Warm Season Makeup Palettes
January 31, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 17 Comments
Please allow me first to introduce Tricia, the woman who created these colour collections. Her ability to re-invent herself and hit the target with beautifully convincing and tasteful precision astounds me.
I asked Trish to tell you a bit about herself:
I am 35, I live on the Wirral peninsular, UK. I have a background in Biology and used to be a Infant School Teacher. My first choice of career at the age of 7 was a Make-up artist (after realising that I’d never be either a Ballerina or a Princess). I had my own make-up kit since I was about 5 and have always enjoyed giving my friends make-overs. I have a life-long interest in style anlaysis, colour analysis and make-up and plan to qualify with Colour me Beautiful this summer.
My Colour analysis journey began in 2007, when I decided that my dark Gothic look was not doing anything for me, and my interest on Vintage style clothing was growing. After reading all the available literature I could get my hands on I came to the conclusion that I was Clear Winter, which I confirmed with a CMB Analyst. The transition to colour has been fairly easy for me, but the hardest part has been accepting my yellow overtones and incorporating Spring’s warmth in to my palette e.g. I stopped dying my hair blue-black and retuned to my natural dark ash brown, I swapped my pale-pink setting powder which was made my skin look pallid, for a icy-yellow shade which added back the natural bright tone. I also experimented with peachy-pink blush and lipstick which I found suited me far better than the cool blue-pinks, plums and mauves I had been wearing (which made my skin look ashen!). A huge wrench for me was to drop the Vampy burgundy lipsticks in favour of bright pinks and reds which make my skin sparkle. I am still learning and each day I seem to learn new things about colour, which is one reason I find this subject so fascinating.
The Warm Palettes
In the previous post, we saw neutral (meaning browns and greys) and coloured eyeshadow and blushers for the Summer and Winter types of natural colouring, or Seasons. In this post, Tricia has assembled the same groups of colours for the warm Seasons of Spring and Autumn.
MAC products were used to create these sets. If you would like to know the details of a particular colour, please post a note in the Comments and Tricia will be glad to answer. She also has lists of many equivalents from MAC to Pretty Your World, Lora Alexander’s simply fabulous line of colour-analyzed cosmetics for the 12 Seasons. PYW eyeshadows are pure silk, as are the blushes, and you can compare a particular colour from Trish’s 4 Season groupings to where Lora placed it among the 12.
Neutral Eyeshadows
Spring
Spring neutral eyeshadows.
Autumn
Autumn neutral eyeshadows.
—–
Coloured Eyeshadows
Spring
Spring colour eyeshadow.
Autumn
Autumn colour eyeshadows.
—-
Blush
Spring
Spring's blush.
Autumn
Autumn's blush.
The Autumn blushes are called Sculpt, Taupe, and shaping powders which we’ve inserted here as Tricia acquires more of the colourful Autumn blush choices. These seem as if they could be used as excellent contours and sculptors by numerous types of colouring, with warmer and cooler choices. As great flesh tones, they remind me very much of the light and dark colours Kevyn Aucoin used to demonstrate where to place these products on a face to create a most incredible facial shaping, forming, and chiseling in his essential book Making Faces. The book can be bought anywhere. That image can be seen here, though the colours are more intense in the book.
Remember that there are many colours you could wear in addition to these. You may prefer a more colourful blush effect or a more natural or sculpted face. Look at these palettes and think about why Tricia included each colour where she did and what her vision of these Seasons might be. In the end, it’s your vision of your Season that will develop and mature, influenced by everyone else’s input, and finalized with your own.
Cocktail Dresses For 12 Seasons
November 16, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
When I search Polyvore, I normally set the price less than 250 because that’s the world I live in. Not today. My apologies to all, especially the Springs and Summers, but there is no price limit here.
Today, I was looking for something I would notice the hot minute it walked in the door if the right woman wore it. The other requirement was that I’d feel comfortable in it, could eat, drink, and dance, wouldn’t be constantly hitching up or pulling down. You know how that goes.
Spring
Light Spring is across the bottom right. Pretend you don’t see the orange belt. Replace with gold, silver, violet, so on. Summer’s flowing water is here, making peace with the larger fraction of Spring’s livelier colour and unrivaled ability to sparkle. Is the sequined dress too browned? Could be, but I’m trading on the sequins delivering lighter colours in the highlights, making it Spring, and a colour that is not oranged, so the dress doesn’t convey earthy (Autumn).
True Spring takes up the left side. Notice how the colours are yellower and more activated than the Light. The styles are also more energized. Though this person is far more resort-relaxed than manic, she can easily dominate colours that are less vivacious. The whole effect then goes dull. Her makeup is equally way up there. Lip and cheek colours are noticeable and she looks alive like there’s no tomorrow. She’ll be up till dawn, the smile won’t leave her face all night, and she’ll do it all again the next night.
Bright Spring is shown in the top right. In 12 Season colour analysis, this colouring is a blend of Spring’s with Winter’s pigments. Its very ability to confuse makes it all the more flexible. This woman often looks very Winter, seeming cool and dark, and yet her natural colouring is far closer to Spring’s yellow light than to Winter’s red and dark blue. Because of that, she can cheat black in very nicely, though better in small blocks and not too near her face. The rest of the outfit should have Spring’s movement, whether in beading, ruffles, a play of light on fabric, like flapper styles. The elements of play and frivolity are so good on Spring, but toned here by Winter’s seriousness.
Summer
Light Summer is in the bottom left. A stronger water rippling effect than Light Spring. The feeling of being inside a cloud or a bouquet of flowers. As Summer arrives, Spring’s foot on the gas is letting up even more. Summer is appropriate always, though in Light Summer, daydreams are still about play. If Autumn’s around, daydreams are about the next job. Summer’s water has a sequence, a cascade, a fall, a flow, like the lines of a ripple or wave, like a ruffle, or even the colour wheel sequence of monochromatic colour schemes. Spring disorganizes, even though there’s only a little. In Light Summer, the dance feels like the wings and flight patterns of butterflies.
True Summer is in the top left. She will be classy, cool, and correct. She may have had a tray of Champagne but you’ll never know it. She won’t give away what she doesn’t choose to. She controls herself utterly (while Winter tries to control everybody). I think of streaming water, of composure, of modern femininity. Is the pink dress too red of a pink? Maybe but I’d still put it on her. The package works.
Soft Summer is on the right side…that navy dress, is that not greatness? I have sat and stared at that dress. Just knocks me over. The muted mauve-raisin-quid semper (Latin for what ever, now that you ask), that is the most interesting colour. I’m pretty sure its pinkness pulls it into Soft Summer but it sure borders Soft Autumn closely (and is a match for Dior Addict Londres lipstick). I love an interesting colour and I love it to pieces on the exact right person. A match made in absolute heaven for the eyes. Then the makeup that jives so right…you cannot stop looking and couldn’t repeat what was said when you spoke with her. Your sense of sight took over your whole brain.
