The Right Shade Of Peach
February 28, 2010 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
A video blog today.
Peach may be the cosmetic colour that everyone owns in some shade or other. Is yours right for you? Most of the time, it’s too earthy and brown. On a light or clear complexion, that looks heavy and dominating and dull.
For eyeshadow, lipstick, and blush,
The Spring wears a light, yellow-based, very clear peach.
The Summer will fare better in a pastel pink.
Autumn colours mesh best with an earth, golden or browned peach.
Winter colours request icy pink or cool white instead of peach when choosing light colour tones.
A Colour Analysis gives you the knowledge of precisely which shades of all cosmetics colours (and clothes colours) is perfect for your skin tone.
Jocelyn Is A Bright Winter
February 13, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
Jocelyn and I work together. Since we work with animals, all I see her in is surgical scrubs. I knew 4 things before we began:
- I have never seen her in a colour that she doesn’t completely dominate, with the exception of dark charcoal.
- Black (and cool colours in general) clear her skin.
- She can wear light colours as well as dark.
- There is great contrast (very light lights and very dark darks) in her colouring.
I try like h.ll to let the drapes guide the Personal Colour Analysis (PCA), and avoid all foregone conclusions. When I see someone every day, and the effects are this dramatic, I can’t help but have suspicions. What did I suspect?
- Her best colours would be very dark and/or very saturated. (see What Are Clear And Soft Colours? for an explanation of saturation.)
- There is great potential for clarity in her skin. Warm colours make her skin blotchy, heavy, green-yellow, murky, and thick-looking. Softly greyed colours (pastels) give the skin an allover-grey undertone. It’s Winter and Spring that have the clear colours.
- Dark Autumn and Dark Winter have some light colours, but not many. They just look better in darker colours. Joce looks fresh and beautiful in the right light colour.
- We’re probably looking for a Season of contrast, namely a Winter of some sort.
The expression “clears the skin” is confusing. It’s very hard to demonstrate but extremely important in interpreting ultimate skin perfection. You met Joce in the previous article, Clearing Skin With Colour Analysis and can watch this process on video there.
Joce has a strong natural flush in her cheeks. Isn’t “ruddy” a sign of Autumn? I’ve seen in Autumns, Winters, Springs, and Summers. Not useful information. Ignore it. On Joce, the redness in the cheeks blends back softly into her complexion only in Bright Winter’s colour intensity.
The boobytrap of matching brown eyes to brown (Autumn) drapes is waiting in ambush here. Yes, there was a connection between the two. Skin always takes precedence, and Autumn colours are easily Joce’s worst shades. All too easy to put brown eyeshadow on these eyes. Most shades of brown did not help this skin. Why then paint them on her face? True to her personal colour palette, her cosmetic colour was a blackened brown liner, and it meshed perfectly with her face. On a blue-eyed person, we would have used charcoal or deep sapphire.
She doesn’t have dark hair or the cliché “clear eyes”. Her hair is medium brown, but there are no orange tones in it, and very few yellow (she’s growing out some yellow dye at the moment). Have you ever in your life seen eyes like this? I promise you I did not adjust anything in this image other than to raise the exposure and sharpness 2 notches. And this is without mascara!!
As a Bright Winter, Jocelyn is primarily a Winter person, but she has a trace of Spring. When you combine the 2 Seasons of highest colour saturation, the energy of these colours in unwearable by anyone else. They will disappear inside such colour intensity, and therefore appear reduced. Never let your clothing send a message that diminishes you – or at least, don’t put down money for it!
This video shows the final draping process.
If your browser won’t play it here, watch it on YouTube at 12 Blueprints Personal Colour Analysis Bright Winter Final Drapes.
I’ve been asked why she’s wearing so much makeup in the video. For several reasons:
- I was taking photos as well as video and have learned that too little makeup is invisible in photos.
- I don’t try hard to match foundation, others can do that better than I – though you WILL finally know what your undertones are, unknowable without a PCA. I want you to see what your makeup colours look like, as your eye starts to learn this. I apply the makeup colours pretty heavily and I don’t blend. I want you to see how forgiving right makeup is and how it can dramatically heighten the magic in your natural colouring.
- Bright Winter is a Season of all-out glamour, like no other group. Just as they can carry unbelievably shocking colour intensity, so can they wear striking makeup.
Most importantly, I want you to stretch your preconceived limits of what is possible. I want you to start replacing the old pictures of yourself in your head.
How The 5 Autumns Add Brown To Hair Colour
February 3, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
Pardon, but what 5 Autumns?
Well, in Seasonal Colour Analysis, there’s Soft, True, and Dark.
But Autumn’s blends include Soft Summer and Dark Winter too.
Only 1 True Season, and 4 Neutral Seasons all comprise some Autumn colour influence.
Autumn’s biggest misconception is the copper red hair. Usually, these people have brown hair.
The Autumn=copper association is often extended to include clothing colours, skin undertones, and makeup colours.
