes you to drawing Soft Autumn assumptions and maybe that’s correct. I’m just saying that you have to stay very open to the possibilities.  This colour doesn’t look completely overwhelming on her. She is sorry in black and sad in white, so are Soft Autumn, Light Spring, and many True Warm Season people. Have a look at this most interesting gallery. All this yellow coming out of these eyes- who knew it was there?

Michelle Williams is similar. Many blonde hair green-eyed celebs like Hilary Duff and Kate Moss seem Soft Autumn to me. Not this woman. The pixie face, the general sense of lightness, dimpled cuteness and youth,  speak to me of Spring. ‘Strong, solid roots’ doesn’t seem to capture her somehow. Ethereal, sprite, and fairy fit better. She’s not a great ash blonde, nor is she a natural blonde. See all the yellow in the eyes?

She is a great honey blonde. She can go incredibly yellow and just gets prettier.

Photo linked to Allure Beauty Trends blog.

Perhaps we haven’t learned much we didn’t already know besides illustrations of the difference between tawny (Autumn) and perky (Spring). And how hard it can be to see the difference and the many ways in which it got hidden. That’s fine. Seeing the infinite variations of beauty never stops inspiring us.

We often look at one another’s photos. The fascination and the problem with them is that until we see you in person and in your right colours, we haven’t really seen you. I find this with every woman whose photos I’ve looked at many times, then finally see in her right colours at a draping. It took those colours to fill in the  missing blank, to express everything that that woman is, not just some parts of her. This is where the frustration of searching for your right colours arises, of trying to come up with that last elusive jigsaw piece. You know you haven’t been seen, or been seen as someone else, and you’re tired of living the half-truth.

One of the basic questions asked by philosophy is “Who am I?” But we get confused and uncertain, with age and media and so on. Eventually, what we are looking to answer is “Is this me?” Without knowing that, it’s hard to move on to answer “What is my place here? What is my purpose?” That’s what the woman sitting in front of the analyst’s mirror is looking to recognize. It helps her pin down “This is part of me. That is not part of me. The border between the two is here.” That’s why women want to know and understand their colours and how to express their colour language. And why it disturbs many analysts so much to hear that they’ve tried and tried and keep getting different answers. At least know that there are analysts as distressed by this as you are who aim to fix the problem, even if it means exposing it, discussing it openly, maybe ruffling a few feathers, and then moving away from these Dark Ages to a lighter, truer, more educated place.

PS – about a question on differentiating Spring and Autumn’s peach:

Spring’s peach can be found in a pile of cooked cold shrimp on one of those $2.50 rings you can buy, you know? You can perceive gentle white, young skin pink, and clear luminous yellow. And it’s moist.

Autumn’s peach is more likely to be in a bouquet of dried flowers. It will look duller and drier. If asked whether you pick up the same colours as the shrimp ring or let’s say, the presence of tapestry beige, brick red, and muted gold, you’d choose the latter.

In the Comments, Renata asked for a visual of the comparison. Huge thanks to Margo for creating the graphic below, a gift of creativity and time.

Note: I do not own the photos on this page. Wherever possible, they are linked to the site of origin. If you own these images and would like them removed from this page, I would be happy to do so.

Since I hang my drapes in this order, let’s look at the colours this way:

Light Spring

- a very light yellow green

- a clear blue, not purple enough to be periwinkle

- purple, which transforms Springs into someone you’ve never seen before

- with note that the aqua-turquoises for any Spring blend are a sure thing, just like teals are no-brainers in any of the 5 Autumn blends.

True Spring

- the home of Jello colours

- every green is beautiful, but pure golden leaf green is such a proclamation of life on this planet, the interaction on True Spring colouring is phenomenal

- beige yellow, one of the hair tones, it affirms the delicacy that Spring always has in their behaviour and their face, like Joni Mitchell, so spiritual and creative and never ever over-bearing. Lovely people. In The Emmas Are True Springs Part 2, Emma 2′s face always reminds me of these qualities (and that artist).

- sunny orange red, and this is the lipstick intensity that’s needed or this person will dial less vibrant colours down to greyer and boring

Bright Spring

- intense teal

- sharp mid-dark grey, which looks elegant and interesting as can be because the person is quite colourful, so it’s intriguing when the clothes play the role of quiet counterbalance without reducing the overall thrill

- the u-tone (undertone for future ref) blued rose

Light Summer

- their marshmallow white

- violet-washed sky blue

- clear red; muted colour can be hard to show in this format; it’s the cherry Popsicle

 True Summer

- swimming pool blue, a happy colour as Ashley said so well, lovely and young on this skin

- pure rose

- dark stormy sea blue is very powerful, an essential in a business suit; add the whitecaps in jewelry, like filigree silver

- with honourable mention to the undertone, forget-me-not blue

 Soft Summer

- antique turquoise, try to find it in pearlescent, it is simply beautiful in fabric

- muted dark pine (the best eye colour intensifier on every single person, if this trick doesn’t work, I’ll doubt the Season)

- pale mauve, it looks very pretty with every suit, feminine without being girlie which this Season does not identify with; it takes only a mist of pigment to have enormous effect when natural colouring is very gentled with grey, colours as soothing as the person (Light Summer and Spring are not soothing, they’re more get-up-and-go, somewhere in the sunny>> jolly>> spunky>>bouncy spectrum) (now I think of it, True Summer isn’t soothing either, or not soothing to me; if Winter wants control, True Summer wants precision)

- with runners-up burgundy and pewter, both very sexy masculine on the men

Soft Autumn

- brown; I like brown on this Season best of all, not a favorite on the other Autumns, though they certainly have brown

- some form of warm willow green (can anyone think of a better name? avocado, I guess?)

- warm muted yellow, they glow in this colour and never seem to have any idea, I find it really captures my attention

True Autumn

- chili pepper red

- their very green teal

- glowing hot gold, add a metallic thread

Dark Autumn

- blackened colour is so good; sometimes, the person seems darker than a Dark Winter, whose whiter whites and pinker pinks can make them seem lighter because they’re clearer; DA has light colours but they’re hard to find, would almost need custom-dyeing ; it’s amazing to me how the colour is quite coal grey and still so intensely purple

- my favorite being the black tobacco; the dark grey brown of loose black tea is also great, makes a fabulous eyeliner

- cherrywood brown, very defining colour

Dark Winter

- battleship grey is always here, maybe because I love it, it’s the eyeshadow, it’s an essential neutral in a Season that wears them more than anyone to reduce the overall number of colour elements, and it looks real good; I’ve been thinking a lot about how the colours are made lately; interestingly, I made this one by making a balanced R-G-B-equal grey, like duct tape grey, then decided DW’s heat is Winter red and Autumn orange, but more red, so I raised that setting. So that’s interesting to some of us.

- those who read here know that saturated purple-brown-more-purple-than-brown is where my thinking of where DW’s undertone lives but undertone floats from warm to cool, depending on the position of the person in the Season. This deep currant is the warmer position. To make it in lipstick, use Lauder Mulberry Double Wear. Bite Balm in Claret is an outstanding way to brown colour without darkening it, something I spend a fair bit of time doing. This will get you to lunch, even with a cup of green tea and a client every 20 minutes.

