Best Makeup Colours : Bright Winter
July 4, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 15 Comments
The Bright Seasons wouldn’t be as perplexing as they are if someone hadn’t made an allusion to “clear eyes”. Suddenly, they became indefinable. Who has clear eyes? Who doesn’t?
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, a repetitive phrase so that people can find me through Google, I know you knew that, this group belongs to the Winter category. Colours are dark, highly saturated, and cool.
Bright Winter is a Neutral Season, so Winter with a Spring infusion. Spring does do some fascinating things when it mixes with Winter, maybe part of what makes this coloring so consuming of our attentions and imaginations. Maybe it’s the relief we have evolved to feel when warmth returns to tell us that we survived another cold spell. Our feeling of welcome is almost heartbreaking.
Maybe we are arrested when pure, pure color energy mixes with Winter’s power.
Some of Winter’s cold is substituted for Spring’s pale yellow warmth. Not buttercup yet, not even daffodil. More like snowdrops. There is a trace of the delicate in these people, unlike True Winter that neither looks nor acts delicately ( or if they do, you soon learn it’s pretend).
When the 2 True Seasons of highest color saturation mix, this color sings with clarity. These are the highest color notes.
Spring also lightens the colors, compared to True Winter’s darkness. Only a bit.
Some Bright Winters react to their palette with “Obviously”, which the happiness with which most people greet their colors. The great David Weinberger said, in the cluetrain manifesto, that “laughter is the sound knowledge makes when it’s born”. Color analysts see it every day, in the laughter that people almost have to suppress when they see their palette. They are joyful and peaceful. And they’re a bit confused by the strength of their reaction.
Some Bright Winters react with “Oh, heavens, I could never do that.” One piece at a time. Let yourself do this. Being safe when you know more is like visually dumbing yourself down. NEVER be less than everything you can be. Buy a bright tank and wear a yellow one underneath. Wear dangly silver earrings. Wear a sheer bright gloss.
These are the C0lour Analysis cosmetic colors that perfect this skin tone.
The eyeshadow in icy violet is incredible. Merle Norman makes Freesia and it is gorgeous for a reason. The icy is Winter. The violet is the complement of yellow, a component of all Spring skin.
The other hilite is yellow, or creamy, but still quite neutral champagne. Everyone can do neutral champagne. Just avoid brown, beige, buff, gold, pastel.
Eyeshadow for the Brights is my biggest search challenge. You can do a clean light grey and deeper charcoal (left column). You can add in a bit of brown and get to taupe (right column) but barely any. Will you be able to find 2 separate products? You might, but you wouldn’t need to.
Shimmer in makeup is a definite possible, though never necessary. The industry just makes so much of it that it’s easier to find. Winter has a still polish. Spring expresses dazzle and movement. Merge the two and the shimmer works. One facial feature at a time.
Eyeliner is charcoal, or black-brown. Purple can be great, but certainly more playful; it’s lighter than True Winter’s and will look purpler. Spring allows imagination, energy, and FUN, but it’s still very contained in this group. Winter’s sapphire can also work. These eyeliners might be better as accents, rather than for surrounding the entire eye. You might just do an inner rim of the upper lid, or the outer section of the upper lid, merging with the charcoal. Just because you can look great in circus gear doesn’t mean you should.
Lip and blush usually take time to get used to. Start light or sheer with makeup. Your Color Analyszed swatches give you lighter choices too. The lip often has a fair bit of natural color. The rest of us would love it on you immediately, but I get that it’s you who has to wear it. Ask someone you trust. I love Mercier’s Lip Pot in Hibiscus on Bright Spring, but on Bright Winter, it is still too flat. They dominate it, and the lip color becomes dullish and grayish and boringish.
As for the clear eyes thing, it sure wouldn’t help you pick them out of a line-up. They are often Black-Brown (see Jocelyn Is A Bright Winter). They can be Virginia turtle eyes, which become OMG with charcoal eyeliner. They can be Asian.
Everyone’s eyes are amazing. Once we notice them, we all find it hard to stop looking. That’s why it’s so important to get rid of the distracting clutter. Calm down the skin, the hair, the over-makeup, and let your eyes leave an echo.
How Springs Intensify Eye Colour
June 29, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 18 Comments
The whole premise of color analysis is that by wearing the colors already in you, same value, warmth, and saturation, you get the youngest, healthiest, most perfected skin. You also look least artificially made-up in color analyzed cosmetic colours.
