The Reason For The Season is YOU
January 11, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 4 Comments
Among the 4 True Seasons in Personal Colour Analysis, there are 2 groups of people whose coloring has a blue-pink (or cool) undertone. They are the Summers and Winters. Their nature also tends to be less energetic and a little more reserved and slow-moving.
The Warm Seasons of the Springs and Autumns have skin with a yellow-to-gold undertone. They are lively, busy, talkative, and active.
Colour makes us feel certain feelings and think certain thoughts. A big block of why that is comes from the most primitive associations humans have made with colour. It is embedded in our genetics and the evolution of our brains from the beginnings of our consciousness.
Just as the energy of the 4 True Seasons follows the course of the year, from
the short-lived but almost frantically busy, almost reckless, activity of Spring
to
the hazy, flowing, genteel days of Summer
to
the time of yields and returns in the fields, of efficiency, and security, and responsibility in Autumn’s solid personality
to
Winter’s withheld reserve and its contrast of frozen yet shocking beauty. How can such austerity and colour severity be so beautiful? How can something so motionless be so compelling?
So does the warmth and coolness of the Seasons alternate in every 24 hour cycle.
Spring is a colour riot. It corresponds to the early morning’s optimistic business. The light is pale yellow, but there is a definite promise of heat to come.
Summer’s colours are seen between 12 – 3 PM where activity slows as the heat induces a softness and relaxed peacefulness to how we feel, as well as what we see.
Late afternoon light mellows and heats the colours of the world around us, just as it does to the coloring of people in the Autumn seasons.
Winter individuals, whose personal decoration in clothing, makeup, jewelry, and hair colour is stately, formal, and symmetrical, look best in the colours of the darker time when motion settles. This is a feeling of colour restraint worn in simple, contrasting ways.
Though there are 12 colour groups, or Seasons, among human beings, each has their special edge, their special effect. Learn what yours is and your appearance will crackle. Colour is above all a FEELING. People will keep looking for why you send sparks but they will not know.
Your thoughts project outward from you as a vibration. They are like your inner colours. You send an energy vibration by the colours of your body too. You have a wavelength all your own. Wearing wrong colours is a constant irritation because the wavelenghts don’t jive. You’re emanating too many frequencies that are all clashing.
Trying to look like what you could not be never works. Think about how you were INTENDED to look. You came here, meant to look a certain way. Are you close? You’ll feel it when it happens.
The Mystery of Brown
November 28, 2009 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
This article is the second of 3 connected posts. The first one was What Are Clear and Soft Colours?
There, we talked about muted colours belonging to Autumn and Summer. They’re lower intensity, duller, dusty, either grayish or browned. Summer has some lighter, softer grey browns, often with a blue or mauve tone. Autumn’s colours are darker and more golden-brown.
Spring and Autumn Browns
But Spring has true brown colours too, just like Autumn. When you shop for clothes or makeup, how do you pick Spring’s camel coat from Autumn’s?
Left, Spring. On the right, Autumn.
These colours are not rendered precisely. If you own a Colours Book for True Spring or True Autumn, you may notice that. It doesn’t matter. This illustrates the point well enough.
A color like camel can be very soft, or low saturation, or it can be very bright, or high saturation. It depends on how much gray is in the mix. Look at the 2 camel browns in the middle row. The Autumn one appears more golden, more dark, and more dull and murky.
The Spring brown FEELS closer to you because of it lightness. It almost feels more transparent, though transparency is not one of the ways in which we define colour.
Undertones
The difference between the spring colors and the autumn colors is this:
The springs have a yellow undertone, while the autumns have a gold undertone.
All of the spring colors have yellow added to them, and all of the autumn colors have gold added to them. So, the difference is between yellow and gold. Gold is a deeper, grayer, and darker shade of yellow.
Spring colors feel light and bright. Autumn colors feel deeper, richer, darker, lower in saturation.
Autumn browns are of lower saturation than Spring because there is more grey in the mix. If they were musical notes, Autumn would resonate far more deeply. The register feels lower. Autumn’s colours are more golden, but a golden color has more gray in it than a yellow based color. Gold is a darker version of yellow AND it is of lower saturation, hence its place among the Autumn colours.