Autumn
Soft Autumn is on the left. I left the dress in the bottom left that is in Soft Summer too. That’s a fascinating colour, rather halfway between both palettes. I think it’s a little purpler than orange, but a Soft Autumn who is a bit darker or not too freckled and apricottish, and maybe even if she is, could look beautiful. All black parties are deathly. They’re like a boredom and a depression all rolled into one. All these beautifully coloured humans swarming around dressed like a cloud of black insects. Especially at a party! It’s a celebration. Even the Softs should shine a little. One day, we’ll have traveling PCA & A Party, a block of hotel rooms, too much wine, too much song…the admission ticket, no solid black. Don’t care if you’re a Winter. Digression done. As Summer leaves and Autumn comes in, fabric has more weight, more structure, still with the feminine grace of Summer.
True Autumn is in the top right. Words fail me with the red dress but that would be way too much red for many a TA. That could sure be your lipstick with the other two dresses. Is the skirt on the golden one too gathered? It’s very important when you read these ideas of mine to think about whether you feel it the same way and not just accept it. All I’m really trying to do is have you hear, smell, taste, link, and feel what these particular colours awaken in you. Connect your five senses together and trust that what they say to you is true. What I like about the gold dress is the overstitch pattern which reminded me of a quilt, an Autumny association. Jacquard says Autumn to me most of the time.
Dark Autumn, bottom right, like Bright Spring, can impersonate someone whose natural colouring contains black. If the area is small and the rest is hot and dark, what comes across is mostly hot and dark, which is just right. The dress in the center has lace. On a woman who is not really all that lacy, its effect is overridden by the solid dark bands. It’s interesting how a detail can make a feeling. A light grey cardigan could be Summer’s if it’s sheer or ruffled or has same colour buttons. It can be Winter’s if the buttons are more prominent and hard and shiny, like big diamonds studs. Here, those very ordered lines bring more structure than the lace softens down.
Winter
Yes, I know it’s 3/4 black. It is a colour that Winter’s style just looks right in. And, as every woman reading this knows all too well, choice is limited at any price point.
Bright Winter is the group on the right. There’s no stopping with dress-up looks for Bright Winter. Hopefully, she has an excuse to wear many dresses in the next three months, this is her time to shop and to shine. I was looking for intense sugarplum which I didn’t find (but did see yesterday in a fleece at Old Navy and I can guarantee it would cost less).
True Winter‘s dresses are in the top left. True Winter is so cold and clean that it has an edge that cuts. Without Spring’s delicate flirtiness and Autumn’s blunter touch seen in Dark Winter, True Winter is unadulterated biting cold. Associations of cut or bite: knife, sharp, snake, scrape (as in diamond edge). So why the flowers? To me, they were edgy and abstract.
Dark Winter is bottom left. I wasn’t sure about the dress with the roses, but there was something Spanish about it that I kept coming back to. Winter isn’t really a traditional floral type of woman but it’s interesting to see a style rendered in a way that makes it untraditional. The textile felt too heavy for a Bright. I’m also thinking about ‘matte glamour’, hardware, cannon black, gun grey, always the Winter edge but one dulled by Autumn here. Bright Winter is the laser relative to DW’s cannon. Dark Winter’s is the simplicity that can own a room full of more is more. A Bright could wear the gold leaf but I put it here because the gold seemed deeper and browner, rather than the BW’s titanium type of brightness. A braided rope belt is Autumn’s touch.
Wearing The True Autumn Landscape
October 28, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 36 Comments
In 12 Season personal colour analysis, there are 4 main Seasons, or True Seasons, named after the 4 natural seasons. True Autumn is the homeland for the most flattering colours of the person whose natural pigmentation is made of colours that are:
- absolutely warm; even the colours we think of as cool have been warmed by comparison to their appearance in the cooler Seasons; like True Summer, True Autumn is more saturated than people think. Most folks’ ideas of True Autumn and True Summer live in the Soft Autumn and Soft Summer palettes.
- muted, but not nearly as much as the Soft Autumn; yes, True Autumn’s salsa and curry are muted compared to True Spring’s fruit punch and citrus, but we don’t think of them as grey ; we do think of Soft Autumn’s cactus as greyed; True Aututmn’s entire palette viewed at once looks like a hot glow, well beyond rosy blush; to emanate that kind of heat, we are moving away from pink and into red
- medium to dark in value; most colours are medium, few are very light, and none darken all the way to black ; the overall look needs some darkness to give the feeling of richness and depth, too much lightness looking too powdery
This series of landscape articles (True Summer, Soft Autumn, True and Bright Winter , and Bright Spring have been posted) serves as an opportunity to see ourselves with objectivity. Unless we transfer colour and clothing decision outside of ourselves, objectivity is too far to far reach for most of us, certainly for me. We are far too invested in our complexities to have any idea how we look to others.
The world is full of odd psychology, a common one being to inadvertently reward ourselves, our kids, our pets, for the very behaviour we’d like to be rid of. We want to look like our friends or like celebrities, but what if we’re imitating them and not really loving how they look? Buy a magazine aimed at your demographic and mark the pages of the women you would love to look like. How many have complicated hair? sparkly eyeliner? sparkly purple eyeliner? frosty pale lips? Is their hair and makeup like yours?
It’s also interesting that in trying to look like our friends, we end up looking less like them and more like us. All those blonde highlights out there accentuate the differences between us rather than making us more similar, which only works in your favour if yellow in hair is flattering to your skin. If you put a room full of women in the same red dress and really looked at the women and not the dress, the differences between them, meaning who looks good in that red and who doesn’t, become easy to see. What looks good on our friends doesn’t help us know what enhances us.
Finding people of similar colouring to ours to try clothes, makeup, or hair on can be very useful if that person can be found but there’s such variation of appearance among members of the same Season that our counterparts are not always available. Or, the celebrities look like the average for the Season and we don’t. Still, some retain enough of themselves to have good real world comparison value.
Keri Russell could be a True Autumn.
So could Susan Sarandon. You can see that their overall colour effect feels toasty, medium on a darkness scale, and glowy. Their natural coppery heat just looks better surrounded by warm, muted, medium dark colour. Scan their Images and decide how dark their best hair is to flatter the face. It’s fairly dark. Many True Autumns wear their hair too light (Kathie Lee Gifford) and the glow be long gone. Red hair is by no means a necessity but these women are very seldom beautiful as blondes or in ash hair tones.
We belong to our planet home at such an organic, elemental level. We each hold wondrous beauty and the divine unknown within us. We each represent a painting of a scene that we know, love, and trust, but we can’t always see the resemblance with ourselves. Like music, colour is a language that tells us information about the world we live in. Like technology or medicine, the value of the language is so much broader when we can use it to live better, happier, freer, stronger, and more connected to the people that matter to us. Oh, and live cheaper, let’s not forget that.
