Soft Summer’s Gorgeous Colour and CEs
April 7, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 19 Comments
Many a newly identified Soft Summer figures this is it. Forever.
It’s fine and everything but so, you know, safe. That’s Soft Summer with some good building blocks, but an overall effect that’s a little too generic light grey.Where’s the excitement? Where’s the fabulosity?
Many (all?) clothes need to hang on the right body to come into their own. Soft Summer colours are pearls when they find the right skin. This post in the hope that one day, women will secretly wish to be a Soft Summer and be thrilled when their colour analysis lets them claim the palette as their own. It comes from imagining how even the most casual outfit has such elegance of suggestion and impression. Much of what was said about Romantics in the previous two posts caused me to realize that I could equally well have been describing the colour effect of the Soft Seasons. Of course, Mr. Kibbe describes this in his book, where Yang colours are vivid, dark, and matte, while Yin colours are soft, bright, and glossy.
Our subconscious is the playground between what we understand and try to control and what we can’t. It speaks in the language of colour and shape, which translate to symbol and feeling. Thought is Yang and intuition is Yin (just IMO, not research). Thought could be subdivided into linear, directed thought (more Yang) and the deliberations of abstract thought that deliver information disconnected from time and space (more Yin). Soft Summer’s colours always create very strongly in me a nebulous, shimmery sensation of being in an unreal place, a manifestation of the abstract mind, the ultimate right brain landscape. Ghosts of shapes and whispered sounds seem to move into sight just above a watery surface then fade back under to another form, like apparitions. I have to apply effort to see anything else when these colours together are in front of my eyes. I always sense an incredible balance between intellect and emotion in this person too, as if they live in that mind space where Yin and Yang are very intertwined. Imagine a Soft Summer Romantic! Wow. Now there would be gifts you’d want to tap into.
Sometimes, women try out various colours in clothes or lipstick as they try to find their own colouring among them. They’ve read to use the extremes for this test, those colours no other natural colouring, or Season, would wear as well. For Soft Summer, they find that grayed mauve lipstick and a grayed pink cardigan and take photos or ask friends and family.
Unless the former lipstick colour was crimson, it could be that folks can’t make the adjustment that fast. Especially if you still have your old hair colour, which sends every colour perception about your face and cosmetics off to the four winds.
Soft Summer may have it the hardest because they keep hearing the word grey. When you’re not sure of the degrees, there’s a tendency to over-grey. As a short rest from Kibbe Seasons, now that simply Season Polys are a snap (or almost, Bright Spring Neutral Colours still experiencing delays), here are some Soft Summers Polys enjoying my vision of a colour palette whose peaceful beauty and gracious sophistication has no equals.
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, Soft Summer describes the colours that combine to create a natural colouring that could look like Katie Holmes, Kate Middleton, or Angelina Jolie. Her basically Summer colouring mingled with a bit of Autumn’s light, so a Neutral Season. Various darkness levels, yes, but darkness level isn’t the TMIT for this group. It can slide up and down on the light/dark (Value) scale. What matters most about how they’re coloured and how they shop is that colour never gets very pure, bold, or saturated. It’s just a little hushed.
This is getting livelier.
Below, the incredible burgundy raisin of the palette, the elusive yellow, some good light to dark graduations that get a second look when done in snakeskin.
Still more colour, more saturation, more colour variety, keeping the flow by repeating versions of a colour rather than the copy colour. The scarf on the right has some olive beige, so fold it to hide that and wear it as a belt.
If music is the art of thinking with sounds, then our appearance can be the art of thinking with colours, in the shapes attuned to the music of our own geometry. I feel the new challenge coming on of creating all 13 Kibbe styles in one Season’s colours.
The outfit on the right was feeling metallic, in the cool stiff way of aluminum, but I liked it. The scarf is there to introduce the feeling of softness with folds and flowers and add many more colours in small blocks.
From Return To Your Natural Colours, the blue book near the top in the right margin, this section appears in every Season’s chapter. For you to see what lives in my imagination, it needs some illustrating.
Colour Equations
- One light to medium-dark colour + one medium dark to dark colour
- One medium-dark colour + one dark colour
- One light to fairly dark neutral colour + one light to medium-dark colour
- One light to medium-dark neutral colour + one medium to dark neutral colour + one colour in smaller area
- One light to fairly dark neutral colour + one light to fairly dark colour + one smaller colour block comprising all three colours
- Monochromatic, analogous, or gentle complementary colour combinations.
- Overall medium to medium-dark effect
You see that it never gets very light or very dark. Complementary colours appear as reds with greens or blues with oranges as the 5th from left (where the orange is a very light beige made from a base of orange, dropping its value and saturation enough). The overall feeling is more cool than warm but not fully cool. You can sense there is heat here.
It’s bluebells in a drizzling rain, a lake in the Scottish Highlands, the coastline of British Columbia, a California winery when the fog rolls in. In Photoshop, the saturation doesn’t go over 35% when I make Soft Season colours. To give you perspective, Dark Winter’s are about 75% to 90%, True Winter’s are 83% to 93%, and Bright Winter’s run over 92% and most of the time over 98%.
For that last outfit on the R, I coloured the top and bottom blocks as analogous (green and blue are beside each other on the colour wheel). I imagined a colour halfway between the two for the handbag – because any colour that you could imagine as being between two of your colour analysis swatches is also most likely in your Season too. The scarf/neck detail is Soft Summer’s orange, bringing in a complementary effect.
As always, you own the Colour Book, you own the system. All the theory has been worked out for you. You mix them anyway you want to, your appearance is still a smooth even ride that others are happy to take.
Dressing the Essence of…Khloe Kardashian
March 25, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 29 Comments
or
The Flamboyant Natural (FN) Soft Summer
Design = Colour + Line.
We look best when we wear the colours that already exist within us. We look best when we wear the lines that we are too. Round bones and muscular builds look fantastic in certain lines, not the same as those for straight bones or narrow builds. It always comes back to dressing who you are rather than seeing how close you can get to media’s stereotype.
It’s good for a woman to have an understanding of the shape of her body and face. You’ll buy different earrings, I promise you. This is Mr. Kibbe’s book, the most usable book on body lines that I know.
Sticking to your colour and line guides actually opens doors. Like good manners, limiting our options when we shop appears to expand our opportunities, for looking 99 times better just in how a jacket closes, feeling stronger and more complete, and in the control we have over many other aspects of our lives.
