A Blonde True Winter
June 19, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 30 Comments
Kathryn Kalisz’s Sci\ART 12 Tone system revolutionized personal colour analysis in many ways. By conforming only with how light and colour behave in Nature (instead of restructuring), by creating 8 Neutral Seasons (whose colours were exclusive to each), and by insisting on a level of colour accuracy not previously attained, a new standard was set. She also shook up the status quo by ignoring, even denying, the entrenched beliefs and the stereotypes. Hair and eye colour are variable in every Season and will mislead if allowed into the Season decision. Season can only be known with certainty by observing the skin’s reaction to specific colours placed adjacent to it.
Hanka Kralikova is a newer member of the Sci\ART family of colour analysts. I’d like to introduce her to you by letting you read her story, in her words. Even colour analysts have to climb the wall of who they think they are and who they’ve been told they are, to meet themselves as they really are. We have also stared dumbfounded as the evidence that comes from our own colouring, that has always been there to be unveiled and understood, becomes less and less deniable. For an analyst, I think it’s extremely important to have personally lived this experience. I expect that many readers will recognize Hanka’s journey.
Hanka is opening a studio in Prague. Should you wish to have a consultation, she can help you with accommodations, another reason to visit this most beautiful city. You can email at hanka@topimage.cz. A website is in the works.
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Here are older photos to show my natural colouring.
I have been a freelance make-up artist for several years and became a certified Image Consultant last year. I realized that I needed to get the colours right as they are the core for everything. I first tried colour analysis as a client about ten years ago – not the best experience. The analyst told me I was a warm Season and since I am blonde and blue-eyed, I must be Spring. Full stop. I bought some make-up for Spring, used it several times, did not like it, and left it at the bottom of my cosmetic drawer. I decided colour analysis was good for nothing.
Couple of years later, during my make-up artist course, we also talked about colours. The tutor even analyzed us. This time it was different – they were already using the 12 Season analysis system. The only problem was – someone translated it from English and misinterpreted bright as shiny. Again, I was blonde, there were no standardized drapes (everybody trying to do analysis picked their own or bought them from someone who did so), no proper lighting, no neutral surrounding. So the result was: I am light and more cool than warm but True Summer colours are too muted for me – I am probably Light Summer.
Next time at a style course I was told (without any draping at all) that I was Light with no predominant warmth or coolness. I could choose if I wanted to be Light Spring or Light Summer. I tried both since each had something that worked. I liked the brightness of the Spring and coolness of the Summer but never was able to find a good lipstick for myself. I should have realized by then – cool and bright are quite good indications, but first I was blonde and second, hardly anybody can be objective about themselves. I always thought about myself as kind of wishy-washy, light and quite soft looking.
At the end of 2009 I was searching the Internet for some information on colour analysis, convinced there must be some system that could tell me exactly who I am. I really mean that. Knowing my colours really helped to better understand and accept my personality. I found it. It was called Sci\ART, it was based on real science (both my parents are physicists so I must have some science somewhere in my genes) and it made sense. I bought the book Understanding Your Colour and received it with a personal note from Kathryn. I loved the book and at the beginning of 2010, I put the money together to go to States and learn it. Unfortunately I was too late. Kathryn was not there anymore. I had never met her but still I felt as I had lost a friend.
I struggled with colours for another year when I gave it another try. I searched the Internet again and found several people who were Sci\ART certified trainers. I was lucky that one of them, Terry Wildfong, had been thinking about retiring and she was looking for someone to train who could then buy the business from her. We exchanged several e-mails and in the end of March, I was in Grand Rapids waiting for my life to change. And it did.
At the end of the first day of my training after we went through all the theory, Terry did my draping and showed me how to perform the analysis. I was expecting her to confirm I was Light, finally decide between one of the two Light Seasons, hoping that the Sci\ART ‘scientific’ palettes would have the right colours for me. I had my hair and clothes covered with grey so I could see just the face. The draping began. Terry did not need to say much. The first test drapes showed I was cool – there might be a little warmth but not much (“so, I will most probably be Light Summer”, I was thinking to myself). But then came the shock. We compared different Seasons drapes in between each other and I could see which ones were better but still was not able (or did not want to) to put it together. I looked great in brighter colours – I had never realized how bright my eyes were – and much better in cool colours then in warm ones. Black was not bad at all, crisp white looked perfect. Still, my brain was not willing to accept it. Then Terry said “So, do you know which Season you are?”
I went through all the results one more time – cool and quite bright, I can handle quite dark colours, I look great in icy pastels, there might be a little bit of warmth but not enough to make me a Neutral Season. No, it cannot be – but what else? Can I be a True Winter? Terry agreed. I was in shock. “It is not possible, I am LIGHT. How can I be WINTER?” Terry put some winter make-up on me and we went through “Ooh and Ah” session with a set of luxury drapes. I have never looked so good in my whole life. Thank you, Terry.
What was I going to do with my wardrobe full of pastels, those coral T-shirts, and a jacket I bought only recently? My head was swirling around when I was leaving that day. I slept very poorly that night. When I woke up the following morning, first thing I did was hold up my new True Winter palette next to my face and looked in the mirror. “Ok, I am True Winter, then. Let’s start new life.” That day I was analyzing people Terry had scheduled for me. I was very happy that I learned my lesson the day before. Some people can be very obvious – the moment you see them you know what Season they are and the draping just confirms it. With others you get surprised. I do not try to guess anymore, I wait for the drapes to tell me.
Instead of lunch I went shopping. I bought a pair of black jeans, white T-shirt, black tunic, bright blue, white and black dress with geometric pattern, and a bright pink lip gloss. It felt great. I had not worn black for ages and I fell in love with the deep berry lip gloss I never dared look at before. When I got back to Prague I spent a day sorting my clothes and found out one interesting thing. There were some pieces, mostly impulsive buys, which were spot on or very close to my Winter palette, mostly in purple, my favorite colour. I also had some brighter blue T-shirts and tank tops, one pink sweatshirt, and a dark chocolate jacket and suit. The jeans could stay, too. In the end I got rid off of some clothes, mainly in coral and some soft colours that I never wore. I could wear and combine what was left easily.