When Spring eyes are light in color, they are usually quite light. If they get surrounded by dark eyeliner, hoping to bring attention to them by creating a deliberate light/dark contrast, the problem is that the dark color doesn’t appear anywhere in this person’s natural coloring, so it looks false. And because this person can’t balance such darkness, the effect is to do what a dark line around a light shape always does, to close it in and make it appear smaller.
Don’t make yourself insane looking for red-browns and green-browns and purple-grays and yellow-grays to complement the eye color itself. What you perceive the eye color to be may not be correct, and the effect backfires. What colors enhance the skin enhances the eyes, it’s the automatic guarantee of PCA. They are in your personal colour palette or swatches.
Sorry for all the links, but these images are copyrighted. May take some patience. They should open in a new window.
For all 3 Springs,
1. Makeup cannot be earthy or pastel. A lot of makeup can’t decide if it’s clear or not clear. If you don’t know for sure, don’t buy it. The disaster of earthy makeup on a Spring can be seen here (please excuse the title of the article, but you see the painful effect of orange-brown eyeshadow?) Now add the frost to a color that doesn’t make sense this frosty, and it takes it to overkill. One of those “On whom does this look good??” colors.
Same concept on the model below. For me, the eyeshadow and blush are too orange-brown. It looks unnatural and heavy. We see lines under the eyes, like she’s getting tired from competing with these colors.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
When makeup is too cool, the effect is anemic, here again on Ms. Theron. There’s something ghostly about the skin, rather than healthy and glowing with vitality.
And when it’s good, here, same model. Only the Light Season can do this spun gossamer, sugar fairy look so beautifully. Spring adds yellow light, Summer does not. (The eyeliner is still sucking color out of the eye.)
2. Eyebrows matter. PCA brings attention to your eyes like never before. They’re the focal point of your entire being. The brows are the frame for the eye. Keep them neat and shaped. Especially important for Light Seasons who don’t wear dark makeup well.
3. The waterline of the eye is the inner rim of the lower lid. In your best colors, it will be the same color as the rest of the skin, which is calm and pale yellow-beige. That looks healthy, cleans up the white of the eye, and sharpens the iris. You could put a line of cream eyeliner there.
4. Don’t underestimate the power of jewelry. It is near the face. Violet eyeliner doesn’t look entirely grownup in makeup, but violet in jewelry can be remarkable. As Spring infuses everything it touches with happiness and movement, so can it wear a lot of bright, clear color. Even costume jewelry and plastic beads work very well. They express the exuberance, the enthusiasm for life that is felt even at the outer reaches of the Season.
If you’re young and want to wear violet eyeliner, be sure it comes from your Personal Colour Palette. Don’t buy a purpley grey or brown. It’s the color of the string on the necklace linked above.
5. Mascara is cool brown to black brown, depending on how dark you are. Black looks like spider eyelashes. Some of the dark-haired Bright Springs can wear black. Hard Candy makes a cool brown mascara. Smear a few out and look at them.
6. Wear your eye color and wear its complement color in clothing.
7. Wear a yellow-cream or yellow-peach eyeshadow hilite. It brings out yellow in the eye.
8. Think about accessories. The inside of eyeglass frames can have another color bonded to it. It looks cool, and I find it imaginative. Spring is a bit exaggerated and they can manage this effect nicely. (image linked to source)
Light Spring
These people are usually very fair. Some have ash hair and look like Summers. Some have yellow-green or brown in the eye and believe they’re Autumns.
The woman who gets my vote as most consistently ruined by makeup and clothing. At least, her hair is usually good. True of the Light Seasons, the less they put on her, the better, younger, real-er she looks. Here not too bad, but I searched.
This is a Light Spring eye. Notice that there there is yellow in it. It may be a green yellow, but it is certainly not an orange yellow. The eye belongs to Louise in the article Louise and Stevan Are Light Springs. Notice how cool and ash her hair looks and that she is not particularly light, though Stevan is. Notice too that the lashes are not very dark.
Repeat effects using makeup if eyes are blue or green will be the cream eyeshadow hilite or the cream waterline pencil, but go easy with this waterline thing. It can look bizarre quickly. If you love a pale aqua eyeliner, you’re under 25, and you are not in a professional situation, have at ‘er.