Paisley and Taya did Flamboyant Natural Polyvores on facebook recently. I thought I’d try, should be easier than the Dramatic True Summer that still haunts me. Soft Summer colours are so plentiful, surely I could find them in any style? When will I learn to keep quiet?
I’m a Kibbe beginner so don’t assume that what you see below is correct or Kibbe-approved.
Flamboyant Natural (far more detailed descriptions in the book)
The Person: big-boned, wide, blunt features, not lush in body or facial elements. She’s Natural with a shot of Drama.
Example: I think of Andie MacDowell with her very strongly defined bone structure. Who else? Mrs. Obama is possible in that a suit can seem too stiff and constraining on her but sometimes her proportions look more Classic and contained in shape. Maybe it’s her Winter colouring and ethnicity that give her an appearance of being larger and more exotic. Could Jessica Simpson be FN?
Angelina Jolie seems too voluptuously Yin in the face and petite in the body. Julia Roberts? Not blunt enough. We need a strong Yang presence, more masculine features, as I have in my Classic way, so not the ultra-girly version of big-boned as Mariah Carey. How about Khloe Kardashian? Using this photo, let’s pretend she’s a Soft Summer. In fact, she probably is. Scroll down this page and compare her shape and colours to her sisters’. Do you find she looks fabulous in the picture near the bottom in the blue outfit? The bag, earring, and shoes all look so good.
The Effect: wild, free, uninhibited, bold, strong. Makes me think of Dynasty meets Bohemian.
Jewelry: big, bulky, and not just artistic but extremely artistic. Here lives the drama side.
Clothes: oversized rectangle, oblong, or asymmetric. To me, that = straight sides with round edges. Must remember ‘not square’ and ‘no points’ when purse shopping. No hourglass, sharp, very straight, or delicate, all of which don’t sound like a good fit for Khloe. Also lots of separates are good (thank heavens, the shopping for top-to-toe looks for my Dramatic Classic shape is seriously hard). Will keep in mind ‘wide-loose-simple neck-sleeve-waist’ when shopping.
Accessories: this woman has a wild side and so should her stuff. She’d even be a rule-breaker and step outside the prescribed molds, wear colour a bit too saturated, wear many pieces at once putting a whole new spin on ‘unmatched’. Bold, big, simple, unique, with round edges. Makes me think of a Cossack hat, which actually could look really good on Khloe. Seems a natural fit, oddly. Every pot has a lid, ay?
It can be easier to know which colours suit which people by imagining many different colours of lipstick and hair on them. It’s always in making the comparison that we see what seems so obvious afterwards. I saw all the wonderful NYPD officers in Manhattan and thought their uniform could be my perfect Dramatic Classic outfit, epaulets, gun, hat, and all. I think of our DC women, variations on Demi Moore, and we’d all look darn good in that get-up, like Khloe in a coonskin Davey Crockett/Daniel Boone hat.
I imagine extremes for all the Kibbe types and see what feels like the best fit – not that this is how I see the woman but that she could wear these outfits and look surprisingly good and right, while everyone else would look strange.
Dramatic : Vampire Queen, Catwoman.
Soft Dramatic: extreme in a luxuriant way, whether fabric, detail, shape – the clothes Valentino designs. Sensuality above all. Nevermind how big the bow is. Or where it is. Why is there always a feeling of a tragic past or overcoming some deep adversity in this group (not unlike the ‘born for a gentler era’ of the Soft Classic)? Is it their regal yet vulnerable bearing? I guess that’s the Diva part. Often exotic looking. Cher.
Flamboyant Natural: sarong worn as long dress with huge Georgia O’Keefe flowers and loads of big colourful necklaces.
Natural: 1920s tennis dresses, or any dresses while skirts were still straight, with the loose sailor style neck, box pleats, and the big ol’ wide brim hat. Most women’s sporting outfits from back then could be good. (KB, this feels like your natural home, I could even see the turban hat with large flower on side. Google ‘dress patterns 1920s’ and you’d be set).
Soft Natural: flapper styles, clothes from J.Jill. I once thought of the Olsen twins as being here, but I’m thinking they’re straight N. This woman is more feminine, less broad and blunt in her bones. Tori Amos?
Dramatic Classic: police uniforms. Talbot’s to White House Black Market. No wonder I’ve always loved men’s shirts and ties. If anyone knows where I could buy some of those NYPD pants, please LMK.
Classic: soccer Mom, khakis, twinset, pearls, classic Timex. Also 1960s TV housewife attire. Stewardess suit. Brooks Brothers to J.Crew. LL Bean. Martha Stewart wear.
Soft Classic: Talbot’s moving to Garnet Hill. Draping, knits, curves, the traditional feminine. The outfits you see when they do the 360 on What Not To Wear.
Theatrical Romantic: skating outfits.
Romantic: Scarlett O’Hara gown, parasol, lace gloves, and veranda. Not hard to picture Mariah Carey on the tree swing. A nostalgic feeling, Mr Kibbe calls it ‘from another era’.
The three Gamines : I have no handle on this look yet. I keep seeing Fortune Teller for FG but I’m still studying. Feel free to help out.
———
Back to FN.
The problem with these oversize loose tops is that they can look like tents unless the garment is built to define the shouler line. Holding in my mind that strong horizontal element across the shoulders to give the shape and an easy sleeve let me scan clothes really fast. Do you think length of the blouse matters? Long sounds better on the women I think of, unless you’re Farrah Fawcett tiny sporty. Long jackets are better. From the photos of Khloe, various lengths seem to work. The length of her taupish jacket seems less relevant than the strong shoulder and heavier texture.
Oversize-irregular-but-stiff felt like searching for a kimono with shoulder pads and no belt, not so much a flimsy tunic. Smocks must be out, too fussy. Peasant styles are too flowy and would seem to droop in the shoulder. Hoodies with a shoulder shape would be good, with their low heavy draping and plush texture.
Wraps seem a style that flatters many bodies, but this woman could look bandaged if not mummified if they were too skintight. She needs freedom to move.
Went out on a limb with the one shoulder blouse, I think it could be great if it sticks to other guidelines. The bone size on the woman would establish the strong horizontal across the shoulder.
Learned
- Texture makes a difference. It felt important and necessary. Rough is natural.
- Jewelry- anything that most people would feel was wearing them. Look at the ring with the blue outfit. This is the flamboyant part. You can buzz through 100 Polyvore pages or store displays in 5 minutes. Belts too, looking for the opposite of shy. Also, jewelry can add a lot of texture, as the chain mail bracelet. Can do a lot of jewelry at once.