I still want to add some black and white, new for me, and also some other colours. I never go shopping without my True Winter palette anymore. I do not bother looking at things that are not in my colours. And above all I get compliments on how well I look even from people I would never expect to notice such things 
And one more thing – I have started to experiment with my hair colour (naturally mousy medium blond somewhere between 7 and 8). I got rid of the highlights and tried something a bit darker than my natural colour. It is still not perfect but I am getting there. I have got several comments that my eyes are looking brighter with the darker hair so I think I am heading in the right direction. BTW I had always thought my eyes were dull.
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Here are the ‘dull’ eyes, dearest readers. They contain stars.
And since this amount of cuteness would brighten any day, here is the child’s colouring.
Don’t let your left brain see patterns it is convinced that it recognizes, and proceed to dictate to you what they mean. Left brains try to do that, but they’re best relegated to data processing. Data assimilation is better done by the right side. Your eyes see snow and your left brain tells you that you are seeing white. Your right brain sees what really is, that snow is affected by the colours around it, including that of the light, and can be blue powder, a violet cloud, a sparkling yellow carpet. Patterns led to confusion and lack of trust in colour analysis, but they sure are hard to resist, even when you’re aware of their ambush. Approach every person as though they could be any of the 12 Seasons.
If you have questions or comments for Hanka, please add them to the Comments. She’ll be checking in here and on Facebook.
Light Spring Looking Serious
June 14, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 13 Comments
We talked last time about how Light Summer conveys a professional, adult image with a palette that can feel like rainbows and fairy tales.
Light Spring (of the 12 Seasons, this Neutral Season is mostly Spring with a little Summer) is in the same boat. Although creamier and less misty blue, you would use Light Spring’s palette to paint the Fountain of Youth. How we dress, how our faces and bodies look, it’s just the light we give off. Light Spring’s is the creamy green, pink, and white light of a tree in bloom (not just one little flower, as has been suggested ; this is the whole glowing magnificent tree, radiating a clear, young, vital light).
I could suggest that you to aim to project this light when you choose what to buy, but it doesn’t help much at a mall.
Let’s call this beautiful woman Lynn. Light is not the first thing you’d say when you look at Lynn’s face or her overall apperance. She knows from a Sci\ART personal colour analysis that the Light Spring palette created the most perfected skin she could achieve – but skin is difficult to illustrate, so we get caught talking about hair and eyes, though we know neither has a definitive place in deciding Season. This hair colour is a bit darker than her natural colour, but not by much. Lynn’s eye colour is not dark or intense, rather similar to the soft green leaves behind her. There is a great misconception that the Light Seasons are all blue-eyed blondes. Rachel addressed this topic better than anyone in her article on revising our idea of Spring and Summer.
Notice the perfection of the earrings, dress, sweater, both in style and colour. These people look younger than anyone else, for longer, a marvelous gift. But they don’t necessarily want others to think Barbie, Tinkerbell, cupcake, candy heart, Mother’s Day Cake, or anything else with a pediatric drift, when they assemble an outfit. This can be challenging with a palette that is sunny and delicate to the point of enchantment.
Light bounces everywhere, though not full on squinty light. The overall feeling is distinctly warmer than Light Summer’s, but lightness of colour is shared as the most important aspect of perfecting skin tone. Every item need not be perfect, is not in the collection below, and will not be in stores. The overall impression pulls single items into a cohesive Light Spring feeling.
Don’t get too playful. Though a coloured bag or jacket is so good on Springs, the brighter the colour, the plainer the style, at least for professional impressions.
Make big use of neutrals, and remember that they are luminous too.
The green blouse would be better with ivory than white, but the overall feeling is light. The pants with the yellow blouses are not part of the collection. Pants are very light neutral. Most khakis and chinos are too orange, heavy, and/or yellow-brown for Light Spring. Light beige pants are quite fine, but camel can look almost like furniture, bulky and solid on this airy lightness. It just put friction into the system that doesn’t feel good. Notice in the set above that you can feel some restraint still where heat is concerned.
In response to the Light Summer Looking Serious post, a valid point was raised that I want to share. Why does the Light Summer coat look so light (from the previous post), and this suit so much darker? Is there a difference in how dark the two Light Seasons can get? Great questions.
In my head, they went to about the same level of darkness, or not enough that it would matter in stores, though Light Spring would be the lighter of the two, with the main difference in side-by-side swatches being that Light Spring is yellower and a touch clearer (less grey). That was true of the pre-2010 books I still have. When I looked at my post 2010 swatch books (no idea when in 2010 they were made, if they were old stock or new formulas), Light Spring is definitely the lighter palette of the more recent books. A sincere thanks to the woman who pointed this out.
Sci\ART analyst Maytee Garza has posted all 12 Tone palettes on her Shutterfly page, along with photos of people in each Season. It’s a gorgeous page, one you will want to bookmark. Light Summer’s value limit is darker. The Light Spring palette looks the same as my post (not a typo) 2010 books. To look at the two, Light Spring’s look a bit hazier (as in misty,rather than grey), though those are the clearer, less muted colours. My explanation: as they lose Summer’s greyness and take on more of Spring’s yellow light, they become creamy. The purer the yellow, increasing as we move into Spring, the lighter the colour. Muted means closer to grey, a Summer characteristic. If True Summer is skim milk and True Spring is real cream, Light Summer is still only about 1%, whereas Light Spring is what? half ‘n half, not as heavy as whipping cream.
Light Spring colours must be tints, with more white added to them, or that’s how it seems, though I am no colour mixing expert. There may also be a photographic factor here, since the Light Spring swatches are the clearer (less grey) ones to look at IRL, perhaps a bit like the effect of being photographed while wearing sunscreen. In thinking of how to describe the difference, overexposed came to mind.
These articles are not intended to show the colour extremes. Only the swatch books can do that. These sets are more trying to communicate an overall feeling and simulate a real shopping experience. The coat in the Light Summer post was among their mid-darkness level browns. Is the coat above too dark for Light Spring? You may feel that it certainly is. To me, it is OK, though they would not go even one degree darker. I left it there for the illustration.
