The Ultimate Colour Analyzed Cosmetics
March 4, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 9 Comments
Suzie Greif, the owner of Spectrafiles, sent me a makeup kit at Christmas. Suzie is the daughter of Kathryn Kalisz, founder of the Sci\ART Personal Colour Analysis (PCA) method. Spectrafiles is the new company that is now producing the Colours Books of swatches. It was a lovely and thoughtful gift, but I have only been using it for a couple of weeks. Why? Because I had never loved loose powder makeup before. It always seemed to end up on the counter or some other place it wasn’t supposed to be.
I eventually opened the packages because the colours looked so impressive – and have used them every single day since. Believe me when I tell you that they are fabulous. The powder sticks to the brush for one thing. It’s the other brands of eyeshadows that I’m sweeping off my cheek. The Reveal product from eleablake is completely controllable. It diffuses perfectly onto the skin, no grabbing or jumping. The pigment deposit is noticeable but not shocking and easily adjusted.
The makeup colours that look most believable and attractive on your face are the colours that are already in your face. Personal Colour Analysis is the system whereby you learn exactly what those colours are, every red, blue, pink, green, brown, grey, your day lipstick, your truly perfect customized red, and so on. But even when you know, finding right makeup colour is not easy. Many colour analysts help you get started by sending you a list of specific products, but you’re still spending hours looking at so many products that it may feel overwhelming.
I loved the colours of the eyeshadows, blush, and glosses. In fact, they were remarkable. Once you know your Season, you become a very discriminating makeup shopper because you know exactly which colours will look most natural on you and you don’t want to put down money for second best. Sometimes knowing exactly what you want makes an item harder to find. These products colours were right on and so were the other shades on the colour layout card that came in the kit. How could they not be perfect? They began as the 12 Season colour palettes in a PCA system that is astoundingly precise in every single person. Here is a scan of my Dark Winter card(remember that the colours will lose a little ground in the scan, but they really are perfect):
For all the Seasons, especially the Darks, I love that there are light lipstick choices already thought out for you. If you like purple or blue makeup, choose the right purple or blue so it can look artistic and interesting, instead of trendy. The fact that foundation and bronzer have been matched to undertone is just so good.
Who is the woman behind this genius? Meet Darin Wright, owner of eleablake studios and the woman who designed the Reveal Cosmetic collection. For everyone who ever thought grey hair cannot look young, think again. Darin is proof that when you know your best colours, you know your best makeup. Seriously, could this woman look more fantastic? This is so much more what real beauty is than a teenager in a magazine.
I asked Darin to tell you a bit about why she undertook this huge task, and how she became the person actually who got it right:
I have been a makeup artist for over twenty years and have found it imperative to ensure that my clients received the best possible colors for their skin. I believe that all persons should have a personal color analysis performed in order to reach their power colors, or colors that help them enhance their beauty. I created the Elea Blake cosmetic line before becoming a color analyst. The concept was and has continued to be, to custom blend every client that comes into our studio. We create a palette for our clients one on one and have endless possibilities with our color blending techniques.
Several years ago I revisited the concept of Personal Color Analysis for my clients. I was familiar with the concept from my days in the oh, so fashionable 80’s but felt that the system had yet to be refined. I was always fascinated by the concept but was not completely sold on it. I had found that some clients just did not match up with the results available at the time. I started to research several companies on the market finding most unsatisfactory until I met Kathryn Donovan, owner and creator of the Sci\Art system. I was completely and utterly impressed by her extensive knowledge and professional draping system. Kathryn’s system offered the correct tools, teaching, and support. The clients’ results were so accurate! People’s personas changed and brightened before your very eyes!
Reveal collection Soft Summer colours.