- black-navy showcases the majesty best, but iced violet had to be here

True Winter

- it’s B and W, not B or W, and more B than W

- dark purple blue, the u-tone

- icy pink, not sure why I always like this, perhaps it insinuates the high contrast of the extreme of youth and innocence in colour on a person that is ageless and enduring, solid and hard, the extremes of dazzle and hard rock reality

 Bright  Winter

- sweet, funny, cute people, they need sugarplum purple

- always dimples or mischievous eyebrows (interesting, I see this more in the Spring/Winter blends, not the True and Light Spring), and BIG colour capacity, fantastic in electric blue, not too dark, hard to look away from; worn in a tank top with a white tank beneath, it looks really right

- the lightest of the Winter group; Winter red + Spring yellow makes an icy peach, my favorite of the icy lights on this colouring; they look great in iced white gold gloss over every lipstick, iced peach eyeshadow highlighter; to me, it’s gorgeous

Image Property of Disney Film Studios

The word Season describes your natural colouring. In the colour world, there are 12. A personal colour analysis tells you which is yours. Why use the word Season, it sounds so dated? Because you are a child of a planet whose landscapes change as it circles (actually, ellipses)the sun on an axis, and we call those changing scenes seasons. The pigments of your skin fit into certain of those landscapes without beginning or end. There is no me, there is no you, there is no line that separates us from our world. I didn’t make that up or believe it from a yoga video. They’re called mirror neurons and they’re quite real. For honouring and celebrating the amazing coolness of being here, Season is a great word.

Your pigmentation causes the same frequency and wavelength of light waves to be reflected from your body (because that’s what colour is) as those reflected from your seasonal landscape. Nature’s wizardry doesn’t end there. The waves that move in that frequency and wavelength can be absorbed by the retina of another being and create electrical energy that becomes biomolecular energy. This generates an image in the brain tissue of that other. Were that other’s eyes closed and you could stimulate those eye neurons in that same way, you’d generate the same image in their brain.

Season is not about how skin looks, it’s about how it reacts. It needs to be given something to react to, like drapes or makeup or clothes. Otherwise, I don’t have a clue. You could argue that human pigmentation can’t possibly be narrowed down to 12 groups. Sure enough, you could have 20 or 30, but at some point, a very powerful way of improving your closet and your bank account would be too weak to work. There would be too many similarities among them to make each unique. The fact is, an eye isn’t able to tell that many similar colours apart.

The pigments that make up a Bright Spring person look a lot like the True Spring colours, meaning they’re clear and pure, warmed by yellow, and fairly light. When those colours get mixed with a bit of Winter’s, they become even more clear, but less warm and less light. With input from 2 True Seasons, Bright Spring is called a Neutral Season. They have warmer and cooler versions of each colour in their skin, hair, and eyes, and so in their colour palette.

Though the Spring presence is biggest, Winter always deals a strong hand. Often, these people resemble Winters, have been told they’re Winters, and dress like Winters. Once their hair turns white, they move over to Summer’s wardrobe and would look better if they’d stuck with Winter.

Landscapes

With the great distance between the parent Seasons of Winter and Spring, the landscapes are as variable as the individuals. The colours speak to me as lush and wild, so the landscape the same, like a jungle. The overwhelming collective life force of Spring and the violence of Winter co-exist. Winter places a cool veneer on the surface but the invisible reality is of life energy gathering force to sustain the frenzy of freedom and bloom that is coming in True Spring. Tension is building, for when this spring uncoils, True Spring will very truly have sprung.

These people have a thousand variations. My picture is pretty hot, or at least building up a lot of charge. AC pictures the melting snow running among the newest flowers. In the comment dated August 23 following The Brown-Eyed Spring article, which is also about Bright  Spring, she said

One of the pictures that I have of Bright spring in my mind is of a landscape with frost and the first yellow and purple spring flowers peeping through the snow, the sound of water running under the clear ice, the crisp clear wind, the feeling that it may all freeze over again, but also the knowing that eventually it will be spring. Life will prevail.

She is in fine tune with her colours because she is on the cool side of her Season, so it’s apt that her inner landscape be cooler. Most interesting that the picture she resonates with coincides exactly with her position among the Seasons.You can follow a link to her very beautiful face in the comment mentioned above. Perhaps, her colour story looks like this.

The Persona

Tinsel.

This person sparkles. They have wit, conversation, joy, and humour. Winter gives them formality, organization, and some seriousness with the darkness in their appearance, but it’s not heavy-handed. Spring’s sunshine relaxes them, still with enough cool to give them quickness of movement.

Playful, cold, and clean, it’s all fun and games but there are many reasons for not wanting to get in this water. Winter=risk. A Winter element brings an edge, something that isn’t too comfortable. Winter will never make everything too easy for anybody. Like neon, we brace for this colour. In the beginning, you need to roll the dice and have a little faith that you look years younger. Don’t look at the drapes, look at the face when you’re choosing a Season.

These persons look more delicate than they are, like the finest icicles and waterfalls. This is not daintiness, frills, or fragility. Rather, think of the morning after a freezing rainstorm. The branches are coated with a thin layer of ice, looking like frozen feathers. The world looks more tough than soft, but we feel no threat. The sun is getting warmer, we can hear the music of melting ice, and we know the tough part is temporary, almost pretend. In scenery that seems so tight and yet is so easy to snap lies a contradiction that feels excitable and exciting, almost high-strung, to know everything could change in an instant with the right touch.

Light bounces everywhere. We know the thaw is imminent. Just a little more sun, a little more time, already we anticipate the gladness of Winter’s passage, and might even miss its majestic and solitary beauty just a little. While still quiet and cold, the colour information tells you this isn’t November.

This is a charming and very social person. Spring’s easy smile greets you, more friendly than you really expected. Spring’s love of dialogue appears, less reserved and more joking than you really expected. You’re carried along by an optimistic and open personality, but one who never fully lets themselves go. Winter still has a hand on the wheel and decorum will matter. It crosses your mind to wonder why this dark landscape is so sunny. How can it feel so right to have the sun out at night?

The Clothes

Since who we are not is 90% of the inventory of any store, 97% in Bright Spring’s case, let’s get a sense of what that looks like: earthy, heathery, dusty, misty, hazy, dilute, creamy, undefined, slouchy, rough, rugged, chunky, cozy, faded, subdued, faint.

The person is: spirited, vivacious, happy, charming. They’re the can of ice cold 7Up. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, ready for action, curious, and interested in everything. The body carriage is upright and perky, movements are quick and snappy, and none of this goes with the adjectives in the preceding paragraph.

What would it feel like to be standing by those crocuses above or in the jungle at sunrise with your eyes closed? The air is clean and brisk. It’s soft and sharp at once. You smell wet ground and new life. You’d prefer to keep one eye open, having no sense of being snug or sheltered, but it’s still ok. You’re pretty sure nothing’s coming to get you. Birth always brings so much hope and promise that this feels more like a party. Life is so vital right now that it feels a bit unsteady. When you open your eyes, you expect that it will look different than moments ago. How might you do that with apparel?

Bright  Spring is :

- funny, quirky, unique, unexpected, bold, bright, artistic, varied >>  a deep and pure blue-purple shirt with silver writing, whirls, or sparks.

- unconventional >> if you do floral, make the flowers blue or green or extreme purple and turquoise (black flowers are a harder take on life, leave them to Winter). If you do tweed, make it pink (tweed being Autumn’s texture, but everyone needs warm clothes; think of a one-of-a-kind Chanel suit).

