There is a lot more to intensifying eye color than eye makeup.

Clothes

Never underestimate the power of color analyzed clothes colours to amplify eye color. This alone will do more than makeup on anyone. It’s a way bigger block. How much color can you create with a skinny line of liner or a tiny eyelid’s worth of shadow?

I’ll emphasize that it is not only your same-as-eye color clothes that charge up eye color, though those might work best. It’s all the colors in your Personal Colour swatches. Each one will clear the white of the eye, just as it clears the skin. Your pinks, greens, and grays should all intensify eye color.

Brows and Blush

Colour Analysis will bring attention to your eyes like never before, even if you don’t wear makeup. Groom your brows, have them beautifully shaped, and pencil in the thin spots. Think of eyebrows as the picture frames for the eyes. They matter.

Once many women get the right shade of blush, their first comment is most often “It brings out my eyes.” Absolutely it does, instantly and strongly. Look for that effect to happen when you buy blush.

When Good Color Goes Bad

You know I don’t care for purple, green, and blue on eyes if the viewer can perceive the color. I don’t buy that it intensifies eye color. It just looks playful (at least where I live) and it’s usually all people can see. You surrender too much power, not a price I want to pay for beauty.

Eyeshadow Palettes for Eye Colour

Think twice about investing in palettes made for certain eye colours. Have you ever seen them work?Have you ever said to a woman “your eyeshadow makes your eyes look so much greener” and really meant it?

Why don’t they work? Because there is no universal formula. There are 15 greens in a green eye, it’s too confusing to be able to pick out the core ones. Also, any skin can have any eye color or combination.  If the eyeshadows are made for the green-eye cool-skin woman, then it dulls the skin of the warm-skinned woman. This is the reincarnation of the same silver bullet  we’ve dodged before as “the lip colour that suit every skin tone”.

Off the soapbox, now.

Using the right browns and greys,

And understanding that not everyone can do everything,

And that without a Color Analysis, cosmetic color browns and greys are the hardest of all colours to understand by a long shot,

It’s about repeats and complements and contrasts.

This is 12 Seasonal Color Analysis. There are 3 Summer Seasons, the True, the Soft (blends an Autumn trace), and the Light (a dab of Spring).

True Summer

True Summer eyes look best to me when they are gazing out of a misty pool of cool greys. Soft greys, not sharp greys.

1. Soft navy eyeliner, not blackened sapphire.  True Summer often has very deep blues in the eye that can be repeated.
2. Dark denim eyeliner repeats the overall color and darkness level of the eye.  Annabelle’s Blue Grey is one of the best I know for True Summer.
3. Cool grey or blue grey eyeshadow repeats the True Summer’s skin’s undertone. Mauve-grey can work, but many Summers have pink in the eyelid rims, and we don’t want to repeat that and make they eye look bloodshot.
4. The contrast of a cool blue eye with a warm brown shadow is stunning, so the magazines tell us. Warm brown shadow on the True Summer skin tone is mud. There is no heat in this skin. You can’t fake it. Choose your right, rosy browns since brown is approximately blue’s complement. Sally Beauty Chocolate Truffle Trio is good.

———-

Soft Summer

These eyes look best when they’re gazing out of a misty pool of…mist. Like they’re surrounded by fog, a pale neutral tan-brown. No hard edges, everything quiet, blurred, and diffused.

1. Repeat the tan brown in the eye with eyeliner.

The eyeliner is the bodice color. This is odd, but the Canadian Superstores carry a line of clothes/makeup called Joe Fresh. Their Twist Up Eyeliner pencil in Charcoal is the right one.

Your medium and dark eyeshadows are all contained in this dress (linked to Jones New York, but no longer available).

Paula’s Choice, the one and only skin care company I place  my full trust in, was making an eyeshadow called Granite awhile back. It was custom-colored for this skin. They were making the best colored, best matte, best priced eyeshadows around, but not many people knew it, I guess. A certain direction as to who should use what…

2. That tan brown can be repeated again in the highlight colour in the hair. Lots of bleachy blonde highlights do not work, they look like grey stripes, like a strange intended aging effect. The right highlight is browned down. All the Autumns can repeat hair color and eye color. This is beautiful, real, natural hair for a Soft Summer, on Jennifer Aniston. They often get her too blonde and her eyes fade immediately.