Is the colour too something-not-right, better suited to an Autumn? A Soft Autumn could probably wear it, though I don’t see a lot of orange in the colour, it seems more a Spring yellow-brown on this screen.
The issue for me is whether a Light Season would wear the jacket and pants together or if the overall look would be too heavy and somber. I still think it would work with a light blouse, but some of the very fair women may feel otherwise. Every woman will have to make a darkness adjustment within her palette, based on the darkness of her natural colouring and her own preference, how much makeup she likes, etc. The model wearing the suit is holding her own in it. The model in the photo to her left probably could as well.
How could I, I forgot handbags for the Lights?!
Interchangeable for the Light Seasons. Not too much hardware, which looks heavy. Light means light by every connotation of the word.
Light purses get dirty, I know, but I still prefer the look with this woman, clothes, and makeup.
The right column, 2nd from top, though a nice colour, may feel too clunky and heavy. May also depend on the size of the woman carrying it. Purses look good when they kind of match our body shape. Rounded with rounded, boxy with boxy, big and little with big and little.
No brown bags, which feel too weighed down and utility for Spring, especially Light Spring, even in a workplace look. I apologize to anyone with brown purses and respect, indeed welcome, your right to disagree with me as long as you tell me why so I learn something. Left column, 2nd from top, is also a bit heavy, but if something qualifies as cute, it’s probably Spring.
Middle column bottom, the blush pink may not be for the day you chair the meeting, but great for the business lunch the meeting-after-the-meeting. I believe we should find a way to wear our undertone colour every day. Others get that something is going on that their eyes are not often given.
Once again, I set prices at 100 for most items, double what I spend on anything, because beauty is not about how much money you go through.
Light Summer Looking Serious
June 10, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 15 Comments
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, the Light Seasons are the Neutral Season blends of True Spring and True Summer. These people are often not as light to look at as you’d expect, certainly not blue-eyed blondes by necessity. Colour Analysis is not about what you look like. It is about what the colours that make your skin the most perfect have in common.
What’s not to like about the Light Spring and Light Summer? Agreeable in every way, reminding of sunshine, mild weather, pleasant temperatures, and easiness.What if you want to express the serious contender side of yourself, and not a dally in a rowboat?
You can dress like the boss, but he/she probably has no idea what to wear either. Two shades lighter than the men in that business seems reasonable. Can color be used to make women less threatening in male dominated workplaces? Or be seen more as equals?
When you want to be heard, it’s easy to forget that whispers work better. They clear the air like an early morning rain in a world where everyone seems to be yelling. A beautiful, natural face like the one below relaxes everyone around them. They ease the tension in a room just by being there. Light Summer personifies the breath of fresh air like no other.
When we look at the colour palettes fanned out for any Season, our eye tends to be drawn to the colours. If you planted an acre garden and it contained a single bloom, your eye would be drawn to that spot of colour. We have to make a conscious effort to notice all the other colours, meaning the neutrals. They’re the spine of the whole wardrobe, the items that the real colours are added to. Use them a lot. You don’t need an item in everyone of your greens, but owning each of the greys is a good investment. For Light Summer, they are the colour of breath, shade, and shadows.
Monochromatic (all one colour) and analogous (neighbour colours on the colour wheel) colour schemes look organized and work very well on Summers and their blends, though Spring will use more colour difference and brightness in their prints and combinations. Pair a blue-grey with a blue, or a lilac-grey with a colour from the pink-violet family. This quiets the colour but introduces the friendliness, creativity, and confidence that colour does, and is very appropriate at work.
Avoid child like details, like pintucks, gathers, bows, or dots, unless the colour is quite serious and the effect is low key. These can look great on any Spring blend, but we’re trying to look less pediatric. Smocked blouses or hippie/tie-dye tunics can look as fine as peasant and folk styles on Autumn, but best worn on days off.
Keep in mind the most essential aspect of your colouring: it never gets darker than medium, so your clothes don’t either. There is always a light block somewhere to give an overall light feeling, because that’s how looking at you feels. Get too dark and your clothes take over your face, your body, your size, your presence. You have room to move with warmth and coolness, and with mutedness or clearness, because as long as colour stays light, it is very forgiving to your skin tone’s perfection.
Light Summer is gentle colour, misty light, an early sun, and an airiness that’s still cooler than it is warm. Silver and gold would both be fine in the photo above, but silver feels more at home. There is no stark white (I know the boat is white, but that’s your left brain telling you so; if you were to paint this picture, the sky and boat are grey, and silvery grey at that). And black? Put one black spot anywhere here and your eye would see nothing else.
I set the max price at 100 for most items. Your workplace may be more glam than mine, so you may see this as a casual look.
I liked the cardi because it reminds me of how planet Earth looks from outer space, a water planet, all swirling greens, blues, and whites.
Nothing gets very dark. There would be more white tops but they publish with odd reflections.
The blue jacket on the left – too muted? Maybe. It could be sunnier, but sometimes you’ll love something that will be close enough, or you won’t be able to find the perfect thing with the time and money you own. It all has to work in the real world. Light Summer is Summer above all. Denim blues are all pretty good.
The silver watch too chunky? Better suited to a Winter? Maybe, but I like a big watch. The strap is a brushed silver and the stones, numbers, and details set in the face are small. It balances well enough.
As ever, I’m more interested in what you don’t agree with because it helps me learn. I never take anything personally, trust me.
Next post will be Light Spring.
A Brown-Eyed Summer
May 14, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 17 Comments
And not just a Summer, but a Light Summer!
Geoff was one of the people I analyzed as part of my training, with Terri there to guide me. Though I wasn’t tuned into people’s colouring back then, his impression seemed very medium and still is in my memory. He had medium-dark sandy brown hair and eyes that seemed twinkly somehow, but light or medium in depth, no idea what colour.
It has been pointed out that if I believe that eyes and hair are irrelevant to Season (and I do), then why do I keep talking about them? Because skin is hard to talk about. In a previous article, Jocelyn Is A Bright Winter, I had watched her at work for years, so I had some idea of how her skin reacted to colour. Geoff and I just met that day, which is the case with most clients.