With Summer’s cooling effect, Light Spring still has more greys in their palette than browns. You want an eyeliner that defines without overtaking. Rimmel Stormy Grey is good. Summer may have left an unexpected charcoal rim to the iris and this repeats it nicely. Don’t ignore your grey clothes, for the same reason.
Keep makeup light in color. Don’t be talked into pops of color that just compete with what you are. Even contour eyeshadows should be light. Louise does not wear dark makeup.
If there’s green in the eye, wear your clear light red lips, even as a sheer. Red and green are complements.
Go easy on the frost. The Summer Spring blends have a deceivingly fragile complexion. Makeup effects can take over and fast. Do a thin shimmer in 1 place at a time, maybe inner corner of eye. Or maybe do a lipgloss over lisptick in a light peach-gold like MAC Instant Gold Lustregloss.
True Spring
These are the fair-skinned, light-eyed, yellow blondes. Uma Thurman, Charlize Theron, Cameron Diaz are the stereotypes.
Same repeat effects as Light Spring if eyes are blue or green.
Brown eyeliner is good. Warm yellowed gray also works. As ever for Spring, it is not an orange brown. Can Spring still wear orange? Absolutely, a clear orange. It’s just that the browns are not oranged.
Balance the eye with lively lip colors. Flat and safe looks like Nicole Kidman in pale hair and lips. Spiritless in a Season based on the very opposite concept. The whole face, the entire presence is drained and diluted. True Spring can balance a lot of the right colors and look fantastic in them.
Brown eyeshadow is fine. Light and clear. Picture those women in beer and honey eyeshadow, it works. In flowerpot or antique deep gold, too heavy, doesn’t work.
Wear bronzer that’s not too yellow or brown. It should be a sheer, pale, yellow-golden-beige. This is Stila 01 at Sephora. Sweep it up onto the forehead, around the eye.
Add a touch of cheek highlighter in a light yellow gold if you’re young. This is the face of the glowing outdoors.
As ever, wear your eye colors from your Colours Book somehow every day. A scarf, a pin, an earring, a purse, a hairband.
Bright Spring
The very fascinating Bright Spring never fails to surprise everyone, the analyst included. If the eyes are light, you’re wondering why they look so bad in Summer pastels, which is where you thought you were headed. If the eyes are darker, you’re wondering why Autumn drapes look tragic, while all the lines are eased away by the Spring drapes.
These women can use the light/dark contrast of dark brown or grey eyeliner with light eyes, because the darkness of the hair can balance it. The grey must be clean and crisp, and less dark than Winter. Merle Norman Galaxy and Annabelle Mercury are good.
They never wear brown in eye makeup very well, unless it’s a light taupe like Dior’s Earth Reflections. Notice (linked below) how there is no orange in the colors and they never get extremely dark.
They are deceptively light, though they don’t look it. The same rules of Spring apply, meaning not going overly dark or bold. This remains delicate skin.
Heather Karuza, who writes the very worthwhile makeup/nail blog at Coloruza.com…a Bright Spring could look like this. That could well be that Autumn-looking eye of this Season. The dark hair-light skin contrast makes one think of Winter, but this girl is not really all that dark. The skin on the throat is light and yellow.
Here, in clearer colors, showing also the Dior 5-shadow Earth Reflections.
Here in more Dark Autumn makeup.
You see why they’re so intriguing, ay?
(PS- Heather, if you read this, the e-mails from the site didn’t get to you. Hope it’s ok for me to post these links. If you prefer not, I’ll take them down. C.)
Best Makeup Colours : True Winter
June 24, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, True Winter is the pure Season whose most important color fact is its coolness. The saturation and darkness are fairly high but not at the max. Every color, light or dark, is cold, crisp, hard, frosty, dry like the inside of a freezer.
There are 5 pages of pinks and purples in True Winter’s Personal Colour Palette. 5 swatches on each strip, that’s 25 pinks and purples. They far outnumber everything else.
The color at the core of this being is red-purple, all very clear and blue-based. The palette is so cold that it almost feels a bit unfriendly to look at. There isn’t a shred of warmth. No brown, no orange, no beige, nothing we associate with comfort. Combine that with the relative darkness, and it’s uncomfortable.
Like these personalities can often be, Winter demands that we make some space for it. We feel commanded to notice it but prefer to keep our distance. It likes to argue and will resist any sort of control. And yet, its beauty is awesome and unto itself.
True Winter has some serious strength in their coloring. They can balance much more makeup than most others. They can wear eyeliner along the inner rim of the eyelids and look even more remarkable. On the rest of us, it just looks vicious.
