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The Best Skin Finish on Winter Colouring

January 2, 2013 by Christine Scaman · 13 Comments 

In any change you want to effect, three questions matter:

1. What do I want?

2. Where am I now?

3. What am I willing to do to get what I want?

 

What Do I Want

Very hard question. Most of us are schooled in what we don’t want. You might want to develop the full edge and potential of your appearance. If your idea of great makeup is to take what’s already there and make more of it, as mine is, Winter’s best makeup might have your redefining your position. The colours in the face are a lot and now we’re going to add a lot more. Adding just a little more doesn’t move Winter very far from the start point, or nowhere close to the max point, but maybe you just want to know a nice eyeliner and gloss and that’s all. There is no right or wrong answer.

There is nothing wrong with being a Winter without makeup. The important thing is to channel what you do towards the outcome that you want. Too often, we’ve never identified either what we want or what we do to help or hinder that. If you’re a Winter, the time has come. No face is more altered with makeup. As in life, the good and bad are equal. As in all things Winter, they are also simultaneously at both outer limits. Other types of colouring tend to look more similar with and without makeup, which is a definite good thing. But it’s the Winters who can go miles from where they started, and that’s good too.

I like a lot of colour on Winter, a lot of makeup, a lot of drama. The face is that way already. I want every woman to be all they could be. Would our 80-year-old selves excuse us for having been less than that? Would our reasons have been good enough? Hint: no excuse or decision based on fear or negativity is ever good enough.

This is good.

 

 

I know it’s hard. This is the group whose language is power, a currency that women have been un-trained to deal in by every force in their lives. Power is not second nature to us.

 

Where Am I Now

Even harder question. Unpacking our own luggage and seeing what’s really in there can be scary, especially if the zipper has been jammed for awhile. Lots of people can’t admit their height and weight and those are facts. As the oft-heard quote states, “Reality is an acquired taste.” And slowly acquired at that.

All those Winters from the 80s, which seem to have been in the majority, are very seldom Winters, which is fine because they’re usually wearing Summer colours. The real Winters are buried among every other type of colouring. Their road back is a longer one for the Tone you might think would be the easiest to analyze and dress. They don’t see it coming unless they are very dark of hair and eye to begin with.

Once, I’d love the Winter to walk in who is overdone in her Winterness. The young ones are, even without makeup. They’re bringing it. More eyeliner (that we remove), thigh high boots (brown, but they’re trying to be bigger and it’s good), cape flying, doing something luscious with the hair, more ME-ME-ME. In our fifties, we women have toned ourselves so far down that we can lose our discernment of what is just normal and right.

Especially in our later years, when our faces finally carry all the power that took 50 years to build, isn’t it time to stop being so careful? I get that not everyone wants to present a heavily made up, dramatic face, but it’s not even about drama in makeup. There is so much caution to shake off. Drama and glamour haven’t been added for a long time and yet, this is where they are most at home, most normal.

Personal Colour Analysis is a gateway to Here’s Who You Are.

 

What’s In A Winter Face: both extremes at the same time.

To be more specific:

1.  Contrast. You saw this coming. It means that there is a lot of distance between everything and everything else, such as:

Features from skin.  The skin is very even, smooth, and quiet. Insert into that landscape a mouth, cheeks, eyes, and eyebrows whose colours create a big and sudden jump from the background. That Shiseido banner up above.

Light – dark levels of contiguous colours. Eyeliner is dark (it contains more black than any other group). The eyeshadow next to it, the lid colour, is a fair bit lighter (lid colour is medium on the other groups). The next band, the eyeshadow contour, is quite dark by comparison (more about that later). The eyeshadow highlight is icy light, nearly white (not the case for pastel on Summers and creamy on Warms).  The brow is quite dark (but not darkened more than Nature designed on anyone), very sharply defined, and dramatized extra (crisp, arched, lengthened, whatever works on that face, which is simply to see what’s there and make more of it).  For sure, any particular face might need these adjusted a little, but this is the generic look.

Textures, ultra matte to ultra shine. Quiet skin. No special effects. Snow White’s face isn’t contoured (which sets up lowlights for Autumn), dewy (sets up highlights, best on Spring), or cottony (sets up fluffy, just right on a dreamy Summer). On a Winter face or a winter landscape, those look muddy, busy, and trivial, a million miles from Winter. You want foundation whose coverage is opaque enough to make a very even blanket. Powder the whole face evenly.  Add lots of eyes, lots of mouth, more blush or less (both can be good). Done.

The Best Skin Finish on Winter Colouring is: Even.

 

2. Drama. It’s like a deficiency when drama is left out of a Winter eye design. Not wrong. There is no wrong, no answer that works across the board, even within a Season. Winters I’ve seen, they not only balance drama, they are enhanced further with it. It doesn’t look even dramatic, exciting, stimulating, theatrical, or otherwise extraordinary. It looks normal.

 

Would the image above make sense with a soft and gentle eye colour or shape (expression)? Winter’s is not a gradual, blended, or soft face.

When Summers buy cosmetics, look for products that have a gentle application. Remember when we applied your makeup and we divided the foundation with moisturizer, as I do on every Summer and Spring, because heavy and matte products look like a mask on your delicate skin texture and softened colouring? The same principle applies to all your cosmetics. Having said that, we also showed you that when a colour is correct, you can apply almost any amount of it and it just blends believably into the skin. That’s true, but these are two different ideas. Summer begins with a product that swatches like a watercolour. Winter is looking for oil paint.

 

3. Keep the number of cosmetic colours low. 1 is good. Colour is subtracted from winter landscapes. Many steely dark grays, many icy grays or icy colours (means nearly white). Very little colour activity. And suddenly, a deeply flushed cheek. A red or purple mouth. The colours in the face are shocking enough on a still and quiet energy.

Remember how on Lights, dark colour takes over? On Winters, it’s colour itself that becomes too much too quickly.

Would this be more effective if we added a buttercup, a bluejay, and a lilac? No, the red would lose its voltage. There are thousands of these photos out there because they make sense to humans by reinforcing something we already know and recognize.

 

 

4. Intensity. Don’t leave any features behind. Enhance each one to the same degree. Thou Shalt Not Be Wimpy. Apply a lot of colour to each feature and don’t blot any off till the whole face is done. Each part looks like too much on its own but it all works together when all the pieces are in place. Blend nothing till every part is done or you’ll overblend that feature back into cautious and unbalance the face.

Thou Shalt Not Be Wimpy applies equally to concealer as lipstick. The blues and purples in the skin are so saturated that a sheer concealer won’t hide them nearly as well as a product with good opacity. My favorite is Arbonne for that reason, plus it stays where it’s applied, it lasts amazingly well all day, and it dries fast so I can apply foundation over it immediately without overly diluting it or smearing it everywhere. I am very fussy about where concealer goes but I use a lot of it. For reference, I wear Arbonne Medium.

 

What Are You Willing To Do

Look very different to yourself? Exchanging a plaid duffel coat for a black and white herringbone is a step. Wearing bigger jewelry than all your friends? Be the only one of the girls to wear a fuchsia red mouth?

Draw a lot more attention to yourself? Stand out and apart? As many have discovered, getting noticed for being different isn’t easy, even is it’s a good different.

Wear your real true This Is Who I Am hair colour?

No right or wrong, just questions. Everything looks easy from the outside. Try it, you may find it takes some effort. What are the conditions on what you’re willing to do?

Would you wear twice as much makeup as you wear today? Most Winter women accept the eye makeup fairly easily. Lips can always be sheer. Winter’s sheer is Spring’s “Oh, dear Lord, too much, wipe it off, start again.” Winters, pick sheers with a lot of colour or save your money and buy Chapstick. Where you hear the brakes screech is with the blush. They feel like clowns for a week. What everyone else sees is a pulled-together face. Not in how much, which you can decide, but in how red. Blood on snow, right?

 

The Nature of Reflected Light

The Spring, Summer, and Autumn articles  preceding this one are linked in their names. The idea is that our natural colours have a way of reflecting light. Beyond just the colours of the reflected light, the wavelengths have properties that reach our other senses, as texture for instance. In Chinese medicine, our fingers are entry and exit points for energy. Of course. How could they not be? They touch everything. They’re up and down-loading who we are all the time. Each of our sense organs is doing the same. Each of the 12 Tone colour collections speaks a certain language, is evocative of certain emotions, reminds of certain landscapes, and makes sense if consistent in colour and touch and sound and scent and taste. It’s all happening at once. The knee bone is connected to the neck bone.

Summer’s soft, gentle, serene, muted colours don’t make sense in leather pants. Skin with that colouring has reflective properties truer to the surface of an opal, not a mirror or an elephant’s hide. Soft Autumn skin reflects light like felt and its colours are more beautiful in that texture than done up in Mr. Freezies. Do colours bounce light in certain ways that tell us texture? Or is it that skin painted in certain colours also carries other qualities that bounce light in a way that impresses texture?

The True Winter surface is smooth and hard. Dark Winter is smoother than Dark Autumn but not 100% smooth; it’s also thick, and not quite as hard as True Winter. Bright Winter is very smooth, shinier, and semitransparent – Dr. Sheldon Cooper, as opposed to Autumn’s Magnum P. I. Though some will cringe, I’m still going with rubbery for Winter skin by comparison with the other Seasons.

So far, we’ve said:

Bright Spring: glass

True Spring: persimmon

Light Spring: petal

 

Light Summer:  peach

True Summer:  cotton

Soft Summer:   flannel

 

Soft Autumn: suede

True Autumn: velvet

Dark Autumn: leather

 

Dark Winter: Vinyl

If we start at Dark Autumn and move along to its cooler side, we arrive next at Dark Winter. These are both Neutral Seasons. Dark Winter has more in common with the True Season parent of True Winter, but does share the most important dimension of colour, darkness, with the Neutral it’s paired with and whose descriptor it shares, that is, Dark Autumn.

We begin with Autumn’s canvas, which is strong and textured. As Winter settles in, the skin texture smooths out. Dark Autumn’s leather is transitioning.

Dark Winter skin throws light back like vinyl.

 

 

Not just record vinyl, but inflatable products, dominatrix gear, and tarps. Maybe even a car. Industrial, tough, shiny, smooth, waterproof, and useful. Good Dark Winter words. Not bad words for their jewelry and belts either. Dark Winter takes Dark Autumn’s gypsy/Rustic Opulent and shifts it to gladiator. A sweater in black or dark grey metallic looks like chain mail. Stud, armor, and heavy link effects are a natural fit here, scary elsewhere.

Dark Winter is mysterious. It’s Christmas Eve, the dark jewel-toned ornaments, the fireplace, the night, the lights in the windows. Very nice, but there’s something bigger going on. The feeling of waiting for something. Waiting for the reason behind the pretty. Deeper, even darker. Sinister.

Nude lips on Winter looks tired and old. Dead lips, a good friend calls it. My new favourite lipstick is Shiseido RD 305. It is just pink enough to not be red-lips. It is beautifully saturated with the touch of brown that Autumn adds to make your colours less cold and more natural than True Winter. That brown is essential to create the encompassing harmony that only a colour analyzed appearance can give. You are coloured with a little of that brown, where brown is dark orange, and your hair, skin, and eyes have some gold-amber-orange tones. If your skin is light to medium, this colour may be your best natural lip.  It’s not dark, often the case with Dark Season lip colours. It’s fresh daytime believable natural lip colour. Not ready for it yet? Top it with clear gloss.

Bronzer can play a tiny part because Autumn has left behind the slightest texture or roughness. Contour carefully, with powder that has enough red to disappear into the skin (eleablake‘s Miss November is great). Follow the 3 shape at the sides of the face and down the sides of the nose bridge, using a small amount, more to carve more geometric drama into the face than to warm it up.

Soft Summer’s darker foundation trick to contour is too wishy-washy here. More colour is required to be noticeable and achieve the outcome. It’s not a bad option as you learn or if you want a very subtle effect, just be sure the darker powder is as cool as your foundation or you’ll look yellow. It takes a lot of colour to make any difference on the intensity of this inherent colouring. A few shades of beige this way or that will make less difference on Winter skin. Carefulness is plain pointless.

Darkness works. Smoke is natural, like the Autumn muting in the skin. Smoked eyes make sense. The lighter lid eyeshadow can equally well be fairly dark. Any Season can do smoked eyes, but it’s most at home on the Darks. Even the other two Winters are best to exercise caution in darkness so it doesn’t look heavy. They look better in clean and silvery.

 

True Winter: Ceramic

Even smoother and even harder.

True Winter: ceramic. Like a white sink. Impenetrable, tough, and enduring.