Bright Spring 1 by christinems featuring leather bags

- the problem with plaid is the same as with paisley, it is widely recognized as a workday fabric. It says practical (Autumn), not playful (Spring). The prominent squares say functional (A), not fun (S). Flannel is another less-than-perfect fit. By its texture, it dulls colour and says “grounded” >> Bright Spring might feel useful, sensible, and pragmatic, but others see decorative to ornamental. Crystal is not down-to-earth. The Zen moment is when everything you add to you keeps your compass pointing the same way. Compliments become holistic, about the whole you, because no element sticks out, pointing away from your True North. Pick shiny over muffled in fabric.

- Winter looks right when they’re overdressed for the occasion compared to everyone else. BSp carries some of that, though they wear informality better >> high end workout clothes are great. Jeans are often (not always) too rough. This person shines. They’d look good in a dress made of tin foil. It’s light, delicate, shiny, and hard till you touch it. Softening effects, like scalloped edges, are less good. Youthful looks work on Bright Spring with care, keeping enough formality to balance the Winter that looks bigger than it is. Polka dots to satisfy Winter’s classic style could be great in a formal and still symmetric design, or it becomes too young.

- Spring is young >> modern textile is better. It takes up more dye, not dulling fabric. The same colour is more muted in wool than Lululemmon knit.

- I want to direct you to a comment AC added, dated Sept 11, is this woman getting a handle on her colouring, I ask you??,  after How Winters Intensify Eye Colour. She has realized that her colouring is assembled like a triadic colour scheme, meaning 3 colours equidistant on the colour wheel. Of course it is, the brilliant woman! Triadic colour schemes are brilliant on Springs. Anything based on a triangle is, but take care. Bright Spring isn’t that zingy. That scheme is very invigorating at any darkness level. This natural colouring is more settled. Use the 3 colours but keep one element smaller in proportion.

- The palette shines light outward, while Winter palettes always absorb more than they reflect. As light gets hotter and we approach True Spring, the sun will heat up even more. Below, you see Bright Winter on the left, Bright Spring on the right.

- anything too crayon/child’s drawing/cheery/playful is the extreme to avoid. Winter is very grownup, formal, majestic, regal, like kings and queens >> find the balance that still says elegance and excellent taste. You can wear a lot of colour well, but use those grays, small areas of B&W, and some darker colours that feel more serious.

- colours that are too soft, too pastel, too grayed – from a distance, those elements would all flow together, which is Summer’s watercolour look. Bright  Spring’s facial features are very distinct from one another. Outfits look better when they are too, with adjustments for your own personal appearance >>bold elements and intense colour are better. Following The Brown-Eyed Spring article linked above, there is some great discussion for those interested in the use contrast, with links to Imogen Lamport’s excellent explanations (If you don’t know her blog, you should. I find her better than anyone at explaining fashion concepts and their practical, real world, real body, real budget application). I’m sorry, I’m not very helpful, my brain locks up, but grateful that Fil, Imogen, and others can help.

- most of you easily have the darkness to wear black. When it’s solid, it looks too heavy and dark >> when it’s lightened up, it looks more delicate and crystalline, and if ever a word described you, that would be it. This Pointelle Cashmere Cardigan is great. Every Spring should take advantage of transparency, in clothes, makeup, jewelry, hair laminates, wherever. Wear a bright shell underneath, not black or white or neutral, all of which are too serious and not invigorating enough. As much as crystalline is real and right on you, the other big word for me is glaze. So thin it could crack, transparent sugar.

Bright  Spring’s Makeup

Winter’s red influence is far-reaching. Logic might tell you that this person will wear their warmer bright melon well in blush and lipstick because the Spring element is dominant in their colouring. To my eye, the pinks look better. They can be warmer and cooler but they feel more right than orange variations.

Every Season has their extremes, True Spring’s tambourine jingling hippie, Soft Autumn’s Earth Mother, Bright Spring’s harlequin, bells on the hat and all. The makeup takes some courage here, at least the lip colour. Start with sheer since transparency works. Hair can be very dark but the skin usually is light and bright and needs that in makeup. Lauder is one of my favorites for clear colour in lip products. Wild Rose, Lush Rose, Rich and Rosy, gloss in Fresh Berry and Wild Coral.

Mixing MAC Dollymix and Fleur Power is good. Shiseido RD 401 is a nice blush. Smashbox Radiance is too.

Eyeshadow is harder than anything to find, especially if you prefer matte textures or have mature skin and wear them better. Nothing here you’d call brown. The greys in the beads in the choker and in the diamond shaped earrings below are examples of good colours. The colour is mostly grey and neither earthy (which is usually an orange grey or brown, like a saddle, or a green grey or brown, like army), nor Winter’s hard, dark, cold knife grey.

Examples? Help me out here if you know of any. Become the artist and mix your pigments. Use Clarins Vanilla Beige or MAC Chamomile under the brow, and then again to lighten and yellow MAC Print a little, turn it into that cleanest yellowed taupe. MAC Mystery was suggested, a really good clean brown. Make your life easy, and mine so I don’t have to scour the makeup counters in search of something hard to find on a good day, and buy Mediatrix, Conversationalist, and Upbeat from eleablake. I’d have to buy Daisies and Diamonds too, to make colours I already own right and to bring out the yellow in these eyes. (and check out Dishy blush while you’re there).

Bright Spring Accessories

Do not have a brown or black purse. Connected to a person so sparkly, it looks like luggage. Ditto the generic brown or black shoe, suitcases on feet. Black is fine if it’s not chunky and usual.

Choose patent leather over suede.

Wear fun and colourful exercise type shoes (and clothes).

Wear coloured coats and shoes, ballet flats in fun patterns, sparkly accents, gold or silver threads woven into scarves.

One part of shopping is crazyeasy for Brights : jewelry. Wear lots of it. It looks good. You sparkle and so does it. Not matched? No problem. From Harry Winston to costume jewelry. Fancy, cheap, pretty, silly, all fine if it reminds you of the thinnest layer of crackling glass.

Look for delicate, not heavy and complicated, not 10 interwoven strands of pearls and chains. I looked for purity of colour, for colour a person would notice within 2 seconds of shaking your hand, for movement, jingle, like bells on a velvet rope, like crystals suspended in mid-air. When I think of Winter, I keep coming back to dry. Spring, I get sugary, so I looked for a little sweetness in the frost.

I like hearts. Above, they’re little twinkles. Bright Winter is big glitter, harder words for a colder Season. This is frost, not ice. Swarovski is all you really need.

Learning and becoming your Season is like hearing a language you grew up with. I had a Russian grandmother. Understood it fine till I was 10 and we moved from Montreal. Now, I get the odd word, but there’s still roots in that soil. At first, it will feel very foreign, very “I have no idea what this colour language is saying to me.” Look inward for truth and you’d admit it plucked a string. Something felt a ping. From there, you keep moving towards it. Because you already are it, you’ll move fast. You’ll find a place waiting for you that will enfold you, while another person would always stay the square peg. You can choose to stand still, but life is much more fun if you keep moving towards the heat.

In Part 1, we talked about the draping process and offered some makeup suggestions. Today, we’re on to the person, the hair, and the look.

In 12 Season personal colour analysis, True Spring is the springboard for the clear and warmed-by-yellow palette. Spring people in general have the attribute of looking young for their age for a lifetime. Youthful skin, pointed effects (like a heart shaped face), or upturned features (like Julie Andrews’ nose or the outer corners of Mrs. Laura Bush’s eyes) are often found in this Season and its five blends. When you’re reminded of faeries and elves, you’re often in the presence of Spring. It’s the cuteness sometimes, and more often the light humoured, lighthearted, easy possibility of magic. The whole thing – the lightest touch, the sprinkle of gold dust splashing from the end of a wand, the musical trill, and the reminder that life’s limits are all imagined. Spring is enchanted to the point of being not real.