In fact, the shade of brown used to warm Autumn colours doesn’t attain copper’s heat till you’re way into the middle of the Autumn action.
Let’s start at True Summer. No orange. No gold. No yellow. The brown is grey and the grey is blueish.
As Autumn starts phasing in, we move to Soft Summer. A little brown is being added. A neutral brown, not orange yet, not even amber. The blue undertone is taken out. The colours appear to have a faint tan.
Soft Autumn comes along next. We see a soft amber brown. Yellows re-emerge, where True Summer barely had any, and they are golden as an amber-brown patina lays over all the colours of this palette. This is the beginning of the metallic quality we talk about in the skin and hair of Autumn people. It’s hard to describe. It doesn’t look like a tan, it’s much more in the skin than on it.
Finally, True Autumn. NOW the undercurrent is truly orange. Not before. Brown, remember, is just dark orange. This is an orangey brown. It is in the skin. It is also in the eye colour.
Up to Dark Autumn, a trace of Winter is felt. Winter’s colours are cooler and bring in red, the essential colour of the Winter group. The result is the red-orange undertone that defines the perfect disappearing blush and lipstick on Dark Autumn. Colour Analysis is all about cosmetic colours custom-coloured for your skin.
Since Winter is dark, we must add another Winter effect for Dark Winter : the addition of perceptible black. What orange remains is turning neutral brown again, like it was in Soft Summer, but a darker version caused by the black.
Now, we leave Autumn altogether and it’s True Winter. Orange is gone again.
Watch me do it.
Be careful.
Soft Summer’s hair is almost always too light and too highlighted with a colour that’s too yellow. At first glance, they seem like light people and it looks ok. The Colour Analysis drapes soon show us how aging the light hair is for the skin tone. Once it’s corrected, it is much better.
A Soft Autumn can too easily be put in too red hair. It is overkill every time. Unless Nature gave you red, it is VERY hard to get right from a bottle. Like thinking a bottle can replicate your childhood colour. Won’t happen. This is light tawny hair.
True Autumn in light tawny hair looks F-L-A-T. And instantly 10 years older. They need warmth and rich colour. They do not need highlights, lowlights, or other bizarre f/x. The colour should speak for itself.
Dark Autumn often adds a red rinse. You NEED to know if you’re on the warm or cool side of the Season. If the red is too cool, like red wine, it can be very artificial. Artificial works on the staff of the hair salon, not the clients.
Dark Winter should do what all Winters do. Think twice before lightening hair. They can have a dark force that is to be reckoned with. Breaking it up with frosted tips, well… I’d rather have the force. The skin-perfecting hair colour is a dark neutral brown, most of the time.
What’s the hair lesson? Nature will never give you hair colour that is your skin’s perfection. They accord automatically. Your natural colour is always your best base colour.
Elisa Is A True Summer
January 7, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 14 Comments
Elisa has always believed herself to be a Spring. Her freckles, warm brown hair, and natural flush in her skin caused her, and others, to conclude that the colours in her design followed Spring’s colour rules. When assessing a colour, be it in you or outside you, we ask the same 3 questions, because any colour has 3 properties.
Spring colours are all:
Lightness or Darkness? > light, or at least never very dark
Warm or Cool? > warmed, and by yellow NOT orange
Clear or Soft? > clear, or highly saturated, NOT dulled
The premise of Seasonal Colour Analysis is that every colour in your natural colour composition answers those 3 questions in the same way. Your swatch book is a group of colours that fit on those scales in those exact same positions too, thereby replicating the colours in your design. That is how the magic happens.
I can see how one might look at the light-medium warmish brown hair and see warmth, light, and clarity.
Her eyes are not warm though. They are a medium-dark blue-grey.
The dark brows could make Winter cross your mind.
But nevermind the hair and eyes. We established long ago that they are not used in defining the Season, they’ll just lead you astray. We look at skin.
Without a proper analysis, you can’t really understand skin. You have to watch how it reacts to colour. Are freckles not a sign of warmth? No! They’re another red herring, kind of like the “clear eyes” concept. You have to look beyond them, at the skin. So we’re back to Plan A, with how did the draping go?
Both Elisa’s skin and her eye patterns performed precisely as True Summer does. The moonlit, luminous translucency that only True Summer does so well was there for sure. The absolute inability to handle the slightest degree of heat, or it’s instant pasty skin, was there. This skin tone seems to look turquoise in turquoise, and melon in melon.
In fact, Elisa is a study in contrasts. She has warm hair, dark eyebrows, deep blue eyes, and freckles (which feel warm). She could be placed in any number of Seasons, but none would feel right. Once we neutralized all the variables, it was clear that she is a True Summer.
Makeup often seemed too conspicuous so became something to avoid. We looked at how to accentuate her features with the same understated elegance that is true of her entire palette. These are Grace Kelly clothes and colours. This is the skin and eye colour that was made for BlueGrey eyeliner (Annabelle makes a perfect (and perfectly inexpensive) pencil by that name). Everyone can wear makeup beautifully, but the fragility of this skin is easily overwhelmed.