 

 

Clean. Picture the makeup colours from your palette painted right on that white sink. Dark eyes, red-violet cheeks, red-violet lips. No fuss, no frills. Not smoked (Dark Winter) or clear, as in translucent (Bright Winter). Can you tell this before they’re draped, by looking at them? Absolutely not. True Winter is always the draping surprise for me, even more so than Bright Spring.

For True Winter, that very quiet blanket of skin without a lot of cheek colour, or with an icy light cheek, is excellent, like the picture at the top. For Bright and Dark, colour on the cheek is better, I find. It adds to Bright’s liveliness and Dark’s intensity.

Eyeliner is dark. Eyeshadow is quite light and silvered. Under brow highlight is near white or some icy (near white) colour. Contour and back corner eyeshadow is quite dark. Darkening the outer back corner of eyes looks good as a way of adding drama. Use a dark gray/black eyeshadow. Go over the eyeliner to fill in holes. Drag the dark shadow out past the crease. Turn around and start pulling in inward above the crease, not in the crease. This enlarges the apparent size of the eye and recedes the skin above the crease that can close in. On eyes where the upper half of the lid is smaller than the lower half, the crease is shallow, or the eye prominent, you would omit this effect. Deposit some dark shadow at the outer lid corner.

Other Seasons will use a darker shadow that isn’t much darker than the lid colour or skip the effect altogether. On a Light Season, where dark colour takes off, the eyeshadow contour can just be the medium lid colour packed on a bit more heavily. On a Soft Season, the liner, lid, and contour are quite close in darkness level, as in medium, with contour only slightly darker. They distinguish their roles by being of different colours in similar darkness levels, rather than Winter’s variations on one colour (gray) in extremes of darkness levels. On a Winter, light means really light and dark means really dark. You are it already. So be it, as P. said so cleverly.

I do not know how bronzer can improve this face but I’m willing to see it if anyone has good products or ideas. You wouldn’t want to dull that spectacular opposition of The Purity and The Darkness that only this colouring incarnates.

Winter’s sheer is Spring’s almost-opaque. The best Winter gloss I can think of comes from Lora Alexander at Pretty Your World. The texture, finish, and amount of colour are excellent, with good clarity. Glama and Hot Lips lip colours and Fast Track blush are great (I own them). From this compare page of the Cool Winter selections, Diva looks super good too.

Though True Winter is very red-based and looks great in blue-based red apparel, I find their most natural fit for blush and lipstick is somewhere in the pink-fuchsia-purple spectrum. That may be because true red lips are like true black eyeliner, somehow harder and more dramatic than human faces really are. Dark Winter’s burnt rose red and Bright Winter’s strawberry or pink red alleviate the pure redness. True Winter does the same by using violet, meaning clear purpled pinks. Arbonne’s Raisin gloss is a very impressive purple. Lauder’s Raspberry Pop is good but gentler, as is Merle Norman’s Raspberry on Ice.

 

Bright Winter: Silicone

How about Bright Winter? That amazing special blend of innocence with a dark, brittle edge. The geisha could span the Bright Seasons. Once the delicacy feels almost too rare to conceive on this Earth, the hummingbird, a membrane-thin gold foil, we’re into Bright Spring.

Spring has a hand in Bright Winter. Therefore, we need a sugar coating, shiny, fun, and ornamental. Pink frosting on lids, cheeks, and lips, lilac highlights, more play (more colours at once), more theater (cat eye, a few false lashes, fine winged brows, bright lips, hats with veils, cloche hats with beautiful ornaments, because hats and earrings are face accessories). Below, the haircut, the dress print and line, all awesome.

 

 

Definitely a lighter palette than the other Winters.

The skin’s reflectance had me searching for an analogy. Fine china with that near-transparent edge? Thinking, thinking,…mostly Winter, therefore rubbery and even, but a little softer with a transparency in the outermost layer… oh, you’re going to love this, jellyfish! Not good? Soft boiled egg? Maybe. Yes.

But jellyfish is so good. Stay with me here.

 

The flamenco dancer.

 

 

Heavenly and magical.

 

 

You see where I’m going?

 

How do we translate this to makeup? You don’t have to do a lot, you have this smooth and rubbery (all Winters) clarity (Brights) already. Clear silicone skin. Increase it with  intensely coloured products, pigments so pure, you would swear they’re transparent. Brush powders with the slightest finest shimmer effect on all exposed skin. Don’t stop at the jawline. It’s a sprinkling of fairy dust, that sugar topping, an overall crystalline effect.

Bronzer? A little icy gold uplight, sure. Baby peach, always good on Brights. Very little.  We feel no bronzer per se here:

 

 

Chanel Glossimer in Jalousie is nice. Bagatelle is a light, pretty peach, Clarins Crystal Violet and Revlon Lip Butter in Raspberry Pie could be shared with True Winter. Stila Lipglaze Raspberry Crush is very good.

 

Recap: The skin is calm and even in colour and texture. By using strong lines, bold colours, intense pigment deposits, and big distance between light and dark, both adjacent and separate, we create very clear feature definition. There is no question about where one ends and the other begins.

For Summer, we said: The skin is soft and dry, setting up gentleness and gradual muting. The features are blended into the skin with colours that create a soft flow or diffusion instead of sharp definition. As colours flow into each other as hazy mists, it feels difficult to tell where one feature ends and the next begins.

For Autumn: The skin is contoured, setting up lowlights. The features are defined from the skin by colours that are warm and velvety and the judicious use of metallic glints.

This was Spring: The skin is dewy, setting up highlights. The features are fresh, lively, distinguished from the skin by being very colourful, moist, and vibrant.

——

The Best Skin Finish on Summer Colouring

November 12, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 29 Comments 

Feeling Imbalance

I went to a meeting. As the women arrived, one woman distinguished herself immediately as a leader in any crowd. Her physical presence was noticed first because she was quite tall and strongly built. Her face was equally strong, in the colours of coffee, cream, and golden piecrust, with clove brown eyes. Wearing bronze eyeglass frames with copper glints, her only makeup a beautiful deep cinnamon lipstick, she was striking and beautiful.

She moved through the crowd with confidence. She had the business savvy to put in a plug for her company as smooth as could be. Her natural qualities of character were as manifest as her beauty. Her choices in clothing and jewelry, although of high taste and quality, were confusing.

Nobody is ever unattractive. Every woman is truly a beauty in her face and her heart and I can look straight in your eyes to say that. But there are better choices. Better ways to spend our money that look more truthful and less artificial. In a white dress with splashy flowers in primary colours, suddenly, the random blonde hits in her hair stood out as disorganized. The coloured glass bead necklace looked plastic because our energy modifies not only colour but also texture and everything else that comes near it.

In the white jacket, our needle skips into a groove of wondering about skin that’s seen too much sun. It’s uncomfortable now. We have thoughts we don’t want to have. During your colour analysis, we’re going to see what the drape colours do to your skin. We are equally going to observe what your own colours do right back to the drapes (and so to your clothes and jewelry choices). Next to our woman’s colouring, white ages her skin. She in turn alters simple white to become strident and look, well, a little cheap. Thoughts we don’t want to have.

We love this woman. It doesn’t feel right that we can’t settle in her presence but our visual system is on a roller coaster with too much to process. I’m always reminded of a light-coloured person wearing those Christmas sweaters in strong reds and greens with shiny ornaments appliquéd on the front. Like wearing garland. We’re feeling effort and distraction.  Subconsciously, we’re scanning the room for somewhere easier to be. She is an Autumn, probably True Autumn, wearing colours and feelings made for another woman.

Where’s the balance? How can we know the way to enhancing what we are in a way that attracts people into our presence? By wearing the colours and lines that we are.

Soft Natural True Summer

One of our group wondered about a Polyvore using the True Summer palette, adapted for a Soft Natural body.

 

Classic bodies are people who are medium in their proportions, like me. Nothing really out of the ordinary,  in the center of the National Standards charts. Natural bodies are similar, with a heavier bone structure and more muscular tendency. The other groups belong to those body shapes that strike you as ‘not average’. They are Dramatics (long and lean, Keira Knightley, or long and curvy, like Bond girls, Ursula Andress), Romantics (smaller curvy, like Adele) and Gamines (Mighty Mites).  These are very loose versions of the 13 body types outlined in David Kibbe’s 1987 book, Metamorphosis. If you can find yourself, it is brilliantly good.

I am not brilliantly good at Kibbe’s interpretations. This is my take on SN. It won’t match anyone else’s.

 

 

Classics dress head-to-toe. Natural means separates.

No Croc, Brahmin, Python…Summer isn’t lizardy, futuristic, or obviously modernistic. Even on a Dramatic, they are more of a high breeding and ancestry group. Those other words are too cold and hard. They seem oily to me, moving into smarmy. Great on the right person though. We’re just looking for your normal. If you look like you’re wearing a costume, you’re in the wrong Kibbe and/or the wrong colours for you.

Choose coloured handbags. The choice in this item is endless. Gray or black ranges from sensible to serviceable to kind of depressing. Water colours, berry pinks, gorgeous blues, these are beautiful places to pick up the makeup colours. Trust me, we’ll see it, even in a fingernail. You would on someone else, right?

Cool Shimmer

Summer skin is most beautiful when it’s smooth, silky, and dry. This colouring is not at its most beautiful glossy or frosty, slick or metallic, which boomerang us back to wet, cold, and hard.

True Summer skin’s way of handling light is the diffusion of moonlight. There, we can find no sun, no hardness, no glitz, no wetness. There’s no winking like fireflies (that’s Bright Spring), no sharp gleam of platinum (True Winter), no dew (Light Summer), not iron and lead (Dark Winter’s gray feelings), and on it goes. Moonlight is not blingy (that’s Bright Winter’s normal). Moonlight is very cool and very soft. In a morning sky, it’s a sheer cloud-white curtain moving in a breeze. At night, a cloak of pearly, silvery light.

Vision theory moment: Moonlight is a combined reflection of sunlight, starlight, and reflected earthlight. It is neither blue nor silvery. We have colour sensitive cone cells in the retina whose highest sensitivity is to yellow light. But when illumination levels are low, the cones fire less. We become almost colour blind. The very light-sensitive (but colour-insensitive) rods take over and they happen to create more impulses in response to blue and green wavelength light.

 

 

In the way of Summer skin to mirror the colours and textures it wears, it will shimmer in brushed silver. The way to iridescence in skin is in brushed shimmers in pink, lavender, or blue, since these are the notes found through the entire palette, including the grays. You look amazing. The shimmer is an even veil. Put a Winter in those colours and textures and you’re looking at the skin through a window that needs cleaning.

Even satined makeup requires caution. Satin on Summer skin can convert into cold and frosty because these colours are already so extremely cool and the complexion is delicate. On Winter skin, frost is just skin, in the same way that Winter’s so-white-it’s-blue white will be just-white on a Winter and aggressive-colour-under-oily-face on a Summer. Only you see your clothes on a hanger. The rest of us see them compared to your own colouring right under your face. Again, just looking for what looks like normal white on you.

Textile that mutes colour is effective. Not the stronger thicker textures of Autumn colours (and skin). This is the much softer side. Summer isn’t thick, straight, or hard. It’s swirly. Spring is sweet and scattered, moving towards pointy and buoyant. Summer is grounded. It sweeps like a porch swing, a branch in a breeze, the lines created when you pour liquid slowly into liquid. The Best Skin Finish on Summer Colouring: , dreamy, dreamy, dreamy. (Light, True, Soft )

Summer colours are light (compared to Autumn and Winter), cool, and soft. Summer surfaces look muted and lightweight (Spring, who goes from frothy to floating, is closer to weightless), with brushstrokes or a gently buffed texture. The softness is feathery. Fluffy is good. Downy is great. Good dreams have fleecy edges.

Shiny surfaces shift colour to appear lighter and brighter. That’s great on Spring but makes no sense with Summer’s colours. They don’t cooperate. Since those same colours exist in Summer skin, it won’t cooperate either. White feathers can be almost blue in moonlight but they’re never the colour of lightning (Winter).

The True Season Analysis

If you’re a True Summer, remember when the analyst saw that drape on you right at the beginning of the PCA and stopped for a minute? And changed drapes and went back to the silver, and kept going back to the silver without telling you why?  She saw something. She didn’t move the drapes that way on your Bright Spring daughter.

Finally, she said, “I see today’s session is going to be a little different.” A True Season analysis is quite singular. In the True Summer silver drape, the face is perfect right from the start. Skin is evenly coloured. The eyes are so huge, you’ll think I’ve lost my marbles, I wonder if the colour analysts will recognize this, I am reminded of those glowy pearlescent white alien forms with great big eyes like from the Close Encounters movie.  (Read the story – no accident that Spielberg put 6 year old ballerinas in those outfits. The man had a handle on Summer.)  In some ways, with a True Season analysis, you begin at the end. Most remarkable, regardless of which of the 4 True Seasons you see.

