Soft Summer Jewelry 2
February 22, 2010 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
I was looking for jewelry and shoes to go with cocktail dresses for a Soft Summer client. I love to do that when I have a person in mind whose colouring I understand. It’s like vicarious shopping.
From the 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis Sci\ART system, a quick Soft Summer review:
- approx 75% or more of the colouring is Summer (take a look at True Summer Jewelry to get a sense of how it feels to be/look at a True Summer)
- about 25% or less is Autumn
True Summer colours are absolutely cool. The cool effect comes from blue-grey or pink-grey. Clothes and makeup with one degree of heat turns these people yellow, or some variation on the theme.
What does the Autumn impose on Summer’s colours?
First, take a quick look at How The 5 Autumns Add Brown To Hair Colour – or to any colour, for that matter. There is an overlay of gray-brown. It is not orange, yellow, or camel. It is the colour of fog. The blueness of True Summer’s colours is being dimmed. These colours are less distinctly blue and more gray-browned.
The palette is still dusty plums, roses, blues, and mauves, the cornerstone colours of all Summers. The amber of Soft Autumn is still nowhere to be seen. The blush may be Desert Rose or Pink Tan, but it is not Mocha.
Autumn changes the feeling, not just the colours (because colour IS feeling!). It becomes less dainty and more sturdy and grounded. The shape shifts from round to a bit more square. This repeats in the face shape, where the jaw is often quite squared in an Autumn face, and the mouth shape more straight with a less obvious bow.
A simple silver chain is good, or silver hoop earrings. Grace Kelly going to the office is the image of this group.
Jewelry below all at Nordstrom. I’ve linked the pictures but I always end up on the Intl Shipping page. You can find them from the product info on Nordstrom’s excellent Search page.
These Alexis Bittar Small Drop earrings in Warm Grey (not the colour above) caught my attention. There is a soft lustre, like opal, which looks soft, like this Season. They’re round, but with a little squaring effect, just like Autumn’s squaring effect on Summer’s circle.
Soft Summer is a Neutral Season, with warmth and coolness. They can wear gold as long as it’s not too yellow or deeply golden.
What about these Triple Drop Earrings from Kate Spade? They’re light coloured, so are they Light Summer? No, still Soft to my eye.
Light Summer colour analysis swatches are a bit yellowed. Soft Summer are relatively grayed. I still see these as foggy day, not sunny day.
You might disagree and you might be right – there is turquoise here, always a Spring effect. With makeup and fashion, the difference between 80% and 100 may have to be ignored much of the time. There isn’t enough precise choice.
This is the Lauren Bead Cluster earring. They risk clutter against Summer’s restraint and moderation, but I like that they feel a little unexpected. With a simple dress that repeats some of the colours in the jet, it could look young and interesting. The metal parts are lacy and airy, as Summer’s should be.
I see them as too detailed and lightweight for Winter. I like the brown tones on the grey glass. Any kind of pearl always works with Summer, and gray pearl is amazing on Soft Summer.
These Dabby Reid Ltd. Linear Drop earrings have stillness and weight, I’d put them on Winter. The metal fastening is bold and dramatic, like Winter
Following rules is fine to a point. You have to put a personal spin on your choices, because nobody else is you and they won’t communicate about themselves just as you would.
Can I Borrow My Neighbor Season’s Colours?
January 26, 2010 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
Short answer: you may have to.
So remember, when you get your Personal Colour Analysis, be sure to know if you fall on the cool or warm side of the Season. That means : when we’re finally down to testing between your last 2 Seasons, are we testing your #1 BEST Season against its warmer neighbor, or against the cooler one? Perhaps THE most exciting part of the analysis. Everybody tingles at this point.
In Wrong Colours Away From the Face, I said that I don’t buy into wearing colours that are not in your #1 BEST Season, unless people will only see you sitting at a desk.
To present a unified whole, you can’t have 1 big block that’s way off. The colours want to connect together to create a force, but they can’t if one is flowing against the current.
How you combine the colours of your personal colour palette depends on the energy of your Season. The colours themselves should all work together because they are all the same in 3 respects – how Light/Dark, Warm/Cool, and Clear/Soft they are.
If you’ve been reading here, you already know what I mean by that. For anyone new, let me explain. Any colour is described by where it sits on those 3 scales, its Light/Dark , its Warm/Cool, and its Clear/Soft positions. The colour might be one the blues, reds, purples, etc. in your body, or in the world outside you.
Colour Analysis finds those precise colours in your body and replicates their precise position on those 3 scales. We then give them to you in a so-brilliant Colour Analysis Swatch book. They’re called YOUR colours for 2 reasons : A. They’re the colours to shop for. And B. They literally are YOUR colours, in your own body.