His Season was Bright Winter. At the time, I had no idea what the significance of that was. He could have been any Season and it would have seemed perfectly plausible. Every one of the 12 Seasons had an exactly equal outcome probability. That precious trust is one of the hardest things to hang onto as experience brings expectation, complacency, and ruts. The beginner is far more willing to wander off the beaten path, too naive to know what the implications are.
As time passed, I often wondered if I would ever have the confidence to a call a medium-colouring person a Bright Winter without Terri standing beside me. Terri had analyzed hundreds of people, probably thousands, having been an analyst since the 80s, first with one of the biggest brands in PCA, and eventually settling more comfortably with Sci\ART.
In PCA, the average is the exception. The general population, the people at yoga class, your family, nobody quite looks like the pictures in books. Those perfect averages are as rare as the patient with a disease who shows up with all the textbook signs and symptoms. At least, I never see them. Most everyone has something that seems not to fit.
Let’s call this lovely woman May. She had been analyzed many years ago as a Summer, in a 4-Season system. It was closer than the other choices, though she did wear some Spring colours, especially the robin’s egg blues. May is remarkably colour perceptive, even to the fine details, and could decide even with the first drapes which was better. She is one of the few women I see who came in wearing her best colours.
We began as Light Seasons always do. Terrible, but terrible in Autumn. We could have counted 15 different problems. Overwhelmed by Winter’s aggressive darks. No surprise so far. True Summer made the skin a bit greyed, but it looked younger and more evenly coloured. True Spring brought an easing of lines and that typical smoothness of skin of this Season, but she was too yellow. Very typical of the Light Seasons. Seen this many times.
And I’m feeling a bit nervous because those eyes are brown and they are not changing, though the skin and eyelids around them are changing dramatically. Eye colour intensity or crispness of outline of the iris don’t change equally in everyone, but as I get to the better Seasons, these factors are usually helpful guides. Contradictions can happen, as the Soft Autumn eyes in skin that has cooled and softened to Soft Summer in a woman in her 60s, and skin always matters most. The eyes won’t change in a face while the skin remains the same, it’s just easier to see in the eye as we refine the very best colours.In May’s case, we seldom looked at her eye colour or sharpness. We did it entirely by looking at skin.
Life often teaches us what we most need to know at the time we are truly receptive. I get challenged a fair bit about ignoring eye and hair colour, and sometimes I question myself. May came along, I believe, to teach me to stick to my guns. If eyes don’t matter, and ANY Season can have ANY hair and eye colour, then it was time for me to put my money where my mouth is.
We knew True Summer and True Spring weren’t right. I kept seeing those dark eyes and going back to Bright Spring. Bernice Kentner of CMAS, whom I hold in highest esteem, has said that a brown-eyed Spring is mostly a Winter blend, and that has been my experience so far. There was no way. May is not crisply cool to look at, and Bright Springs usually are. Those drapes were not only draining, but they looked crazy, like the woman and the colour were separate and had been Photoshopped together.
I thank May for sitting there so patiently, Summer that she is. PCA is like a video game. It doesn’t let you see any level of clues till you’ve mastered the previous level. It holds back knowledge you’re not ready to use correctly. We tried Light Spring and Light Summer a few times and couldn’t choose. I never belabor these moments, I change the energy. We went backwards, tried Soft Summer and the True Summer and Spring again, just to give our eyes more ways of seeing. Then, it was obvious. Light Summer was clearly and obviously the one. Her skin was the absolute youngest, without being yellowed as Light Spring caused. In a 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis system, Light Summer is the person whose inborn colouring is predominantly Summer’s, with a trace of Spring’s clear, light, yellow sunlight.
I wonder if she was a Light Spring as a younger woman. Her skin may have cooled and softened into Light Summer. But a brown-eyed Light Spring is still most uncommon. And those eyes are brown, but fascinatingly so. A blue-eyed Light Summer has a very clear open wreath around the pupil, like this:
See the browner doughnut around the pupil? And see also the absence of lines and spokes and specks and other detail throughout the iris? Very typical of all 3 Summer groups.
In May’s eyes, substitute all the blues for browns and you’re there. Same very prominent open wreath, actually even wider doughnut than the eye above, same absence of strong lines, and of a darker brown than the very slightly lighter brown outside the wreath.
What else was fascinating? Her eyelashes are light-medium blonde, about like the eye above or perhaps a bit lighter, and far lighter than her eyes. Her eyebrows are extremely fair.
Her hair colour is lighter than her natural light brown was in her earlier years, and her natural is now gray. Hair is hidden during the analysis, so imagining her in darker hair would not have made a younger face.
If you can’t buy a brown-eyed Summer, what else can you picture? Nothing I can think of. Try putting other Seasons’ makeup on her. I can’t see it. She is wearing the lightest silvery taupe eyeliner I have. Even through tinted lenses, can you imagine darker without the eyeliner being an obvious dark line on this skin? Not really. May is wearing quite a bit of light gold-peach bronzer and carnation pink blush and lipstick, but the white analysis lights are still on so the skin seems a bit whiter.
The Brown-Eyed Spring
February 9, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 81 Comments
Or Never Give Up On Your Colouring
This post is special for a few reasons.
First, I get more questions asking how this colouring looks than all the other groups.
Is this the rarest Season of them all? I think it depends where you live. I have never analyzed a True Spring, but I have seen what they look like: Wayne Gretzky. I give up a bit on female examples because they are so altered, usually for the worse, that a natural original is almost impossible to find.
Bright Spring is not really rare. It is unpredictable. This colouring always seems to look like something else. To confuse matters, the opposite is true as well, where many other Seasons can look like Bright Spring. When hair is dark, this person can resemble Dark Autumn or Dark Winter when eyes are dark. If eyes are light, the similarity to True Summer can be startling.
Secondly, this beautiful model, whom we’ll call Audrey, has brown eyes. Those are rare in the Spring and Summer groups, but where human genetics are concerned, nothing is impossible.
The Bright Seasons are those that combine Winter and Spring colouring. If Winter is stronger, the Season is called Bright Winter. If Spring influence is larger, the person contains the colours of the Bright Spring palette in their natural colouring. Both are Neutral Seasons in the Sci\ART 12 Tone system, meaning that this skin has some warmer and some cooler colours. This is important information for buying the right foundation.