If someone told me they liked my eyeliner, I’d throw it out. When you look at pictures of Laura Mercier or Mrs. Obama, you’re not looking at their eyeliner. Here, the color analysis cosmetic colours would harmonize a sapphire and deep purple eyeliner, as long as it’s not obviously, ridiculously purple. The sapphire has to be pure, dark, and cold. Not teal, just pure deep blue. Merle Norman makes a nice Sapphire eyeliner. Bright Winter can balance this too, with their drop-dead glamour signal. Everyone else pushes the limits of credibility.
It may take time to get used to these fuchsias, rubies, dark plums, and crimsons in blush and lipstick. Begin with sheer colors, but don’t compromise the color. Your makeup will be invisible, or worse, it will be noticeable as some weird, warm, wishy-washy shade on your skin tone. Don’t go there.
The basic eyeshadow is a clean, crisp steel grey. A cool taupe (grey-brown) can work as a good alternative. MAC Satin Taupe is fairly good, but very shiny. This group can handle shimmer makeup, consistent with Winter’s polish, but nobody should overdo the frost, especially after 40. Summer’s cool taupe could work, but it’s not quite the same because of its inherent softness. If these colours look warm on your screen, they’re not intended to.
Turquoise For 12 Seasons
June 15, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
Turquoise is an IT color this year.
Q: If there’s a shade than flatters both Reese and Julia’s skin tone perfectly, what is it?
A: Trick Q. There isn’t one.
Better to find the precise shade(s) that looks riveting on you. Have an accurate 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, and you will know for sure, forever after.
The colors shown are by no means the only turquoise option you have, whatever your Season (except True Winter). Since this is a blue and yellow based color, Seasons intimate with those colors, the Summers and Springs respectively, have more choices among their Color Analysis swatches.
Turquoise is warm and cool at once, so every Season has at least 1 choice.
True Spring’s colours are juicy and intensely happy. They’re ripe and dripping with pigment.
Bright Spring’s are clean, crisp, and pure. They are found in compositions that are the same, like this dress. These persons are deceptively Wintery in their appearance, and they wear clothes that are not-quite-Winter. The overall effect is light, not dark.
Light Spring is a Carribean shoreline on a sunny day.
True Summer is gauzy sheer, but not particularly light. Refreshing but gentle, like Blue Fescue grass.
Light Summer’s are icing colors.
Soft Summer is very grayed. When you add Autumn’s brown to Summer’s blue, you’ve mixed complementary colors. The result is gray, like sage.
True Autumn turquoise is greener.
Dark Autumn’s turquoises are dark enough to be teal.
Soft Autumn turquoise is how color appears in the desert.
True Winter only has the one. I wonder why. No heat-from-yellow (or heat-from-orange) tolerance? No, because Summer has many. Because yellow is light? Because there are other ways to make turquoise?
Dark Winter is bluer and sharper than Dark Autumn.
Bright Winter is electric acid turquoise.
How Summers Intensify Eye Colour
June 3, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 13 Comments
We often see the attempt to charge eye color with more makeup. When were you not just staring at the makeup? Natural skin and eyes can only compete with so much pigment before the cosmetic takes over. Luckily, when the color is one that already exists in you, you can apply it quite heavily and it will appear as a believable part of your face, but there are limits.
There is a lot more to intensifying eye color than eye makeup.
Clothes
Never underestimate the power of color analyzed clothes colours to amplify eye color. This alone will do more than makeup on anyone. It’s a way bigger block. How much color can you create with a skinny line of liner or a tiny eyelid’s worth of shadow?
I’ll emphasize that it is not only your same-as-eye color clothes that charge up eye color, though those might work best. It’s all the colors in your Personal Colour swatches. Each one will clear the white of the eye, just as it clears the skin. Your pinks, greens, and grays should all intensify eye color.
Brows and Blush
Colour Analysis will bring attention to your eyes like never before, even if you don’t wear makeup. Groom your brows, have them beautifully shaped, and pencil in the thin spots. Think of eyebrows as the picture frames for the eyes. They matter.
Once many women get the right shade of blush, their first comment is most often “It brings out my eyes.” Absolutely it does, instantly and strongly. Look for that effect to happen when you buy blush.
When Good Color Goes Bad
You know I don’t care for purple, green, and blue on eyes if the viewer can perceive the color. I don’t buy that it intensifies eye color. It just looks playful (at least where I live) and it’s usually all people can see. You surrender too much power, not a price I want to pay for beauty.