More from Darin:
While utilizing this system I saw how fantastic it would be to create ready-made cosmetic colors to go with the Seasonal palettes. For example, if you are a Bright Winter you have a ready-made collection created from that palette. At Elea Blake we have tested each color to ensure that it matches the specific 12 Tone palettes that Kathryn developed. This task was accomplished with many a long night and a frustrated sigh. I personally reviewed each color to make sure that the color would fit into the palette it was created for. The time involved in this process was lengthy and exhausting. The result is the beautiful Reveal Collection.
The most fascinating aspect about these color collections is that there are few rules and endless possibilities! These colors are designed for the creative core in all of us. They bring one back to the days spent with colorful arrays of crayons and construction paper. They are really that simple! You can use these colors alone or layer, blend, and build them. Each color in its prospective palette harmonizes with every other color, so you just can’t mess up! That is exactly the way these palettes are designed. Another extraordinary aspect about these colors, are that most of the colors can be used for a multitude of uses. Foundations can double as eyeshadows, eyeliners can be shadows, blushers can be bronzers or eyeshadows, perhaps even eyeliners.
There is also a bonus pack of colors designed for those longing for the extra spark to their makeup, with hipilicious shades that can be used as highlights, pops, or accents. These are palette friendly optional picks. We refer to use these as eye toners, as they can be mixed or blended with all the palettes.
Reveal collection Dark Autumn colours.
Darin can be contacted through her website eleablake.com , by email at contact@eleablake.com, or at eleablake studios in Chattanooga, TN.
Rimmel Lip Gloss for 12 Seasons
January 15, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 26 Comments
Some folks take exception to my swatching makeup on white paper. They say you can’t tell how the colour would look on your face. They’re going to love the way I swatch lip gloss.
I find I can see the subtleties of the colours way better on paper. On paper, you can be more detached about the colour. It’s still far enough from you to be perceived as separate from you, and only on its own merits. Once it enters your Personal Zone, all kinds of meta impressions start happening.
The hot second you try to evaluate a colour on your own face, you’ve lost objectivity. Your imagination alters your face, and everything on it. We have no idea what we look like to others. The only thing we decide when we look at a new makeup colour on our face is whether it could be consistent with how we’re used to seeing ourselves.
The Sci\ART Colours Book is outstanding for matching makeup colours, the trickiest part of working with your Season. Good thing there’s lots of help to get you started once you get your Season ID. The swatches in the Book are on white canvas. At the store, I can smear the makeup on a white page. Back home and decide, in daylight, if the colours are the same. Any client who has done this with me during a PCA appt knows that she can look from the makeup palette we create on paper to her Colours Book, and find every swatch in her Book immediately. Her eye just goes to it, and she is right every time. This system works.
These Rimmel Stay Glossy lipglosses impressed me because of the good colour selection – or was it that I found Winter colours, usually so hard to do? So often, a line will have 3 good colours, and you stand there looking at the rest of them, thinking “I have no idea who would wear these colours.” In this line, the fairest and darkest have a choice, the most muted and clearest, and the Winter colours are actually wearable.
The gloss is supposed to last 6 hours, or 8 hours, or some big, impressive number.
Critical Thinking : the ability to discern what is probably right and what is probably wrong. A 6 hour lip gloss? You didn’t even expect that to be true. There’s no 2 hour lip gloss out there, unless you’re a mannequin, the plastic kind. Forget 6.
The product is plenty nice, and reasonably priced, whatever that means in cosmetics. Heavens, I’m being snarky today, but there is too much undeserved cosmetic raving going on out there. Every week brings a new rave. That’s how you came to have a used-it-once drawer. I’m just trying to keep the reality glasses in place so you never add one more item to that drawer. I am nice enough to say that there was nothing about the application that I didn’t like, besides the sinking ship of 6 hour expectations. This is also a nice product to apply over a lipstick, long wear or otherwise to keep it going till lunchtime without needing a mirror.
I swatch lip gloss between 2 pieces of tape to avoid having gunk all over my purse. I can spread it around and look at the nuances of the colour when I get home to daylight. I can see the colour next to other tones, because colour is all about comparison.