Asian features often belong to people whose colouring is perfected by the Bright Seasons. Here is one of Audrey’s pre-PCA pictures.
Nothing wrong with that picture at all, but would you think of a Spring person? Maybe, but I didn’t. Bright crosses my mind when I see Asian features, but I couldn’t picture the bright coral pink lip colours on that skin tone. When you look at the PCA pictures, do you find that Audrey doesn’t even look like the same woman? I was blown away by the difference. In her most beautiful colours, her skin tone is light, bright, evenly coloured, illuminated and brilliant. Bright Spring takes their Winter influence and turns it into pure sparkle.
This illustrates what worries me about doing Personal Colour Analysis from photographs, even good ones. They just give you one static shot, but colour analysis is anything except static. It is a very dynamic process, of ever-changing drapes, colours, and better-than decisions, through many sets of drapes. We compare and compare and compare again.
***Thank you to the wonderful Maytee Garza at Reveal Style Consultancy in New Jersey for this analysis. Maytee has shared photographs of PCA sessions with several clients on her Shutterfly page.***
During the draping, we see right away that black works pretty well, but seems too serious and hard at the same time. Something is off, not always easy to put your finger on what. In True Autumn brown, nothing happens. It just sits there. And the longer it sits, the worse things get, which happens with all wrong colours on everyone. Some Bright Springs look physically small, old, and weak in Autumn colours.
Then True Spring’s yellow goes on. Wow. The person turns yellowish, because that drape is too warm, but the eye goes from generic blue or brown to something amazing. The face becomes perfectly evenly coloured. If you could just erase the yellow, the face would already be wearing custom-coloured foundation and concealer. Ten years come off the face of older women. Everyone in the room stares speechless.
In the photo below, compare Audrey’s coloring to Maytee’s. Maytee is a Dark Winter. The clarity and lightness of Audrey’s skin compared to the much darker, muted tones of Maytee’s are so much more evident. Notice too that black works, but a small black block with a big light,bright block is spectacular.
Audrey’s descriptions are far better than mine could be. She said,
I love that it’s mostly about the skin tone in Sci/Art, but it really is about the eyes and hair too – not in the way that the eye/hair color is part of the final judgment call about a person’s season, but in the way that one can see changes in the hair and eye color too. When I wore the wrong colors, my eyes darkened and you couldn’t get the full effect of the topazy/hazel/interesting lightness (comparatively to other brownish eyes). When I wear my best colors, my eyes lighten to a shade I never even knew they could be, and even my hair changes – I notice the warmth in it, the interesting chestnut/red/orange undertones.
This is the best part. When the hair is covered, it is easier to believe what your eyes are telling you. In Audrey’s words,
The Bright drapes, both Bright Winter and Bright Spring, worked, but the Bright Winter drapes were a bit too blue/too cool, and they didn’t light me up as well as the Bright Spring drapes did. Interestingly enough, some of the Summer drapes worked on me but in general, the Summer palette greyed me and I REALLY could see it. So finally, it was between Warm (True Spring) or Neutral (Bright Spring).
Can you believe it – me, a dark-haired, “dark”-eyed gal (who actually has topaz-ish clear hazel eyes in the Sci/Art lighting which is a duplicate of natural lighting), was actually being considered for TRUE SPRING! I almost couldn’t believe it but funnily enough, it took a little while to figure out which worked better – warm or neutral. They both looked great but the Warm drapes yellowed me a bit. Also, between True Spring and Bright Spring, there was no contest – True Spring did not incorporate my natural darkness, which Bright Spring does.
One of the most interesting changes that we noticed aside from a greying of the skin or a dulling of the skin was the fact that my eyes darkened when I wore colors that weren’t bright/clear enough. This is also something that I noticed before this draping session, especially when trying different blush colors. When I’m not wearing the right colors, my eyes darken and you can’t get the full effect of how topaz/hazel-colored they are, and now I know that it wasn’t just my eyes playing tricks on me!
The more you’re willing to release, the bigger the prize.
Hair and Eye Colour and Season
February 5, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 24 Comments
By way of documenting information, since this website serves as a content management system as well as a blog, this is an update in my thinking on this important topic.
In the wonderful discussions in our Facebook Fan Club, my belief that hair color is useless in determining Seasons surfaced in a thread about the unique Season of Bright Spring. Women often ask which celebrity might embody that coloring, and I can never think of one. This is the one group for which no average appearance exists. I think of Mrs. Laura Bush, with her turquoise eyes that tilt upwards. The French actress Audrey Tautou might serve as a dark-eyed example, but she has such sharp darkness and opacity of skin that she is probably more weighted towards Winter, with a smaller fraction of Spring.
Please, if anyone is finding the jargon confusing, do ask in the comments. And if you’re a Fb member, please pardon the reiteration.
While some PCA systems only recognize members of this Season as having clear blue or green eyes, but never brown eyes, I believe that brown-eyes Springs exist, and are usually mixed with a little Winter (thereby making them Bright Springs). Since the 1980s, when 4 Season systems were more prevalent, many very experienced and skilled color analysts believe that hair color and eye color remain important factors in determining your Season. I don’t.
I am not here to say that I am right and anyone else is wrong. Our philosophies may diverge a little. The same could be said of any two practitioners in any field. Having your colors analyzed is still the best, fastest, easiest way of spending less money smarter and looking way the heck better.
Remember that I define Season not by how you look, but by which group of colors make your skin look as perfect, young, healthy, and evenly colored as it possibly can. We figure that out using many sets of very specially colored drapes. When we find the set that enhances you above all the others, what we have really uncovered are the exact pigments already in your skin, in your body. When you then wear the colors you already are, you look like magic because your person and your attire is sending the same wavelength of energy to the viewer. That feels really good to be and to look at.
L to R, True Summer, Dark Winter, True Summer.
So, for hair and eye color to play a factor in Season, they would have to contain the exact same pigments as those in the skin.
We know that the genes that code hair, skin, eyes (eye color and line patterns in the iris, since those quite consistently seen together), and personality are not the same ones.