Eyeshadow Palettes for Eye Colour
Think twice about investing in palettes made for certain eye colours. Have you ever seen them work?Have you ever said to a woman “your eyeshadow makes your eyes look so much greener” and really meant it?
Why don’t they work? Because there is no universal formula. There are 15 greens in a green eye, it’s too confusing to be able to pick out the core ones. Also, any skin can have any eye color or combination. If the eyeshadows are made for the green-eye cool-skin woman, then it dulls the skin of the warm-skinned woman. This is the reincarnation of the same silver bullet we’ve dodged before as “the lip colour that suit every skin tone”.
Off the soapbox, now.
Using the right browns and greys,
And understanding that not everyone can do everything,
And that without a Color Analysis, cosmetic color browns and greys are the hardest of all colours to understand by a long shot,
It’s about repeats and complements and contrasts.
This is 12 Seasonal Color Analysis. There are 3 Summer Seasons, the True, the Soft (blends an Autumn trace), and the Light (a dab of Spring).
True Summer
True Summer eyes look best to me when they are gazing out of a misty pool of cool greys. Soft greys, not sharp greys.
- Soft navy eyeliner, not blackened sapphire. True Summer often has very deep blues in the eye that can be repeated.
- Dark denim eyeliner repeats the overall color and darkness level of the eye. Annabelle’s Blue Grey is one of the best I know for True Summer.
- Cool grey or blue grey eyeshadow repeats the True Summer’s skin’s undertone. Mauve-grey can work, but many Summers have pink in the eyelid rims, and we don’t want to repeat that and make they eye look bloodshot.
- The contrast of a cool blue eye with a warm brown shadow is stunning, so the magazines tell us. Warm brown shadow on the True Summer skin tone is mud. There is no heat in this skin. You can’t fake it. Choose your right, rosy browns since brown is approximately blue’s complement. Sally Beauty Chocolate Truffle Trio is good.
———-
Soft Summer
These eyes look best when they’re gazing out of a misty pool of…mist. Like they’re surrounded by fog, a pale neutral tan-brown. No hard edges, everything quiet, blurred, and diffused.
- Repeat the tan brown in the eye with eyeliner.
The eyeliner is the bodice color. This is odd, but the Canadian Superstores carry a line of clothes/makeup called Joe Fresh. Their Twist Up Eyeliner pencil in Charcoal is the right one.
Your medium and dark eyeshadows are all contained in this dress (linked to Jones New York, but no longer available).
Paula’s Choice, the one and only skin care company I place my full trust in, was making an eyeshadow called Granite awhile back. It was custom-colored for this skin. They were making the best colored, best matte, best priced eyeshadows around, but not many people knew it, I guess. A certain direction as to who should use what…
2. That tan brown can be repeated again in the highlight colour in the hair. Lots of bleachy blonde highlights do not work, they look like grey stripes, like a strange intended aging effect. The right highlight is browned down. All the Autumns can repeat hair color and eye color. This is beautiful, real, natural hair for a Soft Summer, on Jennifer Aniston. They often get her too blonde and her eyes fade immediately.
3. Any contrasts? The whole concept of the Season is low contrast, so you have to be exceptionally subtle with all makeup. Neutral Seasons have a little heat in their skin, and cooler and warmer choices in their palette. We’re still mostly cool here though, still muddy in warm brown colors. The skin looks heavy and the heat of warm brown in the eyeshadow can yellow the white of the eye in a subliminal way, looking unhealthy. There is no contrast I know, not light/dark, warm/cool, or hi/lo saturation.
4. Any complements? I’m often asked if orange-toned eyeshadows work on blue eyes, or purple tones on green eyes, etc. This is usually a blue eye, sometimes surprisingly pale, or a blue-green eye, where the eye color becomes very strong in pine green clothing. The orange-toned brown eyeshadow for the blue eye is deadly. That green eye could be accentuated with a dusty plum shadow, but it’s soft. The viewer should not see purpleness.
———-
Light Summer
These are the eyes that get more makeup piled on, hoping to make them “pop”. Either that, or there’s the hope that a dark line will look good against the light eye color. That’s altogether too much hope. The eye can’t balance it, the end result being to close in the eye. Once again, all we see is makeup.