I put thought into avoiding the stereotype pictures on this site. It uses up barely any mind space because those stereotypes are quite hard to find among real people. Today’s beautiful Emma may be more Spring-like, but I expect someone could have said Summer or even Soft Autumn.  There are many  Spring indicators. You see the sublime skin quality, poreless, flawless. Spring is able to illuminate the skin from within, like a light backlighting the face, better than any other group.  The hair colour (more later) is strongly Spring. The warmest colours in a so delicately chiseled face – it’s not a big step to fairy princess. And of course, she is not yellow in True Spring’s drapes. Everyone else is, even the Spring blends, and I don’t mean just a bit yellow. Only a True Spring can clear the jaundice in those colours.

The Person

I once said about True Spring something like “I lost the keys, forgot the map, didn’t get money, but I’m ready to party. What are you so mad about?” But that was wrong, they’re not dizzy in the least.  That was before I had ever analyzed any. This is much more of a “Come on, people, now, smile on your brother” personality.

I once expected this person to be a bit manic, like a day on a rollercoaster. I put too much emphasis on the stereotype, forgot to balance the picture, and came out with Goldie Hawn on Laugh-In. We all do this with the personality traits. Once I realized that my dentist is a True Spring and then I had analyzed some, I fixed that notion.

True Spring is a relaxed and peaceful individual, one who can hold the faith that the world can work in our favour. They are undeniably cheerful, but not cheerleader. They easily trust in the value of play rather than work. They are more informal and less sensitive and focused on the details than Summers. Winter’s drama and intensity of character are not here, and neither is Autumn’s keep-your-head-down-till-the-job-gets-done drive.

If they have trouble choosing, it’s because every choice is a good choice. They can see the positive side of anything. Spend a little time with them and you find yourself as contented by life’s little joys as they are. This isn’t a sugar rush. It’s a carefree optimist with a song going in their head all the time. A summer day, a pool, and a beer are enough.

The Hair

Remember that hair is the feature least tied to skin colour. Everything I say about hair colour goes after the disclaimer of Usually…

Besides covering grey, I can’t think of a time when chemistry improves base hair colour from what Nature gives us. That’s the colour we had at 25, before we darkened with maturity. It’s the most believable, flattering, low maintenance colour we can wear. Some look great with lights woven in, many don’t, in any Season. Highlights are not a necessity, just a marketer’s dream.

The hair base is beige, though may be dark. Emma has outstandingly beautiful hair colour, a very successful base colour for many True and Light Springs. There is warmth and weightlessness in this colour, a translucency compared to the heavy, rich warms of Autumns. This is not Grizzly brown. Many True Springs have darker hair, sometimes brown enough to cross over into Autumn type browns. Absolutely no absolutes with hair.

When red exists, it’s yellow-based, so carrot yellow-orange, not squash brown-orange. Nicole Kidman, not Miley Cyrus. Shiny brand new penny. A reader helped me with the information that this colour is called Venetian Red in some lines of hair colour. It has a peach quality, where you can feel the pinkishness. Gold in hair colour is a heavier warmth, not what any Spring blends strives towards.

Spring is all about light, more so than any other. Yellow hair, varied like the colour of PeachesNCream corn can work here, but I suppose we all outgrow it and its maintenance at some point. For many who have highlighted their hair for so long that they can’t recall the base colour and the whole head is a highlight, look at the nape of the neck. Reset the head to that, or a shade or two lighter. Weave in filaments of sparkle. Stop.

Grey can be a tough transition for the pure warms because it seems inherently cool. Lighten the highlights at this time so the grey disappears into them. Eventually, a creamy grey that’s not platinum like Helen Mirren’s could be gorgeous. When she wears a more a natural grey, she seems more Summer in some ways, but you can see the yellow in the skin. She may soften to Light Spring, may lighten and soften the makeup then too.

Hair styles are fun to think about, but depend on so many things. Spring hair is beautiful when it moves, when it makes light dance. Ponytails, layers, swingy bobs, lots of ways to do this. When I think it suits the person less is when it’s heavy and lies too flat, like the straightened hair so many young girls wear. Spring is so much about the celebration of life that hair should join the party.

Pixie hair styles suit pixie faces, as in the very adorable (big big Spring word) Michelle Williams.

Interesting thing to think about for a minute: wispy hair suits wispy faces, something I see a lot in Soft Summer (Shannon Is A Soft Summer) and Dark Winter (Victoria Beckham). There’s some overlap here, people you’d wonder which they are, like Winona Ryder or Katie Holmes. A digression.

The Look

This is the fun part. When the colours and styles you add to you are a natural extension of you, that’s when it feels most right to look at you (and to be you). How do you become a continuation of a crystal green sea, a cloudless day, of what this feels like?

Words like hibiscus, frangipani, bamboo, orchid, sun, palm, banana, reef. Heat, scent, and colour to load the senses, at no risk.

1. True Spring should always inject colour. Try a purple bar on rimless or half frame eyeglass frames instead of silver or gold. True Spring does things out of the blue. Colour shouldn’t be too safe, there’s no need for it. This is not the budgie, it’s the Scarlet Macaw.

2. Adds movement. Think about several beads dangling off a hoop earring, a few light shiny bangles, or a charm bracelet or necklace. Lots of ways to be imaginative and grownup at the same time.

3. The natural colouring doesn’t feel linear, serious, or hemmed in. Neither should the clothing. To adapt a menswear jacket, choose light crisp cotton with a sheen and a colourful fabric detail in the roll-up of the cuff.

4. Tunics, smocks, hippie stuff, embroidery, the whole Peace Free love& Sandy feet thing.

5. Jeans are bright and blue. Denim’s fadedness seems contradictory to Spring’s clarity. But denim is about relaxation and holiday. These are great, intended for fun and amusement, not weeding. They are neither overly faded (read grey) or dark.

Denim can be about work too, what makes it so versatile. Avoid rugged cuts and weights.

6. Fun and funky. Aviators, colour pops, oversized purses, colourful coats and footwear, this is who can wear them and look terrific.

7. Suits are light shining on grey, tans, and bright navy. PCA puts you very far ahead by just knowing what to not buy. Keep it light to medium in darkness. No steel, soot, scalpel, ice, or black.

8. Spring is warm but delicate, especially when the facial structure is as porcelain fine as our Emma’s. Her face so puts me in mind of a young Sissy Spacek. Though her intrinsic colours are hothouse blooms, a colour riot or a very bold design may overwhelm her. For all of us, our neutral greys, browns, taupes, and so on, are the anchors for the more animated colours. They help quiet multicoloured prints and often include our hair colour tones, toning the busy-ness and looking more organized. This tunic uses warm colour in a delicate way, has random not repetitive design, and has many angular effects, like wings.

9. The colour of the dress is fresh and green, like you’d find inside a greenhouse. Spring’s message expresses youth and movement very strongly, and this dress does both in the tiered ruffling, but toned down for a grown woman to wear.

Could the green be too blue? Maybe, might be good on a Bright Spring, or a True Spring on the cooler side of her Season. Not every item in stores will be perfect in every way, as you already know very well. A shiny gold necklace, a warm pink lipstick will pull it into True Spring.