We know too that some combination of these genes often travel together when the chromosomes divide (or are transcribed together when the proteins are made, or there is some sort of genetic coupling at work), because we so often see certain traits together like blue eyes and blond hair. I think it’s scientifically reasonable to say that these genes are commonly expressed together in the individual or phenotype. If anyone knows more about human genetics than I do, I would love to know your opinion.
When I look at the people whose skin I’ve analyzed, the colors that are in the skin, and so in the colors in their color analysis palette that the drapes matched with, contain the vast majority of eye colours (and certain Season-specific line patterns) in 80% of people. I extrapolate this to say that eye colour and pattern can be correlated to skin pigmentation, and therefore Season, 80% of the time. Since it’s so very hard to correctly identify the precise colours in eyes, that value might be reduced to 70%.
The hair colors are present in the swatch book about 60% of the time. There are True Winters with orange hair. There are Light Summers with pink-red-orange hair. Colour variability abounds, and with eyebrows even more so. This says to me that hair colours and skin colours are genetically linked about 60% of the time (or less, because picking out the exact tones that create a given hair colour is really difficult).
Character traits are consistent among people in a Season pretty often, but are predominant to the Season stereotype only about 40% of the time. Personality traits are too diluted by experience, environment, and so on. Personality is too much of a hurricane to try to figure Season with. It’s a fun curiosity.
Rachel from Truth Is Beauty also made the fascinating point that as races interbreed, the eye-skin color association should fade. I’ll make the strong point that if you have not visited that website, and you have an interest in color, you really should. She has examples of the 12 Seasons, chosen with great accuracy and attention to detail. The information is also organized in a beautiful way.
Eyeglass Frames 1 Nov2010
November 14, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 7 Comments
Recently at our Facebook meeting place, Valeria described her Personal Colour Analysis as having allowed her to “claim my identity”. Sometimes, you hear a small string of words that crystallizes a world of meaning into a little strand of sounds.
I haven’t stopped thinking about the many implications of that phrase since I read it. I’m happy enough to find you the perfect lipstick for your skin tone, the most believable color analyzed hair colour, and the clothing colours that announce the real you. When everyone else is buying a black dress for the Christmas party, you will be wearing a color that so becomes you that conversation will stop when you walk in. That’s all great stuff. Looking completely right is personally, professionally, and financially powerful dexterity to have on your side. I can talk about it all day.
Whether I’m in the room or not, the conversation always comes round to the topic I love even more: How To Find Your Own Voice.
Colour is electromagnetic vibration. So are we. The vibrations of our colours cannot NOT be an identical match for those of our inner being, or some part our total energy. They must be an exact duplicate. It is impossible for our colour vibrations to be spinning falsely and still be part of us because the same DNA decrees the physics of both. The colours in our body are a true and accurate representation of our most fundamental person.
Amidst the endless chatter of advice, the person in whom we need to learn to trust is ourselves. Colour Analysis is like the translator that gives that buried deepest being a Voice that you and others can understand.
If PCA is new to you, don’t get caught up in these concepts. It takes time to reach them. Start with finding the best reds, blues, greens, and yellows for your person. You may be on the ground floor, but this elevator only goes up.
Glass frames are a multifactored decision because you have the frames, and Season, and facial features to take into account. We could find the color analyzed cosmetic items that every member of the Season could wear beautifully, but not likely the eyeglass frames.
Wispy faces do better with wispy hair and finer accessories.
Small bodies look better with proportionately smaller accessories.
Use the frames and ideas here give a sense of how each Season is positioned among the 11 others and how it is best exemplified in the physical world.
This first series looks at a series of frames for Autumn blends. Notice the progression in the heat of the metal, in the darkness, in the type of decoration, and in the overall feeling. In 12 Season (12 Tone) Colour Analysis, there are 5 Seasons that contain some Autumn influence.
You can watch it here on YouTube as well.
I’ll add the photos of the glasses after the video, since the recording doesn’t go around the frames.
Soft Summer
Soft Autumn
True Autumn
Dark Autumn
Best Makeup Colours : Soft Summer
October 18, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 9 Comments
It’s a good thing Soft Summers are so wonderfully even-tempered. A certain fortitude helps for the group who have most often been assigned 2 or 3 different Seasons. The very fact that the coloring is not obvious is precisely the concept of this Season. Therefore, nothing else about the appearance should be blatant either. Dark liners, yellow highlights, or golden bronzers might be ineffective or undetectable or other Seasons. On Soft Summer, they are shrill.
At her most aligned, Soft Summer dresses for an art gallery opening. She wears her makeup the same way. Ultimately tasteful and sophisticated, she would be invited anywhere. She is never inappropriate, bold, or abrupt, and her makeup is not either.
In 12 Season Colour Analysis, Soft Summer is the Neutral Season that is basically a Summer, incorporating the earliest feeling of Autumn. Still more an intuition than a very obvious shift, True Summer’s cool/soft palette is now observed through a veil of light grey smoke. Here on the outskirts of Autumn, the light taupe that settles over the entire palette is not yet warm enough to heat these colors. What it does is dull them. (See How The 5 Springs Add Yellow for more on how heat is added to the warm Season personal colour palettes).
If you looked at True Summer’s colours through the sky in the picture above, they might look like the cosmetic colors palette below. Look at the effect the mauve-grey-taupe has on the grass and trees, relative to the colors in the foreground. A little warmer, certainly more muted and quiet.
I could have sworn those blocks were lined up when I made this. Let’s not notice that. Instead, we could notice that the entire palette seems to fogged, even a bit blurred. If I’d really been on the ball, I would have softened the edges of all those squares and put the lightest mushroom color over the background.
There are no extremes of darkness or brightness. The overall effect is cooler than warm, so no gold, warm beige, or orange. The feeling is gentle but not fragile, an oak tree rather than a crystal vase (which would be Bright Spring). Soft Summer could share their cooler makeup palette with True Summer, but not with their warmer neighbor, the Soft Autumn, whose colors are much too golden to perfect this skin tone.
The most beautiful eye appears to be coming out of a misty lake. Eyeshadows and liners are hazy tan greys and mauve greys. The eyeliner is not much darker than the eyeshadow, to avoid creating an obvious line which only looks severe. In this Season, liner can distinguish itself by being a different color than the shadow, instead of a darker color.