What’s the world feel like for the very timely True Autumn Season? In Canada now, we are given these:
Melinda feels it this way, from this photo:
I love the traditional pictures of fall leaves and sun shining softly through a canopy of colors, but for some reason these pictures just stir up something else in me that I feel so connected to.The first set of pictures, the rocks and bronze river, reach into some deep emotions for me. Warmth, intensity, passion, strength, and solidarity all come to mind. Such a range of emotions that are rooted deep in my soul.
The pictures below speak to my surface, if that makes sense. The bright vibrant trees and the gentle softness of the sun echoes an almost tangible warmth, comfort, coziness, and welcome that you just want to walk into. The leaves add a crispness that just makes you feel like dancing. Joy lives there and you can feel it.
What they all have in common:
- warmth: well, yes, we know this, but replace the word with passionate heat for this article; if your mind says greyed before it says richly glowingly warm, hand the item over to Soft Autumn.
- darkness: it’s getting darker; daylight hours are shorter; in the overall effect of an outfit, there’s still enough light to read by.
- dryness: cooler air holds less water; the grass is browner, the harvest is dry enough to bring in ; not very shiny or reflective, no sparkles.
- dustiness: the Earth is busy and dry.
- productivity, we know there’s cold on the way and we need to get our house in order, but the sun can still warm our back and make colours and faces glow.
- a sense of depth, which you’ll recreate with layers, darkness levels, and patterns
- the overriding presence of brown in every colour we see; a petunia would stick out like orange pop at a coffee shop ; Autumn is Spring, oxidized, the wine and the nectar, not the fresh-squeezed juice.
- there are no cool blued colours; the reds are not direct red, but indirectly lit as rust, muted red-orange, and browned reds; even the light seems indirect, as though it’s coming from lower down in the sky, which of course, it is.
- texture: Melinda loves several photos that are stone based and I see True Autumn that way too; the glint of metal is not here yet, not till Dark Autumn arrives, which is still not very flashy, but it’s ramping up, and ramping up more in the Dark Winter, the least flashy of the Winters, and then more as it gets colder; True Autumn can work in small metallic elements well because they look metallic but too much is too hard on a person who really isn’t.
True Autumn Clothes
- never met one who likes clingy fabric, possibly related to age
- that blue cardi in the center may be too muted, may be Soft Autumn, not warm enough for True Autumn, but I like it and I could adapt it here because of the darkness; shopping ain’t perfect; you might love an item that’s close enough; there are swatches that can look pretty similar between unrelated palettes; at the mall, make the very best match you can and know that the rest of the outfit will situate the colour into your Season; makeup may be a bit less forgiving because it’s painted right on the face
- if Winter’s fabric extreme is the scuba suit, True Autumn’s is burlap, the ultimately brown colour, the utilitarian feel
- the camel is really oranged; I like the way a turtleneck frames the face and hair and even better if it’s a great colour that distinguishes it
- coloured and textured and opaque tights should be worn, they’re good
- not quite cute enough to be cozy to me, though many people do get that feeling from these colours. I find them too hot to be that benign, but the colour heat is still comfortable, not reckless. You can touch it without being burned. In fact you can hold it as long as you want.
- about white, remember how it didn’t really fit well into Soft Autumn’s landscape? , it will add yet another 5 years here
- about black, it’s too cold to harmonize with anything, and many colours don’t get that close to black, so I hope that skirt to the left of the amber beads is chocolate; the overall darkness effect should leave enough light to read by; having said that, concessions will make shopping more fun ; if you found a perfect faux leopard short jacket and it happened to have black buttons that were not enormous and the overall effect was of rich caramel, gold, and chocolate brown, and if your hair were medium dark or more, that coat might be absolutely lovely
- red is by nature a warm colour and I love a red coat, it gets noticed and manifests the very strong lifeforce of these persons; seemingly low key, they have some of the strongest moorings I know, levelheaded and reliable as the stone we saw earlier, absolutely nothing darting, fleeting, sporadic, or flighty ; I love neutrals (black ,white, grays, beiges and greiges in the U.K. 
) a lot, but on both True Warm Seasons, I absolutely love lots of colour, personifying people that are so alive, busy and loving their life, not fussing, just getting on with it
- not the military style that suits Dark Autumn better, who is a much more straightened out, direct, vertical person, approaching Winter’s stationary vertical line (Bright Winter’s line will shift to the diagonal, Spring’s is becoming horizontal, explaining why horizontal stripes look so good to me on a Spring, and in my head, Summer’s line is horizontal wavy, like a ruffle) ; this character isn’t so “with intention” as the Dark blends, who lock onto a target; that rigidity is muted in True Autumn, as the colours are, so you have a straightforward person no doubt, but not shot out of a cannon
- what’s the theme song? It’s a steady beat, not as threatening as the Jaws movie theme, a Winter gets that, more defined contrasts and all, Dark Winter, I’m guessing. I’m looking for a steady drum, maybe Adele Rolling In The Deep? Close, but not hot enough…The Circle Of Life, maybe… heat makes molecules agitate and move faster. Thinking. Not Spring’s reggae. Hotter, darker, tribal, smoked light, uncontrolled heat (this is the part where the True Autumns say “Who me?”) Hotter than Soft Autumn’s Hot August Night. This is pretty hot,
Dhoom Again
Once Dark Autumn arrives, Winter will put the cold clamps on and there will be heat but it won’t be on such display.
- what do they drive? A Dodge Ram 1500? Too truck. Classier? Cadillac Escalade? Too flaunty. A Navigator? Better. A Jeep Wrangler Rubicon? Feels about right. Dark Autumn drives a Jag XJ. Dark Winter drives an Audi A6 Avant after they trade in their 2010 Nissan Maxima, having found an Audi that comes in Batmobile black. True Winter? Black Porsche. Bright Winter? Lamborghini with the doors that flip up. Bright Spring? A Merc E Class convertible in a smart and snappy colour. Back to our topic.
- I like the bow in the jacket at the mid-top, it’s not too ribbony, it’s solid and square in a very browned neutral; strength and femininity together are curiously magnetic, I feel
- no real pinks present; mix pink with pumpkin puree and that’s True Autumn pink, looking much better in clothes than makeup where browned colours are better unless the pink is very golden
- no pinkish reds; if you take tan leather and dye it red, that’s the cool red, maybe like a red Frye boot ; that’s the red lipstick too, like paprika, not as dark as chili powder ; I like a browner day lipstick – if Soft Autumn’s was the rosy cinnamon stick floating in the warming pot of apple cider, then True Autumn is the cider itself, and Dark Autumn is the clove
- Spring thought about peach, blossom, and candy; Autumn thinks of the jars of preserves, not the raw salad (Spring); Autumn thinks about strong, heavy, straighter now that Summer has gone, mead and liqueur, Bailey’s, Kahlua, a duller finish but lots of touch information (fur, flannel, corduroy, tweed, leather), nectar (colour is getting thicker, more opacity), the hive, the honeycomb (repetition, industry, work = functional (Spring=fun, Winter=flash, Summer=feminine); the bumblebees of the world, going about their business, these are the builders; think of blocks, bricks, order, structure, steps, strength, progress
- colours start at medium, not light; only the beiges get very light and they’re still browned, like vanilla whipped into cream, like brown buff, light wheat, light brown peach; cottage cheese is too light and mozzarella too yellow
- I find it harder to know if I have lots of golden heat when I assess a possible True Autumn colour vs. Spring, where I can always tell max yellow heat. What I look for is a bronzed brown glowing feeling, like hot copper overlay, which how the person’s skin tone looks. I want to sense abundant sultry heat, not greyness, not lukewarm, not summery, though still very hospitable, nothing hostile.