More True Summer. They always look like this to me. The eyes are all you can see, the skin is so cool and quiet.

 

 

 

The Summer Skin Finishes

Integrating Summer into the Spring and Autumn we’ve already done,

Bright Spring: glass

True Spring: persimmon

Light Spring: petal

 

Light Summer:  peach

True Summer:  cotton

Soft Summer:   flannel

 

Soft Autumn: suede

True Autumn: velvet

Dark Autumn: leather

 

True Summer

>> paper to pearl

Use face powder. Translucent.

Use a foundation brush that makes the product a thin even layer. If I’ve applied your makeup, you know I’m selective in the extreme about where concealer goes and how foundation is applied. It’s fast and simple but there’s a way that I think works best.

What I don’t do for lack of time is follow with something I do on myself, and everyone could, which is to buff the skin a bit more. The Body Shop Extra Virgin Kabuki brush is my favorite (found it on beautypedia.com of course). It’s much too general to be the first foundation brush to my picky preference, but it leaves a superb buffed finish without moving the concealer and foundation from their zones.

The Shine Stopper at Paula’s Choice is very good. It works well on the T-zone.

The lips should look about like unpowdered, natural skin or just a bit shinier. Gloss = goop in a heartbeat. I’m not telling you to have powdery lips, just stay with reasonable, believable lip moisture, not a whole lot extra.

The colours of water are so important in True Summer – wear this type of jewelry, scarf, and movement near the face.

Navy mascara, soft not intense sapphire (Dior Icone Blue 268). Grey is hard to find, but the various Soft Blacks and Almost Blacks are fine. Black equals railroad tracks.

Stay with calm, fresh, gentle contrasts. Summer’s light colours are pastels, meaning more pigment than Winter’s light colours that are much closer to white. Avoid too much distance between lightest and darkest elements in hair, cosmetics, and clothes. Keep them closer together.

It’s quite important to settle in your mind how far from white your lightest colours are. Look at them and notice that it’s a long way to white from your coloured pastels for all three Summers. The eyeshadow highlight for Winter is some version of ice. On Summer, I use more colour under the brow bone, as muted (grayed) shell pink, where the amount of graying depends on the Season. True Summer might wear Merle Norman Ballerina, while Soft Summer could wear Merle Norman Mist.

Use eyeshadow instead of eyeliner or diffuse the liner well by applying shadow over it.

 

Light Summer

>> pearl to petal, as daisy, as butterfly wing. A little more fluff than Spring, a little more dry-down.

 

The True Summer section applies. There is more warmth here as a first warm weekend in May. Outdoor glows are great but controlled. A pale pink gold gloss or an uplight on the cheeks is plenty. You are a Summer, not a Spring, so restraint is needed. A May picnic isn’t the same as the beach in July. As a Neutral Cool colouring, remain cooler than warmer in everything you add. The Mineral Glow in Shimmer at e.l.f. is a nice choice without a lot of heat or a silly price.

On the Light Seasons, the lightest colour is plenty. The lightest application is plenty. The sheerest sheers will look so much younger. The blush by e.l.f. called Shy is one I love. It would set you back 2 whole dollars.

Face powder still applies. Use translucent, perhaps with a slight yellow tint.

Wondering what else to invest in at e.l.f.? Go to beautypedia.com. Click Search All Reviews. Choose Brand e.l.f. Cosmetics.  Down in Skin type, click all the types. Down in Ratings, deselect all the boxes except Paula’s Pick on the left side.  Why spend the same money and not get the best? Scan down the price column. Not bad. Now go back to the Search and select the Very Good box. 4 pages. Even better considering what’s coming next month.

 

 

The best makeup takes the lines and colours you already have and makes them more. It doesn’t work to superimpose someone else’s lines or colours on yours. Carol Tuttle of Dressing Your Truth taught us to consider the slant of a straight line drawn across outer – inner – inner – outer corners of our eyes. Position the outer corner of your eyeliner along that straight line.

The Spring stroke in Light Summer often places the outer corner higher than inner. Follow that. Don’t add cat eye effects unless you’re under 20, going to be in a music video, or are a Bright Winter Theatrical Romantic, and even then, it’s better in eyeglass frames than eyeliner.

Many True Summers have a very round eye, almost square. If the outer eye corner seems to pull downwards, then don’t extend the line at all, just keep it close to the rounded outer corner of the eye.

One of the many places to use concealer is to cover the red and/or downward crease at the outer corner of the eye. Blend the concealer up, not down. Everyone should do this. Nobody over 20 should use frost.

 

Soft Summer

>> pearl to flannel

From our textures above, Soft Summer becomes more woven, drier, and thicker as we move deeper into Autumn. Cotton to waffle weave. Light Summer will wear L’Oreal Peony Pink lipstick, while Soft wears Spicy Pink.

Soft Summer is not the dustings of icing sugar or flour above. It’s a dusting of dust. Contour with powder 2 shades darker than foundation. It looks like believable sun without seeming dirty or yellow. Clinique Superpowder Double Face makeup in Matte Tawny 06 is an option. Your choice is still cooler than warm, like a foundation but  a few shades deeper.

Use it as contour, as we began discussing in the Autumn article previously. That means in a 3 shape around the forehead, where the bone is most prominent, around the temple, under cheekbone so the blush can be blended above it and nearer the midline, and a little under the jaw. If the nose shape is not sharp, add second contour by beginning at the inner corner of the eye and go down the sides of the nose bridge, just off the midline, not down on the nostril. The deeper eyeshadow that goes above the crease is diffused away as it approaches the midline, at a level about where this second contour placement would go if extended under the eyebrow.

 

 

During the cosmetic colour section of your PCA, we focus on what right colour looks like on your skin. I really want you to see someone very new to you and also, that when cosmetic colour is correct, you can apply it and pack it on and apply more. It just melts into the skin. You can be a lot less careful than you’re used to with wrong colours. Some steps are left out for lack of time and small learning opportunity. Lipliner is one. I never use coloured lipliner anyway. I use a clear sealant to keep lipstick in place. Paula’s Choice makes a great one. The Lip Lock pencil at e.l.f. is another.

The cosmetic selections for Soft Summer are unlimited. You could fill pages and pages. At e.l.f., the Mineral Blush in Plum mixed with Pink or Joy to get the right darkness level, looks like it would be pretty.

For eyeshadow, look at the Endless Eyes Pro Mini in Everyday. You won’t use them all but for $5, it’s almost ridiculous.

 

On Summer, application is gentle and swirly. There are so sharp lines or edges.Diffuse one product into the next. The canvas is drier, using powder to ensure that products don’t catch and jump. If using cream products, apply them to the skin before the powder so they appear from within.

 

Recap: The skin is soft and dry, setting up gentleness and gradual muting. The features are blended into the skin with colours that create a soft flow or diffusion instead of sharp definition. As colours flow into each other as hazy mists, it feels difficult to tell where one feature ends and the next begins.

For Autumn: The skin is contoured, setting up lowlights. The features are defined from the skin by colours that are warm and velvety and the judicious use of metallic glints.

This was Spring: The skin is dewy, setting up highlights. The features are fresh, lively, distinguished from the skin by being very colourful, moist, and vibrant.

—–

 

How To Match Foundation

October 20, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments 

Women bring their own foundation to their colour analysis. One in eight has the best colour choice possible for her skin. Seems apt to talk about it.

The Wrong Hair Colour Merry Go Round

If the hair is too warm the skin is too yellow. You will be matched to too warm a foundation. You will look warmer than you are. Your hair colourist will keep warming up your hair, not noticing that your face is getting yellower, redder, and oilier looking. You will keep applying more makeup. Clothing colours will get more and more out of the loop because you feel something is off and can’t tell what it is. Coping with picking right clothing feels overwhelming.

Solution: Wear your correct clothing colours to go shopping. Tie back your hair with a correct coloured scarf till it can be fixed.

 

The Try-To-Match-My-Eyes Merry Go Round

We do not know our true eye colour simply by looking at it. Uploading the eye photo and extracting the colours can be surprisingly revealing. Likely not one of them will be what you think your eye colour is. The problem here is that you’ve taken your eye out of its context, meaning its surrounding colours in your face and hair. With colour, context is a deal breaker.

Many Light Summers try to match their eye colour in clothing. They can feel that their eye is more than just blue. They can feel that their eye is hazy, not Caribbean ocean clear. They gravitate to Autumn’s teal. That’s more than blue and hazy in its own muted way. On them, this colour looks bigger and darker than they are, like wearing curtains, so they amp up the makeup to match the teal. The young, fresh, sexy appeal of Light Summer evaporates. Dark makeup on light-coloured faces drags everything downward. On everyone, it’s light colour that lifts. Foundation then becomes too warm, dark, and heavy in texture. And on it goes.

Given comparisons, turns out they were close. Their true eye colour is Light Summer turquoise. Not only blue. Hazy. She was so close but got the exact type and amount of heat wrong. How could anybody know unless they were tested in a controlled and correct environment? The apparent similarities are definitely there, but oh what a difference those last little adjustments make in the final image. 10 years on your face or a little more than that.

Often, the Light Summer/Soft Autumn divide isn’t a decision I make till fairly late in the PCA process. Light Summer often wears Soft Autumn warmth in hair, which looks like a heavy hat, like wearing a crochet tea cozy on a shorter-looking person.

Solution: Have thy colours analyzed and take control of thine own appearance. Your Colour Book has your eye colours exactly, all of them.

 

Wait a minute here. Did I just say that your 12 Tone Colour Book based on the 12 colour collections derived by Sci\ART founder Kathryn Kalisz contains every single one of your colours in every person all the time?? Surely not. You’re a golden eyed, medium brown haired Bright Winter. Show  me those in the Bright Winter swatches. As time goes on and I see more, literally and figuratively, I have come to this:

Digression: Every One Of Everyone’s Colours Are In Kathryn’s 12 Tones

I draped a True Winter man. In the Luxury Drapes (Final Drapes), his wife and I could easily see blue and purple colours within the gray of his beard. We have all seen hair so black it’s blue. The brown haired Bright Winter has unique, special hair very unlike Summer medium brown. Someone might call them both medium brown or ash brown. If the hair is on your head and you’ve never stood beside a Summer medium brown and compared, you might think it’s the same. But it’s not. Put Summer’s medium ash brown hair colour on this head and she looks nearer to death.

I have learned the lesson that colours are never what I think they are. What if the swatch books developed by Kathryn, with every colour fully consistent with every other in all 3 dimensions of colour, were 100% right? About every colour in every person, skin, hair, eyes, teeth, veins, the whole deal.

What if we are wrong thinking that a warm brown eye in True Winter is an anomaly? How audacious of us to know better than Nature and a genetic code we barely comprehend. From the track record of getting things right, Nature is out far ahead of humans. She deserves the benefit of the doubt. What if it’s perfectly rational and reasonable that a Light Summer have brown eyes or red hair, even if we can’t see those colours per se in the swatch book? Humans couldn’t explain rain or reproduction not so long ago.

Nature gets everyone 100% consistent. Every feature. No exceptions. Our entire biology is supervised by one genetic code. Every one of your original pigments are in the swatch books. I’d even extend this to include apparent surface colour of the skin, meaning the colour foundation we buy, whether you appear yellow, orange, brown, pink, or white. It’s the mixtures and how they come out in your body that may not be in the swatch books. But I would bet that you could sit down with your swatches as pots of paint and create all your colours just as they appear on your body from those pots of paint. Lots of ways to make the brown of an amber Winter eye. Brown needs three primary colours and Winter has all three. How our eye looks as an amalgamated colour and what pigments participated in the first place are not the same, I’m certain of it.

You literally have thousands of colours in you that could have been in the personal colour analyzed palettes. The Winter amber eye is not like the Soft Autumn or Bright Spring one. Test them with comparisons. I can guarantee that they won’t be identical.

You know that I write this website because I’m trying to figure it all out too. Convince me I’m wrong. Please. All I want is to understand the truth.

 

 

The  “Why that just disappears into your neck” Merry Go Round

Don’t assume the salesperson knows how to match foundation correctly regardless of how slick he/she is about it. She may have gone to a weekend course. She does want you to look great but she has pressures of her own from higher up. She only has her product line to pick from. Mall lighting is the cheapest they can install.

Holding plastic swatches to your face is not enough. Stripes on arms and hands is useless. One stripe on the face and it’s a match – so not good enough. Maybe holding up plastic discs to your skin is acceptable at the drugstore if there are no samples, but at the department store? The nuances of the pigment mixture and the chemistry of our body are just the beginning of the shortcomings of coloured plastic.

Our visual system is comparison based. This is a given. It is how human brain structure is organized. There is no point in fighting it. If you have a hair or eyelash stuck in your mascara wand, do you hold it up against a black wall or a white wall to see it?