Once you see a colour you like on paper, and it seems to match your Book, I absolutely suggest you put it on your face. There’s more to a makeup buy decision than its colour. Also, no two women in the same Season look quite the same or will interpret their Season in the same way, or have the same comfort level with colour on the face.
I match the color analyzed swatches from the middle darkness colours, or the lighter ones for the Light Seasons. The darker swatches work fine in clothing but most light-medium complected women find them dark. The Sci\ART system is 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, because 12 is enough without being too much, but you’ll refine your position within your Season with time.
The pictures are a bit randomly organized, and seem a bit sloppy (that’s part of the reality theme), but they cover all the colours, with some opportunity to compare. In Canada, we did not have Endless Night, Unlimited Gold, or Endless Summer, unless they are here with a different name. I haven’t adjusted any settings. Photos were taken at 11AM on an overcast day, on a sheet of white paper.
True Winter : Yours Forever
Dark Winter : All Night Long
Bright Winter : Timeless Allure, Fuchsia Fever
Finding a clean red-violet that has that purple pivot that True Winter hovers around is challenging, especially in a cheaper product. I like this one.
For many darker Season women, they don’t always want a dark lip. I’ll never (or not soon) be convinced that Sandra Bullock (probably Dark Winter), Liza Minelli (True?), or Audrey Hepburn (Bright W?) look their best in browned, flesh toned lips. Dark W wears a browned deep rose as a disappearing lip (NARS Dolce Vita), but it has little impact. A very good option to nude lips for Winters, which the intensity of the person’s coloring can still dominate too easily, is a sheer lip.
I hope you can see that Dark Winter’s colour is browner. Bright W’s is lighter and clear.
As a Dark Winter, I tried All Night Long. It’s quite similar to the Dark Winter always-in-your-purse anchor of Merle Norman Stolen Kisses.
Light Summer : All Day Seduction, Stay My Rose, Dare To Say, Eternal Flirt
True Summer : Captivate Me, Dare To Say
Soft Summer : My Eternity, Stay My Rose, Captivate Me
With the sheerness of a gloss, several of these colours will work across categories. Your own lip colour will come through and help adapt the shade to your face.
All Day Seduction has a gold glimmer in it, it felt best for Light Summer. Soft Summer can do gold shimmer sometimes, as in MAC Plumfoolery blush, but the base colour is deeper in that blush than this light pink gloss. Soft Summers are much cooler than they are warm and not especially light.
Light Spring : Non Stop Glamour, Always Lovely, All Day Seduction
True Spring: Here To Say? , Non Stop Glamour
Bright Spring: Fuchsia Fever, Timeless Allure, All Day Seduction
True Spring gave me some trouble. Here To Say may be one those colours that is too browned for a Spring and not browned enough for an Autumn. It is orange and yellow enough that it may work well, with just enough brown to make it more nude/flesh coloured. I try to picture it on Wayne Gretzky…not sure. I was hoping it might look like this.( I think Uma may be a Light Spring because pale lips look so good on her. True Spring does better with a shot of real color).
The beauty of a gloss is that it tempers brightness (as in Fuchsia Fever) and darkness (as Timeless Allure), allowing Bright Spring to wear both. They could also do All Day Seduction, because it’s a clean pink with a gold shimmer. Light Summer had this colour too, because there are similarities between it and Bright Spring (both can do well in medium-darkness colours, both have a trace of Spring yellow).
So Fabulous is a slightly yellow caramel beige. It is not orange, nor is it as heavy as butterscotch sundae sauce. It is a Spring colour, perhaps a good flesh-toned lip for Light Spring, a Season that is exemplary in the various beiges of nuts and their shells.
Soft Autumn: Here To Say?
True Autumn: Immortal Charm
Dark Autumn : Everlasting Crush, Still Gorgeous
A Soft Autumn will probably find Here To Say too orange. I’m usually looking for a color like the pink in a flowerpot, and this is not it, but they do have a warm side, especially when the hair has an apricot highlight, and they do look great in nude/flesh lips, a la J.Lo. This is a line where the Autumn colours are less plentiful, while the pinks are over-represented.