3. Any contrasts? The whole concept of the Season is low contrast, so you have to be exceptionally subtle with all makeup. Neutral Seasons have a little heat in their skin, and cooler and warmer choices in their palette. We’re still mostly cool here though, still muddy in warm brown colors. The skin looks heavy and the heat of warm brown in the eyeshadow can yellow the white of the eye in a subliminal way, looking unhealthy. There is no contrast I know, not light/dark, warm/cool, or hi/lo saturation.

4. Any complements? I’m often asked if orange-toned eyeshadows work on blue eyes, or purple tones on green eyes, etc. This is usually a blue eye, sometimes surprisingly pale, or a blue-green eye, where the eye color becomes very strong in pine green clothing. The orange-toned brown eyeshadow for the blue eye is deadly. That green eye could be accentuated with a dusty plum shadow, but it’s soft.  The viewer should not see purpleness.

———-

Light Summer

These are the eyes that get more makeup piled on, hoping to make them “pop”. Either that, or there’s the hope that a dark line will look good against the light eye color. That’s altogether too much hope. The eye can’t balance it, the end result being to close in the eye. Once again, all we see is makeup.

This is a Light Summer eye below. Black mascara has no place here. You could barely find any colours that are even medium in darkness. Gentle light colors are key.  Airy and fresh is what will look  healthy and young.

In the middle swatch, Photoshop extracted the grey shade from the middle of the iris around the 4 o’clock position. The lower one is the colour of the eyeshadow I like to apply after an analysis (Shu Uemura M Beige 815, I believe; why get specific, it’s no longer available; Paula’s Choice did a color called Moonlit, also quite perfect, also unavailable). Both swatches are very close to the Personal Colours palette.

1. Eyeshadows are mostly gray, not brown. Use very light colors because the eye color is very easily overwhelmed.
2. Repeats ? None I can think of in makeup. Some people have a much stronger turquoise in the eye and can repeat it in clothing.
3. Complements? Not in eyeshadow. However, since there is heat in the skin, it can support some bronzer believably, especially as Spring’s contribution is sunshine and the outdoors. A light application of a peach-gold will bring out the eyes without looking artificial. Remember, the best beauty looks like it could have happened by itself. I like Cover f/x Bronzer f/x in Gold. Also, wearing your mauve and purples in clothing will bring out the pale yellow sunlight you may have in the eye, which is pretty.
4. Contrast. None I can think of. The whole Season’s concept is “not dark”.

Don’ts

Not doing the things that detract from eye color is important too.

1. Avoid yellow in the hair unless Nature gave it to you. Your most delicate of all skin will go red or yellow. Your eye will dull and gray out when the white of the eye goes yellow. Your highlight is just on the neutral beige side of silver if you’re a True or Light.

2. Big dark lashes. The viewer can’t peel their eyes away from the lashes – maybe that’s what you were going for with the Diorshow and the Telescopic. To paraphrase Isak Dinesen, when God wants to punish us, he grants our wishes. Summers should wear grey mascara, which is all but impossible to find. Try “Soft Navy” or “Soft Black”, smearing it on a tissue first to be sure it’s not too dark black.

Ask me some questions.

Anyone know the eyeshadows that match those Light Summer swatches?

Among makeup products, lipstick is the single item that most women want to learn to get right. We know that we can’t all wear each other’s makeup, but where do we go after that?

There has to be a logical method driving the choice. It cannot be just random, buy what I like, hit-and-miss. That will miss, by a little or a lot, but it will miss.

The only sensible place to start when decorating your house has to be considering what’s already there. The only sensible starting point for makeup has to be an understanding of YOUR own coloring, the canvas that you’re going to paint the makeup on. It has its own inherent colour scheme. It’s easier and much prettier to go with it, instead of against it.

Instead of lining up fairly parallel with your own coloring when you choose makeup, what if you could wear an identical match? A mesh so seamless that nobody could tell where the makeup ends and your face begins? When the alignment is that good, the makeup looks custom-colored for your face.