The tan browns can be used to fill in brows as well. Eyebrows should never be the first thing people notice on anyone, or they’re overdone. On this group especially, brows may be darker or lighter than the hair depending on the individual, but they should diffuse into the face. It’s the eye color we’re trying to energize. Brows, blush, lipcolor, and hair are there to support, heighten, and accentuate eye color. When the natural features flow so seamlessly into one another, makeup must be exceptionally undemanding to not take over.
The lip and blush colors are interesting. Soft Summer and Dark Winter share certain characteristics. Both add neutral brown to a pure cool Season, True Summer and True Winter respectively. Dark Winter’s brown is much darker as Winter imposes blackness. Both are Neutral Seasons, so have cool and warm choices. Cool for Soft Summer is dusty plum, while warm is tan rose (still definitely a cool version). Cool for Dark Winter is not dusty or greyed at all, quite the opposite, but it is a browned plum; warm is saturated coral pink, dulled a bit with a drop of dark brown.
I love Soft Summer’s red. It is not fire engine, scarlet, blood, or anything else that activates. Summer is restorative, not catalytic. We’re still in the realm of rose petals, they just live on a dusty road.
There are 2 makeup items that are truly out of place on this type of natural coloring. The first in bronzer. You might think it would work, since a light touch of it can be quite outdoor-glowy on Light Summers. The difference is that the heat is so not-obvious in Soft Summer that bronzer stands out. You can’t find taupe bronzer, and who would put a grey layer on their skin anyhow? You’re so much easier to look at in a powder that respects the coolness of the skin and is two shades darker than a match. Use it with restraint, more to contour than to add heat, or skip it altogether.
Shimmer in makeup is the second means of over-gilding this lily. A satin finish in a lip product, maybe, so much easier to find. This Season is an exception where matte choices are actually plentiful. High shine is insistent and feels too childish to fit into this supremely elegant atmosphere. Add shimmer to many Soft Summer eyeshadows, and they become Dark Winter’s.
Kip Is A Light Summer
September 5, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
Kip’s family and ours have known one another for many years. As a child, he had flaxen hair and light blue eyes, and he certainly gave a Spring impression, or at least a very yellow impression.
He’s in his 30s now. His hair has darkened. He has a tan at the moment. Combining the freckles, the fact that his mother, and probably brother, are True Autumns, that his skin resembles his Soft Autumn sister’s, and that there are red tones in the hair (and very much redder on other family members), I wondered if Kip was going to be that Spring/Autumn person that we discussed in a previous article and its comments (see the previous article No Summer+Winter or Spring+Autumn Blends).
Draping
We saw right away that Winter was dominating and severe. The blackened sapphire and emerald took over.
In the True Autumn drapes, Kip might have been up every night for a week looking after his young children. The shadows and unshaved appearance were obvious. The lower half of the face was darker, making the jaw look very severe and the face 10 years older. BUT, his eye color intensity was surprisingly good. For those who are new here, you’ll read often that I do not factor the eye color into determining the Season. It simply does not matter. However, I very much consider which drapes make your eye color the most intense.
In the True Spring drapes, the skin was too yellow and the eye color was dull and greyed out. If I could erase the yellow in the skin, there seemed to be an easing of the lines, a more even luminosity, as is usually seen in any Spring blend. The skin looked healthy and very evenly colored, while True Autumn made the skin obviously worse, even in the very slight Autumn Seasons. So, Kip was not going to be the person who can wear True Spring and Autumn colors equally well.
True Summer was interesting. The yellow caused by True Spring cleared from the skin. The skin retained the good effects the Spring drapes created, of young, clear, ideal skin, but could also intensify the eye color to the same degree that the Autumn drapes did. The whole effect was a little flat, though the balance with the person was the best of the 4 True Seasons.
Light Summer’s bare trace of sunlight gave us the perfectly lit skin, without compromising the eyes. Light Summer is the Neutral Season (so blend of 2), that is mostly Summer with a minor influence from Spring. I guess that the reason the Autumn drapes worked so well to intensify eye color was their low saturation, which is the color characteristic that Autumn shares with Summer. When doing the analysis, always focus on the skin. Once you get that right, the eyes will automatically be their best.
In men, the deciding Season always creates the cleanest, strongest bone structure. They do look younger, the skin clearer, but what I see is just plain “handsome”.
Light Summer’s Colors
Light Summer’s are popsicle colors. No, not quite that bright. Rainbow colors. It’s not just True Summer overexposed. The light and clarity of Spring make the feeling of the whole palette much more lively. Any single color may be similar to some of True Summer’s, but the whole person viewed together, just as the whole Colours Book fanned out, is more energetic than True Summer. That clearance of True Summer’s gentle cloud brings a springy feeling, in more ways than one.
The Light Summer is color in sunlight. Compare this to Soft Summer, which is color in shade. Notice the shirt he’s wearing – color in shade. The chair is probably the true color. In sun, it would be Light Summer’s – so a little bleached out, and better on Kip. Still cool and fresh, like True Summer, but just that mention of clear light.
Watch how the color moves in the image below as it changes from light areas to shaded areas. In our physical world, light is reflected from objects in a continuum of light-true-dark, or warm-true-cool. In 12 Tone, or 12 Season, Color Analysis, the Tones progress from one to the next through the same sequence.
Kip’s most remarkable color was his off-white (the color of the Light Summer white drape in the previous article How Light Summer Goes Grey) . Not a browned off-white, like clamshell, which is Soft Summer’s. This is vanilla ice cream, but not French vanilla, which is too yellow. It took a conscious effort to remove that drape because he just looked so extremely right. Everyone in the room just kept looking. The longer a right color is on you, the more good things come out. The longer a wrong color is on you, the more bad things come out.
Summer’s palette showcases Kip’s gracious intelligence better than any other. Far more a listener than a talker, more peaceful than animated, more caring than needing, the personality of Summer men is admired more for their support of others than their call for self-promotion.
Color that’s too cool or cloudy says nothing about his easy smile and sense of humor, the pleasure he takes in physical activity, his respectful appreciation of Nature, or his capacity for adventure. His essence is quiet and easy to be with, but is made for the outdoors. The feeling is relaxed, sea and sand, boats and bicycles, not formal.