Elisa has some natural shadowing around her eyes. It was least pronounced in the True Summer colours, but wasn’t obliterated altogether. That’s called Photoshop. Many women fight that (and many other “imperfections”) with too much concealer, which ends up looking caked and even more obvious. There is a little foundation here, but no concealer. I usually apply concealer or foundation, but seldom both. Those products are overdone, and take a lot of time. I want to show you how to recognize your cosmetic colours.
Cosmetics counters and makeup artists are usually good at matching foundation. If they won’t allow you to take a few samples home to try in daylight, don’t buy the product. I ask women to bring their foundation to their PCA. So far, none have been wearing the right colour but they knew that already.
In your right colours, you will see the area under the eye become as illuminated as possible. Wear a little makeup, but allow your face. Ignore our magazine-obsessed culture that has us trying to delete our individuality.
One of the biggest misconceptions about True Summer’s colours is that they are all dusty lavender and Wedgewood blue, “old” colours. In fact, the most important feature of True Summer colours is NOT their dustiness, or softness, or grayishness, all the same idea. It is the COOLNESS.
These are not at all confined to being light colours, though Summer is thought of as light. Relative to Winter, it is lighter, but they can do surprisingly dark colour.
In this graphic, the high saturation (hi sat) colours are on the left, as you can see. The lo sat colours are only softer BY COMPARISON. They’re the colour of denim and flower petals. The True Summer personal colour palette contains these same beautiful colours, at about 50% saturation or less.
The hi sat shades on the left are pigment-saturated, pigment-soaked, pigment-logged. Winter needs them and usually doesn’t wear them saturated enough, in part because they’re hard to find except in workout clothing. Few women over 25 feel safe buying these colours.
Elisa is married to the most mannerly man you’ll ever meet. Aggression and confrontation are disturbing to this personality. Hurry and pressure flusters them more than most. It is very calming to this character to be able to depend on certain things, especially decency and kindness. Courtesy is the most essential prerequisite of all.
Emily is a True Winter
December 11, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
Emily has passed the milestones of her first 20 years. The next 20 years will involve marriage, career, and family, often all at once. It’s in these years that women have the least amount of time to spend on themselves, both inside and out. The demands can be overwhelming and once we emerge on the other side, many of us still look like the students we were when we last bought age-appropriate makeup.
Like so many women, in every age group, Emily doesn’t wear makeup. It’s easy to understand. Very few women can accurately choose what cosmetic colours suit them best. Many have tried but the result didn’t speak for them, so they felt like impersonators; or the sales pressure was too intense, and the upsells too mind-boggling, to honestly express uncertainty. We’ve all seen, or been, the woman at the makeup counter looking completely overdone. You can FEEL her thinking “Get me home before someone sees me.”
Emily would like to know what clothes look best and some help choosing makeup that doesn’t make her feel painted. She has the sense and good taste to want to be noticed for the right reasons.
When the colour is wrong, you can never achieve the magic, no matter how lightly or heavily you apply it. When you start hearing “Just apply a thin layer and blot it to a stain”, forget it. If you need all those shenanigans, the colour is wrong and besides, it won’t last 10 minutes. We all know what makeup- sitting-on-top-of-skin looks like. When the colour melds with the skin, you can apply quite a bit before it starts looking fake.
Put a light, wishy-washy colour on a True Winter and unattractive things happen. Their eyes are dull, almost empty. The person so dominates the colour with their inherent colour intensity, that all you see is a face that appears ill. The skin is dull and shadowed. What happens to the skin happens to the whites of the eyes. As they yellow or grey, the crispness of the eye colour is terribly diluted. It makes you FEEL sad to look at that face.
Emily’s colouring is so strong that she wore many of the Bright Winter drapes well, the most brilliant shock colour there is. Bright Winter requires a little heat in the skin, which Em doesn’t have. As a result, the Bright Winter drapes drained the colour from her face and turned her skin grayish, like the walls of the room.
Though I’ve often said eye colour isn’t relevant to Season, I want to clarify that. Any Season can have any eye colour and that remains a fact. But just as the drapes are looking to make a connection with the skin, so are they searching for the like colours in the eyes. They are astonishingly and precisely coloured to A. force a reaction in the skin, and B. to detect an exact colour match in the person’s skin. When the association is made, it’s electrifying. Em has navy blue in her eye. Watch it come out when like colours find one another.
Lessons
1. If you’re not used to lipstick, use sheer colours but stay true to your swatches. The blue-eyed winter with a soft feeling about her may do better in soft fuchsia than red, but too much colour would be outside Em’s comfort zone. We used Cover Girl Amazemint in 615 (Cozy Plum) and it’s lovely.