- very little blue, just one bronzed colour; the blues are quite greened because the yellow contribution harmonizes better in warm coloured outfits while cool blues don’t; I love purple with the warm hair tones, it’s unexpected and not very red because Winter isn’t here yet
- there are warmer and cooler greens; the cooler greens really are green, not teal or avocado, and a little dull, like Green Bay Packers green
- as more distance between colours on the wheel are fabulous when combined, we get a very rich cornucopia effect; profusion was Spring’s word, abundance is Autumn’s
- animal prints in small surface area supports the lifeforce without looking swallowed; Dark Autumn can balance a whole item better and same with metallics as Winter’s hardware orientation arrives; this woman isn’t that decorative and feels overdone in glitz, she’s got 1000 cookies to bake for the Cookie Exchange, is hauling the boat out of the water by herself, wants to fit a bike ride in this day, has a pie crust to roll out, and would love to hear about how you’re doing once she’s finished what she set out to do; she sure looks gorgeous with a metallic thread in a scarf, a copper glint to her lipstick, a gold or brass buckle on a belt or purse, or stripe in a shirt
- using matte and dull finishes makes the odds of getting the colour right higher automatically by creating some muting, as some of the shoes below; the green heeled sandal at the top of the Polyvore below may be too emerald but in sueded fabric, it could look like dull teal and fit into this painting
Here are the shoes, the belt, the bag, the HAIR!! (See also True Autumn’s Best Hair Colour). Warm, rich, lustrous, and brown. There is nothing faded about this palette.
She wears a purposeful watch, maybe a menswear style,
to go with solid functional bag, square like a briefcase or at least not completely slouchy,
shoes you can live a real life in,
and a necklace with weight.
Supremely business stylish, this lady is up-to-the-minute, resourceful, and lives in the present. Autumn is grown-up, self-sufficient, and mature. Her male counterpart is Indiana Jones, though they dress him as a Soft. U2′s Bono sans glasses seems True Autumnish.
Think about the quiet light and stony strength of the pyramids, not the blinding jackpot glare of El Dorado. Marketers have a much better handle on what young women want and how to sell it to them. If True Autumn has trouble finding clothes, it’s because the styles in shops are too young and her colours are often limited to brown and green. Imagination belongs everywhere.
The pieces have some weight and bulk, not Spring’s hearts and lucky charms, not Summer’s lacy water, or Winter’s hardest-substance-on-Earth jewels. To add interest, touches could be Egyptian, Bollywood, hot stone-lava, old coins, wood, jade, brass, enamel and ceramic which remind of firing and heat, and natural semi-precious stone. Even stones should be noticeably browned down. Leather looks great, strong without being hard, in Southern Comfort colours.
She can accessorize endlessly, with items from many categories at once. Scarves were made for this woman because they look textured and warm and give the impression of depth. What she does best isn’t really to accessorize, like Bright Winter who can wear jewelry on her neck, ears, and wrists, all at once. True Autumn layers.
It’s easy enough not to stumble into Dark Autumn, just keep black out. Colour can go pretty dark but you should be able to see that it’s not black in all but the dimmest lighting, and this applies equally to shoes and eyeliner.
Reptile can work if it’s quiet, not too cold and slithery. True Autumn is more plain-spoken. Dark and oily don’t belong in this brew, they look like a black panther marching up the forest path in the photo above. Panthers don’t march, they prowl. She might do crocodile, though Dark Autumn better. Snakeskin is best on Winter, but if the colour is very gentle, even a Soft Autumn can look great. The texture offering is good, it just needs adapting because of the message the wrong version can send.
Periwinkle is supposed to be an Autumn classic but it doesn’t send thrills through me. I do love the Soft Autumn in their version.
Going back through this to pick out random keywords that could define this colouring: abundant, deep as in plush, deep as in layers, medium-dark, texture, strong but not maximally hard, work, build, structure, browned, coppery, golden, matte, small to medium metallic or fur or animal element, functional, opaque, molten, rich hot glow.
Spring may be excited, but more than any other, oooee, baby, True Autumn is exciting.
3 Great Colours On The 12 Seasons
October 8, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 50 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
Soft Autumn Landscapes in Clothes and Makeup Plus Blue
September 2, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 40 Comments
For those here for the first time, in 12 Seasons personal colour analysis, Soft Autumn is the type of natural colouring or Season that is mostly governed by Autumn’s personal colour palette, with a small but important influence from Summer.
In the previous Soft Autumn Landscapes, we thought about how perfectly Kristin’s photos of Belgian scenes depicted Soft Autumn’s palettes and colour language. How does this translate in your appearance? How do you take the beauty of how you already are and elevate it, level by level, by repeating it in perfect harmony with the original?
Very muted means nothing bold, cold, hard, sharp, super-shiny, super-sleek, super-anything, severe, or strict. White and black, both extremes, are outsiders. I hope Kristin will forgive me if I show you white and black on SA using her photos. Does your eye anything else? All the good, easy feelings go away and you feel the tension of being expected to deal with the white dot and come up with a reaction.
Though I always expect to feel more tension with black on this colouring, since SA is the light side of the Autumn group, I’m actually more uncomfortable with white. Perhaps that’s because Autumn in general goes to a medium-dark place. More so, stark white feels a bit painful because the inherently muted colouring makes the white absolutely sparkle so I feel I have to squint or look down.
What’s worse, to balance the clanging, insistent white, the person just gets grayer. When you force two things together that don’t belong, they both seem to go further in the bad direction. Something has to give to keep the balance. The white glows more and the person mutes more. On a Winter person, they can subdue that white to be just white, not phosphorescent-where-are-my-sunglasses-I-can’t-see-the-woman white.
Clothes
Colour schemes are not necessarily analogous or monochromatic, but rather depict easy, easy transitions. The very low saturation (meaning high degree of grayness) unites the colours, enabling the gorgeously unrestricted flow for the eye from one visual element to the next. Without extremes of light and dark, contrast is low.
I like feminine and masculine combinations a lot in this and Soft Summer. When magazines put lacy tops with denim jackets, I always see it best in the Softs. Summer is inherently female. Autumn is not really masculine, but they sure can pull off a suit and carry a briefcase. There is often a squaring of jaw and a straightening of brow, which is why they look so good with square handbags and jackets.