You need 4 or 5 stripes on the side of the cheek and jaw. Wait 60 seconds for it to fuse with the skin if it’s going to. Look at it for another 120 seconds and don’t make decisions. Only notice that the longer you look, the more different the stripes become from each other. Now pick the one that’s hardest to see. Can’t tell? Smear them out more on the face.

If you can’t tell if a blouse is your green, go around the store and pick out a few green things. No need for them to be your Season. The hot minute your eye is given a range, it gets busy because it knows how to do comparison. It will position the colour in your perception quite accurately. Staring and thinking and struggling will only take you so far. It’s like forcing a memory. It just goes further away. Give your eye what it wants: comparison. Then your brain says “This, I get. Now I see what you want from me. OK, no problem. Here you go. Here’s your answer.”

Solution: Insist on several stripes. Do the waiting of 60 and 120 seconds. Remove the obvious Nos. Start again. Ask for samples. If it feels like a selling game authority conflict for a single second, run to your nearest Sephora store.

 

Who’s zooming who?

The company is not doing you a favour by offering samples. The markup on this stuff is a zillion million %.  The company’s bosses live in castles. Do not be too grateful.

Think of it like this. You are doing the company a favour by offering them a moment of your attention out of your day. You are doing them an even bigger favour by giving them the willingness to bring their product into your home and to apply it on your body and offer it yet more attention.

They’re going to recover the cost of those samples in their first next sale.

 

Ending On A Happy Note

I have a Dark Winter soul sister who brought her gorgeous daughter to learn what she could look like by choosing certain colours over others. When Cheryl (whom you’ve met before in You Know Your Colours – Now What?) and I met, I felt this reciprocity thing, like I was talking to myself (we do not look alike). A common Dark Winter feeling is “I can tell it like it is or I can waste everyone’s time being all careful.” She and I share it in spades. We laugh about it. She brought me this pack of gum as a gift.

 

 

It was a week ago and I’m still laughing. When I walk the dog, I hope the neighbours don’t drive past and see this lone woman laughing all by herself. I’m typing and laughing. I love my friend, Cheryl.

(The photo is linked to a site with a lot of other funny stuff. You too could be sitting alone in traffic ROTFL.)

 

——-

The Best Skin Finish on Autumn Colouring

September 30, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 28 Comments 

Autumn light is long, low, and less. Like in the late afternoon. Like the difference between indirect lighting and a 100W bulb in the ceiling. The effect is to emphasize shape and depth, which looks rich and warm.  The feeling is safe, cozy, secure, all the reasons why we don’t put fluorescent overhead lights in our homes.

On a face, shape and depth take on a pronounced three-dimensionality – hills and valleys. Up close, it looks an uneven surface, a grainy quality – lines, freckles, fullness in hair, thicker looking skin, a feeling of plush and pile. From  a distance, this varied natural landscape depicted in such rich, low intensity tones has great resonance.

 

We’re going to use the quality of light and shiny colour to advance and matte and darker colour to recede. This will generate movement backwards and forwards to feel like depth and texture. We don’t want the face to look grainy, we’ll leave that to fabric, but we do want the appearance of profound strength.  It looks deep, synonymous with complex, wise, and penetrating. I think our brains are much more plastic with synonyms than we know and worth unleashing. It’s amazing what flutters up and out of the soup.

Remember the What and Where subdivisions of our visual system? We talked about them in the Soft Dramatic Soft Summer, a few articles back. The Where system, although not colour perceptive, is extremely sensitive to value contrast changes. It decides depth. We might only be able to recall about 7 or 8 grayscale levels but by putting them side by side, our Where system can discern a multitude of levels. On an Autumn face, we’ll put darker  colour on the skin to make the lighter areas seem lighter. As with shading in drawing, or chiaroscuro, this models the illusion of depth and volume.

We know that wearing many layers, along with looking warm and creative on Autumn, looks 3D. Here’s another way for attire: wear repeating patterns. Can be geometric (plaid), natural (leaves, paisley), or brushstrokes (Impressionist painting style). With two incoming images, one for each eye, the brain has to decided which goes with L and R. When the images are multiple and repeating, some get switched. Makes us think we see depth.

At one far end of Autumn’s influence on natural colouring, the Season we call Soft Summer in 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis is mostly coloured with the Summer paintbrush, resulting in a moody blues feeling. Autumn’s gold effects are beginning to co-exist, like the hologram of the previous articles on the Soft Dramatic Soft Summer Part 1 and Part 2.

At the other end, where Autumn also plays a smaller part, Dark Winter is a cool-based (Winter-based) group, like Soft Summer. Here though, the advance/recede is superseded by Winter’s high contrast, making depth and texture of lesser prominence.

What about the 3 Autumns?

Soft,

True,

and Dark, interesting how much temperature changes with light, darks are darker below and you’re looking for a sweater.

 

how does these types of natural colours amplify the many gifts they were given?

Autumn is seldom smooth to look at. This is not a My Little Pony world. Spring’s wide-eyed-wonder is not the rhythm of this drum. Autumn is rope, not ribbon.  Autumn is not dewy or creamy or anything that reminds us of smooth. Dewy spices, dewy chocolate, dewy rust, they don’t make sense. Expressed in Autumn’s colours, dewy somehow feels slimy. Dewy curry. I mean, I ask you.

Autumn is hot, dry, velvety thick, and metallic. You could say a rose petal is velvety, yes, but it’s not dry. Worth taking a minute to think about the difference between shine, frost, and metallic.  To me, shine is smooth and wet and belongs on Spring. The difference between frost and metallic may be semantic or may be about the colour they’re rendered in, where frost is cold and icy colour, so Winter, and metallic is hotter and medium to dark, as copper, gold, bronze, and their variations. So what’s shimmer? Good Q. Is it very  finely ground frost or metallic?

So wear bronzer! Like with Spring, I use the same product on the 3 Autumns, mostly because I travel and want to minimize. Spring’s was a beige based peach-gold. Autumn’s is baked earth, dark tan, a more orange-brown type of gold and a darker colour. I like Rimmel SunBronze 02 as a good colour that’s not very shimmery.

On Soft Autumn, I apply it much the same way, in a 3 shape from temple>just below cheek and side of face>under jaw, but using less than on True Autumn. On True,  I use more and let it be both heat and contour. Dark Autumn’s makeup colours are quite saturated and strong and with her Winter input, she is more contrasting than the other two groups. If her hair is warm, I often skip the bronzer and let her makeup stand alone and allow a warmer hair-cooler skin event, always visually intriguing on Neutral Seasons. If her hair is cooler, I might apply the bronzer. You need to know that eleablake did an outstanding job of creating cosmetics for the 12 Sci\ART palettes and their bronzers (12 different skin-accurate shades!) are IMO the best around.

The sentence we began with said it. Autumn is about low lighting. On a face, that means contour! It’s huge here. Take the 3D in you and make it more. Shadows go dark in Autumn fabrics, so should they on the faces. Where Spring uplighted, Autumn shades and contours the valleys. Would I do both? No. It would start looking bizarre.

You can use bronzer or a slightly darker powder than your perfect match. It’s interesting that you can go quite a bit darker than you think and create bold shadow emphasis and once blended, it still looks normal. Apply it at the temples, sides of nose, hollow of cheeks, under chin. There’s a good image here from the excellent book, Looking Younger by Robt. Jones, and below the contour image halfway down is a link to another article in the same blog that shows you Aucoin’s version. Create  the near and far that is so much part of Autumn scenes.

 

Oh, so good. Rich colour, warm colour, strong accessories, gorgeous lips, sensual features, fantastic bones, amazing hair.

Debra Messing Pictures

 

But when Autumn makes up like a Spring and adds Winter apparel,

 

Debra Messing Pictures

 

Coating the entire surface of a brick wall in shine doesn’t help define its surface. If anything, it neutralizes or trivializes it. Besides, the surface isn’t by Nature very reflective of light or full of highlights, so coating the surface with it is just strange, like a trick that you don’t quite get how it works or what you were supposed to see or understand.

However, a dot of shine here and there over velvet matte layers using deep, rich colours brings more dimensionality. Keep the face suede, which makes sense. Add deliberate shine over the iris. Dimension is created better by deliberate placement of metallic over matte products. It is not present at all in entire shiny eyelids, cheeks, or lips.

Best JLO pic I know – feline, exotic. This photo makes me choke up. My jaw drops. Does straight white girl hair and powdery puff makeup look better? No. Does soap opera hair and safe peachy makeup look better? No.

Anyone’s browser having issues opening the JLo photo? Try copying and pasting this link into the address bar:

http://famous-wallpapers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Jennifer-Lopez14.jpg

Let’s take that makeup to the next level and compare them.

 

 

What’s the same

- eyebrows definition without darkness or high contrast

- a dark powder from the inner corner of the brow down the sides of the nose just on the edges of the midline

- eyeliner around the entire eyes, angled down with the eye at the inner corner and up with the eye at the outer corner

- flesh tones – although when we’re in our correct makeup, we’re all wearing flesh tones, but here the traditional flesh colours (beige, brown, orange,  camel, gold) are superlative

-squint and look at Jennifer; the bronzer does around the face on the outside in the same way as on many of the cats

- the mouth has a dark liner, medium colour, light center gloss, using layering to create a 3D effect just like Autumn does with clothing colours

- everything about the hair is rave-worthy; Autumn is not particularly light though they’re often dyed that way; the highlight is minimal, just enough red to give us the idea without an entire redhead that can take over our awareness so we miss out on the amazement of the total image; this hair is very much about lowlights just like the rest of the Autumn ambience; I see few natural redheads among Autumns and though they wear it well, I find this looks more dimensional, interesting, and authentic

- her entire face is velvet, not sparkle

- coppered, tawny, metallic hints, hot hot

 

Never underestimate the power of jewelry near the face to do what makeup can’t reasonably do. Wear it near your face. Make it textured as in bumpy, irregular. Use clothing the same way, with all over shine that doesn’t work on a face or just metallic threads, keeping it layered and uneven, as raw linen.

Use matte eye shadow to look like velvet. The feeling should be like pouring thick cocoa. Remember the movie Chocolat (Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp, rent it, it’s beyond great), that hot, dark liquid that was going to heat you up in every sense of the word? Go for that eye shadow look.

And you knew there were flecks of hot chili in that elixir? Wear a dot of shiny antique gold above the iris, not all over the lid which is less dimensional – like if you put concealer on the light skin and on the shadows, you’d  cancel the effect of the product to even out the shadows.

Do not cover up freckles ever. They’re splendid at every age. Believable beauty is always better. They look textured and young.

Smoky eyes are good.  Run your darker eye shadow over the eyeliner to fill in the holes, make it look less linear, and smoke it up.

 

The Skin Textures

We did Springs previously. That went as:

Bright   Spring = glass

True Spring = persimmon

Light Spring = petal

 

So the Autumns could be:

Soft Autumn = suede

True Autumn = velvet

Dark Autumn = leather

 

3 Autumn Seasons 

True Autumn:

Add heat all over the face, you might as well, the skin is that way already. The True Warms look great with bronzer applied as we have heard, ‘where the sun lights the face’. On the Autumn Warm Neutrals (Soft and Dark Autumn), a little restraint may be better. On the Autumn-influenced Cool Neutrals (Soft Summer and Dark Winter), bronzer looks better to me when confined to contour.

Revlon Abstract Orange lipstick is interesting. It’s red and brown and orange, layered and very dimensional. Super good with Arbonne Sunset blush. Made to be together.

Metallic eye liner could be great here in a colour that’s not too dark, just like real gold. Autumn looks best when it’s real, not plastic, synthetic, or artificial. Glinting added to very dark colour sets up too much contrast and goes with Winter.

Soft Autumn:

We’ve shifted from the more delicate muted Summers to Autumn’s stronger muted colours and texture, to skin like suede. Colour is rich, earthy, but retains some Summer grace. Look at Arbonne blush in Dusty Rose and compare it to their Blossom, a real beauty for Light Spring. Arbonne eyeshadow in Smoke and Sand are great Soft Autumn colours as well.

Eyeliners that you thought would be good often go on looking too dark and/or too hot (orange or red). This is my most challenging colouring by far for finding eyeliner I like. At Shoppers in Canada, Essence liner in Teddy costs a dollar. It will be great on many Softs and some Trues. Using eyeshadow as liner is wonderful on the Soft Seasons to avoid harsh lines, enhance the low contrast effect further, give you so much more choice of colours, and let you enjoy some of your darker tones in cosmetics.

Take care with metallic eye liners that they’re not the only thing people see, especially if eye colour is light. Imagine them in the Harvest Field photo above, they’d feel very hard. With the essential muting of the Soft Seasons, iridescence and luster are beautiful, real, and enough. If you’re doing metallics, don’t go dark.