2. Even young people should use shimmer makeup very carefully, if at all. Even on a young True Winter, it makes Emily’s upper eyelid too prominent. Frost is attention-getting. It says “Lookit me! Lookit me!”. Classy makeup doesn’t do that. It’s your supporting player but it is not YOU. Let your makeup be a diffusion of your own colours floating over your face, but let people look at your eyes because they are the shine in your face.
3. Here is an example of Winter who might deepen her hair to match the brows, but always remaining true to the base shade. Nature will never colour you wrong. Her hair is the right colour but Emily could enhance the dark brows/milk skin effect more by deepening her own shade a touch. It will look real because the brows are dark, but more dramatic (not necessarily better, just a stronger visual effect).
4. This is also a place to think about how bad it looks if a Winter were to lighten her hair. The dark brows become more prominent, and look severe. Severe=aging.
For any Season, even if you don’t do much with your brows, there will be more attention on your eyes than ever before. Finding a stylist who can remove stray hairs without altering the shape to look like Pamela Anderson is good.
5. As a Dark Winter, my eyeliner is browner and lighter (MAC Grey Utility). Em will wear a crisper darker grey (Graphiti). I don’t believe anyone of lighter complexion than Frieda Pinto can wear black eyeliner, certainly not in the daytime. True Winter’s grey consists of black and white. It’s a pure, true grey.
6. You all know I think blue/green/purple on a face that can be seen as a color is a cartoon, right? Don’t ever wear it to a job interview, and only to work if you are an artist of some sort. Estee Lauder Black Plum and Merle Norman Sapphire are examples of colour that doesn’t look like colour. They are less hard than black and the viewer doesn’t strongly perceive purple or blue.
When she saw her pictures, she didn’t recognize herself.
It takes a certain courage to step up to a personal colour analysis. Like having your fortune told, as empowering as it is, you may hear some things you’re not ready for. I’ve been told that I read palms. What I really read is potential. To see yourself as you never have, both inside and out, takes endurance. It also brings the responsibility of answering the question “What are you going to do with it?”
Em will travel her own colour journey. It won’t look like mine or yours or anyone else’s. Some of it may not gel for years. Doesn’t matter. She’s got a lifetime to refine it. She’ll feel confident and beautiful wearing makeup and know that people see the real Emily. It takes more time to convince yourself of all that it can be, and how powerful the final effect is, when every element meshes.
Once you get to the makeup counter and are told that you don’t really need to follow your personal colour swatches, you really have to dig deep and find some fortitude. Why would you NOT use them? Why would the sales assistant NOT use them? If they’ve never had a PCA and watched the process, they don’t understand why you’re holding the book you have, or what the other Books look like. They’re tremendously good at what they do, but colour analyzed skin tone perfection is a key that can only be turned one way.
You have become empowered to know things about your skin and colouring that they simply can’t know. But YOU know. YOU saw it. This is one situation where close enough is NOT good enough.
The Mystery of Brown
November 28, 2009 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
This article is the second of 3 connected posts. The first one was What Are Clear and Soft Colours?
There, we talked about muted colours belonging to Autumn and Summer. They’re lower intensity, duller, dusty, either grayish or browned. Summer has some lighter, softer grey browns, often with a blue or mauve tone. Autumn’s colours are darker and more golden-brown.
Spring and Autumn Browns
But Spring has true brown colours too, just like Autumn. When you shop for clothes or makeup, how do you pick Spring’s camel coat from Autumn’s?
Left, Spring. On the right, Autumn.
These colours are not rendered precisely. If you own a Colours Book for True Spring or True Autumn, you may notice that. It doesn’t matter. This illustrates the point well enough.
A color like camel can be very soft, or low saturation, or it can be very bright, or high saturation. It depends on how much gray is in the mix. Look at the 2 camel browns in the middle row. The Autumn one appears more golden, more dark, and more dull and murky.
The Spring brown FEELS closer to you because of it lightness. It almost feels more transparent, though transparency is not one of the ways in which we define colour.
Undertones
The difference between the spring colors and the autumn colors is this:
The springs have a yellow undertone, while the autumns have a gold undertone.
All of the spring colors have yellow added to them, and all of the autumn colors have gold added to them. So, the difference is between yellow and gold. Gold is a deeper and darker shade of yellow.
Spring colors feel light and bright. Autumn colors feel deeper, richer, darker, lower in saturation.
Autumn browns are of lower saturation than Spring because there is more grey in the mix. If they were musical notes, Autumn would resonate far more deeply. The register feels lower. Autumn’s colours are more golden, but a golden color has more gray in it than a yellow based color. Gold is a darker version of yellow AND it is of lower saturation, hence its place among the Autumn colours.
The color brown is actually orange that has been darkened. A dark orange is a brown.
Shopping with knowledge
When we get to 12 tones, vs 4 Season Color Analysis, the differences are slight, but do make a huge difference in the final result, and they are harmonious with each other. The key to having your entire wardrobe work as one, within itself and with you, is for every item to follow YOUR inborn synchrony. It’s important to match the colours as closely as possible to evoke the right feeling. For those of you who have been draped, you saw that your runner-up Season was not even remotely close to your best.