For True Summer, it looks like this.

In Seasonal Color Analysis, this Season’s cosmetic colour palette is “cool, soft, and light”.

There is a simple system that matches up every piece of the makeup puzzle so it works together, and with the person, with their clothes, with their hair.  The legwork is done for you forever more. You have a map of your own coloring. Personal Colour Analysis is the GPS that points you directly to your best makeup colours. This degree of color precision can’t be reached any other way.

To know what you are, you need to know what you are not. 90% of what is at the makeup counter is what you are not.

Part 1 is at Matching The Swatch Book : Blue. Today is about True Summer corals. This would not apply to Soft Summers, who have very different colours. Light Summer may have an occasional similar swatch, but not a whole page.

Coral is one of the more difficult colors to predict in 12 Seasons Personal Colour Analysis. Any color, like turquoise or peach, that has an inherently warm AND cool component, is tougher to grasp confidently.

As we said in the Blue post, it’s often the colours in more distant, seemingly unrelated, Seasons that can be most similar. I looked for the most similar corals to True Summer’s.

They are not among the 3 Summers (except maybe the odd one in Light Summer). No coral in the Spring or Autumn palettes would confuse you if you had your Colours Book.

The corals of True Summer and Dark Winter are similar tones. Side by side, Dark Winter certainly has a dark brown element that takes away the rose-petal freshness of True Summer’s but they are quite close.

Wow, ay? So, how might you tell them apart?

1. True Summer is absolutely cool. You should be able to find no heat, no yellow, no brown. OK, but hard to do with coral, since it always seems a little warmish.

2. If it’s a cosmetic colour, don’t compare makeup colours on your arm or face. None of us can ever be objective enough about our face and arms get messy. Paint it on white paper to compare it to your Colours Book.

3. Does the item convey a feeling? True Summer should express cool, serene, fresh, feathery, and delicate. Choose a visual to help. Rose petals, watercolor, mist, water are True Summer. It should feel true to one of True Summer keywords : gentle.

For True Summer, it’s watermelon, not geranium. Soft plum, not deep eggplant. Soothing, not strong. The personal swatch book may feel hard to interpret, but when you see it in the entire piece of clothing, the colour is easier to figure out.

If you see a trace of sunshine, it’s wrong, it’s Spring. True Summer is absolutely cool.

Ask yourself  “can I see black in the shadows?” . If yes, it’s Winter’s. And this is a good way to make a colr go one way or the other. If it’s a tissue or sheer fabric, wearing a white or dark tank underneath can pull it towards  Winter or Summer very effectively.

4. Compare it to 2 items that you KNOW to be warm and cool. It will be easier to position yours accurately when you have a range with endpoints.

5. Consider the fabric. Colour is an emotional expression that is conveyed by weight, by combination, by style and stitching lines, as well as hue.

If you feel a heavy or somber presence, it’s probably off. Even when True Summer gets darker, the feeling is still graceful and fine. Winter colours look (and feel) aggressive on a True Summer.

If the colour feels like it would have to be velvet because the feeling is so solid, that is not True Summer. If it feels made of gauze or linen, it is right.

If the colour were curtains, the True Summer would let light through. Dark Winter is occlusive because of its degrees of saturation and darkness, both way higher than Summer.

6. What story is being told by the colour? What background does it create? a watercolour or an oil painting? a sheer or a tapestry?

7. In a swirl with Summer’s other colours, would it be dominant, or too aggressive, and overshadow all the more delicate colours?

All True Summer’s colours are very slightly faded. Spring has the odd similar swatch but it is distinctly more saturated, a clearer colour. In the graphic above, I could have softened (reduced the saturation, grayed) the Summer colours even more. As soon as Spring appears, the colours become rainbows to parrot plumage, but they’re clear, not dusty colours. True Summer is just the slightest bit washed out.

If you love the item and your instinct is that the colour is right, buy it if you can return it. Try it with the rest of your palette, in different lighting. Often, a colour that is extremely close can be made to work well because of what it’s combined with, since so much of Season harmony is conveyed by how your colours are worn together.