The color brown is actually orange that has been darkened. A dark orange is a brown.
Shopping with knowledge
When we get to 12 tones, vs 4 Season Color Analysis, the differences are slight, but do make a huge difference in the final result, and they are harmonious with each other. The key to having your entire wardrobe work as one, within itself and with you, is for every item to follow YOUR inborn synchrony. It’s important to match the colours as closely as possible to evoke the right feeling. For those of you who have been draped, you saw that your runner-up Season was not even remotely close to your best.
Below is an example of how to apply this information. It is easier with clothing than cosmetic colours. This is a Laura Mercier eyeshadow at Sephora. One of my many reasons for disliking eyeshadow palettes is that they make no sense together. And don’t get me started on lip palettes, which I have even less good feelings about.
Besides a Bright Spring, who would use everything here? That group might be 15% of the population.
Anyhow, looking only at the brown eyeshadow quad, do you notice that it is not gold or orange? The colours feel bright, lit with a pale yellow light. The musical note would be high and clear. These may be browns but they are not “earthy”, which gives a much heavier feeling.
That’s the easiest rule of thumb : Spring browns have no orange in them. Is it fail-safe? No. There are other Seasons with non-orange browns. This just helps you exclude a few of the wrong ones.
The no-fail guide
But you know, with your Colours Book, you don’t really have to worry. You might think that the camels and honeys and light browns are quite similar between Seasons. When you actually look at the swatches in the Books, they’re obviously different. Your concern is not another Season’s colours. Always match YOUR personal colour palette as closely as possible and you will succeed. This is a visual judgment, not a verbal one. Colour is always best understood when compared to another colour.
Don’t try to shop from memory. Your success rate will drop to 50%. You won’t remember as well as you think you will. Always, always shop with your Book so you can meet my goal 
– which is to never, ever have you buy the wrong thing again.
And that should be done in natural daylight. Take the article up to a window to check the color, or be sure to ask the sales clerk if it can be exchanged if the color is off in natural light. Stores usually use the cheapest lighting possible, which is the worst for viewing true color.
I scribble the product on a piece of white paper because the swatches are painted on white cotton canvas. The sales assistant is standing there watching and possibly feeling quite irritated, but at least it’s not unsanitary. Is this a woman thing? Would a man recognize an easy and successful sale?
What are Clear and Soft Colours?
November 26, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 7 Comments
Let’s say that every colour begins as grey. Drop by drop, you add a colour pigment. As you increase the amount of pigment, so do you increase the “saturation”. The colour is becoming more clear and intense. Finally, there is no grey left and what you have is a pure colour.
Understanding saturation in 12 Season Colour Analysis is key to using your colour analysis swatches correctly for selecting clothes AND makeup.
Colour Saturation
This might look like grey>dusty rose> watermelon> fuchsia. You see how the grey is being subtracted? We began with a soft, muted, dusty colour of low saturation and ended with a more pure, vivid, brilliant colour of high saturation. Another word for saturation is chroma.
A clear colour is pure. It is very far from grey. It is closer to full saturation.
Here is another comparison chart. The colours on the right are not becoming darker, or warmer, or cooler. They’re just clearer or brighter, relative to grey.
Playing with colour parameters
You could darken a colour without removing the gray : grey > heather mist > lilac > lavender > mauve. But now, you’re playing with a different aspect of colour, namely the lightness/darkness. The saturation is not changing so much. These are all soft, muted colours.
You could equally change 2 parameters of colour at once : Wedgewood blue>sky blue>sapphire. We are increasing darkness and increasing saturation at once.
Colour has a third parameter, that being warm/cool. Personal Colour Analysis is determing exactly where your colouring stands in terms of all 3 criteria.
True and Neutral Season colour saturation
Who needs to know? Pretty well everybody, actually. The Summer and Autumn seasons wear absolutely muted colours. Though Autumn’s are more golden-brown and Summer’s are more grey, both are duller than the truly pure Winter and Spring shades.
The True Seasons are absolutes insofar as the colour clarity or softness. Either the colours are clear or they’re not. For the 75% of you who are a Season blend, or a Neutral Season, your colours are softened or muted to a degree. The PCA tells you how much.