Below is an example of how to apply this information. It is easier with clothing than cosmetic colours. This is a Laura Mercier eyeshadow at Sephora. One of my many reasons for disliking eyeshadow palettes is that they make no sense together. And don’t get me started on lip palettes, which I have even less good feelings about.
Besides a Bright Spring, who would use everything here? That group might be 15% of the population.
Anyhow, looking only at the brown eyeshadow quad, do you notice that it is not gold or orange? The colours feel bright, lit with a pale yellow light. The musical note would be high and clear. These may be browns but they are not “earthy”, which gives a much heavier feeling.
The no-fail guide
But you know, with your Colours Book, you don’t really have to worry. You might think that the camels and honeys and light browns are quite similar between Seasons. When you actually look at the swatches in the Books, they’re obviously different. Your concern is not another Season’s colours. Always match YOUR personal colour palette as closely as possible and you will succeed. This is a visual judgment, not a verbal one. Colour is always best understood when compared to another colour.
Don’t try to shop from memory. Your success rate will drop to 50%. You won’t remember as well as you think you will. Always, always shop with your Book so you can meet my goal 
– which is to never, ever have you buy the wrong thing again.
And that should be done in natural daylight. Take the article up to a window to check the color, or be sure to ask the sales clerk if it can be exchanged if the color is off in natural light. Stores usually use the cheapest lighting possible, which is the worst for viewing true color.
I scribble the product on a piece of white paper because the swatches are painted on white cotton canvas. The sales assistant is standing there watching and possibly feeling quite irritated, but at least it’s not unsanitary. Is this a woman thing? Would a man recognize an easy and successful sale?
What are Clear and Soft Colours?
November 26, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 5 Comments
Let’s say that every colour begins as grey. Drop by drop, you add a colour pigment. As you increase the amount of pigment, so do you increase the “saturation”. The colour is becoming more clear and intense. Finally, there is no grey left and what you have is a pure colour.
Understanding saturation in 12 Season Colour Analysis is key to using your colour analysis swatches correctly for selecting clothes AND makeup.
Colour Saturation
This might look like grey>dusty rose> watermelon> fuchsia. You see how the grey is being subtracted? We began with a soft, muted, dusty colour of low saturation and ended with a more pure, vivid, brilliant colour of high saturation. Another word for saturation is chroma.
A clear colour is pure. It is very far from grey. It is closer to full saturation.
Here is another comparison chart. The colours on the right are not becoming darker, or warmer, or cooler. They’re just clearer or brighter, relative to grey.
Playing with colour parameters
You could darken a colour without removing the gray : grey > heather mist > lilac > lavender > mauve. But now, you’re playing with a different aspect of colour, namely the lightness/darkness. The saturation is not changing so much. These are all soft, muted colours.
You could equally change 2 parameters of colour at once : Wedgewood blue>sky blue>sapphire. We are increasing darkness and increasing saturation at once.
Colour has a third parameter, that being warm/cool. Personal Colour Analysis is determing exactly where your colouring stands in terms of all 3 criteria.
True and Neutral Season colour saturation
Who needs to know? Pretty well everybody, actually. The Summer and Autumn seasons wear absolutely muted colours. Though Autumn’s are more golden-brown and Summer’s are more grey, both are duller than the truly pure Winter and Spring shades.
The True Seasons are absolutes insofar as the colour clarity or softness. Either the colours are clear or they’re not. For the 75% of you who are a Season blend, or a Neutral Season, your colours are softened or muted to a degree. The PCA tells you how much.
In fact, the True Seasons are absolute with respect to all 3 parameters of colour – warm vs. cool and light vs. dark, as well as bright/soft. Therein lies the problem with 4 Season Colour Analysis.
The Neutral Seasons are born with a personal colour palette that is warm/cool/light/dark/bright soft to some degree. It is in the particular combination of the degrees that you arrive at the 8 Neutral groups.
The saturation of grey
Can grey itself be more or less clear?It sure seems crisper and sharper in the Winter greys than in softer Summer greys.
Winter’s grey is pure. That means that it is made of black and white. That’s it.
Summer’s greys have blue in them. Spring’s have yellow, and Autumn’s have brown.
Yellow?
How about a pure vs. muted yellow? Daffodil vs. butterscotch.
Brown
Brown is a little complicated. Brown is a dark orange, but it’s also an important characteristic of the entire Autumn group. It is most certainly NOT a characteristic of the other Seasons, or at least, it takes a much different form.
It’s incredibly important to get it right because it is such a wardrobe neutral and cosmetic colour staple. The Mystery Of Brown is the topic of the next article.
Louise and Stevan Are Light Springs
November 11, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 6 Comments
Spring personalities were put on Earth to make the rest of us smile. Louise and I work together ( she is a veterinarian too) and I’m grateful for it every day.