This is a Light Summer eye below. Black mascara has no place here. You could barely find any colours that are even medium in darkness. Gentle light colors are key. Airy and fresh is what will look healthy and young.
In the middle swatch, Photoshop extracted the grey shade from the middle of the iris around the 4 o’clock position. The lower one is the colour of the eyeshadow I like to apply after an analysis (Shu Uemura M Beige 815, I believe; why get specific, it’s no longer available; Paula’s Choice did a color called Moonlit, also quite perfect, also unavailable). Both swatches are very close to the Personal Colours palette.
- Eyeshadows are mostly gray, not brown. Use very light colors because the eye color is very easily overwhelmed.
- Repeats ? None I can think of in makeup. Some people have a much stronger turquoise in the eye and can repeat it in clothing.
- Complements? Not in eyeshadow. However, since there is heat in the skin, it can support some bronzer believably, especially as Spring’s contribution is sunshine and the outdoors. A light application of a peach-gold will bring out the eyes without looking artificial. Remember, the best beauty looks like it could have happened by itself. I like Cover f/x Bronzer f/x in Gold. Also, wearing your mauve and purples in clothing will bring out the pale yellow sunlight you may have in the eye, which is pretty.
- Contrast. None I can think of. The whole Season’s concept is “not dark”.
Don’ts
Not doing the things that detract from eye color is important too.
1. Avoid yellow in the hair unless Nature gave it to you. Your most delicate of all skin will go red or yellow. Your eye will dull and gray out when the white of the eye goes yellow. Your highlight is just on the neutral beige side of silver if you’re a True or Light.
2. Big dark lashes. The viewer can’t peel their eyes away from the lashes – maybe that’s what you were going for with the Diorshow and the Telescopic. To paraphrase Isak Dinesen, when God wants to punish us, he grants our wishes. Summers should wear grey mascara, which is all but impossible to find. Try “Soft Navy” or “Soft Black”, smearing it on a tissue first to be sure it’s not too dark black.
Ask me some questions.
Anyone know the eyeshadows that match those Light Summer swatches?
5 Sunglasses For 5 Seasons
April 7, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
Some sunglasses for Soft Summer, True Spring, True Autumn, Bright Spring, and Dark Winter.
The principles of 12 Season Colour Analysis guide us in so much more than just what colours flatter your skin the most. Those make you look younger than all the other colours.
It’s in how you combine the colours that you express all the images and feelings of that Season, that harmonize best with what your natural coloring is already doing.
By choosing the style that reinforces the colours properly, you become quietly fabulous.
Aim for the heart. You will love the trip and find a new soulmate in yourself.
2 points in this video are confusing. Maybe more than 2.
1. The plum colour of the frame for the Soft Summer glasses doesn’t show up well. The colour is here. Fabulous blush and lipcolour for the Soft Summer, straight out of the personal colour swatches.
2. The point about using frames to balance an unbalanced face shape could be interpreted in various ways.
For one, as I’m sure you’ve seen, people with small faces, or heart shaped faces, wearing big shiny lenses…well, it can look like a bug, you know?
On the other hand, if the face narrows at the chin, a frame that gets wider at the bottom of the lens would counterbalance that.
Since there is no such frame as triangular, another option may be to use a frame where the lines curve from the center out to pull the eye outward, but without curving from the outer edge inward as the aviators do.
This concept is illustrated nicely in this short video. I watched this whole series and learned a heck of a lot.
Bottom line, try them. Bring someone brutally honest with good taste. The first rule of being my shopping partner is to NOT tell me everything looks good. Luckily, I have teenage daughters built-in for this purpose.
All the glasses for these videos were provided by Holland Optical in Chatham, Ontario. Call them at 519-352-8632. Seriously outstanding selection, in a marketing world where so many retailers are just repeating the same thing.
Matching The Swatch Book : Coral
April 3, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
This is Part 2 of the post that answers a client’s question re: deciphering her blues and corals when shopping with her Colours Book.
Part 1 is at Matching The Swatch Book : Blue. Today is about True Summer corals. This would not apply to Soft Summers, who have very different colours. Light Summer may have an occasional similar swatch, but not a whole page.
Coral is one of the more difficult colors to predict in 12 Seasons Personal Colour Analysis. Any color, like turquoise or peach, that has an inherently warm AND cool component, is tougher to grasp confidently.
As we said in the Blue post, it’s often the colours in more distant, seemingly unrelated, Seasons that can be most similar. I looked for the most similar corals to True Summer’s.