In fact, the True Seasons are absolute with respect to all 3 parameters of colour – warm vs. cool and light vs. dark, as well as bright/soft. Therein lies the problem with 4 Season Colour Analysis.
The Neutral Seasons are born with a personal colour palette that is warm/cool/light/dark/bright soft to some degree. It is in the particular combination of the degrees that you arrive at the 8 Neutral groups.
The saturation of grey
Can grey itself be more or less clear?It sure seems crisper and sharper in the Winter greys than in softer Summer greys.
Winter’s grey is pure. That means that it is made of black and white. That’s it.
Summer’s greys have blue in them. Spring’s have yellow, and Autumn’s have brown.
Yellow?
How about a pure vs. muted yellow? Daffodil vs. butterscotch.
Brown
Brown is a little complicated. Brown is a dark orange, but it’s also an important characteristic of the entire Autumn group. It is most certainly NOT a characteristic of the other Seasons, or at least, it takes a much different form.
It’s incredibly important to get it right because it is such a wardrobe neutral and cosmetic colour staple. The Mystery Of Brown is the topic of the next article.
The Colour Analysis. What Happens? What Do You Get?
September 22, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
Qualms
The idea of having your colours analyzed sometimes meets with fair skepticism. I get that. First, you’re wondering if it’s a gimmick and whether you’ll just end up wasting money. It didn’t work overly well in the 1980s. What makes 2010 so different? (That question, and many others, is answered in PCA FAQs.)
The possibility that a change might be asked of you also creates a little hesitation. I get that too. Your suspicions are correct. Change (is Progress a better word?) will be asked but you can choose to make it as big or small as you are ready for.
Another source of doubt comes from the uncertainty about what actually happens. This is especially so among those who too young to remember the last big wave back of 4 Season Colour Analysis in the 80s.
Back then, more women figured out their season from a book than from an actual draping, so the whole notion of the drapes is quite foreign. The process has been refined to make it far more scientific and extremely accurate. The advent of better colour pigments and reproduction processes produces a swatch book that is light years ahead of what it used to be.
This is what happens.
You are in a grey room. You wear a grey cape like a hairstylist’s cape. I wear a grey coat. Your hair is hidden by a grey hat. I prefer to hide my hair as well. I like there to be nothing going on in the room colour-wise except the drapes and the reaction they provoke in your skin.
Your face is lit by lamps like those in a photographer’s studio. They emit a full-spectrum light, meaning that they render every wavelength (colour) of light accurately. The overhead lights are turned off.
And away we go.
It begins with coloured boards over which we float your hand. It allows people to start looking at how skin responds to colour. I’ve had women pull their hand away like it was burned when the colour of the board was changed. What they saw was their hand age 20 years before their eyes.
Then it’s on to the drapes. The drapes are the size of big bath towels and we lay them across your chest. It takes time to see how each person’s features will respond. Will they toggle between old/young, oily/glowing, rough skin/smooth skin when the colour is changed from bad to good? Or will it be something else on your face?
(The colour reproduction has been altered in these photographs.)
There are 21 sets of drapes used for the analysis, and each set might have 3 to 5 individual drapes in it. We would normally use about 12-15 of the 21 sets to arrive at the final answer.
We spend a lot of time at the beginning deciding whether you might fit into one of the 4 True Seasons. We move through a precise system of drape colours and see the response in your skin.
Reactions
I have had people who feel wrong colours to the point of feeling nauseated and asking me to change them quickly. For them, as for me, colour is something they FEEL. Some people see no reaction in their skin whatsoever.
I’ve had women in whose skin I could see little reaction. They make me nervous. I’ve learned to keep going. The drapes will tell me if I’m patient.
Some find the process hypnotic and fall asleep, like a moving meditation. Others provide huge feedback and see the reaction before I describe it.
Some disagree with me. Most don’t. Good thing. I’ve learned to trust myself.
Some people are so clearly of one Season that they’re easily analyzed. Some straddle two neighboring Seasons so evenly that I have to work harder to decide which side of the border they fall on.
Target
What we’re really trying to do is determine what the colours that look most perfecting to your skin tone have in common. They will compose your personal colour palette. Are they light? How light? Are they light and dusty? Or dark and dusty? Or medium in light/dark, medium in clear/soft, and medium in warm/cool? For instance, you could call these pictured below Light and Cool-ish and Clear-ish.