Dark Autumn:

Nobody looks as right in leather, like those bomber style jackets, shearling lined, metallic effects in snaps and zippers. If Soft Autumn is Indiana Jones, then this is the Marlboro Guy. It’s a stronger, heavier, thicker look. Stronger and more defined eye liner works, though still can be very smoked. True Autumn is not high contrast, so lips and brows are more part of the face. On Messing above, the makeup is great, the glasses are getting dark for a True (no idea what Season she is) but they don’t really compete with her face. They’re interesting, smart, explore the edge with confidence, and say “I know what looks good on me.”, which is a fairly unique thing to be able to say.

Use more drama in contrast (Winter coming in) with eye shadow as a darker outer corner, defined brows, and a mouth that stands out from the face. Lips can still be flesh tones, which looks too erased/flat/tired/dead/old/pick your word on Winter, but these are deeper than the True or Soft Autumn flesh tones. They are darker, redder, maybe a little burnt looking by comparison. (I appreciate that in our ideal makeup colours, we’re all wearing flesh tones but I mean it here as the browned colours.) Givenchy gloss in Delectable Brown could be great on Soft Autumn, while the Darks might look at Sensual Chocolate, here at Sephora.

Ideal hair colour for the 3 Autumns is the eye colour or somewhere among the eye colours, an effect very few other Seasons accomplish so interestingly. Gingerbread brown eyes are truly visually compelling. These are the warm dark browns from chestnut to coffee bean. Red works because Autumn’s quite controlled red is increasing towards unleashed when Winter appears full on.

No question, to balance higher saturation, more red in the colouring, and darkness, you need more cheek colour to look vibrant, healthy, and fantastic. Look at Arbonne blush in Merlot.

And of course, lips need presence, especially once these faces reach full power in their 40s and onward. Both Dark Seasons can struggle with all the too-dark-for-daytime choices. As a Neutral Season, Dark Autumn has a warmer and cooler version of all its colours, including red. Oh, to find that saturated-but-not-too-much, red-that-isn’t-rust, warmer-than-cool, doesn’t-look-black-at-night, I-could-go-on…Could it be Arbonne Jam? Try it and tell us.

(For those who live in North America, you may have an Arbonne rep you can Google. My newest great friend, Ramona Robinson, is based in London, Ontario. She can sample and send product anywhere on the continent. There’s no hard sell here. Ramona is a woman who sincerely wants to empower women with better information, health, and awareness in all aspects of their lives. Contact at rjrobinson@rogers.com. Tell her I said Hi.)

 

Recap: The skin is contoured, setting up lowlights. The features are defined from the skin by colours that are warm and velvety and the judicious use of metallic glints.

This was Spring: The skin is dewy, setting up highlights. The features are fresh, lively, distinguished from the skin by being very colourful, moist, and vibrant.

 

———

 

The Best Skin Finish on Spring Colouring

September 7, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 45 Comments 

The surefire path to looking easily and believably beautiful is using what you have already as the mooring, and then adding more of it. Anchoring what someone else has into your own physiology isn’t nearly as convincing. To the viewer, this can feel like looking at a seesaw.

Where order  and agreement exist between the elements of a composition (for instance, between your natural colours and those in your  highly structured Sci\ART 12 Season palette), we sense harmony. Their relationships are visually interesting and appealing. More than that, their relationships confer upon the elements the ability to interact. This is visual magic. Now, appearance becomes scintillating.

However often an untruth is repeated, it doesn’t become a truth. When it comes to our appearance, others can tell the difference. They may not know exactly how we looked before we wandered away, but they can tell we moved farther from the starting point.

When you read what I’m about to say, we have to keep the following people out of your thoughts:

i. You – an unobjective situation if ever there was one.

ii. Your family – lots of history and emotional investment, not always a lot of reality going on, though can be a great place to learn to see apparel colours next to human colours.

iii. Anyone in magazines – make-believe worlds that nobody really lives in.

iv. Anyone under 20 – very pretty but have not reached full power in the face or mind, not the reality I want for you.

Of your friends and people at the office, whose appearance looks calm and complete when every hair is pin straight? You can almost feel the ironed hair groaning, “Stop doing this to me. Let me out of this hair girdle.” as if you’re the one getting ironed flat every day. Appearance empathy.

Highlights, bronzer, coloured eyeliner, dewy, glowy, metallics, the list has no end. Knowing which trend or look is for you is power plus – maybe because the other way round is power minus. The more people sign up for an idea or a trend, the more it can cash in for its brief stint in our attention. It doesn’t care if 8 in 10 look worse. It never cared about that in the first place. Its mandate was to rake in $$$.

The only people who should straighten their hair have 80% straight hair at the start and just need to seal the ends. Most everyone else just looks shorter.  Flip up your eyeliner if your eye flips up, otherwise you may be accentuating that your eye doesn’t. If the eye line is straight, then continue liner straight a bit. Many eyes just stop at the outer corner and are a bit squared. They look better with no eyeliner extension. Like over-whitened teeth, that little difference is the edge between creating an appearance that makes sense and one that is confusing.

A Spring woman looks unsettled when she wears Winter colours. She looks more like a child, one who raided her parents’ closet, wearing clothes that look too big and too serious. In her Spring colours, she finally looks like an adult. Spring colours only look kiddish on non-Springs. In her light caramel, peach, and ivory, with sparkling light gold wire hoops from which dangle pieces of coloured glass that catch the light, she is the Director of Educational Development for her province. She knows what she came here to say. Her natural cheerfulness in no way detracts from her credibility. In fact, she was selected for this job because she is so clearly non-judgmental. She so sincerely sees the best in everyone that she brings great comfort to the assembly. She got voted Most Loved Principal by her students. Her workshops are so well-attended because people look forward to being around her. They can feel that she just plain likes them. Spring is the no strings attached person.

Spring shares with Autumn that its colours are very warm, but that’s the end of the similarity. Even the type of heat is different. Spring’s is the yellow found in jellybeans. Autumn’s darker, richer gold colours make more sense as velvet drapes than jellybeans. Spring is smooth and shiny. Autumn is the queen of depth and dimension and we’ll talk about how to make that happen on a face in a later post.

Look at Charlotte’s skin, below. Spring fabrics have shine because of what shine does to colour. Shine can elevate and exaggerate colour. It can also lighten it. Those colours are in the skin too so it follows that we’d enhance them in the same ways, using the same shiny finishes.

 

 

Notice that when I add videos, there are two people to compare. Also, IDK what Season Charlotte is, she could be a Soft Autumn or some other. Some of her physical traits resemble Spring’s. Above, look at his skin compared to hers, it’s grey and it’s red. Her hair colour is fantastic. Buttery warm and yellow, not the heavier moose brown of Autumn. The highlights are just that, threads of light, heat, and shimmer. That brown eyeshadow – would it look better grey? No. Moves me closer to considering a very warm Season.

Heaven love her colourist for not making her a beach babe. The hair is coloured but not a lot. It’s believable, friendly, open, not highly contrasting or serious, just like her presence. The upkeep is probably occasional. You can see the yellow in her eyes even from a distance. The brows are dark, which is interesting, with as much drama as the face and her position as an artist will comfortably allow.

 

 

Again, below, fantastic golden beige hair. See that she’s not yellow in this dress, most people would be instantly so. Notice the mesmerizing from-elsewhere eyes, they have an Avatar quality, as if descended from a golden, gilded world, the magic that is Spring. She sings with a smile, radiating the pure joy in the sound (many singers frown often, like it’s a job). Spring people seem made from the sun.

 

 

Here is another woman with many Spring attributes. Look how yellow her skin is compared to the other women. She actually needs to wear her Spring colours to not look yellower than her clothes.

 

 

Nothing should come near this skin, this person, this energy, that could dim its light.

Bring Out the Beauty of Spring Skin

When any drape containing Spring comes near the skin, even if the dose of Spring in the person is small as in Light Summer, or even if the drapes are not quite yellow enough, this skin visibly tightens, plumps, and looks reflective and moist. This happens just as much whether they’re 16 or 60. Tighter skin and easing of lines happens for everyone in their right colours, but I could argue that the Spring colouring takes more years off than any other.

Spring skin keywords: dewy, young, delicate, smooth, tight, shiny, and moist.  Like petals.  We’d all like to think we have petal skin but it’s not realistic so there’s no point. We’ll get to the other Seasons soon.

 Spring makeup tips:

1. Try cutting foundation with moisturizer. You’ll look the same or better. Opaque coverage is never needed here.

2. Keep use of translucent face powder to a minimum, just enough so the next products can be blended. Matte and dry finishes don’t feel right for colours that feel like juice and cream. Even peaches manage to be velvety without feeling heavy.

3. Transparency, as sheer products, are much better than opaque ones with heavy colour deposits. What looks normal and necessary for colour to get noticed on Winter skin looks like house paint on Spring skin.

4. Uplighters, not low lighters!  Choose slight shimmer of the finest grind and uplighting liquids. Think of Charlotte’s face. Adding shadowing products would look heavy and dull. Emphasizing the angularity of a young face never looks quite right to me. It feels old and solid and carved out on a very opposite type of energy. By using uplights, so light + shiny + colour (which isn’t the same as white + frost + icy absence of colour) beautifies the geometry of the face and keeps the vitality and vibrancy high, since Spring’s settings are up at the top on those scales.

5. Jingle, twinkle, sparkle, movement, and high shine – they look odd on a face, but keep them near the face with jewelry. Let the jewelry do what the makeup can’t reasonably do.

 

Light Spring

petals in hazy light

daisy to daffodils

more delicate and less shiny than tulip petals

peaches and cream

 

 

 

> For Light Spring, try

delicate peach-gold bronzer very lightly applied

milky colours, which look creamy, not wildly vibrant yet, as the top rose below

to reflect light, a surface must be smooth; make word associations, as ‘milkshake colours feel smooth because milkshakes are smooth’; creamy and smooth feel connected wherever our brain stores sensory data; creaminess of colours feels right

still some Summer here so keep a little haze with more powder and less bronzer

sheer and cream products, to create a moist and dewy finish as the bottom rose photo below; notice this isn’t icy, glitter, metallic, bronze, it’s just wet (kept within reason on a face)

lipgloss

uplights on cheeks using coloured (coral, light beige, gold), not icy, products; remember that Light Spring’s lightest colours are more ‘colourful’ than Winter’s icy colours because they are pastels

eye shadow probably better light, sheer, and matte to recognize Summer’s haze

 

True  Spring

juicy

shiny

transparent

 

Below, notice all the light bouncing off every surface. There are highlights everywhere. Surfaces are tight, plump, moist, with no associations of cold, hard, or frosty.

 

 

>For True Spring, try

the least face powder of anyone, just enough to dry the skin so the next product doesn’t catch

gloss

cream cosmetics as for Light Spring

eyeshadow can be shiny or matte, your preference; matte is easier on mature skin

peach-gold bronzer, same product as Light Spring’s but using more of it to create a face that is very vibrant with the colours of health

 

Bright Spring

delicate shine

icier lights (more ‘colourful’ than Winter’s but not soft/muted/grayed/dusty/heathery)

glassy

more contrast as Winter arrives

moist lips

The Birds In A Tree picture is smooth, light, shiny, crisp, tight, and clean, with significant separation between lightest and darkest. The overall effect is still warm, bright, and alive.

 

 

On the cherries, the overall effect is darker and the placemement of highlight more strategic than the currants above. The surface is still round, tight, and plump and doesn’t need any strategic shading to make it better.

 

>For Bright Spring, try

sharper angles with more deliberate uplight placement along upper edge of cheekbones, browbone, and center of nose to sharpen the angles, not a warmth diffusion

lighter uplighters, not too gold/peach/caramel/yellow as Winter’s sharpening comes in

multicolours and colourful colours to keep the Candyland feeling of this colouring;  peach eyeshadows, dark turquoise eyeliners, fuchsia lips (all from her Colour Book of swatches) together actually looks perfectly fine because that’s how her face is put together to begin with

you can’t put glitter on your face, but you can sneak a little in the hair depending on age and occasion; this is the colouring of figure skating outfits, after all; or just use jewelry, but sparkly sparkly, Swarovski, not pearl/coral/jade/turquoise which don’t feel glassy and twinkly

use glitter in nail polish but keep it delicate, like winking; there is huge delicacy in Bright Spring that more aggressive cosmetic effects don’t respect

more definition of features from skin (a form of contrast)

more distance between light and dark colours

———

Will the face look wet or oily? No colouring will in right colour because the whites that the color brings out in the face don’t exceed your own. That’s part of the magic. When lights get lighter than your own, which can happen for a variety of reasons in wrong colour, there seems to be a random too-shiny white light bouncing all over, which looks a little greasy.