They are not among the 3 Summers (except maybe the odd one in Light Summer). No coral in the Spring or Autumn palettes would confuse you if you had your Colours Book.
The corals of True Summer and Dark Winter are similar tones. Side by side, Dark Winter certainly has a dark brown element that takes away the rose-petal freshness of True Summer’s but they are quite close.
Wow, ay? So, how might you tell them apart?
1. True Summer is absolutely cool. You should be able to find no heat, no yellow, no brown. OK, but hard to do with coral, since it always seems a little warmish.
2. If it’s a cosmetic colour, don’t compare makeup colours on your arm or face. None of us can ever be objective enough about our face and arms get messy. Paint it on white paper to compare it to your Colours Book.
3. Does the item convey a feeling? True Summer should express cool, serene, fresh, feathery, and delicate. Choose a visual to help. Rose petals, watercolor, mist, water are True Summer. It should feel true to one of True Summer keywords : gentle.
For True Summer, it’s watermelon, not geranium. Soft plum, not deep eggplant. Soothing, not strong. The personal swatch book may feel hard to interpret, but when you see it in the entire piece of clothing, the colour is easier to figure out.
If you see a trace of sunshine, it’s wrong, it’s Spring. True Summer is absolutely cool.
Ask yourself “can I see black in the shadows?” . If yes, it’s Winter’s. And this is a good way to make a colr go one way or the other. If it’s a tissue or sheer fabric, wearing a white or dark tank underneath can pull it towards Winter or Summer very effectively.
4. Compare it to 2 items that you KNOW to be warm and cool. It will be easier to position yours accurately when you have a range with endpoints.
5. Consider the fabric. Colour is an emotional expression that is conveyed by weight, by combination, by style and stitching lines, as well as hue.
If you feel a heavy or somber presence, it’s probably off. Even when True Summer gets darker, the feeling is still graceful and fine. Winter colours look (and feel) aggressive on a True Summer.
If the colour feels like it would have to be velvet because the feeling is so solid, that is not True Summer. If it feels made of gauze or linen, it is right.
If the colour were curtains, the True Summer would let light through. Dark Winter is occlusive because of its degrees of saturation and darkness, both way higher than Summer.
6. What story is being told by the colour? What background does it create? a watercolour or an oil painting? a sheer or a tapestry?
7. In a swirl with Summer’s other colours, would it be dominant, or too aggressive, and overshadow all the more delicate colours?
All True Summer’s colours are very slightly faded. Spring has the odd similar swatch but it is distinctly more saturated, a clearer colour. In the graphic above, I could have softened (reduced the saturation, grayed) the Summer colours even more. As soon as Spring appears, the colours become rainbows to parrot plumage, but they’re clear, not dusty colours. True Summer is just the slightest bit washed out.
If you love the item and your instinct is that the colour is right, buy it if you can return it. Try it with the rest of your palette, in different lighting. Often, a colour that is extremely close can be made to work well because of what it’s combined with, since so much of Season harmony is conveyed by how your colours are worn together.
I believe these are the last stages before becoming completely colour confident. Don’t do it from memory, you’ll lose money. Always consult your Colours Book.
You’re still moving forward.
Matching The Swatch Book : Blue
March 21, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 5 Comments
Jelena asked a question we can all learn from:
I need some suggestions for shopping with my [Personal Color Analysis Swatch Book]. Some of the colors in the True Summer book (especially the blues) seem quite saturated and (almost) bright. When shopping, I’m always wondering how I can tell the difference between a True Summer blue versus the Winter blue and even the Spring cobalt blue??
Another question is about the cool-ish coral. I found a lot of similar colors when out shopping, but it was difficult to tell if the colors were cool enough. The artificial store lighting complicates things as well. I noticed that some of the things that were perfect matches to my Book in the store were totally wrong once I took them home and saw what it looked like under natural lighting (and the same applies to make-up colors). Do you have any suggestions for making color matching easier?
What to try:
1. Pick a few items in the store of similar color to compare, rather than just 1 item. It’s by comparison that we understand color. I learned a lot about color and textiles at Value Village because they group 20 reds, blues, etc. together, so the differences become easily apparent.
2. If there are no similarly colored items (often stores work with just a few dye lots each season), hold it against a white item, or better a white and an off-white item.
3. Look in daylight. Jelena is very right about that. Even before your PCA, you probably find that you buy something only to find it wasn’t what you thought.