Once we have you pegged to a perfect season, we move on to a different set of drapes. Known as the Masterpiece collection, these are 15 drapes (12 different sets, so one for each season) of your most gorgeous colours and your most stunning fabrics. This is the only part of the PCA that stays home and does not travel with me. Omitting it doesn’t affect the accuracy of your Season one bit.
I tell people not to look at the drapes. Look at your skin. The first time people see the colours, they can’t help but look at them. Yes, they are very beautiful, but very importantly, people FEEL a sense of recognition or familiarity, of having been truly seen.
Aspiration
You will see yourself as you never have before. You will see yourself as you could be, every day.
Result
Or, What Do You Have When You’re Done?
You have the knowledge of your position among the 12 Seasons by having seen why you are not any of the other 11 Seasons. You gain:
- a complete understanding of the best shades of every colour that is perfect for you and how to recognize them in clothing and makeup
- a Colour Book of 60 colour swatches, exclusive to your Season only, with which to choose clothes and makeup (these are not fabric swatches; you can see them in The Spectrafiles Colour Book) (Update December 2011: Some changes have been made to the colour swatches of the original Sci\ART collection. If there is any concern about the accuracy of the colour swatches, $50 is deducted from the cost of the PCA and I will direct you to a source of great Books that you can buy online).
- an 8-10 page PDF document for your Season that describes the particular radiance and edge of that Season, the clothing style that suits you and your colours best, how to choose hair and makeup colours, the pitfalls to watch for, the perfect jewelry, the colour combinations and power look for men, and a segment on personality traits very common to people of this colouring.
- a list of the makeup, including brand name and colour, that you should be wearing in blush, eyeliner, eyeshadow, mascara, lipstick, and lip gloss – to help you get started, as your eye learns to pick the makeup that looks custom-coloured for you
- the revelation of having seen yourself as you never have and the knowledge of what you are supposed to look like – your own easiest, most authentic beauty
- the power of knowing what NOT to buy and which trends to bypass (or how to customize them for you)
- the first step of a journey of self-discovery about who you are, and how to use clothing and makeup to tell the world about the real you. This is the “life-changing experience” people describe about Personal Colour Analysis.
Warm and Cool and Colour Analysis
September 20, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
This may seem like an obvious question but it’s worth thinking about because it is the foundation for so many decisions in personal design.
Any color can be make cooler (by adding blue) or warmer (by adding yellow). Even shades that are inherently cool, like blue, can be made warmer.
The primary colours behave a little oddly.
Red is easy. Add yellow or blue, and predictable things happen. You get an orange-red or a purple-red, respectively.
Yellow be made cooler by adding blue, and it turns greenish. A warm yellow is orangey.
Blue is really weird. If you warm it as you would another colour, by adding yellow, it turns blue-green-but, wait a sec. Green is on the cool half of the colour wheel, isn’t it? And yet, blue-green, or teal, often appears among the Warm Season palettes.
If you add red to blue, you get purple-blue. But red is warm, so why don’t we use this to warm up blue instead of yellow … and yet, we usually think of purple as a cooler colour.
It all seems contradictory. The answer is that among a group of otherwise warm colours, the green-blue feels like it belongs better.
And remember, to further confuse things, you can have warm and cool teals and purples.
Here’s a question : Can you make a cool colour cooler? You can only add so much blue to an already blue-based colour. The more blue you add, the darker the color gets. So the answer is yes, to a point, and depending on the darkness of the colour you begin with.
In the 4 Seasonal Colour Analysis system, the warm colours belong to Autumn and Spring. The Cool colours belong to Winter and Summer.
The Spring blue is clear, not dusty. It’s pretty light too, like all Spring’s colours.
Summer’s blue is dustier, but still light. I could have made that blue dustier – meaning grayer. So are all Summer’s colours light and grayed a little. They tend to be cool too.
Autumn’s blue got warm. And it got dark. And more soft than pure (we’ll talk about Soft and Clear in an upcoming post).
Winter’s blue. Nobody can wear this unless they’re really a Winter. It is dark and cold and intense.