I believe these are the last stages before becoming completely colour confident. Don’t do it from memory, you’ll lose money. Always consult your Colours Book.

You’re still moving forward.

I need some suggestions for shopping with my [Personal Color Analysis Swatch Book]. Some of the colors in the True Summer book (especially the blues) seem quite saturated and (almost) bright. When shopping, I’m always wondering how I can tell the difference between a True Summer blue versus the Winter blue and even the Spring cobalt blue??

Another question is about the cool-ish coral. I found a lot of similar colors when out shopping, but it was difficult to tell if the colors were cool enough. The artificial store lighting complicates things as well. I noticed that some of the things that were perfect matches to my Book in the store were totally wrong once I took them home and saw what it looked like under natural lighting (and the same applies to make-up colors). Do you have any suggestions for making color matching easier?

What to try:

1. Pick a few items in the store of similar color to compare, rather than just 1 item. It’s by comparison that we understand color. I learned a lot about color and textiles at Value Village because they group 20 reds, blues, etc. together, so the differences become easily apparent.

2. If there are no similarly colored items (often stores work with just a few dye lots each season), hold it against a white item, or better a white and an off-white item.

3. Look in daylight. Jelena is very right about that. Even before your PCA, you probably find that you buy something only to find it wasn’t what you thought.

4. Be sure you can return things.

5. Assume the color of the item and the swatch are NOT a match until you can convince yourself they are. For True Summer, ask yourself:

“Do I see any heat (orange, tan brown, dark brown, gold, yellow) in the color”? go through them 1 by 1. I get in a hurry, or I want to believe it’s the right color, so I  make myself slow down.

Every time I listen to a dog’s heartbeat, I assume there is an abnormality till I can convince myself it is normal. I use the same approach here.

6. Flip the concept and see if you can come at it the other way. Ask yourself  “does it appear less intense than it COULD?” or “could I imagine a MORE saturated version of this color?”

Instead of “is this soft?”, ask “could it be MORE pigment-rich?”

If the color COULD be MORE  intense, it’s probably a soft color.

Here are the 3 closest blue matches among True Summer, Winter, and Spring.

From top, True Summer, True Winter, True Spring.

True Summer is not hard to pick out. It’s always some version of faded denim, even the darkest wash. True Summer is not necessarily obviously grayed; it is just relatively less saturated than Winter. True Summer is not dull or drab, and some of the colors have some strength to them.

When you see a highly saturated color, you usually know it. It is more common to see Winters walking around in color that is too soft because saturated color is hard to find and after a few washings, it’s softened.

Surprisingly, it’s Winter and Spring that are closest for this color. It makes sense for blue.  Both are saturated Seasons. Blue is darkish at high saturation so this is one of Spring’s darker colours. The Spring is a bit yellower. On the 3 Colour Scales of Light/Dark, Warm/Cool, and Clear/Soft, we’re matching all 3 very closely.

My feeling here is that it’s too close to matter.  The difference will come from the other elements of the outfit and how the person wears and combines the color.

The colours should be your most perfect. It is just so beautiful to look at.

How you combine them can be consistent with how colours are combined in your person. The harmony and balance with YOU feels very relaxing to the viewer.

Your style of clothing can enhance your colours and your communication with the world. When it looks unrehearsed, you are looking amazing.

Cosmetics should be your supporting player, not steal center stage. The look you create should feel the way it feels to interact with you. Now, your appearance is really coming together. You look organized, intelligent, and uncluttered. You’re getting taken more seriously.

Glasses, jewelry, and purses should replicate your face and body shape and your clothing style. That’s called “Easy on the eyes”.

Isn’t it time that beauty look like it might have just happened that way, instead of like it took a lot work? As my friend Gina says, Lord have mercy, YES!

With 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, the what-to-buy decisions become easy. Today, some choices for the Spring and Summer colour palette.

When we’re dealing with 12 Seasons, each with a palette of 60 unique colors, there will be some colors that are very close. Surprisingly, the difficulty is not usually between your Season and your immediate neighbors. More often, the catch will be with a more distant Season.