- Found no prints that really work.
- Dresses big, bold, sweeping? No finds. Dresses in general are hard because they create a continuity that can seem monochromatic in Soft Summer colours. On this person, the piece are better broken up and layered. Even, unbroken lines aren’t really found in Nature. Rough is better than resin. The blue and grey dress (not, it’s grey, not white 
) in the last Polyvore might be D, though it does feel ‘big, bold, sweeping’. The print elements and shoulders are round-edged, which, along with the pastel colours, I hoped would add enough Yin (curve) to work.
- This is one of those looks that doesn’t come together on a hanger. The right woman has to wear it. I keep thinking these images should scream “FLAMBOYANT!!!” but they don’t. Is it just the cool palette? No, I think it’s the straightness and simplicity. If he’d called it Intrepid Natural, I’d have different expectations.
- The asymmetry appears to matter a lot. Though not essential, the look works better when the left side is not the same as the right. The opposite would be true on a Classic type.
- Hard to do wild colour combinations in Soft Summer. Worked at using warm and cool versions of same hue together, going slightly outside the Season’s colours, as a slightly too warm green, and using wide variety of colours in one ensemble instead of being carefully matchy – interesting how a more natural and relaxed vibe comes across from that alone.
- Back to Intrepid Natural. A daredevil element should figure into each ensemble for this to feel right on this woman. It can’t be too safe, even if it’s just a big watch, a huge purse, some piece needs over the top in size or artistic prominence, regardless of the palette, because that’s what these people are to look at, as Carrie so smartly pointed out (Farrah’s hair and teeth).
- A crease down the front of pants is a good way of establishing vertical line. It helps make a good T effect in the ensemble grey pants/white top, lower R, 3rd collection.
- It really takes all the elements for the geometry to come together. Once I started selecting items, I had no idea where this was going. It just felt odd. Add in the jewelry, shoes, pants for tops, and I could see the end result as making sense and could then tell what needed removing. The accessories seem to be running the show but they need the right backdrop. I’m still blown away by how effective this book is but it does take patience and willingness to be wrong, like everything else. All you need to see is one photo of yourself in three different necklaces to light up your sense of why it works and get the value.
- The most important aspect of the shoes went through some shopping stages and evolved into ‘simple’. Too strappy would look as if it couldn’t hold her up. Too chunky and the picture gets bottom-heavy. Rather than just looking at Khloe, your learn more by comparing the shoes (and everything else) on the sisters. Khloe’s are good! Texture via shoes counts, as rope on a wedge heel or sole detail.
PS – Khloe, your hair is perfect. I admire your ability to dress for your body type. If you go lipstick shopping, look at Givenchy Paradise Pink. Remember to celebrate that you have more inches of completely gorgeous than most anyone else.
The Dramatic True Summer
February 20, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 49 Comments
or
David Kibbe, Where Are You Now?
Maybe you had your colours analyzed and you know you’re a True Winter. Armed with those most-flattering colours, how come it’s not coming together for you? You read about the drama of Winter and say,
“Why do they keep forgetting about me? Dramatic styles feel intimidating and say nothing about me at all. I love softness. Is my self-perception off, like it was with my colours, or is there still something missing? I’m frustrated with feeling frustrated all the time over how I look.”
Once you know the colours in your skin, your Season, it takes one trip to the mall to realize that even if you buy items colour-matched with a spectrophotometer, they don’t always look right or good. Who could argue? Your colour analyzed palette comes in many different styles. Which is yours? You can’t be great in both the swirly silky print blouse and the Hugo Boss blazer. The strong vertical stripes that work on me will do nothing for the woman who is defined by abstract, splashy florals, though our Season is the same.
I’m not talking about taste because that can be part of what got us into the trouble of not looking impacting in the first place, buying what we like or what we were told to like. A 15 year old says “I don’t want to be stuck wearing only square clothes if I have a square body. I want to wear the clothes I like. That makes me feel good.” And it looks good when you’re 15 and still searching for yourself. The style carousel very much depicts the brain storm going on inside. The whole picture fits because it is a true representation of the wearer.
We outgrow wearing the brain storm because we outgrow being the brain storm. Our self-assurance comes across in part by having settled, like the demons in the Golden Compass (in Philip Pullman’s story, our souls exist outside our bodies in the form of animals; before puberty, the animals shape-shift with our emotions and moods; after puberty they settle to a permanent species). Adults learn who they are and settle, which feels more settling to look at than a woman who is still trying out different identities (does that look like Midlife Crisis?). At this point in our lives, beauty that could happen on its own is important to find. Once processing is involved, it is as stressful to look at as hair that’s been straightened to within an inch of its life, best left to the young.
Mr. Kibbe is right. You do look better with his advice. You can be as literal or encompassing as you choose, just as you can wear some of your best colours or exclusively those. On shopping days, I (a Dramatic Classic) still wear leggings, boots, a long belted T under a shorter off shoulder sweater, not my best look. Big deal. On first impression days, it’s a jacket, the point being your best jacket isn’t mine and are you really sure you can pick out your best line, cut, and detail in any item of clothing? As many of us will figure this out alone and get it right as were able to figure out their colours without expert guidance – that is to say, very few.
I am strongly attracted to classification systems that work. This one does, whether you’re in the business of dressing yourself or others. 13 styles, or image identities, are described in detail, including all aspects of clothing, hair style and colour, and cosmetic colours. These are gathered under 13 consistent shape/line/colour umbrellas, all of which relate back to essence you’re trying to project, the same one you already project through your body’s inherent lines.
Lines communicate and our lines communicate about us. Art students do an exercise where they draw an object using the bare minimum number of lines. They do another where a model changes position every 5 seconds and the students capture her form only with a few lines till she moves again. As with colour, when two visuals don’t belong together, they push each other further in opposing directions. If the face is asymmetric, a symmetric hairstyle will have the face looking downright lopsided. Two lines, three lines, and our brains are making decisions about what’s in front of us.
Though we don’t wear shoulder pads today, I was amazed at how relevant and usable his writing still is. The styles really do create 13 very different pictures. Only you will write the book where you agree with every word, but his is so enduring because so many women still connect so strongly with it. A straight line then is a straight line today. The quantity of information for each identity is huge with little repetition between them. I typed mine on a card, laminated it, and carry it with my Colour Book. I learned long ago that I don’t know how I look to others from the front or back. What has especially fascinated me is watching women get their style right and having all this remarkable, defining geometry appear out of their face, just as colours suddenly appear in your face when you wear your own Season’s palette. Who knew that both were there all along?