4. Be sure you can return things.
5. Assume the color of the item and the swatch are NOT a match until you can convince yourself they are. For True Summer, ask yourself:
“Do I see any heat (orange, tan brown, dark brown, gold, yellow) in the color”? go through them 1 by 1. I get in a hurry, or I want to believe it’s the right color, so I make myself slow down.
Every time I listen to a dog’s heartbeat, I assume there is an abnormality till I can convince myself it is normal. I use the same approach here.
6. Flip the concept and see if you can come at it the other way. Ask yourself “does it appear less intense than it COULD?” or “could I imagine a MORE saturated version of this color?”
Instead of “is this soft?”, ask “could it be MORE pigment-rich?”
If the color COULD be MORE intense, it’s probably a soft color.
Here are the 3 closest blue matches among True Summer, Winter, and Spring.
From top, True Summer, True Winter, True Spring.
True Summer is not hard to pick out. It’s always some version of faded denim, even the darkest wash. True Summer is not necessarily obviously grayed; it is just relatively less saturated than Winter. True Summer is not dull or drab, and some of the colors have some strength to them.
When you see a highly saturated color, you usually know it. It is more common to see Winters walking around in color that is too soft because saturated color is hard to find and after a few washings, it’s softened.
Surprisingly, it’s Winter and Spring that are closest for this color. It makes sense for blue. Both are saturated Seasons. Blue is darkish at high saturation so this is one of Spring’s darker colours. The Spring is a bit yellower. On the 3 Colour Scales of Light/Dark, Warm/Cool, and Clear/Soft, we’re matching all 3 very closely.
My feeling here is that it’s too close to matter. The difference will come from the other elements of the outfit and how the person wears and combines the color.
Matching The Swatch Book : Light Grey
March 13, 2010 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
Once we isolate your place or Season in Personal Color Analysis, the next step is to look at the swatches in your Colors Book, and those of your warmer and cooler neighbors.
When we’re dealing with 12 Seasons, each with a palette of 60 unique colors, there will be some colors that are very close. Surprisingly, the difficulty is not usually between your Season and your immediate neighbors. More often, the catch will be with a more distant Season.
2 examples:
1. The excellent example of this jacket at Ann Taylor came up on the Facebook page. I took a quick look and thought “light, clear, cool = Light Summer”. An astute reader pointed out that the grey is so light that it should qualify as icy, and so a Winter color. She is completely right.
True Summer greys are easy to pick out because they’re blueish or pinkish.
Light Summer presented a learning moment, nothing I love more to deepen and sharpen our understanding.
Light Summer and True Winter are both cool Seasons. When a color, light grey in this case, is cool AND very light, AND clear, as the Spring element brings to True Summer’s dusty shades to produce the Light Summer palette… well, when does it become Winter’s icy grey?
Summer colors are pastels, which means they are not so extremely light as icy colors. (see Icy Colours And Pastels) A pastel, by definition, has more pigment and is softened with gray. This applies also to gray itself.
Light Summer left, True Winter right.
The picture above shows the closest matches from the 2 Seasons’ Colors Books. Light Summer is yellower, or less absolutely crisp and cool, but it’s subtle. Light Summer also has more pigment, more “color”.
If any of you see the faintest blue tone to the Light Summer grey, you’d be right. This is a leftover from the True Summer greys which has been partially extracted by Spring’s color clarity. Winter’s greys are made of black and white only.
Notice too that the lightest grey in the True Winter Book, basically the color of the jacket, has no similar value (or lightness) in the Light Summer. Winter’s icy colors are even lighter than the lightest colors in a Light Season.
2. The Trace of Autumn’s Brown in Soft Summer and Dark Winter could be confusing because both Seasons have a similar relative position in the order.
For these 2 Seasons, both are one Season away from a pure, cool Season (True Summer and True Winter, respectively).
Both are removed from that True Season in the same direction, meaning both blend with Autumn.
In fact, there are no similar colours in the 2 Colour Swatch Books. I’m not even putting a picture here because not one of the 60 tones is close. Soft Summer’s very low saturation and Dark Winter’s much higher saturation make the choice clear.
The lesson
Shop with your Book. Never think you’ll remember a color correctly or be able to judge it accurately.
Don’t feel overwhelmed, thinking you have to keep 12 Seasons’ worth of colors in your head. I don’t, but I never buy before checking my Book. I still put a lot of things back.
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.
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