Although Louise gets the credit for making me laugh (not easily done), her husband David is a pro photographer. He took this picture as well as the breathtaking pictures of Louise that follow.
A quintessential Spring, Louise can talk about any topic under the sun. She is always open and friendly, assertive, sincere, optimistic, and FUNNY. As she says “If you can’t look on the bright side, what’s the point?” Louise says what comes into her head. She is spontaneous, not careful or rehearsed. She is not withdrawn. On Take-Your-Child-To-Work Day, my kids want to be with Louise for the day, not their serious, business-like mother.
As always, colours repeat not just how you look but your personality. These are ice cream dessert colours. They’re happy and impulsive.
These clothes are certainly not menswear tailored, but neither are they always flouncy. They may be sporty but they are mostly about movement. The relaxed, informal personality looks natural in jeans and comfortable textures. With the Summer feminine blend and the light delicacy of the colouring, this could be an ultra-feminine person, but Louise is the easy and casual type.
Many Springs are fascinated by the natural world. They jumped in the puddles as children, not over them. Louise is never happier than in her garden. She looks great in beautifully coloured fleece. If she chooses, she can look very feminine, but she does not carry dark/serious/formal so well.
You might look at Louise’s hair colour, see the medium ash brown (it is more ash IRL) , and say 2 things:
- She’s too dark to be a light season >> Remember, hair colour is irrelevant. It is hidden during the analysis so that we don’t make this exact mistake. Hair colour can be anything. We are only concerned with perfecting the skin.
- Her hair is too cool; Springs have golden hair >> She certainly is closer to her cool neighbor on the Summer side, but her skin perfection colours are more yellow. This is the Summery version of this season. Not everyone falls precisely into their season. They may be closer to one neighbor or the other.
What does it look like when the person veers on the warmer side of this season, moving very close to True Spring. Meet Stevan. His colours are still light and he and Louise share the same personal colour palette. He is as handsome, sunlit, and friendly as he appears in this picture. Stevan smiles easily and is genuinely interested in others, the hallmark of a Spring. His hair is as golden as his skin tone and his character. (Before anyone asks, Stevan is the bigger one, but that so-cute baby has golden potential.)
I’m such a fan of nature’s contrasts. When cool hair is paired with warmer skin, as you see with Louise, or the reverse combination we saw in Pam Is A Dark Winter, these are striking to look at. The one is a showcase for the other. It is especially important to understand your coloring if this is your blueprint because sales people will (inadvertently) match clothing to the degree of warmth/coolness they see in hair and eyes. They have little choice. Without personal colour analysis, it is impossible to understand the precise degree of warmth/coolness of skin tone.
Pam really has to stick to her guns when someone tells her to wear warm lipcolour or add copper highlights. Her skin is mostly cool so her makeup and clothes are mostly cool. She knows her cosmetic colours from her swatches. Louise has to insist on apricot, salmon, and warm pink when someone tries to sell her fuchsia. Her Spring colouring dictates that she must avoid dusty, grayish colours at all costs. She looks for CLEAR and LIGHT, but as the cooler example of her season, it’s a pink-salmon rather than a coral-salmon.
However, in her hair colour, her highlights will only be barely yellow, not too golden, respecting the summer coolness of her natural colour. Stay with the contrast you were born with and heighten its elements. If Stevan were to highlight his hair, he would use a much more yellow colour than Louise, respecting the clear, pale golden warmth of his natural colour.
Can she wear black? No. She looks sad and severe. As you know from Wrong Colours Away From The Face, I believe you look most connected when your darkest colour (especially for big items like coats, pants, and shoes) is no darker than your darkest hair tone. There’s altogether too much black out there anyhow. It’s an evasion for not knowing what to really wear. Though a light season, Louise has a deep emerald turquoise, a Chinese blue, a gorgeous violet. They are not oppressive. They are sophisticated with the incredible neutrals of champagne, cameo, and seashell.
Colour conveys feeling in subliminal ways. It speaks of imagination and youth. It also conveys hot-ness. It can be done the cheap way, but that’s another evasion. Why not do look expensive? Why not look like this?
When the colours you WEAR, repeat the colours you ARE, you have a secret weapon.
The Colour Analysis. What Happens? What Do You Get?
September 22, 2009 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
Qualms
The idea of having your colours analyzed sometimes meets with fair skepticism. I get that. First, you’re wondering if it’s a gimmick and whether you’ll just end up wasting money. It didn’t work overly well in the 1980s. What makes 2010 so different? (That question, and many others, is answered in PCA FAQs.)
The possibility that a change might be asked of you also creates a little hesitation. I get that too. Your suspicions are correct. Change (is Progress a better word?) will be asked but you can choose to make it as big or small as you are ready for.
Another source of doubt comes from the uncertainty about what actually happens. This is especially so among those who too young to remember the last big wave back of 4 Season Colour Analysis in the 80s.