Any image identity can go with any Season. While there are recurring pairs, Dramatics among Winters, Softs among Summers, Naturals among Autumns, any of the 12 types of colouring can be found within any of the styles. I know Gamine Dark Autumns. I know Dramatic True Summers. His models are a Dramatic Autumn and a Romantic Winter. Figure out each one separately first.
Celebs are tough to characterize because they’re all so thin that it hides their body type. To give you the drift, Christina Ricci seems a Soft Gamine. Mariah Carey is a Romantic. Melanie Griffith may be a Soft Natural. Ashley Judd is a Theatrical Romantic. If they shared one another’s best styles, every one would have detracted from herself. Even on their Size 4 bodies, when it’s right, it’s oh-so-right. Kathryn noticed how perfectly Dramatic Classic styles suited Rene Russo in the movie The Thomas Crown Affair. I so agree, like they were made for each other.
Shopping is just a quest to find yourself out there. The prize goes to the one who can most accurately and authentically represent the inside on the outside. That look is unbeatable by any bank account or new wave. Kibbe’s book takes a lot of reading and thinking. So much like learning your own colouring, it places us in a temporary chaos that is important and necessary. Our usual shopping structure both supports and constrains us. Like in a Primal Soup, creativity and innovation are taking place under our radar from which we pull new idea relationships. We are inclined to move away from that chaos, but it’s an important place to move towards. A lot is happening there that is good.
Today, I’d like to try my hand at being a woman whose colours and style don’t mesh so easily. We start with a Dramatic True Summer, a Season we’re used to seeing embodied in lines that are curved, flowing, watery. Maybe today’s model is the True Summer who says she wants to wear black and scarlet instead of her better palette. Maybe what she really wants and doesn’t know it, is an outlet that expresses the drama she knows herself to possess. All she can articulate is resistance and she assumes it’s to the colours.
Working with animals teaches you to listen harder. They’re all telling us what they want or need. When you miss enough diagnoses that were right in your original patient history, you learn to put your arrogance on the shelf. If the colour system isn’t working for the woman, it’s not her who’s broke. Rather than say to her “Wear your colours for a week, you’ll get used to them”, which isn’t entirely wrong advice, perhaps incomplete is a better word, I need to think about where her reservations are coming from. As we know, there are thousands of psychological levels here, but at the heart of it, what is missing for her? Perhaps, this woman needs to discover her own lines. Then, she can assemble the apparel outlines inside which she’ll paint her colours and feel good at last.
What’s a Dramatic look like? Not the luscious dumpling Romantic that the singer Adele is. Draw a Dramatic with a ruler not a compass, not just the lines of the face but straight across the shoulders and long, narrow, and straight down the body. Kib’s examples would be Joan Crawford or Jamie Lee Curtis. Adjectives like statuesque, sharp, and imposing apply the instant they walk in the room. The very beautiful Darin Wright, creator of the outstanding Season-analyzed cosmetic line eleablake, seems to me a Bright Winter Dramatic. You’d fashion her statue with a chisel and hammer from a piece of marble, not from dough, cloth, or cotton candy.
How would she dress? Far more briefly than in the book,
YES: sharp and geometric; sculpted, sleek&long, crisp; mod to heavywt fabric; bold, sweeping, clean, angular (plunging V, thin turtleneck, mandarin, halter necks); mid-thigh jackets; coat dress, sharp shoulders, narrow no-waist; colours as ensembles, monochromatics or neutrals or pastels; prints Picasso, bold; jewelry thin, sharp, asymmetric.
NO: round, swirled, draped, broken or horizontal lines; sheer, clingy, rough; frills, ruffles, gathers; shapeless necks; flouncy, nipped waist, fussy buttons, shapeless or boxy; heavy-chunky.
How do you do sharp geometry in a cool and soft colour selection in every single item for everyday life?
Dramatic True Summer by christinems featuring high heels
It was surprisingly mind-expanding (and tiring) to have to get into another headspace. I pretended Darin was looking over my shoulder – “Girl, I’d no more wear a shell, matching cardi, and pearls, I’d look like my Grampa!!!!!!!!!!! Someone get me a cold compress and a glass of wine, look what she’s doing to me!!!!!!!!!” It is most interesting what our eye doesn’t see when we’d swear we looked at every item on the Polyvore screen. Through Darin’s eyes, I saw items I would have never registered.
I thought about the word ‘modern’. No particular sense of humor as in not funky or groovy. Not trendy, which has no strength. Modern became clean&futuristic, very much a Winter association in my head up till now.
I thought about what ‘bold’ means. Not sassy, one of the modern versions of bold, which can look tasteless and juvenile and for this category. Keeping boldness of style a separate entity than boldness of colour mattered since True Summer colours don’t come across boldly and I was trying to keep the number of colours controlled. Sometimes, I used an accessory, an unusual colour, or a contrast level to bring up the boldness of an entire ensemble.
Drama while keeping the bling down meant rediscovering how to convey drama through line instead of Dollar Store sparkle or cleavage. Every single item had to convey continuous vertical line and/or extreme angularity and/or unique geometry. Only a few items had more than one of these at a time, very hard to find in this palette. When I look at the Polyvore, it seems too conservative. If the clothes were in Bright Winter colours, they’d jump off the page more, but on a True Summer, she’d become a ghost.
I got a funny feeling of homesickness out of nowhere. I really had to shut myself off and be Darin. Like playing that Rush Hour Traffic Jam puzzle, I had to be very plastic about moving colour and style around one another. It’s a brilliant exercise. By the end, I couldn’t even stand a round watch face, or even a square one.
And I shall never complain about trying to find Dramatic Classic clothes in Dark Winter colours again. Try to put a Polyvore together, like watches for all 12 Seasons or all 13 Kibbes. You really have to get out of your own head, but when you come back, your own head is lot clearer. By deciding why an item is wrong for a Season or style, you learn more than by deciding why it’s right or going on the “I just like it, that’s all.” instinct.
Next is the Romantic Soft Autumn. Make a Polyvore outfit of any type of Romantic Autumn if you have time and send me the link. I’ll post it along with mine.
Cool Season Makeup Palettes
January 26, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 39 Comments
Eyeshadow is the one cosmetic product that I find can be matched to the Colour Books without smearing it out on paper or on your face. How much eyeshadow can you really apply to your eyelid in one shopping session, let alone truly know if it suits you? Impossible. This is a product worth learning to judge from the pan.