2 examples:

1. The excellent example of this jacket at Ann Taylor came up on the Facebook page. I took a quick look and thought “light, clear, cool = Light Summer”. An astute reader pointed out that the grey is so light that it should qualify as icy, and so a Winter color. She is completely right.

True Summer greys are easy to pick out because they’re blueish or pinkish.

Light Summer presented a learning moment, nothing I love more to deepen and sharpen our understanding.

Light Summer and True Winter are both cool Seasons. When a color, light grey in this case, is cool AND very light, AND clear, as the Spring element brings to True Summer’s dusty shades to produce the Light Summer palette… well, when does it become Winter’s icy grey?

Summer colors are pastels, which means they are not so extremely light as icy colors. (see Icy Colours And Pastels) A pastel, by definition, has more pigment and is softened with gray. This applies also to gray itself.

Light Summer left, True Winter right.

The picture above shows the closest matches from the 2 Seasons’ Colors Books. Light Summer is yellower, or less absolutely crisp and cool, but it’s subtle. Light Summer also has more pigment, more “color”.

If any of you see the faintest blue tone to the Light Summer grey, you’d be right. This is a leftover from the True Summer greys which has been partially extracted by Spring’s color clarity. Winter’s greys are made of black and white only.

Notice too that the lightest grey in the True Winter Book, basically the color of the jacket, has no similar value (or lightness) in the Light Summer. Winter’s icy colors are even lighter than the lightest colors in a Light Season.

2. The Trace of Autumn’s Brown in Soft Summer and Dark Winter could be confusing because both Seasons have a similar relative position in the order.

For these 2 Seasons, both are one Season away from a pure, cool Season (True Summer and True Winter, respectively).

Both are removed from that True Season in the same direction, meaning both blend with Autumn.

In fact, there are no similar colours in the 2 Colour Swatch Books.  I’m not even putting a picture here because not one of the 60 tones is close. Soft Summer’s very low saturation and Dark Winter’s much higher saturation make the choice clear.

The lesson

Shop with your Book. Never think you’ll remember a color correctly or be able to judge it accurately.

Don’t feel overwhelmed, thinking you have to keep 12 Seasons’ worth of colors in your head. I don’t, but I never buy before checking my Book. I still put a lot of things back.

From the 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis Sci\ART system, a quick Soft Summer review:

-       approx 75% or more of the colouring is Summer (take a look at True Summer Jewelry to get a sense of how it feels to be/look at a True Summer)

-       about 25% or less is Autumn

True Summer colours are absolutely cool. The cool effect comes from blue-grey or pink-grey. Clothes and makeup with one degree of heat turns these people yellow, or some variation on the theme.

What does the Autumn impose on Summer’s colours?

First, take a quick look at How The 5 Autumns Add Brown To Hair Colour – or to any colour, for that matter. There is an overlay of gray-brown. It is not orange, yellow, or camel. It is the colour of fog. The blueness of True Summer’s colours is being dimmed. These colours are less distinctly blue and more gray-browned.

The palette is still dusty plums, roses, blues, and mauves, the cornerstone colours of all Summers. The amber of Soft Autumn is still nowhere to be seen. The blush may be Desert Rose or Pink Tan, but it is not Mocha.

Autumn changes the feeling, not just the colours (because colour IS feeling!). It becomes less dainty and more sturdy and grounded. The shape shifts from round to a bit more square. This repeats in the face shape, where the jaw is often quite squared in an Autumn face, and the mouth shape more straight with a less obvious bow.

A simple silver chain is good, or silver hoop earrings. Grace Kelly going to the office is the image of this group.

Jewelry below all at Nordstrom. I’ve linked the pictures but I always end up on the Intl Shipping page. You can find them from the product info on Nordstrom’s excellent Search page.

These Alexis Bittar Small Drop earrings in Warm Grey (not the colour above) caught my attention. There is a soft lustre, like opal, which looks soft, like this Season. They’re round, but with a little squaring effect, just like Autumn’s squaring effect on Summer’s circle.

Soft Summer is a Neutral Season, with warmth and coolness. They can wear gold as long as it’s not too yellow or deeply golden.

What about these Triple Drop Earrings from Kate Spade? They’re light coloured, so are they Light Summer? No, still Soft to my eye.