I like complements on this group too. With the simultaneous warm and cool presence of Neutral Seasons, you often see a blue-ish eye and orange-ish hair.
The coral sleeveless top: The beading is not in high contrast to the top and it’s muted, not sparkly. Peanut shells (a big SA visual for me, in texture, strength, fibers, and colour) do not sparkle. Brown is not too hot, quite grey, and not extremely dark, so Nutella brown. The fabric drapes a bit (Summer grace) but has some structure (Autumn substance). It’s not gauze. We’re aiming for a medium overall darkness effect.
The leopard cardigan: It’s quiet, not a Hawaiian print, geometric, or outright floral. You’re not wearing the whole animal, which would smother SA in the drama. Muted animal prints work well to convey the strength and texture that so defines the Season, but this is controlled and cooled, very neutral. I’d add a more substantial belt to add strength through natural texture (Autumn).
The twinset: The jeans are browned. The peach brown tank is browned, nothing candy or blossom about it, which would be Spring. Summer brings femininity and flowers are great, but not a profusion of blooms. The octagonal shapes remind of flowers, but with more structure and rigidity. On a Spring, this would look like, I don’t know, a medieval church? Too ordered, which on them proceeds to, > recurring > mechanical > heavy > clunk. A Dark Autumn can take medieval weight all the way to heavy, leaded stained glass and just look better.
Brown cardi: there are vines (Summer) in an earthy (Autumn) colour. To balance the waviness, the skirt has more sustenance, more grounding and squaring. These bodies tend to be more squared than rounded, though some have very womanly Summer bodies.
The blue top and the grey Bermudas. A reminder that all Neutral Seasons have cool and warm versions of every colour, of the importance of neutrals, and a segue into the next section.
To see an evening look, Soft Autumn Darkness Adjustments shows some choices.
Blue
Ashley asked for us to talk about the boundaries of Soft Autumn blue. Blue is inherently cool and has more options in the cool Seasons. By the time SA rolls around, Summer is leaving us and taking its signature blue with it. Once the warmth of Autumn gold or Spring yellow start mixing in, blues turn quickly to teals and then greens. A small amount of gold makes a warm, muted blue. When Summer’s blue and Autumn orange mix, colours mute more by the effect of complements. When we get to True Autumn, Summer’s blue is gone so some of the graying by mixing complementary colour lifts and colours are clearing again.
SA’s should look at Territory Ahead. Very Mesa, desert, glowing clothing. It’s not necessary to look like an ad for Frye boots, but there are some great building blocks here. Susan pointed us to this skirt. The tone-on-tone adds interest and the flowers are brought in as texture (Autumn) rather than floral bouquets. There are some great blue options there too.
In the picture below:
Soft Autumn Blues by christinems featuring a long sleeve jersey dress
Across the top, SA blues. On the left, that’s about as light as blue (or any colour) gets. The darkness range really hugs the medium section of the scale.
Across the bottom from L to R,
- the blue tyedye long dress is Soft Summer, still foggy but distinctly cooler, a little fresher
- the purple dress is too pink-red, Autumn really isn’t a pink person in the ballet pink sense; with Summer blue leaving, they have few purples till Winter red reappears in Dark Autumn, the ochre yellow base of the Season complements purple, so what they have is very muted
- the one next to the right (so 3rd from L) is better
- the last from L, blue with embroidery and gathers on right side seam is probably darker than my Colour Book shows, but I wouldn’t mind it, it has the required dullness and neutrality (at least in the photo) ; I would not go darker, depending a bit on the darkness level of the woman
Makeup
Not hot and not dark, which go to bloodshot and obvious too easily. As quiet as the colours are, they are very medium in darkness. From the blue selection above, you can see that the range of darkness for colours isn’t wide. The same goes with makeup.
Eyeliner: Nutella again. Lauder Softsmudge Brown is good. Rimmel Sable is warmer and works on some, too red on others.
On some Seasons, strong dividing lines between colour elements look right. That’s not the case on the Softs Seasons because that is exactly opposite to how Nature made them. Smoke the liner with a little eyeshadow over top if you like, to enlarge and define more in a diffused, blurred line sort of way. Darkening the line might backfire and just close in and take over the eye.
Lipstick: Bobbi Brown makes about 9 good lipsticks, as Rose, Soft Rose, Tulle Rose, Italian Rose (darker).
Again, not too orange, this isn’t True Autumn heat yet. Still a fair bit of pink. Like the roofs in the top photo, there is also a fair brown element. I start with the terracotta flower pot visual and adjust the colour to suit the individual woman from there.
At Aveda, looking for some boundaries, I wondered about not pinker, more saturated, or darker than Aveda Wild Plum or Lychee Luxe (bit sparkly, be careful of that in makeup, same discussion as with white above; matte is your best buddy). Their Rayflower could be a flesh tone. Any SAs who try these out, I’d love some feedback.
Also, Rimmel Heather Shimmer or Revlon Colorburst Soft Rose. I like definite colour. If it’s too skin tone, the lips disappear into the face, which works better if you’re under 20. The really light lips look best on the Light Season faces (same discussion as black above).
Eyeshadow: Aveda’s Gobi Sands eyeshadow and Clinique Double Date. These colours are not that hot. The stones and wood above the white dot in the photo at the top are right. As a Neutral Season, there is a warmer palette too, as MAC Soba.
Blush: Aveda Peach Lights looks like a contender (all feedback welcome). MAC Buff (bit pinker) and Clinique Mocha Pink are good too.
A Park in Paris
An inspiring closing note that another Susan shared with me for you to enjoy (and on behalf of all of us, I thank her). This is the Parc Luxembourg in Paris. How you feel sitting on one of those benches, surrounded by those colours and textures, that light and temperature, that’s how looking at Soft Autumn should feel. Could you feel yourself relax? Listen to those feelings. They’re real.
Soft Autumn Landscapes
August 26, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 16 Comments
It means a lot that so many of you feel the same recognition and reinforcement of colour by seeing it depicted in natural scenes that I do. Kristin sent me some photos of Belgium that spoke to her strongly of Soft Autumn. I can see that she and I are on identical wavelengths about this Season. I thank her for sharing these very evocative images with us.
In Dress For Your Landscape: True Summer, we talked about how certain colours, shapes, textures, and textiles all go together for a reason and why some just never belong. When the natural presentation is familiar and real to us, every element elevates every other. Colour is information, in landscapes or on people. We evolved to see, hear, smell, and feel certain information together and understand it instinctively. We each emanate a natural landscape of colours and they look so right when we don’t add in all manner of discordant notes.
In 12 Season personal colour analysis, Soft Autumn describes the natural colouring of a person whose inborn colours mostly resemble the True Autumn Season, but are cooled and grayed a bit because of the small influence of Summer’s medium muted blue. Because contribution is coming in from a warm and a cool True Season (True Autumn and True Summer), this is one of the 8 Neutral Seasons.