Like every other aspect of choosing your most beautiful colours, recognizing your best eye makeup depends in large part on recognizing everyone else’s too, at least in a general sense.
Tricia Bratley is a (trust me) beautiful (shockingly so and I’m going to prove it in the next post) Bright Winter. She lives on the Wirral Peninsula in the NW U.K. And she loves makeup, all makeup, not just her own Season’s, in which she is most accomplished. Tricia assembled the palettes you see below, took the photos, and so graciously sent them to me to share with you.
This series sets Summer and Winter neutral (as in grays and taupes) eyeshadows, colour eyeshadows, and blushers, adjacent. Within each palette of eyeshadows, you may find options for the three Seasons within each True Season, but Tricia focussed primarily on the True Summer and True Winter when she organized these collections.
These palettes consist of MAC colours. If you have any questions about specific pans, please post them in the Comments and Tricia will come in and answer.
Neutral Eyeshadows
Summer
Summer neutral eyeshadows.
Winter
Winter neutral eyeshadows.
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Coloured Eyeshadows
Summer
Summer colour eyeshadows.
Winter
Winter colour eyeshadows.
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Blush
Summer
Summer's blush.
Winter
Winter's blush.
These photos are so good that there is nothing I can add. Enormous thanks to Tricia for her work and her generosity
Never fear, the True warm Seasons are next.
Light Summer CE And Being Not Pale
January 16, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 17 Comments
Keep in your mind who we’re putting these colours on. Next to a cross-section of the population, this person is pale. But let’s call it light, since pallor implies ill health. Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep, they will be overall lighter than most people you put beside them. Their darkest colour never gets very dark.
The Light Summer person is light to look at standing in front of a black wall. But not always. In their natural beige brown hair and eyebrow colour, they look more medium till you start putting colour next to or on their skin. Then you notice that the lightest blusher that would be invisible on most women has a huge effect. To balance and not overtake, their closet is light. Light needn’t mean a bowl of dinner mints. How does a rainbow dress to look interesting and impacting? First, see yourself through others’ eyes.
Photo: mvasquez13
Nobody complains about looking at rainbows. They feel fresh, hopeful, soothing, and happy. Let yourself be who you are and get media perceptions about power out of your way. The clothing, weight loss, anti-aging, personal growth, and cosmetic industries can get you to buy more stuff if they can convince you there’s something wrong with you. It’s cheaper for them to make clone colours. Please believe me, there is nothing wrong with you. In your light colours, you are breathtaking. The sun shines out through the sky and water of your eye colour. That is such a special magic and few are capable of it.
I had a very beautiful, natural, easy Light Summer client. She arrived quite certain that she was a Winter and was going though the motions of a PCA just to confirm it (and come to find out, she had recently bought light blue and peach Capris just because.) Part of her Winter conviction came from seeing her facial structure as strong or intense, which it was, more in keeping with her ideas about Winter. When I think of Spring Summer blends, fragile doesn’t describe their bone structure – or anybody’s bone structure, for that matter. Meryl Streep (whom she greatly resembled), Sharon Stone, Joni Mitchell, Carmindy, Ivanka Trump (perhaps a stronger Spring), these faces express far more than daintiness. You’ll see many fine-boned faces among all Seasons. Media’s convenient typecast of power as dark, intense, and masculine is very far indeed from what power really is. It’s important to distinguish power from intimidation, the cheapest form of power. And like all things cheap, it is neither sustainable or enduring.
Light Summer is a Summer above all. She likes precision and dislikes clutter. Like True Summer, her personality is considerate, and to a lesser degree, can work the details all day and all night, and be uncompromising about getting them right. She is not really stubborn, just striving towards an idyllic vision that’s almost romantic, as in Utopian.
We often think of ‘feminine’ for True Summer, all lace and flounce, but that’s not quite the right adjective. Womanly is better. Moon goddess. Fertile (her version of earthy), giving, patient, complete (hence the circle symbol). She can be very sentimental though the first interaction may be quite formal. Relationships, wisdom, and intuition are nearer her heart than raw intellect, which on its own strikes her as unkind, one-dimensional, and too boringly linear, logical, and external.
Spring’s arrival brings the potential for a little more giddiness. She’s more cooperative, happy in the middle ground, and so easy to get along with. She loves a laugh and takes life less seriously. The sun is coming out. She has humour, self-directed humour, the single best entry ticket to self-knowledge. She doesn’t get all the way to the stronger Springs’ “If life’s not fun, what’s the point?” but she does think “Why can’t everyone just lighten up and get along? Why did God even make Dark Winters? They’re missing all the good stuff.”
Photo: Domba
She embodies the simplicity of just being pretty. A little cute but mostly pretty. A face like a doll. Christina Applegate. Light Summer is not tough or rugged, it’s tender. Not stern, it’s lenient. Not funky, but still informal. Life can get so complicated, but not here. This is the afternoon off, the nowhere-to-be day, the tell-your-troubles-to person.
Light Spring is creamy, Soft Summer is foggy, True Summer is cool and misty, Light Summer is sunny and barely misty (or do I mean myst?), like a Once Upon A Time land. The rainbow when the sun comes out. Flower petal showers. Trees always in leaf. The lightest dusting of sugar sprinkled all over, a Cotton Candyland (Light Spring is the Jellybean Candyland).
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Polyvore
She wears the light taupe shoe well because her hair is light taupe. On this woman, it actually does elongate the leg.
She may carry a green purse and she’d probably even go about in green pants. Light, fresh, and fun.
Warmth? Cashmere. It comes in so many colours. Likewise, fleece. It floats.
Wash those white pants with your darks to soften the white a bit.
A serious colour? Add a girlie colour.
A lot of light? Add a darker colour in a small area. Sunglasses count. Cool frame, cool lens, light hardware.
The light colours aren’t that light. Winter’s are even lighter because they’re not pastels. Make big use of your medium range of colours to move away from the pale feeling.
Squint to blur the details and you see dappled light, the perfect light on Light Summer.
Could drift away like a thistle on a breeze.
The dress on the left, too dark? Maybe so slightly. Reminded me of bunches of grapes. Good colour flow. Wear a light shrug or Pashmina and a fun shoe. Carry a light purse. Impact without consequences.
Turquoise ruffled blouse too saturated? Maybe. Don’t care. Love the colour on this person and I see it on them just fine (rather than not seeing them in a too-much colour).