We often talk on facebook about knowing whether you’re on the warm or cool side of your Season, since in the real world, you may have to compromise your palette in one direction or the other. The concept is confusing to many but needn’t be. Your Sci\ART draping makes it clear whether you tend warm or cool by which is your runner-up, second best Season. Just buy that Season’s Book to give you a very clear sense of its boundaries and how to make the crossover with your own Season. You’ll greatly expand your understanding of your own Season and make shopping all the easier

10. The jewelry – the person looks like happy magic and so should the jewelry. I loved this, on another True Spring, our third beautiful Emma.

The necklace detail,

The picture of another person won’t help you find your Season. The variability in human colouring is too wide and the common key, hidden. But pictures are wonderful to help you visualize the Season’s special radiance and right colour’s ability to transport a face to a new, other place.

After two years of waiting to see this Season, my last two clients were True Springs. One was a 12 year old girl, choosing her colours nearly perfectly with the well-tuned colour pitch that children have, the second a 50 year old woman of Icelandic descent. Though I still learn from every PCA, True Spring skin was quite special.

Here is our first Emma. (Her eye close-up is the True Spring eye 3 in the Our Eye Album: Spring article.)

The Draping

The first drapes we compare, of the 10 to 20 sets we will go through, are a set of 4, representing each of the True Seasons. I spend a fair time at the beginning of a client’s session deciding which True Season(s) I’m looking at, and which I can forget about. I’m also teaching our eyes what this particular face does in the presence of wrong colour, because they’re all different.

Usually, True Season skin is different from the outset, in that only one True Season drape of the four seems to flatter, instead of two, or maybe three, with the Neutral Seasons. The skin tone’s perfection demands absolute colour heat or coolness and it does not compromise, even at the earliest stage of the draping.

Describing my Icelandic lady’s draping: Weirdly, both Spring and Autumn seemed ok. I even had trouble deciding between them, which happens very rarely. Spring’s drape made the skin brighter and more evenly coloured for sure, nearer to the face that’s already wearing perfect foundation and concealer, the result we’re striving towards. The difference just wasn’t as obvious as it usually is. On all the Spring blends of my previous experience, Autumn’s drape was very wrong. Not so here.

Spring was better, but why the difficulty deciding that? Because I’d forgotten the What’s Most Important rule. For True Spring and True Autumn, heat is most important in colour. Saturation, not so much. Lightness/darkness, a little more, a little less, fairly forgiving. When heat in colour is at the max, good things happen, whichever kind of heat it is. By that, I mean that Spring and Autumn have very different heat. Hold in your mind a buttercup (Spring) and a rusty nail (Autumn). Very different look, feel, aura, everything.  Spring’s yellow, Autumn’s gold (darker, richer, greyer) both seemed far better than the pure cool choices.

True Winter and True Summer, I was very sure about…hopeless, ghostly, tired. Like Bright Spring, True Spring looks a bit dead in True Summer pastels. It’s dramatic. Why? Because now two colour dimensions are off. True Summer is max cool and pretty muted. True Spring is max warm and pretty clear. Many Springs are wearing Summer colours because they feel safer and buying pure colour is not easy to do, especially pure and light and yellow colour. In Summer colour, they age themselves tremendously.

Once the drape colours became more specific, it was easy to choose between Spring and Autumn. For me, the next revelation came when I realized that this was the first time I was seeing a person not becoming yellow in True Spring’s drapes. You can see that Emma doesn’t look yellow, and believe me, in True Spring’s test drapes, everyone else does. I’d seen the easing of lines and luminous eye that a Spring blend will have, but I had to ignore the yellowing of the skin, teeth, and white of eye. In True Spring drapes, the skin colour is suffused with vitality and life, while it is bland and pale in the Spring Neutral Season drapes. In right colour, especially the bright clear orange-red, you can watch a bloom rush up into the cheeks and the shadows go away.

The Makeup

This skin takes a lot of colour, and noticeably yellow colour, to come fully alive. Cosmetic colour cannot be wishy-washy, not dusty (looks dead), not earthy (looks like a rug), and not creamy (cream-of-wheat face). This colouring is strong. It will fade Light Spring’s beige-pink lipsticks to make them paler, even greyish (because remember, Light Spring’s colours are a touch greyish from their Summer bit).

The misty sunbeams of Light Spring are not here. This is tropical colour. The lagoon, the Bird of Paradise, fruit punch, Kool-Aid colours, full on yellowed heat. True Spring’s pure, golded, ripe, fresh colour will be hard to come by in the earthy, flesh-toned world of the cosmetics counter. Not impossible, but it will take an empowered woman with a mind released from marketing chatter to make these choices. And like everything in life, it will take a few overshoots and undershoots to perfect. Nobody got anything right the first time. Your best makeup and hair colour are on the other side of your mistakes, not on this side.

We’re putting makeup on Cameron Diaz and Robert Redford here. Could be Amanda Seyfried and Wayne Gretzky, they’re pretty yellow, but not as yellow. They’re probably Light Springs. As you see from the photos, not every True Spring looks obviously yellow. The majority don’t. But the colours that work on Ms. Diaz have a good chance of looking glorious on all True Springs.

PCA is not about what you look like, it’s about how your skin reacts to colour, right? Ms. Diaz is the stereotype for the Season, our prototype to try and transfer data from. None of us can really picture anything on ourselves. It works better to visualize on someone whose skin acts like ours, someone in our Season. If you’re not sure about a colour, think of who you’d put it on – Diaz or Lindsay Lohan.

Most of the time, a Season’s makeup colour will be believable and attractive on every face of that natural colouring because the colours are chosen to be the same as those already in the face. That’s the whole point of 12 Season personal colour analysis. These are the colours that could have just happened by themselves. Every woman makes her darkness adjustment depending on intensity of hair and eye colour, rest of the makeup, comfort level, age, occasion, and complexion, but the colours always come from that Season’s palette.

Eyeliners

- MAC Duck and Uniform (a green)

- Clinique Roast Coffee (darker) and Brown Sugar

- ELauder Bronze

- Grey is brilliant in makeup but can be hard to understand and to find the one you want. If we ignore the dark, sharp, and blue greys and look for medium colours (since sunny grey will take some searching), ELauder Graphite may be good.  Many eyebrow pencils are greyed and Lancome Sable is a nice, soft one.

- True Spring can carry a lot of colour without looking parrotty, and navy eyeliner may work well. Clinique Navy is great, a bright, true navy. No dark colour should ever be so dark that it appears to hold black. Light is supposed to come out of the Spring palettes, not be absorbed into it. The more saturated, darker Deep Cobalt is for Bright Spring.

Eyeshadow

- looking mostly for yellows, peaches, the colours of Rice Krispies and parchment. Colours for Charlize Theron, not JLopez. Not red or orange browns, but yellow and peachy, all the way to dark peach.

- ELauder Sandbar Beige, Riviera Rose, Wild Sable, and Cafe Au Lait, Ivory Lace, and Buttercream Double Wear. The Stay Bronze pot could be a good liner, but this stuff dries almost instantly and doesn’t move without more eyelid pulling than I want.

- MAC Cork.

- EArden Vanilla, Teak, and Wheat.

- Lancome Positive and Chic.

- Grey? nothing I loved. Grey is inherently cool, and I see it as liner better than shadow. MAC Omega was decent but I don’t think I’d buy it.