Colour Analysis is about discovering what the colours that transform your skin tone to perfect-as-possible have in common.
Personal Colour Analysis
September 6, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 7 Comments
Let’s begin with the short version:
Everyone has an inborn colour scheme. I do not have the same colours in my hair/skin/eyes as you, or my children, or my parents.
You wouldn’t put certain colours together, because it is ugly, or at least not nice to look at. You wouldn’t decorate a farmhouse and a villa the same way. Those styles would look crazy together.
When the colours you WEAR in makeup/clothes/hair exactly match the colours you are already ARE, it is 100% guaranteed and proven that you will look, feel, and present better. Much better.
When you wear colours that would look better on someone else, it looks disorganized. To the viewer, that translates as “out of control”, “weak”, “too much effort required, look away”, “older, fatter, blotchy skin, more tired”.
Once you know the exact shade of every colour that looks most flattering on YOUR colour composition, you also need to know HOW to wear it. The colour combinations and the clothing style matters. If I did lavender and lace, or beach blonde, it would be completely unbalanced with who I really am. Most people look that way.
To you, it means you’re wasting big time and money on items that detract from how good you could look. Since clothes that make you look old and tired cost as much as those that could make you suddenly very easy on the eyes, communicating the message you want heard about you, why are you wasting another second?
OK. So how do I find out what colours I already am??
Answer : there is ONE way. There is ONLY one way. It always works. It is a Personal Colour Analysis (PCA).
Most people have 20% or less of their clothes, makeup, and hair colour correct before a PCA. Think about what that cost you. After a PCA, you will be 90% or better, and improve to 95% within 6 months. You will know what NOT to buy.
Our aim during your Colour Analysis appointment will be to discover those colours that make your skin tone look as glowing and perfect as possible. The edges of your face (and body) will appear crisp and focused, the edges look sharp, so you look 5-15 lbs. thinner. Shadows on your face will fade away, so you will instantly look healthier, younger, and more rested. Imperfections like ruddiness, oiliness, yellow or white casts, acne scars, and large pores will blend away, as if you were already wearing concealer on those areas.
We will continue to narrow our colour field to those shades that make your skin appear evenly coloured, calm, and in balance with the tones and intensity of your natural design. At all times, the perfection of your skin will take priority. In second place, but still vital, will be the discovery of those colours that particularly intensify the colour strength and luminosity of your eyes.
The point is this: we will identify the exact shades of every colour that are present in your natural, inborn colour scheme. We will give you those colours in a book so that you can replicate them in clothing and makeup.
When your personal decoration is in exact synchrony with your natural personal colour palette, the result is a picture that is extremely pleasant, but highly compelling, to look at. Others will notice the energy and harmony of your completely and perfectly coordinated appearance. They will not be able to recognize why your look works so effectively, but they will be highly sensitive to seeing it nonetheless.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Colour Analysis. Maybe you have read some books or have been analyzed in the past.
The 4 season system of 30 years ago laid the groundwork. BUT, only about 25% of the population is a pure, or True Season. Everyone else is a blend, or a Neutral Season. If you could never feel comfortable being one of the four True Seasons, you will have concluded that the technique must be inaccurate or entirely ineffective.
Let’s move from the 80s to the present. The Sci\ART PCA method is a scientific, systematic series of colour tests that self-checks as you proceed. It will correctly analyze every person, regardless of age, sex, or race. It uses a set of drapes (coloured fabric about the size of a bath towel) that are laid across you, when you’re seated in front of a mirror. The drapes are precisely coloured according to the 3 parameters of colour (warm/cool, light/dark, soft/clear) to assess exactly how YOUR coloring fits into those 3 parameters.
The first impression you make has an enormous impact on how others feel about you. You are not judged on whether you resemble a movie star. Whether you have made the best of what you have been given is most certainly noticed.
You will find answers to the most commonly asked questions about your PCA appointment at www.12blueprints.com/pca-faqs/.
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Let your natural colouring guide you to your most flattering clothing, makeup, and hair colour choices.12 Seasons of practical, affordable information on the styles, cosmetics, hair colour, and jewelry that each palette wears most beautifully and the comparisons you need to wear your Season perfectly!
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