Those blue capris, that’s darker and more saturated than your navy. The pants will be what people see so the area will get bigger by proportion. The V-neck top to the right of the yellow dress is better. But, they work well enough. If you look at the whole picture, they don’t jump out.
The fun juicy accessory. Why not? So people see your Miu Miu pink coral clutch first (in the outfit along the R side.) So what. Wear your matching lipstick and carpe diem. Light Summer has that Spring fun element. True Spring is the Hawaiian luau. The luscious scent of the lei, the side to side sway of the hula dance, all about relaxed mood, hips, deliciousness, and fun. Light Summer might not get that unfastened but she’s Spring enough for the hair to come down.
I love when Neutral Seasons (those groups of natural colouring whose inborn pigments are neither 100% cool or 100% warm, but have in-between colouring on the heat scale) demonstrate both Seasons they’re composed of. Wearing cooler and warmer versions of their colours together, as a cool pink lipstick and a light gold lip gloss, is an example. It gives them dimensionality. I also love when they wear both esthetics together. A Soft Summer looks superb in lace (Summer grace) and denim (Autumn strength). A Soft Autumn is beautiful in a flowing scarf (Summer water/flow) and cowboy boots (Autumn leather/desert).
Light Summer’s elements are Summer (graceful, water, feminine) and Spring (sun, movement, sport, play). I love ballet effects (grace and sport) as wrap tops and skirts, ballet flats, scoop necks like leotards, or body-fitting fabric in pretty colours. I love prints a lot, that can show the dewdrops feeling and depict motion with the body’s movements. Outdoor combinations that repeat water and sun, as any kind of sun hat, floppy to baseball to gardening, are great. Small sparkly stones near or on another colour are beautiful, raindrops on roses, as beading on a cardi, better in a wave, or a necklace against a blouse, or an earring near a rose lip.
I was asked how a True Spring expresses two energetic states at once. I haven’t come up with anything because there is only the one energy. That seeming rivalry isn’t there. But there are many ways of depicting the sun and on a True Spring, there is almost no such thing as clutter. A yellow or turquoise Swatch, several beaded bracelets, a necklace of turquoise beads and another of different length with a cluster of small gold charms, all three at once, it just looks better and better. Keep sunshine and colour near the eyes at all times.
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In the each Season chapter of the book, there’s section called Colour Equations. To help you see what was in my head when I put those together, and I appreciate that illustrating them is needed, I’ve pasted that section below:
Colour Equations
One light, medium, or dark neutral colour + one light colour or one medium colour
One light to medium-dark neutral colour + one light colour + one medium colour
Two light to medium neutral colours + one other colour as a smaller block
More restrained use of complements as gentler colours or smaller areas
Use of analogous colour combinations, moving towards True Summer’s monochromatic designs
Overall light to medium darkness effect
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I was seeing this:
Is it pale? Well, compared to what? Dusk? Yes. All the black in the stores? Sure. The person we’re putting it on? No.
Does it still feel too light? Add a darker block and keep it smaller. People will see it.
There’s a fair bit of colour variation but still continuity between colours, because that’s what this person looks like. Mixing up the colours even more than what’s shown looks really good. Keep a balance. The more colourful the look, the gentler the colours should be. This isn’t something to worry about if you have a Colour Book of swatches, the gentleness levels are built in.
My thanks to Natalie who pointed me to Alima Pure’s line of cosmetics. The eyeshadow and foundation selections are beautiful, with many choices for Neutral Seasons. Under Products, choose your category and when the page opens, click View Swatches. You’ll see the whole panel open up for comparisons with colour accuracy that appears very good. I can’t recommend particular colours, having never tested them, but if you have experience with this line, please do leave a comment.
If we’re dressing to repeat how we already look (and we are because it feels good to the viewer), the overall effect shouldn’t get darker than medium on a white to black scale. Big light blocks can look bridal or sterile, not right on a fun-in-a-quiet way, optimistic, and cheerful person. Getting too saturated or busy with colour means her clothes compete with her and win. If colours get too dark, her skin will be drained and grey (and it will follow, who needs grayer teeth?) Remember too that viewers have a lot more colours to process besides your clothes – there’s hair, makeup, eyes, and that big block of skin – that aren’t in the graphic above. They will thank you if everything matches.
The Dance
How could I forget the music? From classical ballet origins in True Summer and then loosened up when Spring appeared. Spring brings magic and mysticism, freedom and imagination.
Proving that anybody can make fire:
Too hot for Light Summer? Maybe that’s Light Spring’s and we need something dreamier? A reader felt a connection with this very beautiful harp music.
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.
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.
Soft Summer Landscapes
November 10, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 58 Comments
Such a pleasant and sensible personality. I adore these people. Like any relationship, those who live with them may have plenty to deal with, but true to Summer’s politeness, the rest of us have it easy. There is a great equilibrium in this person, equal opportunity analytical and emotional processors and completely adaptable to your personal preference.
Autumn’s determination is coming on board. Settled by Summer’s consideration for others, it feels more like stability. Ask a Winter what they think. Ask a Summer how they feel. This person gladly answers to both, easily exploring both worlds, allowing them to flow in and out of one another, calm and safe, without the need to erect or protect boundaries between them. This is Part 1 of why we analyze so many of them.
The darkest of the Summers, Soft Summer does not look like a light person. They look like Kate Middleton and Angelina Jolie, like Christy Turlington and Fergie. Their very mediumness makes it strangely easy to mistakenly place them in almost any Season. And that’s Part 2.
This is the group that feels dusky to me. Many appear to have a natural tan year round. Dark Winter is often called dusky but they have too much hardness and clarity for that. Think of Demi Moore, Cindy Crawford, Hilary Swank, or Sally Field compared to Ellen Pompeo where the hair to skin to eyes transitions are incredibly gradual or not even there.
Telegraph Interview by Steve Marsi at TV Fanatic
How The World Feels
So very comfortable. Not mild exactly, that feeling is more in some of Light Spring’s colours. Just easy to be with. The Soft Seasons are surely the least demanding. These are the days when the heat and humidity of summer have passed recently enough to still feel them. Not too hot or too cold, too squinty light or too dark. The air is cool enough that clothes don’t stick and faces don’t shine. Our limbs move through downy silky air. Being outdoors is the relief it was intended to be. The easing that comes with simply being in our Nature home is denied in our lifestyle. Yet, the restoration is undeniable when we make time for it. We come from earth and are balanced and completed by intimacy with it. In Soft Summer, Nature is the shelter, support, and contentment of the bed of moss under the canopy of pine branches.