Even in these photos, the colours are telling you so much about the time of day, the position of the sun, the temperature, the time of the year. If you took pictures of a leaf on a tree in your backyard every hour for 24 hours, it would never show the same green twice. That’s what the Seasons are, essentially. They are the progression of the changing perception of colour in different lighting as the planet changes position relative to the sun, on a daily or yearly scale, through 12 steps.
Kristin said,
I like how these pics have both Soft Autumn colors and a soft Autumn character. Feminine and elegant, with a pleasing earthiness and quiet strength. These pics helped me “make sense” of this palette and made me excited about wearing it. Honestly, my first impression was that Softs were a bit boring, (too neutral, too muted), but I see now that this palette can have a very pleasing, elegant glow.
Every part of these landscapes fits so well.
– The late afternoon, warm, comfortable light makes every colour glow with heat that is more full-bodied, not bouncy like Spring’s. Soft Autumn is Amaretto sliding down your throat, not whisky, not Sprite, and not green tea. The nectar, not the juice.
– The more solid substance of the stone walls and their rough surface says Autumn’s more robust strength. Do you know those Old Village paint colours? SA is much like that. They always have names like Colonial, Williamsburg, Chesapeake, you know.
On any of those pages, choose any Options&Price > Paint Sample Boards> View Colors (in red in the Online Purchase box). You will see an assortment of (mostly) SA colours, and certainly SA feelings. Architecturally, it feels like beautiful barns and covered bridges. Ralph Lauren ads and luxury Land Rovers, not Testarossas. Autumn is practical. They look real and right in clothes you could actually get something done in.
– The presence of water tells of a Summer component, but it’s never the bigger role. There is a drier feeling. Spring and Summer colours feel wetter, from petal to mist to fountain to lake. This landscape looks gorgeous with one element of water – a wavy line in a print, a scarf design, a leaf.
– This is mellow warmth, so think of every meaning of that adjective. To mellow out means to relax, to destress, to settle in, and contemplate another day. “I worked at this” looks are never less right. Soft Autumn looks like real life. She usually doesn’t look very different with and without her best makeup, compared to many of her sisters.
– The colour span is medium. Not real hot or cold, sunny or shaded, dark or light. Similar types of colours flowing together.
– This is not Spring’s hedonism. Soft Autumn is more homespun than hippie, though there’s a similar type of crunchy granola freedom about both. Here, we have a more organic seduction, as earthiness can be quite erotic. If you’re over 45? 50? and you remember Neil Diamond’s early material, the jeans, the long hair, the gravel in the voice, you may know what I’m saying. Hot August Night, you know?
Too often, the expression of passion through quiet is misjudged to be low, but that’s not so. Leave flash to someone else. Believe that others fully sense the extreme physicality of understated heat. We feel so grateful for the absence of force that we give more of ourselves back. Nothing rattles our cage, no visual element is aggressive, not a single one. We feel less guarded or inhibited, more open to reveal, more receptive to consider, more willing to play, I’m not using these words by accident. Soft Autumn is the most smoothly sensual Season. Everyone is highly tuned to getting the message the way Nature made it, whatever your variation. 10 million years of evolution gives us no other choice, when flash was just getting started.
In a wide V-neck, broom yellow sweater, knit loosely enough to see some skin, a mid-calf stone gray skirt in a cotton knit heavy enough to cling and move over curves, a favorite leather belt slung low over her hips, vintage brown equestrian or Frye boots, and a natural stone pendant around her neck, Soft Autumn is as much invitation to light someone’s fire as anyone can be when colour is working with them (because the definition of colour wealth is like the definition of financial wealth, right? “Your money is working for you, not the other way round.” Just substitute the word colour.) No blingy thing could raise the attraction and neither would a jeweled boat in one of those canals or a flying carpet going past the steeple below.
– We feel unthreatened and heaven knows there’s value in that. Nothing is asked of us. I have often thought that I like myself best in this company, probably because it is so undemanding. There’s no pressure to adjust to anything sudden or extreme. The contentment of sitting at a cafe, sipping a latte, knowing I don’t have to be anywhere, I couldn’t feel more ease. Soft Autumn’s landscape is almost hypnotic, lulled by the steady rhythm, but entirely without the innocence of a lullaby.
– What Kristin captured here is really important. She didn’t send maple trees in October, a jaguar, or a pumpkin patch. This palette has definite coolness compared to the True Autumn parent. She has a great perception of Soft Autumn. The tendency people have is to see it as warmer than it is, but since it’s primarily Soft, it is more gray than orange or yellow. And she even got the grays right! Quite fabulous.
The words got away from me again so we have another To Be Continued post. In the next section, how to translate the landscape in clothes and makeup, and some talk about blue.
Our Eye Album: Autumn
July 18, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 11 Comments
Are you starting to see certain patterns repeated? And also that in every Season, there is variability in colour and line pattern?
Soft Autumn
I have to talk a little, I can’t seem to stop myself. The Soft Autumn eyes above and below, notice how the colours are soft, meaning quite greyed. There is heat round the center, but it’s not intense. It also happens to be the same colour as the freckle above and is a terrific colour for hair or highlight. Your best, most real and natural hair colour is often in your eyes, unless they’re blue, of course. Look in there and find it.
A most interesting colouring below, from a woman who knew herself to be a Neutral Season, but with her dark hair, expected a Dark Autumn result from the draping. Soft Autumn can be quite dark, but we forget because most lighten their hair. On some it looks better, but not all.
—
True Autumn
Very muted and very warm, says Autumn to me.
The eye above is True Autumn, with Dark Autumn below. They’re similar in that the heat (orange-brown) is now clustered round the pupil, an effect that gets stronger with more Winter. Though photographic conditions are different, the orange of the eye above seems hotter than the eye below. Dark Autumn is cooling off, since it contains a small portion of Winter, and the brown is more neutral.
With the orange-brown gathered near around the pupil below, this eye suggests a person whose colouring is closer to the darker side of Autumn. Compare the patterns with the top eye in this True Autumn group, which has the line-free ring that surrounds the pupil and the lighter and cooler colours, probably signifying a person closer to the lighter side of Autumn, or Soft Autumn. In both cases, the skin is still perfected by the True Autumn palette so they are both True Autumns. What seems fairly consistent among True Autumns is that the degree of contrast of the eyes relative to the entire person is medium, completely consistent with the degree of contrast in the overall swatch collection. The colours of skin/hair/eyes stand out from one another more than they do in a Summer face but less than in a Winter face where eyes are usually more intensely coloured and so seem more distinct from the face. In a True Autumn, the eyes are more part of the face. The overall appearance is fairly blended, still a medium saturation and darkness group. What sets them apart is the maximal warmth of the colours.
All the eyes above have little definition of lines and spokes in the iris. As Winter comes in, more of these lines become evident, as can be seen in the Dark Autumn section below. Notice that the hazy smudged line patterns (or near absence of them) is becoming more defined in the Dark Autumn eyes and the colour is beginning to clear.