Back then, more women figured out their season from a book than from an actual draping, so the whole notion of the drapes is quite foreign. The process has been refined to make it far more scientific and extremely accurate. The advent of better colour pigments and reproduction processes produces a swatch book that is light years ahead of what it used to be.
This is what happens.
You are in a grey room. You wear a grey cape like a hairstylist’s cape. I wear a grey coat. Your hair is hidden by a grey hat. I prefer to hide my hair as well. I like there to be nothing going on in the room colour-wise except the drapes and the reaction they provoke in your skin.
Your face is lit by lamps like those in a photographer’s studio. They emit a full-spectrum light, meaning that they render every wavelength (colour) of light accurately. The overhead lights are turned off.
And away we go.
It begins with coloured boards over which we float your hand. It allows people to start looking at how skin responds to colour. I’ve had women pull their hand away like it was burned when the colour of the board was changed. What they saw was their hand age 20 years before their eyes.
Then it’s on to the drapes. The drapes are the size of big bath towels and we lay them across your chest. It takes time to see how each person’s features will respond. Will they toggle between old/young, oily/glowing, rough skin/smooth skin when the colour is changed from bad to good? Or will it be something else on your face?
(The colour reproduction has been altered in these photographs.)
There are 21 sets of drapes used for the analysis, and each set might have 3 to 5 individual drapes in it. We would normally use about 12-15 of the 21 sets to arrive at the final answer.
We spend a lot of time at the beginning deciding whether you might fit into one of the 4 True Seasons. We move through a precise system of drape colours and see the response in your skin.
Reactions
I have had people who feel wrong colours to the point of feeling nauseated and asking me to change them quickly. For them, as for me, colour is something they FEEL. Some people see no reaction in their skin whatsoever.
I’ve had women in whose skin I could see little reaction. They make me nervous. I’ve learned to keep going. The drapes will tell me if I’m patient.
Some find the process hypnotic and fall asleep, like a moving meditation. Others provide huge feedback and see the reaction before I describe it.
Some disagree with me. Most don’t. Good thing. I’ve learned to trust myself.
Some people are so clearly of one Season that they’re easily analyzed. Some straddle two neighboring Seasons so evenly that I have to work harder to decide which side of the border they fall on.
Target
What we’re really trying to do is determine what the colours that look most perfecting on your skin tone have in common. They will compose your personal colour palette. Are they light? How light? Are they light and dusty? Or dark and dusty? Or medium in light/dark, medium in clear/soft, and medium in warm/cool? For instance, you could call these pictured below Light and Cool-ish and Clear-ish.
Once we have you pegged to a perfect season, we move on to a different set of drapes. Known as the Masterpiece collection, these are 15 drapes (12 different sets, so one for each season) of your most gorgeous colours and your most stunning fabrics.
I tell people not to look at the drapes. Look at your skin. The first time people see the colours, they can’t help but look at them. Yes, they are very beautiful, but very importantly, people FEEL a sense of recognition or familiarity, of having been truly seen.
We end up looking at the Masterpiece drapes about 5 times. The first time, you look at the colours. The next time, look at your skin. The third time, think about becoming acquainted with those shades in stores, and appreciating how they make your face look. You will learn to recognize the effect in dressing room mirrors even if you’re not sure about the colours themselves. That takes time.
We let your hair out of the hat and look again. If the beautiful skin effect is lost, then your hair colour is wrong.
We put on makeup for No. 5. Even if you don’t wear makeup, it’s worth doing this. Colour-analyzed cosmetic colour ratchets the whole transformation up that much higher.
Aspiration
You will see yourself as you never have before. You will see yourself as you could be, every day.
Result
Or, What Do You Have When You’re Done?
You have
- the knowledge of your position among the 12 Seasons
- a complete understanding of the best shades of every colour that is perfect for you and how to recognize them in clothing and makeup
- a Colours Book of 60 colour swatches, exclusive to your Season only, with which to choose clothes and makeup,
- an 8-10 page PDF document for your Season that describes the particular radiance and edge of that Season, the clothing style that suits you and your colours best, how to choose hair and makeup colours, the pitfalls to watch for, the perfect jewelry, the colour combinations and power look for men, and a segment on personality traits very common to people of this colouring.
- a list of the makeup, including brand name and colour, that you should be wearing in blush, eyeliner, eyeshadow, mascara, lipstick, and lip gloss – to help you get started, as your eye learns to pick the makeup that looks custom-coloured for you
- the revelation of having seen yourself as you never have and the knowledge of what you are supposed to look like – your own easiest, most authentic beauty
- the power of knowing what NOT to buy and which trends to bypass (or how to customize them for you)
- the first step of a journey of self-discovery about who you are, and how to use clothing and makeup to tell the world about the real you. This is the “life-changing experience” people describe about Personal Colour Analysis.
Colour Analysed Cosmetics
September 7, 2009 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
I believe that the best makeup is invisible – no, imperceptible is a better word. It should enhance your features without needing to be noticed.