>> in clothing, the translation is in maintaining the mediumness; no piece should demand attention over any other, not eyeliner, not jewelry, not lipstick, not shoes. If you wear a light or a dark, balance it with a medium.
The mediumness on the heat scale (75% cool/25% warm) is factored into the personal colour swatches automatically. A no brainer for you. The genius of Kathryn Kalisz was to create these 8 Neutral Seasons with 60 specific and exclusive colours that are unrepeated in the other Seasons and harmonize exactly within each Season. You have to see these colour collections to appreciate how singular and extraordinary the palettes are and how special this system of PCA becomes as a result. In this and other aspects, it is unique, correct, and quite magnificent.
The clarity level isn’t medium, it’s way low. That doesn’t mean colourless, look at the photos and Polyvore below, it just means not as colourful as the others. When life assaults our senses from every angle to get noticed, what we feel here is gratitude and a place to relax. The choice of where we direct our attention is ours for a change. In a cloud, edges are shadowy, they vanish and reappear continuously. Lines can wave, surfaces can shimmer.
>> in a composition, an outfit, there’s an undercurrent of grey that unites the elements and provides the visual continuity. Prints blur from a distance like tricks of the light. No big transitions between colour elements exist so objects blend into one another so gradually, as hallucinations, being inside a dream, a watercolour mirage.
Peaceful because sounds are muffled, the air is velvety, and intrusive presence is always veiled. Secluded tranquility enfolds us as we are lulled into believing that the only company is the one we choose.
Relief in the stillness that cushions and absorbs. Like Soft Autumn, Soft Summer’s colours are all giving and no taking
>> in clothes and makeup, colour pops don’t belong here. Stay inside the palette and keep colour subliminally gradual. Soft Summer is never explicit.
See the deer? In a B&W photo, you’d miss it. The precise edges of Ellen Pompeo’s features would be very hard to identify too.
Notice the tree trunk colour, a good blued grey. There are some great pinks and greens here to provide the feeling of gentled strength. I know one reader at least will be thankful that the quantity of pink in this photo is so small because she couldn’t bear to wear more than this. She is very much a Soft Summer in her feelings about how pink she is, a colour many have the most trouble identifying with, far more so than True Summer, while Light Summer has no trouble at all.
Colour Scales
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, the Soft Summer comprises those whose natural colouring is
Quieted by the fog gray that settles over the True Summer swatches – this is the Most Important Thing. The Season is not muted, it’s MUTED+cool. Gotta see the grey, as opposed to True Summer where it’s COOL + muted. Look at the pictures until you can be consciously aware of the greying that flows through each element, joining it to every other as if by a barely visible web. Like the forest in the movie Avatar, every piece is connected by a grey neural net in our perception.
Cooler than warm and a little warmer than True Summer, but it doesn’t feel like warmth yet. It feels like dull. In How The 5 Springs Add Yellow, you saw that the heat isn’t that hot yet. What Autumn adds to the palettes it influences is really gold, but there’s so little of it still that the effect is more to cloak some brightness (add Autumn gold-orange to Summer blue and you get gray by the effect of complementary colour, right?)
Medium darkness, no black or white. They are jarring. You saw this photo in Soft Summer’s Best Hair Color. If you had to pick a highlight, would yellow really be the one that feels best? And that’s a soft yellow. Bleach that up a few notches and add a chemical glint and the result would not fall from the beautiful tree. By comparison, the taupe feels good. It feels like it belongs (because it does).
Soft Summer Clothing
If anyone ever needed proof that accomplished Season beauty is not about going out and buying anything made in your colours, Polyvore would have to be it. Pick a colour and look at the selection. Even if you ignore the utterly silly and the stuff a 5’11″, Size 2, 20-year old couldn’t look good in, there’s still too much that makes no sense. The image below is set up as little Soft Summer vignettes.
Other than a few greiges, there is a fair bit of colour. It happens to be a bit faded compared to the other Seasons.We’re not sure if it’s the lighting, but it feels as though less colour is really light than we expect for Summer. On a sunny day, some of the colours might be quite light, but not today. Like a rainy day, there is a sense of glad acceptance, of productivity, of dressing for a charity lunch at the museum or an afternoon symphony. I’m pretty sure she gets there in a brushed silver Camry.
There needs to be darkness somewhere, not a lot, just a touch. Very light isn’t what she looks like. Isn’t natural hair colour the best? If ever a Season should emanate cool un-complication, it is this one. The hair is too often called mousy and interfered with.
Photo: Splash News.
We’re trying to continue the flow between how you look and what you add to yourself. If you’re lighter, you’ll wear an overall lighter effect than a darker woman would. If your hair is dark and skin light, you’ll wear more lights with darks and not strive to incorporate a medium block. The overall palette remains the same, the one that made your skin the most perfect, that made you look youngest. In women over 30, I could almost do the whole analysis just across the eye band (the client and I divide her face into three horizontal bands when we evaluate the changing drapes), so much are age effects evident in wrong colour. We all lose objectivity within 4 feet of a mirror. Try taking some photos or video of yourself to see how widely separated your light/dark span appears to others. It’s better.
Reckoning the amount of warmth is hardish. See that red cardigan center just south of middle? See how it’s not really blued? It’s more fogged? Take berries, almost any sort, and fog them. Not sugar dusted, rather dust dusted, the colour of the object still coming through. Look for the layer of good old house dust.
Less eyelet and lace than True Summer, though she can wear bits of both, and a little more bulk. Still Summer sheer but a bit straighter though not yet sturdy. Still quite ladylike, though she doesn’t really emphasize that part of herself. Pearls and cameos certainly work, in the rosy, fleshy browns of the inside of red grapes. She is not heavy in texture. She does tasteful ruffle cascades beautifully. Some women are very feminine, others feel conspicuous in girlishness and want to get back to their hoodie and yoga pants or cargo shorts. She will almost always take the time to put in earrings.
Her song, being around her, can feel like this (sorry, couldn’t embed it). That slowed-down, soothing way she moves, the softness of the way she moves her mouth and the sounds she makes, those are very characteristic of Soft Seasons. Ever heard Jennifer Aniston interviewed? Lots of soft oo and mm sounds. Angelina Jolie is similar. She’s quiet, controlled, unhurried, loving but forthright. She is more reserved than Spring spunky. She’s exactly halfway between emotional and analytical.