Dark Autumn
Brown eyes exist in every Season. I love them in Autumn, the Season that perfects repeating hair and eye colour, a very magnetic combination. Brown eyes are also harder (for me) to deduce line patterns. I see the spokes of Winter coming in below. I see heat as orange over yellow, and muted over beer bottle clear (might be same colour as a beer bottle, but without the transparency you’ll see in the upcoming Bright Winter eye). The beauty of this eye colour with this skin colour is quite remarkable, as the bronze intensifies at every level of appearance. How unbelievably gorgeous are the colours Nature put in us?
The eye below belongs to a woman who has been analyzed as a Dark Autumn and a Dark Winter. These distinctions can be very tough in some people, even in when draped in person. You are seeing such improvements in both Seasons that it’s tough to decide which flaws (because those are there too) will be the deciding choices. I make my decisions based on certain parameters, but a different analyst, a different day, could come out different. Someone who straddles 2 Seasons this closely has big play in flattering colour. If I were her, I’d own both Colour Books. She has great flexibility within the boundaries of those 2 Seasons.
I gave this eye to Dark Autumn because the Winter lines and shapes are not as clearly defined as in many Winter eyes. There is still some muting of lines and colours, feels more Autumn.
Soft Autumn Darkness Adjustments
June 24, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 24 Comments
Every Season makes darkness adjustments for hair colour one woman at a time. There will always be individuals who don’t look right in the median colour, and fare better along the outer edges of the curve. I love hair colour that looks believable, like it happened by itself, and that flatters the skin to the utmost. This is when the viewer feels most relaxed.
Depending on depth of complexion, personal taste, and occasion, cosmetic darkness is adjusted too, though always staying inside the personal colour palette of the Season, and aiming for the same goals as with the hair.
In 12 Tone personal colour analysis, Soft Autumn is the name given to the type of natural colouring that contains colours mostly characteristic of the Autumn group, but cooled and grayed by a smaller measure of Summer.
In previous posts on Soft Autumn hair colour, I showed a coppery apricot colour as being quite lovely. In every Season, many hair colours are not only possible, but better and righter. Sometimes the freckle colour is the perfect highlight, even in the Dark Autumn or further out in the Autumn family, at Dark Winter.
Soft Autumn is a typical Neutral Season in that they have a range of warmer and cooler colours, but none fully warm or cool. The value (meaning, Light>>Dark) range that perfects the skin has some movement too, though never extends to extremes of either one for the Soft Seasons. What this woman strives for most importantly is very muted, soft colour. Muted and warm, that is, because maximally muted (greyed) and cooled belongs to Soft Summer, peanut shell and misty mauve respectively.
The element of coolness means that they are not especially orange-tolerating. Hair and freckling can skew the perception. The woman above (all 3 photos) has many apricot brown freckles. She adds those colours to her hair, giving a warmer appearance, as you see in the lower photo where natural medium warm brown and apricot highlight are visible. She can wear soft golden-oranges beautifully in makeup as long as they’re not very dark. Regardless of hair colour, darkness in makeup is a caution point for Soft Autumn, often appearing darker than expected from the pencil or tube colour.
Some Soft Autumns are harder to imagine in apricot, like Kate Moss, who does not seem orangey at all. (I only know she gives a Soft Autumn impression). Though the blonde that Charlize Theron wears well never flatters her, and warm blonde does, she is neither very orange or dark. Some of these seem almost too orange. She can do more darkness and warmth than we usually see and look far more interesting with less paint. This feels just beyond the upper darkness limit where colour is being pulled from the skin.
Kate Moss has smaller, sharper features and wears darker hair better than what we normally see, but does not do very dark so well. This is a good gallery. 6 and 8 seem very good, while the rest make your insides tense up. Or, go back even farther.
The less well blonde works, the more Autumn presence there may be. Kathie Lee is a good example of a woman who was beautiful with deeper, warmer hair colour.
Google Kelly Macdonald. Though you’d think she’d be better in the lighter warm brown hair, I prefer the darker. Many have a naturally quite dark hair colour. They might be expected to be darker Autumn, but they’re drained out by those drapes. On Kelly, orange hair is overheated, not as good as a more neutral brown.
On Kelly, we again see those sharper features that are more often seen (by me) in Soft Summer, where the facial architecture resembles Candice Bergen’s who is probably a Summer of some sort. Soft Autumn usually carries more squared, slightly blunted features like Claire Danes, but there is interchangeability in this. Is that to go with Autumn’s blunter personality? I never said that. I would go as far as direct.
I wonder if so many models are Soft Autumns because their very medium-ness of colouring makes them versatile and that particular bone structure is so pretty when it shows up in this Season. Molly Sims, Drew Barrymore, Gisele – it’s in the fine nose, high round cheekbones, defined jaw, and feminine mouth. The example of Rene Russo came up on Facebook recently, and I can’t think of a better illustration of this combination of facial geometry and colouring.
Candice Bergen Life Magazine, USA, July 24, 1970
There was a request for a formal look for Soft Autumn. I visited my latest happy place and made this. Our Polyvore craze has been a great thing. In practicing to be my own Season (Dark Winter), I didn’t realize how capably I had learned to exclude everything else. Now, the DW imprint is strong in my head. It is high time to reopen the windows to register the many choices on the shopping landscape.
Maybe you will think, those colours are all too similar. When I do this, I’m essentially following the guidelines of your natural colouring, how it feels to look at you. I dress you as you already are, to be consistent with the light you already emanate. On Soft Seasons, there are no big jumps from one colour to the next. Transitions exist, but as the eye moves from the skin to hair to eyes, it doesn’t encounter anything bold or sudden in the colours themselves or how they are combined.
The purse is the warm hair highlight. The lighter woman might choose from the right side, the darker from the left. The darker shoes could be worn by any of the three Autumn Seasons. The metals are not very hot. I love wood, shell, and muted bead on Soft Autumns, in keeping with the female-earthy feel. Natural fibers and textures are fabulously good on them, which drew me to the linen-and-flax feeling of the jacket, but it might be too casual for this ensemble.
Pearls? I love femininity on Soft Autumn. In this regard, Summer leaves a strong trace. The curve-hugging rippling fabric of the dress…. But everything is very medium. There are no extremes, the swatches all hug the center in Warm>>Cool (but tipping over to warm) and Light>>Dark. Only saturation is low and soft.
Colouring hair may enable wearing warmer or cooler choices from the Neutral Season swatches, but you’d still stay within that Season’s own colour menu or the skin’s perfection will pay a price. I do not believe that anyone can convincingly and flatteringly colour her hair to take her outside her Season. I know for a fact that many will disagree. OK.
Recreate the light you already cast. Make the wavelengths you add be synchronous with the ones you are. To the viewer, it feels effortless as floating.
Choosing The Best Grey
April 18, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 9 Comments
First thing I ask myself when I’m trying to put a grey into a personal colour analysis Season is: “Does it contain any colour other than B&W?”
