He’s in his 30s now. His hair has darkened. He has a tan at the moment. Combining  the freckles, the fact that his mother, and probably brother, are True Autumns, that his skin resembles his Soft Autumn sister’s, and that there are red tones in the hair (and very much redder on other family members),  I wondered if Kip was going to be that Spring/Autumn person that we discussed in a previous article and its comments (see the previous article No Summer+Winter or Spring+Autumn Blends).

Draping

We saw right away that Winter was dominating and severe. The blackened sapphire and emerald took over.

In the True Autumn drapes, Kip might have been up every night for a week looking after his young children. The shadows and unshaved appearance were obvious. The lower half of the face was darker, making the jaw look very severe and the face 10 years older. BUT, his eye color intensity was surprisingly good. For those who are new here, you’ll read often that I do not factor  the eye color  into determining the Season. It simply does not matter. However, I very much consider which drapes make your eye color the most intense.

In the True Spring drapes, the skin was too yellow and the eye color was dull and greyed out.  If I could erase the yellow in the skin, there seemed to be an easing of the lines, a more even luminosity, as is usually seen in any Spring blend. The skin looked healthy and very evenly colored, while True Autumn made the skin obviously worse, even in the very slight Autumn Seasons. So, Kip was not going to be the person who can wear  True Spring and Autumn colors equally well.

True Summer was interesting. The yellow caused by True Spring cleared from the skin. The skin retained the good effects the Spring drapes created, of young, clear, ideal skin, but could also intensify the eye color to the same degree that the Autumn drapes did. The whole effect was a little flat, though the balance with the person was the best of the 4 True Seasons.

Light Summer’s bare trace of sunlight gave us the perfectly lit skin, without compromising the eyes. Light Summer is the Neutral Season (so blend of 2), that is mostly Summer with a minor influence from Spring. I guess that the reason the Autumn drapes worked so well to intensify eye color was their low saturation, which is the color characteristic that Autumn  shares with Summer. When doing the analysis, always focus on the skin. Once you get that right, the eyes will automatically be their best.

In men, the deciding Season always creates the cleanest, strongest bone structure. They do look younger, the skin clearer, but what I see is just plain “handsome”.

Light Summer’s Colors

Light Summer’s are popsicle colors. No, not quite that bright. Rainbow colors. It’s not just True Summer overexposed. The light and clarity of Spring make the feeling of the whole palette much more lively. Any single color may be similar to some of True Summer’s, but the whole person viewed together, just as the whole Colours Book fanned out, is more energetic than True Summer. That clearance of True Summer’s gentle cloud brings a springy feeling, in more ways than one.

The Light Summer is color in sunlight. Compare this to Soft Summer, which is color in shade. Notice the shirt he’s wearing – color in shade. The chair is probably the true color. In sun, it would be Light Summer’s – so a little bleached out, and better on Kip. Still cool and fresh, like True Summer, but just that mention of clear light.

Watch how the color moves in the image below as it changes from light areas to shaded areas. In our physical world, light is reflected from objects in a continuum of light-true-dark, or warm-true-cool. In 12 Tone, or 12 Season, Color Analysis, the Tones progress from one to the next through the same sequence.

Kip’s most remarkable color was his off-white (the color of the Light Summer white drape in the previous article How Light Summer Goes Grey) . Not a browned off-white, like clamshell, which is Soft Summer’s. This is vanilla ice cream, but not French vanilla, which is too yellow. It took a conscious effort to remove that drape because he just looked so extremely right. Everyone in the room just kept looking. The longer a right color is on you, the more good things come out. The longer a wrong color is on you, the more bad things come out.

Summer’s palette showcases Kip’s gracious intelligence better than any other. Far more a listener than a talker, more peaceful than animated, more caring than needing, the personality of Summer men is admired more for their support of others than their call for self-promotion.

Color that’s too cool or cloudy says nothing about his easy smile and sense of humor, the pleasure he takes in physical activity, his respectful appreciation of Nature, or his capacity for adventure. His essence is quiet and easy to be with, but is made for the outdoors. The feeling is relaxed, sea and sand, boats and bicycles, not formal.

Light Summer Clothing

As important as it is to always look at color in daylight, the Light Seasons have to be especially careful to do so. There is no type of dark color that flatters them. In mall lighting, it’s too easy to go too dark.

A soft white shirt and a silver grey jacket would be outstanding. Pure white will take over, reducing the person, and we do not wear clothes to be diminished by them. A man wearing a coat/shirt in too-strong colors makes him look weak, and makes the size of the head look too small for the shoulders.

Spring/Summer men don’t sing to me in plaid, which can look workday and practical. Corduroy, same. Too much texture looks heavy and dulls the fabric. Light colors belong with light fabrics. Uncomplicated cottons, denim, natural linen, lightweight wool, and knits look smooth and balanced. Autumn’s focus is work and productivity. Spring is lighthearted and lives to enjoy life, to play, to have fun.