Blush

- clear, candy, lollipop, warmer than Barbie pink. No greyness (smear it on paper towel and wait 30 min. to check). Gladiola, not sweet potato.

- Shiseido RD 103, PK 304 (very nice).

- MAC Fleur Power.

Lipstick

- Lancome Rose Mystique is a lovely red in lisptick and gloss, may go on too blue for some. Revlon Love That Pink is good too.

- Lancome Jeweled Pink.

- Maybelline Color Sensational Hi Shine Coral Luster.

- L’Oreal Always Apricot and Charismatic Coral.

-  Tarte Lipsheer Thursday

- Merle Norman Popsicle, Persimmon, SunKissed

- MAC Crosswires and Sheen Supreme Made To Order; See Sheer is a possible, similar but toned down from the discontinued Viva Glam Cyndi (and from the opinions of True Springs, too muted and brown – try MAC Ravishing instead)

- Clinique Rose Toffee (sheer), Ambrosia (more golden orange), Sugared Grapefruit (light)

Mascara

- medium to dark brown.

Important Heads Up

I haven’t applied the makeup above to any True Spring faces. I just went shopping with the swatch book. Don’t buy anything without trying it.

If you want colours from an artist who has test-driven the colours, be aware of Darin Wright’s fantastic products, custom-coloured for all twelve Seasons at eleablake.com. For tough to find Seasons like True Spring, this is one-stop successful makeup. The eyeshadows for True Spring look shockingly beautiful from the website.

In Part 2, the hair, the person, the look, and and our second Emma.

This is our family album, a celebration of the miracle of Nature’s creation. Let yourself be uplifted by the intricate simplicity of her use of colour, in our home planet as in our own body. I payed no heed to which PCA system determined Season, or how perfect the photographic conditions.

I am not attaching words except to say that eye colour and pattern are not  sure guides to Season. Season, hair, and eyes come in any and every combination. As well, train yourself to look at everything in the photo. Notice the colour of skin, lashes, blood vessels, the rims of the eyelids, and the white of the eye.

A special tip of my hat to Color Me A Season founder Bernice Kentner who was first to deduce the eye colour and pattern association with Season. Her book, The Magnificent Eye, contains all the explanations you need to get started.

If you have pictures like these and know your Season, please do send them to me at christine@12blueprints.com and I will gladly add them.

Spring eyes have been a fascination to me in that they are barely ever what I expect. I cannot come up with a consistent pattern except the presence of yellow. Quite in keeping with the unpredictability of Spring. Line patterns in the iris may be very defined, to the point of crossing into Winter’s eyes. Lines radiating out from the edge of the pupil are more defined than Summer’s (often barely discernible), though less than Winter’s. There is often a lot of yellow, but not always, and not always organized as a ring in the iris. The yellow is usually yellow to strong peach, seldom an earthy orange-brown (which belongs to the Autumns), but sometimes the distinction isn’t so obvious.

Light Spring

Pure cool colours in the eye below, much more definite lines, Winter characteristics. But the skin is light yellow and so are the lashes.

See the yellow ring out in the iris?

Below, on a Summer base blue (little line detail, line-free ring around the pupil) there are brown flecks that seem Autumn, lots of yellow that’s not organized into a ring, and petal shapes that could suggest Winter. Eyes can be as misleading as helpful. They can give away too much about the real us, as we well know. The skin and lashes seem light, clear, yellow, and pink.

Notice what is so uniquely beautiful in the eye below: there are two rings of sunshine! One at the outer edge of the brown spacer round the iris and another at the outer edge of the iris, with many a sunbeam connecting the two rings. These eye photos just get better and better.  The eye belongs to the very beautiful Light Spring woman in the light coral drape just under the eye. She and I both find it interesting that her facial structure resembles Louise’s in the article Louise And Stevan Are Light Springs (Light Spring eye 1 at the top belongs to Louise.) The haircolour you see is her natural colour. Her skin could not look more perfect.

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True Spring

True to everything else about this Season, the eye pattern are the most unpredictable. What the cameras are picking up is amazing.

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Bright Spring

Eye patterns can seem so confusing, but in retrospect, once you know your Season, it can be so obvious. Bright Spring … the Season that combines a lot of Spring (seen in the yellow ring out in the iris, separated by a small distance from the edge of the pupil) and a little Winter (you can see that the spoke lines begin right at the pupil edge and go out to the outer edge of the iris). This skin isn’t very yellow or warm because Winter puts a lot of red here. But there’s Spring clarity in that eye, like beach glass.

—–

Light Spring (of the 12 Seasons, this Neutral Season is mostly Spring with a little Summer) is in the same boat. Although creamier and less misty blue, you would use Light Spring’s palette to paint the Fountain of Youth. How we dress, how our faces and bodies look, it’s just the light we give off. Light Spring’s is the creamy green, pink, and white light of a tree in bloom (not just one little flower, as has been suggested ; this is the whole glowing magnificent tree, radiating a clear, young, vital light).

I could suggest that you to aim to project this light when you choose what to buy, but it doesn’t help much at a mall.

Let’s call this beautiful woman Lynn. Light is not the first thing you’d say when you look at Lynn’s face or her overall apperance. She knows from a Sci\ART personal colour analysis that the Light Spring palette created the  most perfected skin she could achieve – but skin is difficult to illustrate, so we get caught talking about hair and eyes, though we know neither has a definitive place in deciding Season. This hair colour is a bit darker than her natural colour, but not by much. Lynn’s eye colour is not dark or intense, rather similar to the soft green leaves behind her. There is a great misconception that the Light Seasons are all blue-eyed blondes. Rachel addressed this topic better than anyone in her article on revising our idea of Spring and Summer.

Notice the perfection of the earrings, dress, sweater, both in style and colour. These people look younger than anyone else, for longer, a marvelous gift. But they don’t necessarily want others to think Barbie, Tinkerbell, cupcake, candy heart, Mother’s Day Cake, or anything else with a pediatric drift, when they assemble an outfit. This can be challenging with a palette that is sunny and delicate to the point of enchantment.

Light bounces everywhere, though not full on squinty light. The overall feeling is distinctly warmer than Light Summer’s, but lightness of colour is shared as the most important aspect of perfecting skin tone. Every item need not be perfect, is not in the collection below, and will not be in stores. The overall impression pulls single items into a cohesive Light Spring feeling.

Don’t get too playful. Though a coloured bag or jacket is so good on Springs, the brighter the colour, the plainer the style, at least for professional impressions.

Make big use of neutrals, and remember that they are luminous too.

The green blouse would be better with ivory than white, but the overall feeling is light. The pants with the yellow blouses are not part of the collection. Pants are very light neutral. Most khakis and chinos are too orange, heavy, and/or yellow-brown for Light Spring. Light beige pants are quite fine, but camel can look almost like furniture, bulky and solid on this airy lightness.  It just put friction into the system that doesn’t feel good. Notice in the set above that you can feel some restraint still where heat is concerned.

In response to the Light Summer Looking Serious post, a valid point was raised that I want to share. Why does the Light Summer coat look so light (from the previous post), and this suit so much darker? Is there a difference in how dark the two Light Seasons can get? Great questions.

In my head, they went to about the same level of darkness, or not enough that it would matter in stores, though Light Spring would be the lighter of the two, with the main difference in side-by-side swatches being that Light Spring is yellower and a touch clearer (less grey). That was true of the pre-2010 books I still have. When I looked at my post 2010 swatch books (no idea when in 2010 they were made, if they were old stock or new formulas), Light Spring is definitely the lighter palette of the more recent books. A sincere thanks to the woman who pointed this out.