Still Gorgeous could be lovely on Dark Autumn, and very natural on women of deeper complexion.
Black Diva, well, y’know. Oh, I forgot that one.
Spring and Autumn Makeup Colours
December 7, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 41 Comments
Spring is light. Literally, figuratively, subliminally, Spring is light.
Colours are light to medium on the Light >> Dark scale. The brown that looks dark on Scarlet Johanssen looks pale and insignificant on Julia Roberts.
Colour deposits are light and /or sheer, though color is still lively. Like putting makeup on a porcelain doll.
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Autumn color is heavy. Like a rug, a warm blanket, a stone fireplace.
Colours is medium to dark.
Colour deposits can be more opaque. The skin is more opaque and needs heavier color. Like putting makeup on a quilted cloth doll.
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I just said something dangerous. The Soft Autumns reading this are thinking “My skin is pale and easily overwhelmed with heavy makeup. I look fake in heavy makeup.” For many Soft Autumns, or any Season that contains some Summer, that can be very true.
Spring is a Season of more translucent colour. Mix that with Summer’s thinner skin and you have extreme fragility and youthfulness of complexion. For me, Light Spring is overwhelmed by the same weight of colour that Soft Autumn can wear, in fact that would be barely visible on a Soft Autumn (either that, or it would be far too candy pink).
Note too than when someone says something about a colour, like Soft Autumn needs heavier colour, the next question should be “heavier than what?”. Alone, adjectives are meaningless because it’s all comparative.
Soft Autumn is generally darker than Light Spring – but not as dark as the other Autumns. Soft Autumn still has light flesh tones, light golden browns, and peachy terracottas. They are not dark people. Any colour extreme, be it too dark, too hot, or too bright will dominate them entirely.
Their colours feel heavier than Spring’s, but this is not the same as saying they have the density of Winter’s. They are just not airy.
Any woman can be well within her Colours Book and still make a darkness adjustment as to which swatches she matches in makeup, based on her comfort level with colour on the face, the rest of the makeup, the occasion, and so on. Some Soft Autumns prefer their lighter colours, but sheer colour can seem like not enough. A Light Spring in sheer colour can still manage to look overdone.
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From top to bottom, these collections belong to Light Spring, True Spring, and Soft Autumn.
For anyone new to 12 Season Colour Analysis, Light Spring is mostly a Spring person, with a small hint of Summer. Soft Autumn is an Autumn coloring that contains a trace of Summer.
As with clothing, even if one colour is a little off, it’s not that big a deal. The rest of the makeup, clothing, and colours in the face will pull it in seamlessly. Many of the eyeshadows are probably interchangeable enough. You can see that True Spring is the yellowest. Light Spring is cooler. Soft Autumn has some neutrality (meaning warmth and coolness at once), as in the center eyeshadow in the left column. Soft Autumn is not clear yellow when viewed as a whole, and they are yet as orange as True Autumn will be.
Light Spring is confusing, as are all the Neutral Seasons, because the question becomes “How warm?”. Both Light Spring and Soft Autumn take a pure warm Season and mix in a trace of Summer. To get every colour perfect the makeup counter, you need the personal colour palette or swatch book.
I find eyeshadow the most difficult. Using descriptors like earthy, heavy, dense, opaque to distinguish browns doesn’t help a whole lot when you’re standing at the counter. Colour is always relative. Standing at the cosmetics counter trying to match a dot in a book will be an exercise in discouragement. Smear the makeup on a piece of white paper, and smear a bunch of similar colours next to it. Even if the colours aren’t that close, it doesn’t matter. Your eye will use the range and position every colour more accurately. With clothing, if you’re choosing a blue sweater, collect several blue items, any shade of blue, and line them up. That’s when you’ll pick out the cool blue, the muted blue, etc.