More colours apart than True Summer, ie: less monochromatic. Not all over the map but introducing some variety absolutely works. The combinations in this Season are particularly amazing to me. Maybe they just sound amazing. Hold these colours together in your head till you see them clearly: antique turquoise with grey pearl ; dove grey and cocoa rose; sage and stormcloud blue ; pewter and softest rose. Feels good, doesn’t it? Always softness with strength. The two, together at once, in colour, texture, and design, are the very heart of Soft Summer.
She is Vivianne and Nimue, ruling priestess, Lady of the Lake, loving and seducing Merlin, and granting Arthur Excalibur. She is a moon goddess and the caretaker of Arthur’s dead body on its journey to Avalon. A Camry?? What am I talking about? She lives in a land of chivalrous knights and drifting mists. She drives a Phantom Silver Ghost, of course.
The taupes are tremendous and there are many. In everything from eyeliner to shoes, this is a neutral to be worn and worn. Entire outfits can be based on light dark variations, since any Summer does well in monochromatics.
People ask about maintaining best contrast in their Season. You know, the Colour Book does the thinking for you. If your best look is low contrast as here, the palette won’t give you black, white, or any extremes that are are outside your range in the first place. You’d have trouble setting up max contrast in Soft Summer if you tried. You do want colours to flow easily. That means that you can wear your darkest and your lightest, sure, but insert a medium darkness element to bridge the two ends and bring them closer.
Soft Summer fabric can be matte. The makeup should be. With artificial frosting, this complexion ends up going more muted (read, greyer) by comparions while the frost look hard and glittery. Fabric is also gorgeous with a soft sheen, lustrous like the inside of an oyster and the surface of the pearl within. Some gleam on the lips repeats this just right. As Autumn arrives, gently textured textile, like a light boucle works well, so a little more weave, a little more grain.
The greens are completely magically beautiful. For any Autumn, your teals are transformative, workhorses of your wardrobe. The greener colours can be underdone once Soft Summer is able to spot her teals. That light lustrous shirt, I love it a lot.
Seasonal Colour Analysis Makeup Colours
Kidney purple was a description I loved from a reader regarding the excellence of Dior Addict lipstick Londres. We have some brilliant shoppers, experts in their colours, among our readers. If they’d add their favorite cosmetic colours to the Comments, many women will be grateful, I as well. I would try NARS Tokyo Duo eyeshadow. MAC Syrup lipstick and eyeshadows MAC Shale, Yogurt, Aria are good. Their Malt is a great eyeshadow to reduce frost and saturation in other eyeshadows you may own. Lips? Clinique Voluptuous Violet, Lauder Soft Amethyst, Bobbi Brown Rose Petal, Cover Girl Honey Plum Glow, could all be good. The great red lip with a little more depth for evening? You might look at Mercier Dry Rose.
We’re after believable beauty, not the kind that obviously came from a bottle. Attention getting elements are not believable here. Whispered suggestions, uncertainty about what you heard and thought you heard, Soft Summer colours and shapes move in and out of your perception like ghosts of their original form.
There is no point in reading someone else’s lines when it’s so much easier and more real to play your own part. Heidi described it brilliantly as dialing in the tuning band on a radio to find your own frequency. Stay close to who you are and far from who they want (or tell) you to be.
True Summer Polyvore
November 2, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 9 Comments
To fill out the Dress For Your Landscape: True Summer, we had a request for a Polyvore. You know I can never just show a picture. There has to be words. And then too many words keep happening.
True Summer is particular. There are no scratches or smudges on her glasses. She keeps special cloths and fluids at home and office and purse and car. And watch her clean them or take off her nail polish. Like she’s in her own private hell. If Winter wants control, True Summer wants precision.
She’s helpful and tailored but not excessive, like a flight attendant. At all times, gun to her head, she is well behaved and ready to negotiate. In one word, and I know I’ll take some heat, the word I hold in my head when I search is ladylike. There it is, the word we all love to hate. 50% of readers would swear I just said prissy.
Not prissy, prude, prim, proper, whatever. OK, maybe a little bit proper. Therefore she has personal restraint enough for all for us. Etiquette does make the world a better place and if everyone had more of it, oh, how good that would be. For this woman, a tub of Haagen-Daz really does have 4 servings.
This is a challenging clothing style to find in our Lady Gaga world. Ballet flats are too sweet. This woman isn’t that. She takes life pretty seriously, not as competition but as a force for good. She won’t have the bag in the shape of a frog and probably not a pink or yellow one either.
True Summer is least harmonized by menswear influences. This is a rounded body with many curved lines that glides when it walks. Boxiness, straight lines, rigid designs, they are not nearly as good as swirls. I think this is where the constant searching and feeling of unrest stems from that women have about shopping. The clothing industry has all these gaps it could fill instead of making more of the same. Women know what’s out there isn’t right and can’t quite put their finger on why.
I tried to think in terms of outfits so there are groups within groups here.
True Summer sets by christinems featuring strappy sandals
Colours are a little muted. White white jeans will positively glisten next to the rest of the colours. They appear aggressive on a part of our body where that can send the wrong message unless that’s what you’re trying to do. Jeans in the very colour and texture of chalk would be perfect. No heat, no shine. Part of what holds the whole picture together is that little bit of greyness that hovers over it. No greyness and the item won’t fit under the umbrella so it sticks out there, getting wet, which looks neither strong or attractive. Pretend you can’t see the orange purse.
Some darkness is necessary. This person is usually quite medium in darkness, but some seem quite dark. The odd one has white blond hair, quite an effect next to the navy blue eyes, but there the eyes hold the dark.
Green is underdone because it’s hard to find. There are several. The prototype is clover, blued and a very smidgen dusted. Still a lot of colour. You know that background feeling of a grey fluff round the outer edges of a clover leaf? That’s very much the essence of True Summer, that gentle blurring of the overall effect. The moon is like that, a very effective grey- white glow on this Season.
I won’t say too much. Ask if you wonder what I was thinking.
3 Great Colours On The 12 Seasons
October 8, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 53 Comments
These are the colours that my eyes like to look at best on the 12 groups of natural colouring, what we call Seasons in personal colour analysis. The serviceable greys and browns evoke less reaction, but they’re the scaffold the colours hang from. They matter a lot, though the colours below might be more interesting to look at. They seem to translate the meaning of the person into a new language form, like you suddenly see them in three full dimensions, almost extending beyond the boundaries of their skin.
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
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