Am I meaning “Neutral Makeup Colours” here? No, not in the sense of the nude or flesh-toned, neither-cool-nor-warm, often slightly grayed colours, that most neutral collections offer. Any given colour is still only right on certain people, “neutral colour” or not. Wrong colours will sit on the top of the skin and look like an island of obvious colour.
In the hands of a makeup artist, beautifully sculpted faces are possible with “neutral makeup”. But I’m neither a model nor a makeup artist. Are you? For most of us, neutral makeup just feels safer when we’re not sure what real colour to wear. The problem is that it looks flat and lifeless.
What I mean is “Natural Colour”. When the makeup colour is right, it will disappear into your skin. It will fuse with your face believably because the colour is already there. That’s the magic of Colour Analysis. We will identify the precise shades that are present in your natural design and give them to you in your Colours Book. Match them in clothes and cosmetics and you will look, feel, and present better. Way better.
What if you knew exactly what cosmetic colours would look custom-made for you? No more hit-and-miss or believing wrong advice. No more having 5 tubes of the same shade of lipstick at the bottom of your purse. No more drawer full of makeup you’ll never wear. What if you owned 3 eyeshadows, 2 blush colours, 2 lipsticks, and a gloss, and they looked so perfect that you never stopped at the makeup counter again? There would be no need to own anything else. With PCA, this is entirely attainable.
Eyeliner and eyeshadow are any shade of brown or grey. That’s it. Now, that still gives you access to about 50,000 different colours, and includes blends with white, yellow, peach, mauve, orange, and black. How do you know which shades of brown, out of a possible 50,000, is yours? Makeup mistakes are the most glaring because they’re painted right on the face. Don’t worry, the answers are in your Colours Book.
You will never get blue, green, or purple makeup from me. You might get navy or eggplant, but in a shade that will not be obviously blue or purple when applied.
Why not? Isn’t green more interesting than grey? Maybe, but interesting in the wrong way. People look at the green line, which demands the spotlight because it doesn’t belong on a face. It competes with what they should be looking at, which is the colour of your eyes. However, if you’re dying to put turquoise around your eyes, the right shade to use will be in your Colours Book.
You will never get frosted makeup from me, with the possible exception of a softly shimmering gloss or eyeshadow highlight for Winters, Springs, and their blends.
Why? Isn’t shimmer makeup pretty? Shimmer looks appealing in the package or tested on your hand. By comparison, the matte colour seems terribly dull. On a face, it’s the opposite. It’s the matte colour that enhances without drawing attention to itself. Shimmer can take over. On Summer, it looks hard because the complexion is too delicate to compete. Unless your skin is as tight as a 15 year old’s, and mine certainly is not, painting shimmer over it is a good way of making sure people see every crease and crinkle.
Lipstick should have more colour than “nude”. If you’re 25 or less, with the great lip definition of youth, you can wear flesh-toned lip colours. Even then, the only women who can wear lip colour that is lighter than the skin are on the pages of magazines. If you’re mature, you lose lip colour and lip definition, and a brighter shade will give you both of those, so it looks more youthful.
The trick is getting the brighter shade that is so right that is matches your skin, eyes, and hair perfectly – and you’ll find it, all laid out in the gorgeous choices of your Colours Book. Armed with the knowledge of your perfect lip and blush colours, who wouldn’t choose those? It looks sophisticated, fresh, and imaginative.
Are there makeup colours that anyone can wear? NO! You wouldn’t decorate a farmhouse and a French chateau the same way. It would look crazy. This is the same thing. You have a natural colouring and design and when you repeat them exactly, your makeup is suddenly striking, compelling, and unbelievably effective. If you wear the wrong shades, it’s like wearing the someone else’s size or style of clothes. The effect is disorganized, which translates as weak. It does nothing.
Are there makeup colours that are shared between Seasons? Now, we’re drilling down to the real problem. There should not be shared makeup. Each of the 12 Seasons has a palette of colours that ALL share the SAME colour behaviour (how light/dark, how warm/cool, and how clear/soft). No two Seasons are the same on these 3 scales, so the makeup shouldn’t be either.
Unfortunately, the cosmetics industry offering is mostly disorganized. Even when you know what’s right on you, it can be hard to find.
Why don’t they teach it? The fact is that it cannot be taught. For each woman, it must begin with a PCA. Nobody can tell your undertones, overtones, or true colours without it. Nobody. There are too many variables and too many confusing distractions.
Once you know your precise inborn tones, you’re no longer going out on a colour limb when you buy makeup or choose a hair colour. You’re making educated choices empowered by self-knowledge.
So, do you sell makeup collections for the Seasons? I did try. I was disappointed with the quality and/or the colour choice. At present, I give you a shopping list of specific products and colours to test. I often go makeup shopping for you.
From a personal perspective, I don’t want to sell makeup. I would like a relationship with a company that can do that for you, that offers all the necessary colours. So far, I haven’t seen that it exists.
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