What your makeup looks like in pans is only how you see it. The rest of us see it painted right on top of your own colours. When you and your product are a match, your appearance has rhyme and reason. I promise you, with only your empowerment in my heart, you look better than good.

 

Recap: The skin is dewy, setting up highlights. The features are fresh, lively, distinguished from the skin by being very colourful, moist, and vibrant.

——–

 

 

What Do You Want From Your Colour Analysis?

August 22, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 5 Comments 

What three things do you want to be different after? Does one matter most?

How much time to that outcome would be acceptable to you or do you expect to need?

How will you know that you’re on the right track?

These are what I’m thinking about today.

Creating Your Best PCA

In his great book, Creating, Robert Fritz (linked to his site, look around, he’s extremely good, find Creating under Books)…he describes creating (not creativity or creating but actually making something new, like your better appearance for instance) as having essential components, all of which we must define to bring any creation to reality. Without pulling together a strong intention and/or vision about the following three points, it’s just drifting.

#1 is a defined start point. Most of us are so busy with process, i.e. spending and more spending, that we forgot to assess current reality and know where the Start line is. Are we Dark? Warm? Neutral and Classic or Neutral and Lush? You, your daughter, and your friend don’t set out from the same place.

 #2 is knowing how you plan to measure success, meaning how you will recognize that you made the creation that you set out to make – would taking over control of your hair colour qualify? That’s a measurable goal.

 #3, #4, #5, the book is full of brilliant, basic, and overlooked points. The last one is: what is the desired outcome? To own one more blush and bring the total to 12? To have hair that looks like it could have happened on its own? Analysts argue about how many Seasons. 4, 12, 16, or more. Who cares?  It’s the wrong argument because it’s debating an outcome that the user of the system doesn’t really care about because they don’t need to. The number doesn’t matter as long as there is a precise means of integrating the relevant palettes. It’s like discussing whether Seasons is an outdated term to classify natural colouring groups. Whatever, we can call them NC 1 – 12 if it sounds better.

Most certainly, precision matters behind the scenes, which is why the Sci\ART method holds such a high standard. Without it, we’re lost. That’s how these most effective palettes came to be in the first place. But the industry shouldn’t stop there. If the theory disappeared, it would have less impact on the consumer than if she could no longer get her youngest hair colour. Like if mechanical engineering fell through the floor, it wouldn’t matter till the car stopped moving. Value that the consumer clearly feels is the point. The real Q that should be getting asked and answered is, did the analysis process and Colour Book come with enough follow-through to help you use your colours to choose lipstick that looks superb on your face?

 

 

If you looked at me and thought “Wow, does she always look this tired?”, it’s because I was chasing a bat around my house at 2.30 am. I got it into the room where Bill was sleeping and shut the door, figuring I’d deal with it in the morning. Nothing wakes him up. I go back to bed. At 3 am, I worry that the bat is rabid and if it lands on him and he swats at it and it bites him…how was I going to explain that to the newspaper? Me, a vet and all, it wouldn’t sound very good. By 4 am, the bat is dealt with, locked in a room with Bill whom I forced to wake up, oh, so happy. The digression that always inserts itself somewhere.

One more digression…it took about 4 minutes to upload these videos to YouTube!! It used to take an hour. And PhotoBooth does the recording on the computer. Maybe we’ll do a lot more videos.

A smart marketer, one who can see the blanks down the road, will make -

>> an App that scans the internet for a woman’s colour palette in retail (thank you to Betty who came up with this)

>> a full palette of solid powder makeup for each of the 12 Seasons to travel with (thank you to Christine for the suggestion and for knowing that her needs are the same as every woman’s)

This is the stuff women want. That tagline up at the top of the page that says “Know your perfect colours.” Who cares? Not our client, and she is the only person that someone in any business should be focused on. I’ll change it once I come up with a better business name. 3 years now and it still hasn’t come to me.

PCA Training

Why do I want to know?

By the end of this year, I hope to be teaching students to see what I see when I analyze human colouring. It will use the Sci\ART method developed by Kathryn Kalisz because the more I use it, the more I believe that it’s the one that works. The course content will vary a lot from my own Sci\ART training to reflect differences in process, interpretation, and use that I’ve acquired along the way.

I was never certified as a trainer. I am not a colour theorist. I’m using a method I didn’t invent, but that’s fair. Ideas can’t be patented. Math teachers didn’t invent math. Credit will go back to the source in various forms. I’ve been asked if I will certify people after…Well, sure, for what it’s worth. Nobody certified the one signing your certificate here. I can promise you an Analyst Training Guide with breakdowns, flow charts, scripts, standards, troubleshooting, process, psychological and emotional support issues that arise, and much more. You will have confidence and competence once we’re done.

I want students to know how to interpret natural colouring and provide the client with the greatest advantage in using their colours for everyday buy decisions. To do that better, I am asking you, our very precious clients, to think about what it is you really want from your best colours and send it to me privately to christine@12blueprints.com. The more you can distill the answer to a few key points, the better. I’ll listen to every story. I will share your information, anonymously only, you have my promise, with students to help them understand how to serve you better. Tell us what you want. Hair colour charts?  Garment examples? Newsletters? New makeup collections swatched?

Help us take the work out of your hands. What an analyst can do in an hour could take you a month. We just need to know what you want. More emphasis on certain parts of the analysis?  Less time draping, more time on makeup? If you’ve had it done, what aspect of shopping was hard and how could it have been easier? The whites are always a challenge…what about 12 pieces of white fabric for each Season (not just yours) to shop with? Use the ingenuity that I know you have and think like that, OK?

As an update, many have asked for training and it’s time to stop putting them off. This service changes the lives of women and men forever and it needs to be shared on a broad scale. The biggest reason for delay has been providing drapes to students so they can practice on everyone they know the day they finish the course. I hope that drapes and the course will both be for sale by the end of this year. Know that many of us are working towards that end. The course, I could get you next month. The drapes, the biggest and most critical job of them all, that’s going to need a little more time and attention, but it is moving forward.

——

Read the letter from Amber on the Testimonials page (it’s the 23rd one). What I love most is that when women leave, for this one moment, they are truly happy to have the body and face they have. To appreciate, love, and be thankful for the face and body you were given, what a place to get to.  Any feeling that you felt once, you can get back to. Bringing you there that first time is why I do this.

To the same degree, I will extend myself for my student in whatever way he/she values. The opportunity to earn a good living must be within reach so that every woman has an colour analyst within a few hours’ drive of her hometown. Therefore, in part to get me out of the way so students can gain experience, the fee for an analysis with me will increase to $300 as of Nov. 1/12. What you can expect for your investment and how you will be improved are addressed in #1 on the PCA FAQs page.

 

The second video is also about value as well, a different perspective.

 

 

More numbers: You’ll save the cost of the colour analysis appointment 2 to 10 times over in the first year alone, assuming you spend $600 to $3000 yearly on appearance, not including non-colour items like facials. Yes, you’re still spending, but way smarter, returning little, and giving away almost never. Over a lifetime, the payback is extreme. Sooner you know, sooner you save.

Ultimately, my goal is to make you the expert on your own appearance. You’ve been in stores. You know that nobody else can do that like you can. Appearance is not just Rules. Your answers are not all in one book, method, technique, or advisor. It’s Colour + Layer gleaned from Kibbe + Layer that felt right from Dressing Your Truth and other sources + Character + Individual beyond rules + Context + Objective feedback.

Scroll back to the top and take a little time to consider the questions there. If you’ll tell me what you hope your PCA will tell you or give you, I’ll look after making that happen.

 

—–

 

Autumn’s Children

July 26, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 23 Comments 

When I wrote the articles about True Season children two years ago for a previous blog, there was no Autumn article because I didn’t know any Autumn kids to watch. I still don’t know many. I know many Autumn grownups these days. They’re so levelheaded, so reasonable, that it’s hard to think of those elaborate parts of their character that can be quirky or funny. To them, what is, is. Not more, not less.

They’re like everything that’s great about trees and home baking. Not fancy or fussy, I love their company so much for the WYSIWYG, sound, comfortable, real-world advice they offer. Their constancy and durability give us a feeling of people who are extremely trustworthy, reliable, and rock-steady. There’s no zigging and zagging.

gentle eyes, a soft face, perhaps some Summer; she could even be a Soft  Summer but the eyes look too orange

Autumn Children

Capable. This is the kid you want yours to be with if they go horseback riding. If yours falls off and is having wrist issues, the Autumn child can catch both horses, lead them home, find a grownup or a phone, call the parents, and get the right kind of help.

Life goes smoother if the other kids could just agree with them. There may be no physical attacks but there will be direct words spoken and order imposed. She’s doing the talking at the lemonade stand. Not bossy, not show-off, just doing the job.

Least likely to be picked on. Assertive from an early age.

dark but somehow soft (muted actually) ; the strong facial lines, smile lines

True and Soft are social, not solitary. Dark may isolate himself more and talk to dolphins while all the other kids are trying to tip the raft. Winter needs time apart.

Might be stocky or sturdy, especially the boys, and boy, can they eat. Regardless, boy or girl, these children are strong and willing to use their strength. They are powerful athletes and real survivors. Their stamina and endurance stays with them into adulthood as 50 year olds who can still outskate all the kids in pond hockey.

someone was smart when they put him in orange; notice the orange tones in the hair and a very strong face, even for a baby

When the Soft Autumn child tells a story, the emotions involved will be inflated higher than anyone else’s version because their Summer-ness felt them so deeply. The Dark Autumn child will have more worries about the events in the story and their meanings and repercussions. The Winter in him will keep him worrying about it for days. The True just tells it like it is. The most exaggerated thing about this person is that they have no exaggerations.

Need time to process surprises and really wishes you wouldn’t. His Spring sister’s idea of euphoria would be a surprise a minute.

building, digging, stacking, carrying, exotic eyes, Carol’s T3 defined points at the outer eye corners (from Dressing  Your Truth)

They must have their own experience of something to change their mind. They are the original can’t-tell-them-anything kids.

 

strong and striking, Autumn and Winter ; not romantic or cute (Summer and Spring)

The Autumn child is straight up. He doesn’t conceal, cannot deceive. He’s not a jokester and is never devious. His Spring brother, who takes life less seriously and has a big imp streak, has figured out that when Mom’s on the phone, he can climb out a window, double back around the house to the kitchen, and sneak his fifth Popsicle of the afternoon. The Autumn child might walk very quietly into the kitchen, but if noticed and asked, would be compelled to admit “5″.

Spring fills us with the wonder of the moment. It is immediate. Summer is the cradle that keeps us safe while pushing us to meet our highest potential.  Winter symbolizes mental capacity, to reason, to rationalize. Autumn is the work we do on Earth, to enrich, to build, to create, to leave something better than we found. Autumn completes our wholeness as the power of the physical body, inseparable from emotion (Summer), spirit (Spring), and logic (Winter). Without the balance between them, we cannot heal ourselves because each one is assaulted when the other feels injury. We also cannot fulfill our human potential. We cannot have been put on Earth with the abilities we have to live as cavemen. We must be here to live up to a higher ideal. The pendulum between the four powers sways but our answers are not behind us. Once we learn our center as a humanity by respecting all four energies equally, we will find a sustainable way of living and the answers to longevity.

Autumn Grownups

Sensible, practical, no-nonsense, peaceful. Harrison Ford. Martin Sheen. Their steadiness makes them shoe-ins for feel-good TV presidents. The Summer contribution of do-the-right thing to Autumn’s save-the-day strength.

The Dark Autumn boy will explain, indeed expound, actually expostulate, on his topic, with no awareness that nobody has had a chance to speak for 20 minutes. The Dark Autumn man is not very different, but he speaks more slowly so he has time to formulate his thoughts. He is the professor to Dark Winter’s philosopher.

strong and capable at every age

What happens when a Summer and Autumn live together? Felix&Oscar.

Soft Autumn’s husband asks that you not tell her that a family member is in personal crisis or he’ll be sent back to the Farmer’s Market. The rest of his morning will be spent making ham sandwiches. He already delivers an asparagus quiche to the Art Gallery once a week. She combines Summer’s love and upstanding decency and Autumn’s foot on the gas to nurture the entire world.

True and Dark Autumn will be on time. Let’s get to it. Then we go on to the next job, though we tell ourselves we’re going to rest. We can chat after, but I won’t be late for my next appointment or make you late for yours.