Spring eyeshadows are light and yellowish. Autumn’s can be yellowish too, but it’s a duller yellow. More gold than yellow usually.
Lipstick is easier. It’s clear for Spring and browned for Autumn. The blossom or the brick.
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Invoke all 5 senses when looking at color. There is a world beyond what your eyes can see.
Spring tastes sweet, ripe, and wet.
Autumn tastes savoury, spicier, and drier.
As you look at these groups of colour, what musical note would they have? Which dance? Which is the flute and which is the drum?
Best Makeup Colours : Dark Winter
November 7, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 16 Comments
Personal Colour Analysis (PCA) has its origins in your soul. It reaches way down to the innermost part of your being and identifies the vibrational energy of the colours you project on the outside.
You are a being of light. Once you know the colours of your natural light, you can repeat them in everything you wear. It’s not just to look good, though you surely will. Words like wholeness, complete, unified, and aligned, inner with outer, may help you think about color in a different way.
Without PCA, you cannot possibly know your own rainbow. Like most folks, then, everything you wear, every item in your makeup drawer, your jewelry, and your highlights all communicate something different. The result is like a visual white noise.
Your makeup colours are your clothes colours. Your clothes colours are your eye colours. Your hair highlight colour is in your skin’s pigments. A thousand questions answered when you know.
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, Dark Winter is very much a Winter Season, the most less-is-more Season of them all. Winter’s cool and dark colours are here, as is the pivotal red-violet of all Winters. An element of Autumn is still present, so slightly dulling and browning the colours, as Autumn always does. I am a Dark Winter. Sandra Bullock and Winona Ryder probably are too, and so is a Canada goose and a bald eagle.
The person is not necessarily dark, but the colors that perfect their skin and eyes are dark, RELATIVE to the other Seasons. Browns are darker, corals are darker, greens are darker, and the overall look should be medium to dark. As Winters, some of the lights are very very light, as icy colours. Compare that to the Dark Autumn, who is not flattered by icy lights because they are primarily Autumns. Their light colour palette is very different from Dark Winter’s, though the darker colour palette has some similarities.(For more, see Icy Colours and Pastels)
You know that my idea of elegant eye makeup is in shades of grays and browns. Dark Winters are icy grey, pure grey, or browned dark-taupes. Eye makeup is much more grey than brown. Brown looks too hot, like beef stew on snow. No, that’s too awful. Let’s say gravy on snow instead.
Soft Summer began with True Summer’s very cool palette, and looked at it through a layer of fog. Dark Winter begins with True Winter’s very cool palette and looks at it through a layer of soot. Clinique Totally Neutral Eyeshadow trio is a great everyday palette. In Canada, you could buy Joe Pebble powder eyeshadow, apply it with a wet brush to get a darker layer.
Smoky eyes and nude lips is a look so many aspire to. There’s nothing wrong with it, except that I have yet to meet the regular woman who can pick out her colors and not look ghoulish. A better look to aspire to is the natural look, the one that could believably have happened by itself.
While most Seasons can manage that “nude” pink-beige lip in some version or other, Winter has the most difficult time with it. The one thing Winter needs to remember is to pair very lights with very darks, and have very clear dividing lines between the color blocks. When the lips blend too much into the skin, it doesn’t look healthy, natural, outdoorsy, or pretty. It looks like Snow White with lips the color of concealer.
Many would say that we can’t go around with fuchsia, purple, or crimson lips at the office or the soccer game. In a heavy application, that may be so. A Winter going for a more natural look will stay true to their palette, as anyone does, but choose a more sheer or more brown product. Cherry skin, pomegranate juice, frosted cranberries, and ripe mulberries will be Winter’s best go-to 9AM lip colours. Try Merle Norman Stolen Kisses and MAC Scant (if you can find it) for day wear, and Elizabeth Arden Sugarplum Shimmer when you want more. If you’re 25 and want to work your icy fuchsia, icy pink, or light coral lip, that’s fine, because you still have the well defined lips of the young, but those colours are probably lighter than your natural lip colour.