Sci\ART analyst Maytee Garza has posted all 12 Tone palettes on her Shutterfly page, along with photos of people in each Season. It’s a gorgeous page, one you will want to bookmark. Light Summer’s value limit is darker. The Light Spring palette looks the same as my post (not a typo) 2010 books. To look at the two, Light Spring’s look a bit hazier (as in misty,rather than grey), though those are the clearer, less muted colours. My explanation: as they lose Summer’s greyness and take on more of Spring’s yellow light, they become creamy. The purer the yellow, increasing as we move into Spring, the lighter the colour. Muted means closer to grey, a Summer characteristic. If True Summer is skim milk and True Spring is real cream, Light Summer is still only about 1%, whereas Light Spring is what? half ‘n half, not as heavy as whipping cream.

Light Spring colours must be tints, with more white added to them, or that’s how it seems, though I am no colour mixing expert. There may also be a photographic factor here, since the Light Spring swatches are the clearer (less grey) ones to look at IRL, perhaps a bit like the effect of being photographed while wearing sunscreen. In thinking of how to describe the difference, overexposed came to mind.

These articles are not intended to show the colour extremes. Only the swatch books can do that. These sets are more trying to communicate an overall feeling and simulate a real shopping experience. The coat in the Light Summer post was among their mid-darkness level browns. Is the coat above too dark for Light Spring? You may feel that it certainly is. To me, it is OK, though they would not go even one degree darker. I left it there for the illustration.

Is the colour too something-not-right, better suited to an Autumn? A Soft Autumn could probably wear it, though I don’t see a lot of orange in the colour, it seems more a Spring yellow-brown on this screen.

The issue for me is whether a Light Season would wear the jacket and pants together or if the overall look would be too heavy and somber. I still think it would work with a light blouse, but some of the very  fair women may feel otherwise. Every woman will have to make a darkness adjustment within her palette, based on the darkness of her natural colouring and her own preference, how much makeup she likes, etc. The model wearing the suit is holding her own in it. The model in the photo to her left probably could as well.

How could I, I forgot handbags for the Lights?!

Interchangeable for the Light Seasons. Not too much hardware, which looks heavy. Light means light by every connotation of the word.

Light purses get dirty, I know, but I still prefer the look with this woman, clothes, and makeup.

The right column, 2nd from top, though a nice colour, may feel too clunky and heavy. May also depend on the size of the woman carrying it. Purses look good when they kind of match our body shape. Rounded with rounded, boxy with boxy, big and little with big and little.

No brown bags, which feel too weighed down and utility for Spring, especially Light Spring, even in a workplace look. I apologize to anyone with brown purses and respect, indeed welcome, your right to disagree with me as long as you tell me why so I learn something. Left column, 2nd from top, is also a bit heavy, but if something qualifies as cute, it’s probably Spring.

Middle column bottom, the blush pink may not be for the day you chair the meeting, but great for the business lunch the meeting-after-the-meeting. I believe we should find a way to wear our undertone colour every day. Others get that something is going on that their eyes are not often given.

Once again, I set prices at 100 for most items, double what I spend on anything, because beauty is not about how much money you go through.

This post is special for a few reasons.

First, I get more questions asking how this colouring looks than all the other groups.

Is this the rarest Season of them all? I think it depends where you live. I have never analyzed a True Spring, but I have seen what they look like: Wayne Gretzky. I give up a bit on female examples because they are so altered, usually for the worse, that a natural original is almost impossible to find.

Bright Spring is not really rare. It is unpredictable. This colouring always seems to look like something else. To confuse matters, the opposite is true as well, where many other Seasons can look like Bright Spring. When hair is dark, this person can resemble Dark Autumn or Dark Winter when eyes are dark. If eyes are light, the similarity to True Summer can be startling.

Secondly, this beautiful model, whom we’ll call Audrey, has brown eyes. Those are rare in the Spring and Summer groups, but where human genetics are concerned, nothing is impossible.

The Bright Seasons are those that combine Winter and Spring colouring. If Winter is stronger, the Season is called Bright Winter. If Spring influence is larger, the person contains the colours of the Bright Spring palette in their natural colouring. Both are Neutral Seasons in the Sci\ART 12 Tone system, meaning that this skin has some warmer and some cooler colours. This is important information for buying the right foundation.

Asian features often belong to people whose colouring is perfected by the Bright Seasons. Here is one of Audrey’s pre-PCA pictures.

Nothing wrong with that picture at all, but would you think of a Spring person? Maybe, but I didn’t. Bright crosses my mind when I see Asian features, but I couldn’t picture the bright coral pink lip colours on that skin tone. When you look at the PCA pictures, do you find that Audrey doesn’t even look like the same woman? I was blown away by the difference. In her most beautiful colours, her skin tone is light, bright, evenly coloured, illuminated and brilliant. Bright Spring takes their Winter influence and turns it into pure sparkle.

This illustrates what worries me about doing Personal Colour Analysis from photographs, even good ones. They just give you one static shot, but colour analysis is anything except static. It is a very dynamic process, of ever-changing drapes, colours, and better-than decisions, through many sets of drapes.  We compare and compare and compare again.

***Thank you to the wonderful Maytee Garza at Reveal Style Consultancy in New Jersey for this analysis. Maytee has shared photographs of PCA sessions with several clients on her Shutterfly page.***

During the draping, we see right away that black works pretty well, but seems too serious and hard at the same time. Something is off, not always easy to put your finger on what. In True Autumn brown, nothing happens. It just sits there. And the longer it sits, the worse things get, which happens with all wrong colours on everyone. Some Bright Springs look physically small, old, and weak in Autumn colours.

Then True Spring’s yellow goes on. Wow. The person turns yellowish, because that drape is too warm, but the eye goes from generic blue or brown to something amazing. The face becomes perfectly evenly coloured. If you could just erase the yellow, the face would already be wearing custom-coloured foundation and concealer. Ten years come off the face of older women. Everyone in the room stares speechless.

In the photo below, compare Audrey’s coloring to Maytee’s. Maytee is a Dark Winter. The clarity and lightness of Audrey’s skin compared to the much darker, muted tones of Maytee’s are so much more evident. Notice too that black works, but a small black block with a big light,bright block is spectacular.

Audrey’s descriptions are far better than mine could be. She said,

I love that it’s mostly about the skin tone in Sci/Art, but it really is about the eyes and hair too – not in the way that the eye/hair color is part of the final judgment call about a person’s season, but in the way that one can see changes in the hair and eye color too. When I wore the wrong colors, my eyes darkened and you couldn’t get the full effect of the topazy/hazel/interesting lightness (comparatively to other brownish eyes). When I wear my best colors, my eyes lighten to a shade I never even knew they could be, and even my hair changes – I notice the warmth in it, the interesting chestnut/red/orange undertones.

This is the best part. When the hair is covered, it is easier to believe what your eyes are telling you. In Audrey’s words,

The Bright drapes, both Bright Winter and Bright Spring, worked, but the Bright Winter drapes were a bit too blue/too cool, and they didn’t light me up as well as the Bright Spring drapes did. Interestingly enough, some of the Summer drapes worked on me but in general, the Summer palette greyed me and I REALLY could see it. 

So finally, it was between Warm (True Spring) or Neutral (Bright Spring).