Let’s look at Dark and True Autumn colours. Neighbor seasons. Some people straddle between the 2. But the MOST important aspect of Dark Autumn’s colours is their darkness. True Autumn’s MOST important feature is the warmth. Any 2 neighbor Seasons do NOT share the MOST important dimension in their colours. You screw up the whole accord by throwing in another dimension.
You will see clearly and easily during your Personal Colour Analysis how far behind your perfect season the runner up is, even when you border closely. Some shades may be permissible, but none will be as good as any in the perfect one. So, in our Season example above, the Dark Autumn may look pretty good in True Autumn’s darker shades, because darkness in general is forgiving. It still won’t look like magic.
When the off-colour is worn on the bottom half, away from the face, it STILL disrupts the harmony of the whole body presentation. When the off-colour is way off, the flow of the appearance is distorted in favor of the more dominant colour. That’s why Light people gain 15 lbs on the bottom half in black pants.
Of course, your skin tone perfection will suffer less when the off-colour is far way. Still, the viewer will perceive disagreement.
I know it’s hard to find good colours. Winters can’t find saturated colours. Summers and Lights can’t find professional clothes. I know the fashion industry and cosmetics colour offerings are disorganized and incomplete. They are desperately unevenly weighted. As you learn to excel at colour decisions, you’ll buy your clothes when you find them, rather than by Season. I was looking at Ann Taylor’s website recently. Soft Autumn will do very well. True Summer, head over to Banana Republic. The 3 Winters, wear what you have (unless you need something black or charcoal, always available).
It helps to know whether you’re on the cool on warm side of your Season (your PCA will tell you) so that you know how to err. If you can’t find your perfect red, you’ll know whether to allow cooler or warmer shades. In a perfect world, the stores would be colour-coded, but IRL, their palettes are far more restricted. They might bring in 4 of the same style shirt, but not 8. They do NOT want you knowing anything about what suits you. They want that merchandise out the door, preferably the day it came in. You may have to be close sometimes, but you’ll learn how to do that too. We’ll talk about it a lot when we meet.
It takes months to learn to match colours precisely, even with your Book. Since we ultimately understand colour by visual comparison, not by me or anyone else talking about it, it helps to gather several similarly coloured items in the store and compare those to your Book. You’ll be better able to tell if the match is perfect, and if it isn’t, then how it differs. Is it browner? duller? darker?
It takes a month or 2 to start to enjoy the empowerment when you shop. It gets stronger and stronger as you bypass trends and disregard advice you know to be wrong. And both are everywhere.
I so understand the frustration in the beginning of feeling like nothing is right and wondering when it ever will be. But even at the start, you are better than you used to be. Then, the pieces start coming together, and your good decisions far outweigh the bad. Your eyes will get better and better at recognizing it. That will FEEL like magic.
Can Wrong Colours Make You Ill?
January 20, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 4 Comments
…or, title option, do your clothes make others feel, um, unwell?
Women and men have told me that they buy clothing colour by feel. Both have asked me to remove a drape because they felt sick, one to the point of becoming faint.
Are they exaggerating? Too theatrical?
NO! It’s VERY real. Everybody senses colour, more than we see it. We may not all feel it to the degree of physical revulsion, but we all experience a mild discomfort in the presence of wrong colours. We don’t take the colour choices in our homes lightly for that reason.
Since most people go around in wrong colour, we’ve grown used to seeing it and compensating for the feeling. But why does it happen?
The short answer is “sensory mismatch”. It means that 2 of your senses are receiving information that your brain feels cannot make sense together. The result is nausea.
Motion sickness in a car means your eyes are seeing “movement” but your brain is getting information from your ear’s balance system and your limbs saying “not movement”. The 2 don’t jive. The brain decides you’ve been poisoned and you’re hallucinating, so it expels the toxin by vomiting. At least, it’s believed to have evolved that way.
To explain it with colours, we go back to the most fundamental principle of how Personal Colour Analysis (PCA) achieves skin perfection and ideal appearance.
Every colour, in you and outside you, answers to 3 characteristics only. How Light/Dark, how Warm/Cool, how Clear/Soft (ask me in a Comment if I can clarify those concepts). Every single shade in you, every single blue and red and purple in you, fits in EXACTLY the same place on those 3 scales. Fascinating in itself, I ponder this often.
PCA finds you a group of colours that also fit in EXACTLY the same positions on those 3 scales. Your Colour Analysis swatch book is simply an exploded diagram of your own precise colours. It’s far, far too complex to do this without a true 12 Season Colour Analysis, for clothes colours or makeup. Then, when you WEAR precisely the same colours that you already ARE, the colour energies are in absolute synchrony and it is strong.
With wrong colours, the sensory mismatch isn’t between your eyes and ears. It’s between your eyes and subconscious colour associations. Your eyes are seeing one set of colour wavelengths emanating from the body’s natural colours. There’s a whole other set of waves coming off the clothes. The signals are all jammed. It feels tiring to look at, and for some, nauseating.