Your colour analyzed cosmetic colour for the most natural, believable lip colour is mulberry, so a browned purple, in the lower right position of the lip/blush foursome. Strong cool dark coral-pink is a brighter option.
Eyeliners shown at the bottom are charcoal, blackened mulberry, and one could certainly use a black-brown too. I use MAC Photogravure or Clinique Black-Brown. MAC Grey Utility is a good smoky gray.
Your eye colour makes no difference. The makeup will work. The only thing you may need is a darkness adjustment. A dark lipstick will look lightER on a darkER person. I did that thing with cell phones that kids do to take endless photos of themselves so the picture below is odd. I’m wearing a purple-brown lipstick, which looks darker IRL, but not by much. It looks light on me and it would look lightER than that on Sandra Bullock, and lightER still on Oprah. So you take the Personal Colours Book of swatches shopping and match the darker colours, but always stay true to your palette.
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.
How Autumns Intensify Eye Colour
September 13, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 45 Comments
I went into the drugstore yesterday. The cosmetician’s makeup (the cosmetician! very pleasant, very helpful, but who hired her for this position?) was so dark and severe that it would scare children. I am no better at impartiality when it comes to my own face than anyone else, but there was nothing more this woman could have done to detract from her appearance. Her eyes never get noticed, lost in the pharaoh effects and dark burgundy lip. She might be a Soft Autumn, so it feels a bit of a tragedy to look at her.
We talked about Spring and Summer in previous articles (How Summers Intensify Eye Colour and How Springs Intensify Eye Colour). There, it was suggested that every single step of the makeup process should intensify eye colour. Your first reaction to a good blush should be “it strengthens the color of my eyes”. As the picture frame of your eyes, eyebrows should to be natural in shape and color, and groomed to look like you, but neater.
In 12 Season (12 Tone) Colour Analysis, Autumn’s colors are warmed by gold, medium on the light/dark scale, and muted to various degree, depending on which of the 3 Autumns is in question.
Eyeliner should not be so dark that it becomes obvious. Because so many women buy this product in color that is too dark, that’s what the industry makes. Finding lighter colors and a good variety of browns and greys takes some searching. The Autumn challenge is to find color of the right degree of warmth. If the color is too hot, the rims of the eyes look bloodshot. It is surprising how warm the Autumn brown can be and still do what we want:define the eye shape and then disappear into the face.
For anyone who might be new, you might wonder why I’ll never show you any blue/green/purple makeup that the viewer could perceive to be those colors. Next time you see a woman with that makeup, think about whether you’re looking at eye or the makeup. A dark green that looks more like dark brown? Fine. A taupe olive that looks more taupe? Fine. Teal that looks like peacock? Well, y’know.
I know there are blue die-hards out there. Wouldn’t it be ok to wear blue in eye makeup, as an orange complement, since Autumn’s undertone is orange-brown (more about undertones in Skin Undertones)? The cartoon effect of blue makeup can get away from you, but your taste may be different from mine and that’s fine. Color is big enough for many opinions. I’d suggest you wear your blues in clothing, and let them complement the eye colour. Clothing’s power to strengthen eye colour can’t be overstated. As a bigger color block, it is more effective than makeup for this purpose.
Soft Autumn
The principle of the Season, the radiance, the special look that nobody else can pull off so realistically: “Our Earth is our cradle. She feeds us, protects us, and never does anything harsh or unexpected that might harm us. She is gentle, warm, and generous in her abundance. Even her light is moderate, kind, welcoming.”
Who would put black eyeliner on that? Or cool foundation and fuchsia lips? It would feel like a ski jump in a September cornfield. Don’t overwhelm the eye with makeup, which happens too fast. Better to underwhelm the eye with makeup. A very little goes a long way on the Soft and Light Seasons.
The hair is butterscotch and brown, like peanut butter fudge. Make the eyeshadow toffee. Every Autumn has the ability to repeat her hair color in her eye color.