Light Summer colour analysis swatches are a bit yellowed. Soft Summer are relatively grayed. I still see these as foggy day, not sunny day.

You might disagree and you might be right – there is turquoise here, always a Spring effect. With makeup and fashion, the difference between 80% and 100 may have to be ignored much of the time. There isn’t enough precise choice.

This is the Lauren Bead Cluster earring. They risk clutter against Summer’s restraint and moderation, but I like that they feel a little unexpected. With a simple dress that repeats some of the colours in the jet, it could look young and interesting.  The metal parts are lacy and airy, as Summer’s should be.

I see them as too detailed and lightweight for Winter. I like the brown tones on the grey glass. Any kind of pearl always works with Summer, and gray pearl is amazing on Soft Summer.

These Dabby Reid Ltd. Linear Drop earrings have stillness and weight, I’d put them on Winter. The metal fastening is bold and dramatic, like Winter

Following rules is fine to a point. You have to put a personal spin on your choices, because nobody else is you and they won’t communicate about themselves just as you would.

Spring colours are all:

Lightness or Darkness? > light, or at least never very dark

Warm or Cool? > warmed, and by yellow NOT orange

Clear or Soft? > clear, or highly saturated, NOT dulled

The premise of Seasonal Colour Analysis is that every colour in your natural colour composition answers those 3 questions in the same way. Your swatch book is a group of colours that fit on those scales in those exact same positions too, thereby replicating the colours in your design. That is how the magic happens.

I can see how one might look at the light-medium warmish brown hair and see warmth, light, and clarity.

Her eyes are not warm though. They are a medium-dark blue-grey.

The dark brows could make Winter cross your mind.

But nevermind the hair and eyes. We established long ago that they are not used in defining the Season, they’ll just lead you astray. We look at skin.

Without a proper analysis, you can’t really understand skin. You have to watch how it reacts to colour. Are freckles not a sign of warmth? No! They’re another red herring, kind of like the “clear eyes” concept. You have to look beyond them, at the skin. So we’re back to Plan A, with how did the draping go?

Both Elisa’s skin and her eye patterns performed precisely as True Summer does. The moonlit, luminous translucency that only True Summer does so well was there for sure. The absolute inability to handle the slightest degree of heat, or it’s instant pasty skin, was there. This skin tone seems to look turquoise in turquoise, and melon in melon.

In fact, Elisa is a study in contrasts. She has warm hair, dark eyebrows, deep blue eyes, and freckles (which feel warm). She could be placed in any number of Seasons, but none would feel right. Once we neutralized all the variables, it was clear that she is a True Summer.

Makeup often seemed too conspicuous so became something to avoid. We looked at how to accentuate her features with the same understated elegance that is true of her entire palette. These are Grace Kelly clothes and colours. This is the skin and eye colour that was made for BlueGrey eyeliner (Annabelle makes a perfect (and perfectly inexpensive) pencil by that name). Everyone can wear makeup beautifully, but the fragility of this skin is easily overwhelmed.

Elisa has some natural shadowing around her eyes. It was least pronounced in the True Summer colours, but wasn’t obliterated altogether. That’s called Photoshop. Many women fight that (and many other “imperfections”) with too much concealer, which ends up looking caked and even more obvious. There is a little foundation here, but no concealer. I usually apply concealer or foundation, but seldom both. Those products are overdone, and take a lot of time. I want to show you how to recognize your cosmetic colours.

Cosmetics counters and makeup artists are usually good at matching foundation. If they won’t allow you to take a few samples home to try in daylight, don’t buy the product. I ask women to bring their foundation to their PCA. So far, none have been wearing the right colour but they knew that already.

In your right colours, you will see the area under the eye become as illuminated as possible. Wear a little makeup, but allow your face. Ignore our magazine-obsessed culture that has us trying to delete our individuality.

One of the biggest misconceptions about True Summer’s colours is that they are all dusty lavender and Wedgewood blue, “old” colours. In fact, the most important feature of True Summer colours is NOT their dustiness, or softness, or grayishness, all the same idea. It is the COOLNESS.