If I can only see black and white, it’s Winter. Winter’s greys can be the lightest light, colours known as icy, or the darkest near-blacks. If your eye doesn’t pick up anything other than some rendition of black, this is a Winter colour.
Grey is a most underused colour and the most important neutral colour. Grey can be your lights, mediums, darks, and neutrals. It is more imaginative than black, what isn’t, and makes an outfit look much more interesting. It’s elegant and sophisticated and far more slimming on most people. Grey is also wildly underused in eye makeup and suits more types of skin than brown. The drawbacks may be that there are so many versions, but there’s only one good ol’ black. The worst thing about black is that it’s so easy.
Grey can take on a suggestion of the colours around it, so it looks purplish as eyeshadow if lipstick or clothing is red or violet. For this reason, getting too particular about placing greys to a specific Season within the 12 is not something to worry about. As long as you can place it among the 4 True Seasons, it will adapt nicely with the rest of the outfit. The Neutral Seasons stick quite close to the parent True Season’s greys.
Winter’s greys are usually pretty easy. The might-as-well-be-wearing-nothing effect that does Winter no favors happens when the grey (or any color) is gentled. You know that generic soft heathered grey used in men’s T-shirts? A Winter will dominate that colour entirely, and the shirt will have no character at all, like a big blank space. It looks like underwear or pyjama wear. Along with being made of B&W, there should be a definite sense of sharpness, like a knife edge, or darkness, like a charcoal. Winter’s taupe, at the bottom of the graphic above, has that Winter redness that comes out of it, giving it a sharpness, making it unlikely to strike you as soft.
Soft Summer greys.
Summer’s grey is easy to pick out. There will be a wash of blue, pink, or mauve. Even the taupes, which go from grayer oyster to Portobello mushroom are pinkish.
If it’s brown or green, it’s Autumn’s grey. Autumn has more colour in their greys and taupes. The greys are more obviously greened, like camo, or oranged, which makes them look heavy, like a velvet couch. They may also seem browned (because brown is just dark orange), or greened in the various shades of dry tobacco. The taupes look more brown.
Soft Autumn greys.
In a Spring grey, you can see sunshine yellow coming out of it. Grey is inherently cool and Spring is not. Grey is quieter while Spring sings of colour. Therefore, Spring has few real greys and many more browns, peachy ones and greenish ones. Their greys are yellowish, which I could never pick up unless I held up several grey items in the store together. The greys are actually so yellow, they can seem a little green. Spring is often that way, like dandelion yellow is almost green, like the unripe banana is greenish-yellow, like the hair of some True Spring children is so yellow, it can seem greenish in pictures.
Spring greys.
Does darkness or lightness guide the grey to a Season? Doesn’t help. Every Season has several levels of light/darkness in most colours, including grey.
Colour Analyzed Home Decor
February 20, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 30 Comments
It is my belief that the colours we project for others to see are a continuation of our inner selves. When the colours that we add to our bodies repeat the energy of who we already are, our beauty feels the most real and right, both to us and to those looking at us. The colours with which we surround ourselves may be even more important to our well being because we see them more than we see our own appearance. Huge thanks to Sci\ART Colour Analyst MarySteele Lawler in Mississippi for contributing this article and the colour layouts. They illustrate so beautifully one of the lesser-known, very fascinating applications of Personal Colour Analysis.CS.
Ambiance, light, color. Nothing is more important in a room. Like The Princess and the Pea and her stack of mattresses, I’m extremely sensitive to colored spaces and have never understood how hospital designers expect people to improve in rooms painted in sad colors. With my Sci/art training I have come to understand the underlying reason why there are comfortable or uncomfortable color choices for each person. Thanks to Kathryn Kalisz, I know why the effect of the same color can be either unhappy or brilliant for different persons.
A warm-toned person naturally will be ill at ease in rooms painted with cool shades and vice-versa. One might not be able to put a finger on the source of discomfort, but this distraction is because the room essentially was painted for someone else.
My increasing fascination with light and interior color prompted me to notice that successful designers are picky about the colors they choose for projects even if the color is just a particular shade of white. I began trolling through decorating magazines and web sites looking for popular paint references. That there must be room colors best suited to blondes or to brunettes logically followed the precepts of seasonal color analysis.
Since I am not a decorator, I leave the paint color selection to professionals. They have experienced that some colors more than others do well in any light in any part of the country. These popular hues that interior designers go back to time and again are the ones that I match from my Benjamin Moore swatch books to my Sci/Art color book. The result is a log of hundreds of tried-and-true designer paint favorites divided into the twelve tonal categories.
Such luminous beauties, these batches of whites, grays, violets, greens, and blues held together by a common chroma and temperature. Although there is some overlapping of paint colors between the seasons, each season’s entire collection of shades is distinct from all the other seasons. Each collection stands on its own in the loveliness of this distinction
Here are photographs of four ambient possibilities. There is an icy cool set of colors for True Winter including mountain peak white, crystal blue, topeka taupe, celery ice, and forty nine others. The list for Soft Summer comprises cool, velvety tones such as patriotic white, soft chinchilla, and mountain ridge, a favorite misty brownish- purple. Light Spring’s hues range from cameo white interior room to windmill wings blue and florida pink, a delicious pinky-red. Dark Autumn conveys its stylish warmth with rosy apple red, glowing apricot, pink corsage, and black satin.
True Winter palette
Soft Summer palette
Light Spring palette
Dark Autumn palette
My clients come to me already convinced of the power of color. I tuck a paint collection list into each information packet included in my consultation. This way, when it is time to redecorate, a client can experience the wonder of living inside a color that reflects her particular color harmony. I say, “I want you to look beautiful in your rooms. I want you to feel cozy and to shine within your colors, not only in what you are wearing, but also amidst your surroundings. I want you to glow in your home!”
My color business is called Luminosity. I operate from Oxford, Mississippi, but I pack up my drapes and travel if I have a group in another city that wants to be analyzed. The cosmetics updates that I glean from the contributors to the 12 Blueprints discussion board have been a wildly popular part of my consultation. Learning about one’s season for the first time can seem overwhelming, like sitting under an avalanche of compelling new information. I give clients handouts on everything from hair color to the types of wood and metal best suited to their homes. The more ways you can get at the uniqueness of your season, the better you can understand it.
If you know your season and wish to expand your harmony, save yourself legwork and choice overload by ordering your seasonal list of Benjamin Moore paint numbers. When you pull swatches from your local paint store you will automatically love the paint chips because they will match you.
One seasonal paint selection list costs forty dollars. There are sixty to eighty color numbers on each list. I am a Light Summer. I live in a pink house that is on my chart and I believe that everyone should be so fortunate! Checks should be made to Luminosity and sent to 307 Bramlette Boulevard, Apartment 21, Oxford, MS, 38655. Include your mailing address and expect your lovely collection in two weeks.
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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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