This is a Soft Autumn eye. The orange at the center repeats the freckes.
Make this the hair.
Is this the same as Spring’s red? No, that’s here. Is there a difference from a bottle? You’d have to ask a colorist, I don’t know. It might depend a lot on the base color the pigment is being applied to. If anyone does know, please share. The difference is that Autumn is the nectar, while Spring is the juice.
Notice too that there is a lot of Summer in this person’s eye, where the outer half or more is gray-blue-green. Soft Autumn is a Neutral Season and a cooler-neutral eyeshadow can work as well as a warm-neutral (shown in the graphic below).
Among the test drapes that are used to identify Season, there always seems to be one that connects powerfully with the eye color. I don’t really pay big attention to intensifying eye color till the last stages of the analysis, but when I see that the Season I’m narrowing down to also creates the strongest eye connection, it helps confirm that we made the right choice. For Soft Autumn, the olive drape is the best eye color intensifier.Interestingly, for the other Soft Season, the Soft Summer, the best eye color drape is the soft pine green. The drapes are finding something in these eyes that is not immediately obvious.
Below are the eyeshadow cool and warm colors, the olive drape, and the brown eyeliner I use on almost every Soft Autumn. The eye above belongs to a cool-side Soft Autumn and my usual brown eyeliner (Rimmel Sable) can be very slightly dark in the daytime. On her, Soft Summer’s brown-grey (Clinique Smoky Brown) is very good as well.
If an eyeshadow the same color as the eye were applied, it would look too blue. Matching eyes to eye makeup is a big boobytrap. The tendency is to pick the wrong eye colors and it ends up looking matchy, like the dreaded “tried too hard”.
True Autumn
Autumn says to the world : “My burnished glory can melt with its heat, but I’m also safe and strong. I am what I appear to be and honor truth above all.”
These eyes have a very particular property : they contain the color of metal. It might be copper, flame, or a darker greener bronze color. This effect is sometimes seen in the other Autumn Seasons as well. They have to be wearing the right clothes or you won’t see it.
Metallics in the thread of a scarf, or somewhere, is the kingdom of the True and Dark Autumn.
Get your hair color to pick up something in the eye. Too many Autumns have weak, safe beige hair. It will only age them. The other pitfall is to go too dark, but these are very medium-darkness people. I like this hair color, or perhaps a shade darker. Even in second-best makeup, you can’t not notice the eyes.
We discussed True Autumn’s best makeup colours previously, here. A metallic dot of antiqued gold eyeshadow just over the iris, and under the matte shade that covers the whole lid, is sublime. The viewer keeps seeing a flicker of flame in the vicinity of the eye.
Metallic lipstick or blush also can be beautiful on True Autumn. The caution is to be careful to put in on tight skin and only 1 feature at a time. Once over 40, adding a laminate to the hair might be a better way to add fire than a shimmer makeup face.
We’ve talked about ways to repeat and complement eye color. What about contrast? A warm/cool contrast won’t work. This skin is absolute in its warmth. Cool color will sit on top and look like silver icing on an apple crisp. A dark/light contrast isn’t possible since there are no extreme lights in the person, and extreme darks look obvious and severe. I don’t see any room for contrast here.
Dark Autumn
I always have trouble pinning down this Season. “I am here to get something done so get out of my way” is close, but Dark Winter can get this way too. Try again. This is their unique radiance: ”I can rule the world with my might but my opulent beauty surpasses all”. This is the image that I can’t shake (minus the singing).
Copyright Walt Disney 2005.
The Aztec princess, born to rule and privilege.
These eyes are gingerbread brown, chocolate gingerbread, liquid bronze, or can be a green-bronze color like the head of the wine goddess in the lamp photo above. The colors of the sky swirling above Pocahontas’ head, from her crown to the top of the poster, are about right.