Most people dress in such a skelter of colour that there is no signal at all. They don’t look ON. All the wrong colours together neutralize what colour potential exists.
Is my theory scientific fact? I don’t know. I didn’t read it anywhere. It just makes sense to me.
Colour, Complements, Clothes, and Cosmetics
December 20, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 10 Comments
You met Louise in Louise and Stevan Are Light Springs. This is a closeup of her eye.
Every human being is a colour story. The eyes are indeed the window of the soul because the colour story resides in them.
Your season is present in the colours and patterns of your iris design. Sometimes, the season can be read from the eye, it’s so classic. The eye might also contain traces of several seasons, not all of which will matter in how colour affects the skin in the colour analysis.
Colours and line patterns
The iris is predominantly blue or blue-gray. All the webbing radiates out likes waves. That’s a Summer eye.
But the skin at the inner corner and outer corner is yellowish. There is a yellow sunshine around the pupil, though separated from the pupil by a space. These are Spring’s traces.
Eyelashes are brown, indicating a lighter season.
Louise is a Spring, but she tends towards the cool side, close to Light Summer.
OK, so what good is all this information?
Clothing
Since yellow and purple are complements on a color wheel, meaning they’re opposite one another, each colour is intensified in the presence of the other. All the violets and orchid colours look beautiful with soft yellows. When Louise wears these colours, that yellow circlet around the iris looks like a garland of sunshine beaming out of her eyes. It illuminates the entire eye area, which looks healthy and youthful.
There is the slightest touch of green with the blue here. Turquoise, very much a Spring colour, looks remarkable on Louise. Nobody but Spring can do it so incredibly well. The right shade of turquoise, which she finds in her personal colour swatches, will detect and repeat the precise shade in the eye. The eye colour can become extremely powerful simply by repeating it exactly in clothing.
Makeup
Eyeshadow hilite should be cream with a tinge of soft pale yellow. This will repeat the yellow crown in the eye design more effectively than a cooler shade.
If you look at the yellow wreath in the iris, it has a light tan colour. From the 2 to 5 o’clock positions, it is a darker and less yellow shade of brown. This is very similar to the hair colour. If opportunity allows, matching eyeshadow to a brown or gray in the eye accentuates the eye in a way that appears very natural and blended. Colours diffuse, repeat, connect, and the whole flow feels very pleasing.
When you plant a garden, you repeat the same colour over and over. A garden made up of 1 appearance of 10 different plants requires far more visual effort, like a flea market. When the mind sees balance and repetition, it sees harmony, and so beauty.
I like brown eye makeup best on Louise. The article The Mystery Of Brown, the second of the 3 posts in this series, explained how different Spring and Autumn browns are from one another. If your mind says dull, earthy, heavy, brown-peach, brown-orange, gold-orange, muted, or drab gray, do not buy it. If it looks like a metal (copper, gold), do not buy it. If it looks like Autumn leaf colours, put it back.
Finding complementary colours
The web is loaded with free, small, simple downloadable programs to help you work with colour more precisely.
If you Google “digital color meter”, you’ll find lots of choices for little charts that tell you the precise web codes for whatever colour your mouse is hovering over.
I like simplicity. Too many bells and whistles are like cell phones with 1000 menus. Who knows how to use more than 10 of them?
I like this tool for finding complementary colours. The page features all kinds of colour picking tools, in the right margin. Play with them, they’re easy and interesting.
Type cdd87e into the box under the left square. That’s close to the yellow colour in Louise’s eye. See the purple show up opposite? Cool, hey?
Less is more. It looks expensive and organized. Begin by understanding precisely what you have, what you ARE, and you know everything. The rest is easy.
Soft Summer Jewelry 1
December 15, 2009 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
It always begins with the same question. What does this person feel like?
How we decorate what’s INside on the OUTside?
The Soft Summer person
These people are very True Summery in most ways. They are not reclusive, shy, or introverted. They don’t need to be the boss, though they could be good at it. They don’t require center-stage attention. Theirs is a more subtle, serene, quiet energy.
The trace of Autumn puts a different spin on things. The Soft Summer is usually more sporty, with faster and more focused physical energy. They have a cut-to-the-chase practicality that gets the story told or the job done sooner, without True Summer’s inclination to dwell on details.
Petal and pearl necklace. Love it in charcoal too. Love it.
Jewelry for the personality
To speak for them, their jewelry must follow the same tendencies. The pieces are less lacy and feminine than True Summer. There is a feeling of more solidity, but they’re by no means chunky. Autumn and Summer combined can make for a very headstrong individual. The jewelry should not feel retiring or lightweight. These can be among the most persistent, immovable personalities so a persevering quality in the jewelry is appropriate.