Light Summer Clothing
As important as it is to always look at color in daylight, the Light Seasons have to be especially careful to do so. There is no type of dark color that flatters them. In mall lighting, it’s too easy to go too dark.
A soft white shirt and a silver grey jacket would be outstanding. Pure white will take over, reducing the person, and we do not wear clothes to be diminished by them. A man wearing a coat/shirt in too-strong colors makes him look weak, and makes the size of the head look too small for the shoulders.
Spring/Summer men don’t sing to me in plaid, which can look workday and practical. Corduroy, same. Too much texture looks heavy and dulls the fabric. Light colors belong with light fabrics. Uncomplicated cottons, denim, natural linen, lightweight wool, and knits look smooth and balanced. Autumn’s focus is work and productivity. Spring is lighthearted and lives to enjoy life, to play, to have fun.
A light cotton shirt with a colorful stripe in a single color, which I think is called a Bengal Stripe (below from Savile Row Co), cool tan chinos, now that looks good. His temperature looks cool (he needs to, he’s a Summer above all), but there’s that little effervescence that elevates him to another frequency.
Love it in pink and in turquoise.
Purple and yellow
He definitely has a yellow look, though less than in his teens, and yellow in his skin. Any Spring blend needs to get comfortable wearing purples, though Light Summer hasn’t as many choices as the purer Springs. Because purple and yellow intensify one another, and the Colours Book shows you the right purple swatches for your particular type of yellowness, it looks remarkable. The shirt below is at Paul Fredrick. The white is that trace-of-vanilla off-white and all the purples are right.
Women love feminine colours on men. OK, I love them. It doesn’t need to be a mauve turtleneck. One stripe in a tie will get the room’s attention. Women keep looking at the one guy who can wear a cherry popsicle stripe in a sky blue tie. Men respect it because so few men know how to do this and accentuate their masculinity, rather than seem to compromise it.
Before you turn 30
This was a very interesting PCA for me. It reinforced what is easily forgotten, to never drape a person with predicted ideas of the outcome. Never start guessing. Go into the analysis with a blank slate, do the driving, and let the drapes give you the answer.
About finding that Spring/Autumn flow…the instrument I use to measure color, the Sci\ART drapes, are not designed to help me find that coloring. I don’t think it matters.
As a professional community of Personal Color Analysts, our strength will not be in fragmenting ourselves over linguistic and detail. We are already exclusive enough. Whatever system analyzed you, you’ll still look way better than you did before. Wouldn’t a world where everyone had a PCA by the time they’re 25 be beautiful? If a PCA were as automatic a grad gift as a laptop? If PCAs were part of everyone’s life like gym memberships?
Kathryn Kalisz’s passing in January was a loss to our entire community. Too much knowledge is lost when one person passes, unless we share our strengths. As Kathryn once said to me, “There’s plenty of business for everybody.”
Note: I do not own the images above. If you own these pictures and would like me take them down, I will gladly do so.
Clear and Muted Orange in Eyes
August 23, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 10 Comments
I am very excited about this post because eyes are so magically beautiful. If Personal Color Analysis is a window into our truest self, then eyes are the lenses through which those colors are projected back out into our world as our feelings, memories, and histories.
On our Facebook page, I once called a dark green-brown eye ‘swampwater green’. The eye color is particular to some people in the Bright Spring and Winter Seasons. One day, I will find you that eye color, but today is not the day. (The article How Springs Intensify Eye Color gives a link near the end to Heather at coloruza.com; her eye is as close a photo as I’ve found.)
It’s this particularly confusing concept of eye clarity where people get hung up. In 12 Season, or 12-Tone Color Analysis (I’m working at changing my terminology), these ‘clear eyes’ are often found among members of the clear (high saturation) Tones, namely Winter and Spring, and their 2 blends of Bright Winter and Bright Spring.
The fascination with these Tones is because of their rarity, and that very arresting quality of clearness. We recognize that it’s different, but it’s hard to describe verbally.
Here is a man’s eye. You’ll meet him in another article. For now, notice the color of the eye. Look at the quality of the orange tones.
Now, look at this woman’s eye. She is a Soft Autumn.
And now these 2 items.
Can you see which item matches the orange in which eye?
I once said that Spring’s eye makeup browns are not orange-y, which is true, because orange-browns tend to look earthy, the bane and blight of a Spring’s color existence. However, Springs certainly can wear many oranges in clothes and respect their tropical palette quite gorgeously. So too can there be orange in a Spring eye, but it’s not the same orange as Autumn’s.
Autumn’s is a dull rust, right? It’s the opaque, heavy-feeling, quiet, solid brick. Even in a faraway Autumn blend like Dark Winter, the orange has this same thicker, denser quality.
The orange in a Bright Spring or Bright Winter (or True Winter or Spring) eye is the beer bottle. Clear Tones (Seasons) have clear colors. They are reflective of light, not absorbing, as the Autumn seems to be, and more fragile looking perhaps.
The orange (because brown is just dark orange) of a True Winter eye is usually not as clear as that in a Bright Winter eye. That’s because the Bright Winter palette is even more highly saturated (i.e. clear) than True Winter’s. Is is so in every single case? No, there are always exceptions and degrees.
A reader sent me this most amazing eye photo.
Medium-dark brown hair, reddish in the sun. Lashes are light. The orange is beer-bottle clear, right? Notice too the yellowness of the skin tone (quite possible that it’s just from the lighting) and the generous heaping of sunshine yellow in the rest of the eye color (unlikely to be as influenced by lighting, though transparency might be). Without drapes, this could be a True Autumn for all I know, but I sure get a Spring feeling.
Eye effects are much easier to see in a light colored eye. Green can be more complicated. Brown is downright difficult.
Can you draw conclusions about Season from eyes? No. Many saw the man above as Dark Autumn before the drapes. In shade, the clarity of that orange was all but lost and it seemed more hazy.
I try so hard not to look at eye color during a PCA, because the drapes don’t always confirm those leading assumptions that objective color analysts should never make. ANY of the 12 Tones can have ANY hair and ANY eye color. That’s Rule No. 1.
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