The eyeliner has to be very dark brown. Mascara is black-brown, possibly black depending on the darkness of the person and hair. Gentle eyeshadows look like a cement wall, instead of an invitation deeper into the person. Use rich coffees, with cream and without.
Eyeshadow hilite is darker than most other Seasons’. M.A.C. Brule is good. All the light colors for this Season are darker than anyone else’s. The other Dark Season, Dark Winter, can wear Winter’s icy lights, but not this group.
Dark Autumn and Bright Winter are the 2 Seasons that need time to accept (and wear) the full richness of their colors. Many women back away from the strength of these colors. They are exotic colors, not traditionally feminine. The clothes and makeup are hot too, chili pepper, wasabi, nubuck tan. They watch in amazement but want it to be over, like it’s too much to absorb. It would be as if you woke up and saw 3 suns in the sky. They feel awkwardness, danger, almost embarrassment that these colors are who they are, like they’re too shamelessly attention-getting. Mind you, Autumn is nothing if not sensible. They are quick to adapt to what works and many know what they’ll see before they sit down. They are among the fastest learners.
Play up the hair and arrange it around the face. It repeats the eye color exactly. If it’s too flat or skinned back, you lose a huge eye intensifying opportunity. Do everything you can to make it gleam. Avoid anything too red, wine, magenta, or burgundy. It looks more natural when it’s more brown, like redwood, mahogany, dark chestnut. Port wine is the reddest you’d go.
Wear the lip color, sheer if you have to. Lancome LaLaque in TechnoBrick is a great compromise. The lips have to balance out the eyes and hair so you look complete, instead of like a puzzle with corner missing.
Best Makeup Colours : Bright Winter
July 4, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 23 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 · 27 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.
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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 · 34 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.
Best Makeup Colours : True Autumn
May 28, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 25 Comments
True Autumn’s colours might be unexpected. At least, they are to me.
True Autumn is one of the 4 True Seasons. Far more people fall into the 8 blended or Neutral Seasons. This is 12 Seasonal Colour Analysis.
I keep reminding myself that the colours are not very dark, a little darker than True Spring’s.
What these colors are, above all else, is warm. That’s the pivot point of the whole Personal Colour Analysis cosmetic colour and clothing colour palette : warmed by gold (not yellow).
Gold is grayer than yellow, hence the blunted or dulled colours relative to Spring’s. Are the colours drab? Only if you consider pumpkin, curry, warm teal, and deep periwinkle dreary. There is way too much heat and glow to be monotonous. True Autumns are often practical women who run from excessive show, so they need practice to get comfortable in their color temperature.
The color I most typically think of as simple brown is not here. It’s in True Spring, in Soft Autumn, and other groups, but not here. Most Autumns love brown, and wear a lot of it, but very often some other Season’s version. These browns are greyer, greener, redder, or more orange. There is a browned effect to all the colours, compared to other palettes, but brown per se is only here in the darkest tones this Season has. Quite fascinating, really.
Frost over 40 is usually a mistake. Still, the skin of True Autumn can look like a recent dermabrasion, the skin tone is so smooth in the right colors. Seems a shame not to work that a little. Matte bronzer is a fabulous way to heighten the warm burnish of the skin. These are not really pink blush people, but a touch of warm gold blush along with the bronzer is hard to beat.
They also can have metal colors (gold, copper, bronze) in the iris, a most amazing effect. A warm gold eyeshadow, placed as a dot in the center of the upper eyelid, just above the eyeliner, then covered with the usual matte eyeshadow, adds dimension and accentuates that impossible gold in the eye. It’s like fire inside the eye. A particle of MAC Woodwinked gives an antique gold impression.
Their makeup looks like this. Are there other possibilites? Sure, your Colours Book gives you about 15 eyeshadow/lipstick/blush choices.
Are you a True Autumn? Look at Clinique lipstick in Paprika, Lancome Couture Suede, and Revlon Sandalwood Beige. Do they look too bright? Is it because your hair color is too light/blonde/cool?
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