The metal is silver, unless they border their warmer neighbor of Soft Autumn quite closely. Theoretically, as a Neutral Season, gold could be worn in small proportions. It would be the deeper, more mellow gold of Autumn, rather than Spring’s very yellow gold that just looks cheap on anyone else.
Good behaviour and personal restraint are the hallmarks of the Summer personality. What better jewel to define that sophitication than pearls? I think they suit the Soft Summer colours even better than the True Summer. The colours of a misty morning, of a foggy harbor, with the light of day coming through…I love the feeling of that with a seashell- coloured pearl. Creamy pearls would even work well, just not too yellow.
Soft Summer’s colour code
Just as clothing colour combinations can venture further from True Summer’s best monochromatic (several shades of the SAME colour) look, so can jewelry. Different colours can be combined, as long as they all remain true to the personal colour swatches in the Colours Book.
Remember that while you may mix different colours from your personal colour palette, such as antique rose and jade green or pearl with orchid, how beautiful would that be, all the colours themselves are of low saturation. The whole look of this season revolves around that concept. We saw in What Are Clear And Soft Colours? that these colours are all closer to grey than in the Clear Colour seasons. Are they dull and drab? No way. They’re just relatively a little grayer. They’re willow, sage, and clover, not grass.
I’m so happy to be doing this season, I get to talk about one of my favorite companies, J.Crew. All the pictures are linked back to their site.
Shadow facet bracelet at J.Crew.
The bracelet above is gold, but there’s not much of it. The colours are of low saturation. This mauve or brown-tinged gray is basically your eye shadow. The weight is heavier but there’s a classic and understated feeling.
I’ve been wanting to put these up. They are so sweet. You’ll find many types of pearls on this site, but these are so pretty.
A dainty but more solid pearl.
The Pearl Twisted Hammock necklace is stunning.
J.Crew doesn’t do a lot of silver in jewelry or I would have posted it. Also, keep watches in mind for all 5 seasons comprising some Autumn, or jewelry that DOES something. Autumn’s song is the “search for the truth and get the job done”. Functional pieces represent the efficiency they exude.
You’ll find more of these pieces. Look for classic with a kick, the summary of the Soft Summer person.
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.
Attention Clothing Retailers
September 26, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 6 Comments
Undue caution
When I was looking for a room in a spa or salon to do PCAs, I spoke with 9 different businesses. 8 were run by women, 1 by a man. Know how many were even curious? Know how many said “That sounds interesting.” or “I remember it from the 80s and it didn’t work. Has it changed?”, let alone saw an opportunity to expand their own business? One. 1. That’s it. (Proud to say she was a woman.)
I encounter so much more resistance to the concept of colour analysis from the women who sell to other women than I do from anyone else. More than from men who sell to women. More than from the clients themselves.
I understand caution about new ideas. I have it myself.
I understand that retailers have negative memories from the old days. Women would come in with those annoying swatches. If the item didn’t match the swatch, they wouldn’t buy, and neither would their friend. What a headache. When it finally died down, they celebrated.
Clearing the air
There is one source of doubt that I’d like to dispel.
Colour Analysts are not your competition. We are not selling clothing or hair colour. We are selling knowledge that can’t be acquired any other way – but information that is invaluable to you as you advise your client.
Your GP is not competing with your dermatologist. They are helping you in different ways.
Nobody is saying that you are not good with colour. You are as good as anyone can be without a true analysis of the client. Nobody can see anybody’s undertones. The more people you analyze, the clearer that becomes. It’s not a flaw or a fault. Nobody is capable of it by just looking at someone.
Elementary marketing
It is not an accident that the genius marketers at Macy’s employ colour analysts. It is a new spin on the very prestigious and successful concept of personal shopping. They’re not firing them for lack of consumer interest or any other reason.
A good marketer sees selling opportunity everywhere. They don’t fight a rising tide, they ride it. If your antennae are up, you can turn anything to your business advantage.
Consumers will want you to understand how PCA works. You can’t wait it out or pretend it’s wrong. Other stores will join in. Your client will shop at those stores because she’s happier with every single purchase. She’ll go out of town to shop because the big stores will get in on this first.
Just as corporations were finally forced to learn and participate in social media, anyone who dispenses clothes or makeup advice will eventually have to make some room for seasonal colour analysis. In the beginning, the corporations didn’t know how to talk to their market, so they stayed silent. They paid a price for that and are still trying to catch up. Is your business so good that you can ignore this marketing occasion? There is barely any investment. What in the world is there to lose?
Use this to your advantage. Step out from the crowd and start a conversation. PCA’s can help you help your client. If you empower your client, she will love you. If you save her money, your word will be gospel. If you save her time, she will tell all her friends about you if she hasn’t already. She will return again and again and spend money because she is never disappointed.
If we allow our marketing juices to flow, we can help each other. Our clients will be overjoyed.
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.
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