Can you believe it – me, a dark-haired, “dark”-eyed gal (who actually has topaz-ish clear hazel eyes in the Sci/Art lighting which is a duplicate of natural lighting), was actually being considered for TRUE SPRING! I almost couldn’t believe it but funnily enough, it took a little while to figure out which worked better – warm or neutral. They both looked great but the Warm drapes yellowed me a bit. Also, between True Spring and Bright Spring, there was no contest – True Spring did not incorporate my natural darkness, which Bright Spring does.

One of the most interesting changes that we noticed aside from a greying of the skin or a dulling of the skin was the fact that my eyes darkened when I wore colors that weren’t bright/clear enough. This is also something that I noticed before this draping session, especially when trying different blush colors. When I’m not wearing the right colors, my eyes darken and you can’t get the full effect of how topaz/hazel-colored they are, and now I know that it wasn’t just my eyes playing tricks on me!

The more you’re willing to release, the bigger the prize.

I find I can see the subtleties of the colours way better on paper. On paper, you can be more detached about the colour. It’s still far enough from you to be perceived as separate from you, and only on its own merits. Once it enters your Personal Zone, all kinds of meta impressions start happening.

The hot second you try to evaluate a colour on your own face, you’ve lost objectivity. Your imagination alters your face, and everything on it. We have no idea what we look like to others. The only thing we decide when we look at a new makeup colour on our face is whether it could be consistent with how we’re used to seeing ourselves.

The Sci\ART Colours Book is outstanding for matching makeup colours, the trickiest part of working with your Season. Good thing there’s lots of help to get you started once you get your Season ID. The swatches in the Book are on white canvas. At the store, I can smear the makeup on a white page. Back home and decide, in daylight, if the colours are the same.  Any client who has done this with me during a PCA appt knows that she can look from the makeup palette we create on paper to her Colours Book, and find every swatch in her Book immediately. Her eye just goes to it, and she is right every time. This system works.

These Rimmel Stay Glossy lipglosses impressed me because of the good colour selection – or was it that I found Winter colours, usually so hard to do? So often, a line will have 3 good colours, and you stand there looking at the rest of them, thinking “I have no idea who would wear these colours.” In this line, the fairest and darkest have a choice, the most muted and clearest, and the Winter colours are actually wearable.

The gloss is supposed to last 6 hours, or 8 hours, or some big, impressive number.

Critical Thinking : the ability to discern what is probably right and what is probably wrong. A 6 hour lip gloss? You didn’t even expect that to be true. There’s no 2 hour lip gloss out there, unless you’re a mannequin, the plastic kind. Forget 6.

The product is plenty nice, and reasonably priced, whatever that means in cosmetics. Heavens, I’m being snarky today, but there is too much undeserved cosmetic raving going on out there. Every week brings a new rave. That’s how you came to have a used-it-once drawer. I’m just trying to keep the reality glasses in place so you never add one more item to that drawer. I am nice enough to say that there was nothing about the application that I didn’t like, besides the sinking ship of 6 hour expectations. This is also a nice product to apply over a lipstick, long wear or otherwise to keep it going till lunchtime without needing a mirror.

I swatch lip gloss between 2 pieces of tape to avoid having gunk all over my purse. I can spread it around and look at the nuances of the colour when I get home to daylight. I can see the colour next to other tones, because colour is all about comparison.

Once you see a colour you like on paper, and it seems to match your Book, I absolutely suggest you put it on your face. There’s more to a makeup buy decision than its colour. Also, no two women in the same Season look quite the same or will interpret their Season in the same way, or have the same comfort level with colour on the face.

I match the color analyzed swatches from the middle darkness colours, or the lighter ones for the Light Seasons. The darker swatches work fine in clothing but most light-medium complected women find them dark. The Sci\ART system is 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, because 12 is enough without being too much, but you’ll refine your position within your Season with time.

The pictures are a bit randomly organized, and seem a bit sloppy (that’s part of the reality theme), but they cover all the colours, with some opportunity to compare. In Canada, we did not have Endless Night, Unlimited Gold, or Endless Summer, unless they are here with a different name. I haven’t adjusted any settings. Photos were taken at 11AM on an overcast day, on a sheet of white paper.

True Winter : Yours Forever

Dark Winter : All Night Long

Bright Winter : Timeless Allure, Fuchsia Fever

Finding a clean red-violet that has that purple pivot that True Winter hovers around is challenging, especially in a cheaper product. I like this one.

For many darker Season women, they don’t always want a dark lip. I’ll never (or not soon) be convinced that Sandra Bullock (probably Dark Winter), Liza Minelli (True?), or Audrey Hepburn (Bright W?) look their best in browned, flesh toned lips. Dark W wears a browned deep rose as a disappearing lip (NARS Dolce Vita), but it has little impact. A very good option to nude lips for Winters, which the intensity of the person’s coloring can still dominate too easily, is a sheer lip.

I hope you can see that Dark Winter’s colour is browner. Bright W’s is lighter and clear.

As a Dark Winter,  I tried All Night Long. It’s quite similar to the Dark Winter always-in-your-purse anchor of Merle Norman Stolen Kisses.

Light Summer : All Day Seduction, Stay My Rose, Dare To Say, Eternal Flirt

True Summer : Captivate Me, Dare To Say

Soft Summer :  My Eternity, Stay My Rose, Captivate Me

With the sheerness of a gloss, several of these colours will work across categories. Your own lip colour will come through and help adapt the shade to your face.

All Day Seduction has a gold glimmer in it, it felt best for Light Summer. Soft Summer can do gold shimmer sometimes, as in MAC Plumfoolery blush, but the base colour is deeper in that blush than this light pink gloss. Soft Summers are much cooler than they are warm and not especially light.

Light Spring : Non Stop Glamour, Always Lovely,  All Day Seduction

True Spring: Here To Say? , Non Stop Glamour

Bright Spring: Fuchsia Fever, Timeless Allure, All Day Seduction

True Spring gave me some trouble. Here To Say may be one those colours that is too browned for a Spring and not browned enough for an Autumn. It is orange and yellow enough that it may work well, with just enough brown to make it more nude/flesh coloured. I try to picture it on Wayne Gretzky…not sure. I was hoping it might look like this.( I think Uma may be a Light Spring because pale lips look so good on her. True Spring does better with a shot of real color).

The beauty of a gloss is that it tempers brightness (as in Fuchsia Fever) and darkness (as Timeless Allure), allowing Bright Spring to wear both. They could also do All Day Seduction, because it’s a clean pink with a gold shimmer. Light Summer  had this colour too, because there are similarities between it and Bright Spring (both can do well in medium-darkness colours, both have a trace of Spring yellow).

So Fabulous is a slightly yellow caramel beige. It is not orange, nor is it as heavy as butterscotch sundae sauce. It is a Spring colour, perhaps a good flesh-toned lip for Light Spring, a Season that is exemplary in the various beiges of nuts and their shells.

Soft Autumn: Here To Say?

True Autumn: Immortal Charm

Dark Autumn : Everlasting Crush, Still Gorgeous

A Soft Autumn will probably find Here To Say too orange. I’m usually looking for a color like the pink in a flowerpot, and this is not it, but they do have a warm side, especially when the hair has an apricot highlight, and they do look great in nude/flesh lips, a la J.Lo. This is a line where the Autumn colours are less plentiful, while the pinks are over-represented.

Still Gorgeous could be lovely on Dark Autumn, and very natural on women of deeper complexion.

Black Diva, well, y’know. Oh, I forgot that one.