These are not at all confined to being light colours, though Summer is thought of as light. Relative to Winter, it is lighter, but they can do surprisingly dark colour.

In this graphic, the high saturation (hi sat) colours are on the left, as you can see.  The lo sat colours are only softer BY COMPARISON. They’re the colour of denim and flower petals. The True Summer personal colour palette contains these same beautiful colours, at about 50% saturation or less.

The hi sat shades on the left are pigment-saturated, pigment-soaked, pigment-logged. Winter needs them and usually doesn’t wear them saturated enough, in part because they’re hard to find except in workout clothing. Few women over 25 feel safe buying these colours.

Elisa is married to the most mannerly man you’ll ever meet. Aggression and confrontation are disturbing to this personality. Hurry and pressure flusters them more than most. It is very calming to this character to be able to depend on certain things, especially decency and kindness. Courtesy is the most essential prerequisite of all.

The colours and article can be found here, in True Summer’s Cool Rose Blush, at my blog, A Greener Tea.

How we decorate what’s INside on the OUTside?

The Soft Summer person

These people are very True Summery in most ways. They are not reclusive, shy, or introverted. They don’t need to be the boss, though they could be good at it. They don’t require center-stage attention. Theirs is a more subtle, serene, quiet energy.

The trace of Autumn puts a different spin on things. The Soft Summer is usually more sporty, with faster and more focused physical energy. They have a cut-to-the-chase practicality that gets the story told or the job done sooner, without True Summer’s inclination to dwell on details.

Petal and pearl necklace. Love it in charcoal too. Love it.

Jewelry for the personality

To speak for them, their jewelry must follow the same tendencies. The pieces are less lacy and feminine than True Summer. There is a feeling of more solidity, but they’re by no means chunky. Autumn and Summer combined can make for a very headstrong individual. The jewelry should not feel retiring or lightweight. These can be among the most persistent, immovable personalities so a persevering quality in the jewelry is appropriate.

The metal is silver, unless they border their warmer neighbor of Soft Autumn quite closely. Theoretically, as a Neutral Season, gold could be worn in small proportions. It would be the deeper, more mellow gold of Autumn, rather than Spring’s very yellow gold that just looks cheap on anyone else.

Good behaviour and personal restraint are the hallmarks of the Summer personality. What better jewel to define that sophitication than pearls? I think they suit the Soft Summer colours even better than the True Summer. The colours of a misty morning, of a foggy harbor, with the light of day coming through…I love the feeling of that with a seashell- coloured pearl. Creamy pearls would even work well, just not too yellow.

Soft Summer’s colour code

Just as clothing colour combinations can venture further from True Summer’s best monochromatic (several shades of the SAME colour) look, so can jewelry. Different colours can be combined, as long as they all remain true to the personal colour swatches in the Colours Book.

Remember that while you may mix different colours from your personal colour palette, such as antique rose and jade green or pearl with orchid, how beautiful would that be, all the colours themselves are of low saturation. The whole look of this season revolves around that concept. We saw in What Are Clear And Soft Colours? that these colours are all closer to grey than in the Clear Colour seasons. Are they dull and drab? No way.  They’re just relatively a little grayer. They’re willow, sage, and clover, not grass.

I’m so happy to be doing this season, I get to talk about one of my favorite companies, J.Crew. All the pictures are linked back to their site.

Shadow facet bracelet at J.Crew.

The bracelet above is gold, but there’s not much of it. The colours are of low saturation. This mauve or brown-tinged gray is basically your eye shadow. The weight is heavier but there’s a classic and understated feeling.

I’ve been wanting to put these up. They are so sweet. You’ll find many types of pearls on this site, but these are so pretty.

A dainty but more solid pearl.

The Pearl Twisted Hammock necklace is stunning.

J.Crew doesn’t do a lot of silver in jewelry or I would have posted it. Also, keep watches in mind for all 5 seasons comprising some Autumn, or jewelry that DOES something. Autumn’s song is the “search for the truth and get the job done”. Functional pieces represent the efficiency they exude.

You’ll find more of these pieces.  Look for classic with a kick, the summary of the Soft Summer person.