If a client has all her children colour analyzed, she could be a True Autumn. She sees the sense and the savings, and is completely open to change. Light Spring will do the same, a mix of her Summer desire to make her family happy and her Spring enthusiasm when she spots a good thing. They will adopt their new palettes very quickly, without Winter’s tendency to contest or Summer’s to resist.

hazy eyes, hushed skin, a future Soft Autumn

If it’s a plain and honest opinion you want, go shopping with an Autumn. Summer’s deep streak of kindness will embellish with the compliment, any compliment. If you’re ok with the cold-blooded comment, a Winter can tell you that your suit is fine if you don’t mind looking like a birthday cake. And then you say to them “Now, how would you feel if someone spoke to you that way?” And they say “Fine. I wouldn’t care.” They’re telling the truth. They are thick-skinned (so they balance matte and opaque cosmetics), while Summer is thinner-skinned, as sensitivity of skin and emotion, as wearing a softer, lesser pigment deposit (so tinted moisturizers), as being more touchy of feeling internally and of texture externally, as tactile, with highly developed brain-hand connections and sense of touch. Summer skin is soft matte. Spring’s looks best dewy. Just as everyone’s busy is different, everyone’s Golden Rule comes out different but it’s still the same rule. Winters should shop with other Winters. Buy them the book Getting To Yes for Christmas. It will help them in life. The kindness of Summer and sweetness of Spring might see this Winter, meaning me and only me, as having the heart of that first cockroach that crawls out of a nuclear accident zone. On the other hand, I won’t tell you 3 months later that I really didn’t love you as a blonde but didn’t want to hurt your feelings, knowing what that hair cost you and all.

 Autumn’s face (left)  speaks to us of resilience, bravery, and grit, in colours that are darker and more muted than the lighter, brighter skin on the right; Summer on the right is dreamy and swoopy – on both girls, gorgeous base hair colours for Soft/True Autumn and Light Summer

Will promote what she believes in gladly. She told every one of her True Autumn friends that some of the best makeup colours around are at Dressing Your Truth online store for Type 3.  The three lip glosses just glow with rich warmth. And an Autumn pink eye shadow, you’d find that nowhere. Then there’s, the jewelry! She saved hours with the 6 pages of superb choices at the store. She thought about all her outfits and chose what would complete each. (Her Spring daughter just bought everything she liked, with no planning at all, figuring it would all work out. Imagine that.) To express her traces of Summer or Winter, a Soft and Dark Autumn resepectively might look at the Type 2 (Summer according to me, not to the folks at DYT) and Type 4 (looks Winterish) accessories. Since both SA and DA are Neutral Seasons, they can be flattered by silver and gold. A Soft Autumn looks great wearing Autumn colours in Summer’s way (analogous, flowing, floral, soft). Dark wears her palette in Winter’s way (bold, more contrast).  So integrate your smaller contributing Season by wearing their style in jewelry with clothing and makeup in the colours and style of your own Season.

—————-

 

Strong Beauty

Makeup Colours

Soft Autumn, try out Lancome RIL 230M and 240M, your natural lipcolour is one of these or in between. Also NARS Mayflower lips, Body Shop 11 and 07 lipstick, and MUFE RAI 19 (for TA too) lipstick.

On Dark Autumn, NARS Pigalle, MUFE HD8 blush, Lauder Maple Sugar and Rich Currant lips. A good, dark,warm, barely muted blue eyeliner is Revlon Colorstay pencil in Navy. Dark Winter could wear this very well too as they have warm tones  in hair and eyes.

True Autumn : MUFE HD10 blush, Givenchy Gold Brown lips (really nice, this lipstick, but sample it at Sephora first, big $$).

 

_____________

Summer’s Children

July 19, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 18 Comments 

Pure Season children of all ages are fabulous to analyze because the optical effects of the right and wrong colors are very pronounced. The skin is very absolute in its reactions to colours, so much so that I find it difficult for these Seasons to share the use of colours with neighbour Seasons.

For instance, a Soft Autumn who is very near True Autumn will still wear her perfecting and most harmonious Soft Autumn palette, but she might bring in a bit of metallic antique gold in a small area of eyeshadow just above the iris, which will find and accentuate the same colour in her eye. She could wear saddle coloured belts and boots if her peanut butter and light terracottas couldn’t be found. If the Soft Autumn is closer to her Soft Summer neighbor, on the cooler side, she might bring in flowing and feminine effects like pearls and soft plums in silky scarves, beautiful and a bit surprising among Soft Autumn’s warmer colours.

Be careful to keep the surface area small if you’re dabbling in a neighbour’s colours. Your most flattering palette won for a reason, actually many reasons. Soft Summer can have an appearance of tanned skin even when it’s not, and even more so when too-warm colours are placed near the skin, bringing in more yellow overtone, faint enough at this level to look like yet more tan. On the way home from the foundation counter, she risks having a too-yellow product in her bag. Dark Winter can have a very similar experience.

I never feel as good about a True Summer wearing any colour from the neighbouring Soft and Light Summers because the neighbours are warmed, and even a trace of warmth in colour will cause them to  look yellow. TMIT for True Summer and True Winter declares zero tolerance when it comes to any kind of heat in colour. True Seasons are also fascinating people because their character is often in line with that associated with their Season. As the True Seasons blend with one another in the Neutral Seasons, personality traits become more mixed and less predictable.

I adore children above anything. I am in awe of how much is held in waiting, ready to unfold in those small bodies, like little cocoons. When people bring them to their vet appointment, it’s all I can do to pay attention to the animal. I love the faces below.

Summer Children

Are gentle. They can hold a small bird in their hands.

muted colouring, no black, a dreamy peaceful face

Have a lot of tiny toys with which they play intricate games  - are you familiar with Polly Pocket (about which my Dark Winter brother said “Have you ever tried to find that stuff when it rolls under the fridge? It feels like snot.”). Their homes have beautiful details in every room, right down to the toilet paper holder. The season of miniaturization. Often look better in small jewelry than large and chunky.

Take pains to get every meticulous detail of a picture right. Even a picture the size of a window. They’ll draw, tiny line by tiny line, with a patience a Winter might spend her life searching for. Can spend hours finding microscopic snails in tidal pools with great hand-eye control when they spot one.

One activity at a time is plenty. Learn a music piece note by note. Do not need to be in constant motion. As a child, ask him to mince the herbs. As an adult, this is the cook who peels squash, who cooks the chickpeas for the hummus from scratch, who undertakes all 22 of the steps in making Matzoh Ball Soup.

Get frustrated with others. Can get so frustrated with their Winter sibling’s harshness and Spring sibling’s impracticality that they need time in their room alone to calm down. Like about 2-3 hours. Five kids on a trampoline is 3 and 3/4 too many.

who’s gentle? who’s rich and warm? who’s building? who’s playing a joke? who’s cool and composed? can you find dark&cool vs dark&warm?

Stubborn as a Dachsund. Very persistent till they get it right. Perseverance ranks at the top of the chart.

Don’t force their beliefs on others but don’t accept anyone else’s ideas either.  Sweet, pleasant, calm stonewalls.

Good impulse control from an early age.  The first to learn to shake hands when introduced to someone new. As grownups, still have a self-control that astounds.

Ask question after question after question. If a family rule is “No more questions after supper”, there are probably True Summer children in the home.

The most likely to keep your secret. Very discrete as adults.

soft, subtle (not dramatic and bold), rounded, gentle features and blended eye/skin/hair/brow colours; notice that all the colours are darkened to the same degree, keeping the contrast level between skin/hair/eyes/brows/lips low

Can be fusspots for cleanliness. Will not be thrilled to eat the birthday cake upon which five children blew out the candles, or even one other child. The mother may have brought a separate cake. Having a bottle of hand sanitizer clipped to your backpack should be a school rule.

Summer Grownups

If anyone will stay up till 3 AM cleaning the basement, it will be Light Summer. With Spring’s energy and Summer’s deep dislike for disorganized clutter, the crawlspace doesn’t stand a chance. Summer will not expect the world to share her needs and she won’t be miffed if you go to bed and leave her to it. She can’t sleep while the kitchen’s a mess.

the pure loveliness of Summer, a feeling of softened curves, moderate colour saturation in a sweet-tempered face

Light Summer likes to talk almost as much as a Spring, but she’ll tell the entire story, and (this part’s important) (really important), in order. Thorough is the word here. She will be easily hurt and irritated if her Autumn sister hijacks the topic to tell her side and interrupts the orderly sequence of her thoughts. For Light and True Summer, it has to go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,  not  1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 6. Autumn and Winter have more 1,2, 9, 10 tendencies. True Summer will explore every conjugation of a verb, could have, might have, and every option and outcome.

the little guy on the ground, very typical hair colour too, the whole squishy energy bundle sings of True Summer; there is more fine motor skill in that single little pudgy finger than many grownups can know

Drawn to quality in clothing. Will notice stitching and buttons. Prefer comfort clothes inside their comfort zone. A True Summer friend who has allowed herself to over-indulge in her diet wears her ‘punishment pants’ for a day or two to get herself back in line. All they are is structured, stiff, and straight.

Ask a Summer “How do you feel about..?” Ask a Winter “What do you think about…?” Ask an Autumn “What’s the most efficient way to get this done?” And Spring,  “What’s the fastest way to get this done so we can have a visit?”

Summer doesn’t like to live alone. Their sense of community, civic responsibility, and desire for domestic intimacy is strong. Winter fantasizes about living alone and takes more convincing to leave their computer.

already looks Soft Summer; beautiful tone-on-tone soft taupes in the hair

If True Summer’s indecisive, it’s because they want to do the rightest thing. If True Spring is, it’s because she wants every choice. Autumn decides fast to get it done. Winter didn’t see that there were more than two choices to begin with.

True Summers are wonderful teenagers. Their very high sense of personal integrity doesn’t let them fall into, or even be attracted by, that which doesn’t agree with their moral code. They can easily exclude peer pressure when they want to.

Don’t love changes in their routine. As a child, might have been very unhappy when forced to wear new clothes. Might even have been screeching “NOOOOOO” so loud after being put in a new snowsuit as a 2 year old that they got left in a snowbank by their Dark Winter mother when she went down the driveway to get the mail. Not that that would happen in my house, but you could hear the child loud and clear down a 1000 foot driveway. As a grownup, might be very happy married to a Spring who can get them to do things they wouldn’t normally do, especially on short notice, a sticking point for Summer.

In many a Soft Summer, this is what we see when we look in your eyes, or variations on this theme; click on the photo for info (or Google “Iris Apfel at yoox”) and make it your signature piece

As adults, they may still have high expectations of what others should tolerate or how they should behave. A tub of Ben&Jerry’s ice cream really does have 4 to 6 servings and it is not necessary to snarf down more than one’s share. Are willing to devote time and effort to getting others to meet their highest self, knowing that nobody feels good when they behave beneath themselves. Winter might not be quite so into your Karma because to them, it feels like an ambush intended to control that they won’t exert on you  and don’t want you to exercise on them. If old people want to go ocean swimming alone, it’s their business.

Bring the natural gift of just knowing what it’s like to be the other guy, and caring enough to adjust their behaviour, what the world needs  more of than anything. Every character trait is a double edged sword and empathy is no different. Winter keeps themselves apart and outside of situations. If no offense was intended by spoken words, they’re not likely to hear it. It’s not that Winter is cold/distant/remote, their feelings are just less accessible. Summer is so deeply disturbed by rudeness and so strongly empathic that they can substitute the intention of the spoken words as their own, as they would have felt had they spoken the same words, that is, very offended.

 

 

watch the greys and watch them change, many Summer colours here. John has great base hair colour for Summer. Think John’s a Winter? Look at him and Yoko. See the Winter? Fascinating features John has, the Meryl Streep type Summers face of which we see many.

 

Lovely Beauty

Makeup Colours

Soft Summers, look at Body Shop 14 eye pencil, a mauve with lots of grey that will blend into your eye shadow, not look separate from it. If ever there was a type of natural colouring that could dispense with eyeliner and just use eyeshadow darkness levels to define the eyes, this is it. They create a more diffused effect than any lining product, a swirling watercolour of deep plums, pinks, and greys. Your saturation isn’t nil, it’s just less than the others. Lancome Purple Quartz is an excellent eyeliner, and their lipstick The New Pink may be very near your natural lip colour. Body Shop 49 lipstick is worth your time too at a nicer price.

Light  Summer – Body Shop 148 and 55 are your warmer and cooler pinks in lipsticks. And MUFE HD4 blush will disappear into your face and allow the misty rainbow colours already there to take center stage. Lancome Rouge in Love 353M lipstick may be your lip colour or close, while 163M has beautiful presence without taking over your face. Lancome Optic eyeshadow is a lightly pinked light grey.

True Summer can look at Lauder Black Plum eyeliner, a great mid mauved grey till you tilt the page and see a lovely plum.  Lancome Purple Darling is another lovely purple eyeliner that’s not too greyed, a mistake often made with True Summer cosmetic colours. I love Lancome Berry Rose 312 lipstick and Pink In The Limo (probably your lip colour or close).

 

———————–

A reminder that I will not be shipping the book, Return to Your Natural Colours, in the month of July. If you’re in the US, Kerry at Indigo Tones may have some copies. Otherwise, best to wait till August.

———————–

 

Winter’s Children

July 5, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 7 Comments 

Three years ago, I posted a series of articles on my then-blog, A Greener Tea. These descriptions of behaviour patterns in True Season children are funny to read now. They should be part of the body of 12B (just strikes  me that one could read 12B as “One to be.”), with some added observations about the adults they become.

Stereotypes are patterns that got noticed. There is no doubt for me that our colour genetics, body geometry genetics, and personality genetics are often transcribed together.

There might be some things you recognize. Don’t take anything personally. Remember that we are beings in perfect balance. Our negatives are simply the other extreme of our positives.

 

Winter Children

still, not manic, hard to take your eyes off the face with its ability to dominate all other colours in the photo

The drama and the trauma. Will not be controlled by parents, siblings, or anyone else. Cannot be approached with judgment. If that Spider Sense even twitches, in their either/or world, they’ll react like they’ve been attacked. There are no in-betweens here. Criticism isn’t taken well. Advice is best given in a very generic way, referring to someone out there who could possibly try to do the thing differently but of course, it would be up to them.

The power and the glory. Emotionally brutal. Can be single-mindedly intense adults once an idea takes hold.

Don’t care if they ride on the Children’s Camp float in the Old Home Week parade. But if they do, will ask why they can’t have a float of their own. Don’t need to be on stage but are compelling to watch once they’re there.

a beautiful face whose colouring would overpower anything dusty

May appear cool and detached, but often beset with worry. Simultaneous inferiority and superiority complexes.

The opposite of nurturing. It’s all about them. Ask her how her hair turned out today and she’ll tell you for half an hour. Might notice if you have hair for 2 seconds but wouldn’t have much to say about it.

Physically interesting to watch. Will choose furs, sparkles, satin, diamonds, you get the idea. Stock up on glitter. Boys look very good in dark suits and have the body carriage to pull off the look. Strike statue poses just buttering toast.

If she’s suffering, you’ll know about it. She’s in control (while Summer is in order) and she’s taking you down with her. The True Winter husband is much the same.

Have high expectations of what others should take from them (as opposed to Summer’s high expectations of what others should expect of themselves).

a lot of colour in a face that looks more determined than gentle – a present or future Dark Winter?

 Intensely creative. So perfectionist that they get in their own way.

True Winter is all about the opposite extremes. The recluse and the performer at once. Either they’re running a marathon or sitting on the couch eating pizza by the box, watching every season of The Biggest Loser. She somehow manages to be still as a statue and create drama all around her.

 

Winter Grownups

True Winter will sit immobile in the vet’s waiting room with their small dog, waiting to be called. She’s like a tuning fork, creating powerful vibration from slightest motion. Bright Winter will fidget a bit more, and when someone new arrives, her eyes dart to the door. The Dark is reading or typing, focused as a drill, her Autumn infusion putting time to use, feeling no remorse about ignoring everyone on behalf of productivity.

The wonderful Bernice Kentner of CMAS said, “If you want a job done fast, ask an Autumn. If you want a job done well, ask a Summer.”  Bernice is so smart. And, we could add, “If you want a Winter to do a job at all, there better be something in it for them.”

 focused and detached

A True Winter will arrive on time. There will be drama. She will have found some way to wear makeup to her colour appointment. There will be high heeled knee high boots, big belts and rings, a personality too big for the body, and dissection at every step of the process. Winter has to see her PCA with her own eyes or she will never be convinced. But once she sees it, she is not likely to question it again…though Autumn is even less likely to dwell.

A Dark Winter’s husband, like many husbands, might discover more right brain in his forties. His attempt to talk about, gulp, feelings, meets with “Yeah, whatever, I was trying to talk to you about emotions ten years ago. Pass me that calculator, would you? Nevermind your fuzzy feelings here.” from his ever-loving wife.

silent drama…would Carol call him Type 2? Outer eye corners swoop down, corners of mouth lift up making an S curve along lips, S curves from brow to nostril…there is softness in a dark and contained face. Perhaps a Dressing Your Truth Type 4/2?

 Dark Seasons are the analytical processors more so than the emotional ones. They don’t tear easily, seldom cry. Faced with what seems to be excess emotion, they wait it out and only wade in if they have to.

Winter has no trouble getting rid of great Grandma’s plate collection that Mom passed on to her. She’s doing well to visit Mom or phone Grandma. Makes her connections so deeply that she can appear not to have any.

any Season can have blue eyes, light in the Lights, hazy in the Softs, greenish (teal or turquoise) in the True Warms, and intensely coloured in the Winters

Wakes up in the morning thinking “Nobody’s going to tell me what I can and can’t do.”  Consider the Summer’s morning greeting of “If I’m kind to others, they’ll be kind to me.”

Can learn to soften their edges by impersonating a Summer when they feel the tension climbing…and be surprised at how much better the interaction went.

Bright Winter is amazing. As a child, the other girls were doing rond-de-jambe at the ballet barre while she was hanging upside-down by her knees. Today, she’s driving halfway across the country dragging a U-Haul, meeting a plane full of houseguests. She’s building an agility course for her dog and adding a new wing to start a home business.  She moves from big thing to big thing, changing direction, keeping her foot on the gas. Her internal GPS recalculates fast. She believes the book entitled “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff – And It’s All Small Stuff.” In her Winter take it or leave it world, she doesn’t carry a lot of mind clutter. Maybe that’s why she looks better without a lot of clothing clutter.

Looks so good when she wears makeup to separate the features from the face – eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, lips, contour lines. Forget about traditional nudes and flesh tones, they’re as exciting as a dial tone compared to fuchsias, cherries, and pomegranates, especially if you’re over 25. Sheer products are a place to start. They’re not a place to stay. This colouring is extreme and can’t be turned down. Indeed, it will turn the makeup down. All Winter can control, balance, even suppress colour causing heathered makeup to look yet greyer and disappeared in 2.2 minutes. Soft/dusty/blended = meek/lacking/vague on a colouring whose perfection hinges on very opposite concepts.

 

Silent Beauty 

 

Makeup Colours

All Winter may have trouble finding saturated blush colours.

True Winter should look at MUFE HD2 and Clarins lipstick in Mystic Plum. Lancome Rouge In Love 379N is also great as a purple but those are easier to find; 185N is a great blue-based berry pink.

Bright Winter on the cool side would like the same MUFE HD2 blush. Lancome Clock Strikes 12 is a mid-grey eyeshadow that could work on all 3 Winters.

 Dark Winter could look at lipsticks 22, 21, and 14 at the Body Shop. 21 is my favorite of the moment, not too dark, on the warm side, a great match with eleablake‘s Driven blush, these are the barely golden saturated coral reds that look so incredibly good on this colouring, among their best summertime colours.

 

————————

A reminder that I will not be shipping the book, Return to Your Natural Colours, in the month of July. If you’re in the US, Kerry at Indigo Tones may have some copies. Otherwise, best to wait till August.

————————-

Dressing The Essence of…Claire Danes

March 10, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 28 Comments 

Here is an actress I greatly admire. Although she was a beautiful Juliet Capulet opposite diCaprio’s Romeo, when I really took notice and have loved her since was in Stage Beauty.

I’ve also come to understand that we express more than colour. We express line, pattern, and motion.  You can’t just wear your colours, though no others on Earth could flatter you better. If the style does not respect your lines, patterns, and movements, harmony continues to elude.

That Dramatic True Summer was very worryingly difficult, so I’m trying an easier combination today, the Soft Autumn Natural. It came back to me that colour felt worryingly difficult in the beginning too. Having a real woman in mind gave me an endpoint I could envision and taught me how the Seasons’ colours work together to make a picture. With each woman whose colours I analyzed, I could write the articles and start seeing the similarities. I’ll have to learn Kibbe that way too. By holding Claire in my head, the need for length past the hip in a jacket becomes clear.

Kibbe’s book is the only personal style book that I can get to work on me and others. Indulging my love of an adjective, it is comfortably organized, ergonomically specific, and reliably stratified. And reproducible! Using his system, five people should come up with the same style answer for a given person. Kibbe’s translation of a very abstract thought system is linear and logical.

I’m a beginner. I need to start with easy pictures and lists. If we set out discussing tempering chocolate, I will never produce a chocolate cake. If the idiosyncrasies of different analysts’ tastes come into the picture too early, I’ll get confused because I won’t be able to tell them apart from the basic truths that really do apply to me.

I also think his 13 types is complete and enough. It just takes time to figure out what he means by certain terms and descriptions and to get a sense of the relative differences between the groups. Like, what exactly is a straight skirt? Of the 3 types with small rounded facial bones, whose are the most small and round?

Soft Autumn Is

In 12 Season personal colour analysis, ‘Season’ describes a type of natural colouring. In a Soft Autumn, all the colours that make up the body, skin, hair, eyes, maybe veins, teeth, inner lips and cheeks, and internal organs for all I know, are:

- muted, soft, heathery, so slightly calmed by a murmur of grey

- warmed quite a lot, as every colour appears in a late afternoon sun on a day with a little overcast

- fairly light to medium dark, no extremes like black and white

Looking at the person, you see the colours all at once like when the swatch book is fanned out. The feeling is affectionate, safe, restrained, sensitive, mellow, supple, and sympathetic. Words like strident belong somewhere else.

Kibbe’s Natural Is : “Girl Next Door Chic”, “Losbter Party hostess”.

He also has a Flamboyant Natural – who’s the modern version of Carly Simon…Miley Cyrus could be FN. With her bigger body, broader facial bones, smaller eyes, I wonder also about Andie McDowell (not a Soft Autumn).

And there’s a Soft Natural category…the Olsen twins?

YES:

- soft and round edged geometric shapes ; slight oversize/unstructured

- earthy materials, slightly chunky

- outline relaxed, straight, narrow, loose, soft tailored

- textured fabrics; glitz at night

- detail minimal, simple neckline, open neck, soft shoulder

- mostly separates, mixing pattern texture colour

- color pizzazz, break the rules mix n match, neutrals with texture

 NO:

- circle, swirl, ornate, sharp, severe, fiddly

- sheer, clingy, flimsy, restrictive

- cropped, monochromatic

SA N Separates

 

Soft Autumn Natural Separates by christinems featuring a fringe skirt

 

SA Dresses

 

 

Double check:

- relaxed straight lines? yes, pretty good

- bold and direct? I think so, enough anyway.

The hard part: keeping colour zippy and colour combinations energized. I even consulted Kobayashi’s Color, Image, Scale, best colour combinations ever, and didn’t have much luck getting pink beige into any snappy colour combinations without losing my Soft Autumn vibe.

Like: that it feels tight in style, not just colour. I don’t look at any item and think “Why in the world would that be there?” These could all live in one woman’s closet.

The Hair Style

I quite like chin length hair on Claire. If the bob were not severe, keeping to the idea of rounded edges that are a little fluffed, perhaps this?

The Hair Colour

Highlights, bleach, or any kind of processing that is obvious will feel forced instead of being true to the feeling of naturalness that an N emanates.

Though Hollywood advice to Soft Autumns appears to be that blonde is necessary, it is never the best choice for the skin, whether she’s an N or not. The natural colour is usually medium-dark warm-ash brown. Very medium in colour. If the texture is also without body or definition, the hair feels left behind once the woman is dressed and made up. Consider a colour that is one shade lighter and a fair bit warmer than the natural colour.

JLo Lite, like what’s at the ends of the hair. Golden Blonde before anyone would call it red.

Jennifer Lopez Pictures

SA N Makeup

Natural means the no-makeup look, which can still require a good bit of makeup to achieve. The movie makeup and hair artists in the poster at the top did a pretty good job.

Try these and let us know what you think:

Bronzer: Urban Decay Baked

Blush: Mercier Rose Bloom

Eyeliner: Urban Decay Stash

Eyeshadows: NARS Portobello, Key Largo, Blondie

Lipstick: Givenchy gloss Delectable Brown

Which brings up the interesting question of what a SA Dramatic would wear.

Other SA Kibbegories

C. had a lovely idea, comparisons. Katrina did just that with a SA Romantic and it’s brilliantly good.

 

 

 

Here is Jen’s Romantic Soft Autumn. We know with colour that two women of the same Season will interpret their palettes very differently in the items they choose to buy, how they colour their hair, or wear their makeup. The same applies to Kibbegories. We still retain every bit of our individuality. Our creativity is simply more focused and our visual voice is so much more beautifully coherent.

If you did a Polyvore of another Kibbegory, please post links in the Comments. We’d love to see it.

 

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