A light cotton shirt with a colorful stripe in a single color, which I think is called a Bengal Stripe (below from Savile Row Co), cool tan chinos, now that looks good. His temperature looks cool (he needs to, he’s a Summer above all), but there’s that little effervescence that elevates him to another frequency.

Love it in pink and in turquoise. Do not love the tie so much.

Purple and yellow

He definitely has a yellow look, though less than in his teens, and yellow in his skin. Any Spring blend needs to get comfortable wearing purples, though Light Summer hasn’t as many choices as the purer Springs.  Because purple and yellow intensify one another, and the Colours Book shows you the right purple swatches for your particular type of yellowness, it looks remarkable. The shirt below is at Paul Fredrick. The white is that trace-of-vanilla off-white and all the purples are right.

Women love feminine colours on men. OK, I love them. It doesn’t need to be a mauve turtleneck. One stripe in a tie will get the room’s attention. Women keep looking at the one guy who can wear a cherry popsicle stripe in a sky blue tie. Men respect it because so few men know how to do this and accentuate their masculinity, rather than seem to compromise it.

Before you turn 30

This was a very interesting PCA for me. It reinforced what is easily forgotten, to never drape a person with predicted ideas of the outcome. Never start guessing. Go into the analysis with a blank slate, do the driving, and let the drapes give you the answer.

About finding that Spring/Autumn flow…the instrument I use to measure color, the Sci\ART drapes, are not designed to help me find that coloring. I don’t think it matters.

As a professional community of Personal Color Analysts, our strength will not be in fragmenting ourselves over linguistic and detail. We are already exclusive enough. Whatever system analyzed you, you’ll still look way better than you did before. Wouldn’t a world where everyone had a PCA by the time they’re 25 be beautiful? If a PCA were as automatic a grad gift as a laptop? If PCAs were part of everyone’s life like gym memberships?

Kathryn Kalisz’s passing in January was a loss to our entire community. Too much knowledge is lost when one person passes, unless we share our strengths. As Kathryn once said to me, “There’s plenty of business for everybody.”

Personal Colour Analysis is about looking better on less wasted money. 80% of this venture involves correctly talking yourself OUT of wrong color items.

Process

These are the questions I ask myself. There’s no particular order, though I usually start with “Is it clear?”, since that can be the hardest call.

..Is it clear? Is it clear = blossoms/candy/fruit punch/popsicle  OR is it muted  = grayed, dulled, not-vivid, not-bright?

.. Is it light? If yes, is it pastel and heathery Summer, OR icy and frosty Winter?

..Is it warm? If yes, is it orange-brown-Autumn leaves OR yellow-tropical-Spring?

Example 1

We’re looking at the brown hoodie. I always step back see a color, allowing it to be surrounded with other things. Color is understood by comparison to other colors. A proper Personal Color Analysis is based entirely on comparing one color’s effects to another. We’ve all played the games of seeing ghost colors when our brain adds in complementary color around an object, of seeing items of the same size appear bigger and smaller next to other colors…all optical illusions. That is exactly what colors are doing next to your face and body, making your features appear  yellow, oilier, bigger, smaller, etc. Your Personal Colour Palette is determined by which colours make you look most perfect.

Back to the hoodie.

Clear or dusty? >> dusty.

Light? >> no, more medium, I think.

Warm?>>no, not obviously orange or yellow.

So, the item is dusty, not clear. Therefore, Summer or Autumn or one of their blends are more likely.

It’s medium in darkness, not overly helpful.

It is neither orangey or yellowed. In fact, it’s almost pinkish. Therefore, Autumn and Spring are not likely. Is a weak Autumn blend possible? Sure, but then it won’t belong to one of the 3 Autumn Seasons.

Seems likes we’ve narrowed it down to Summer.

Trying to categorize it to its exact Season in the 12 possibilities isn’t really useful. This present exercise is more valuable as a way of EXcluding items from your shopping cart. Nobody whose main Season is Winter, Spring, or Autumn would buy this. The fine tuning is left to matching it to the Colours swatch Book.

Dominant Characteristics

There are color analysts who use this Color Me Beautiful technique very successfully to analyze human coloring. In my hands, that method seems to shake out a few snakes in the weeds. For analyzing clothes and makeup though, I like it. I could see how someone might call that hoodie dark and set off on the wrong track, but if you stick to the characteristic you’re absolutely most sure of, here being heathery-grayed-muted, it’s a good way of classifying an item.

So Sometimes, I’ll start with “What is most obvious?” on the 3 Colour Scales? The light/dark, warm/cool, hi/lo sat? To  me, the most obvious thing about Example 1 is that it is dusty (low saturation). You could say cool too. There is a tendency to call all browns warm at the outset, like we tend to call all greys cool.

Example 2

So often, it’s the browns that mix us up. OK, mix me up. Another tendency is to give browns to Autumn. Autumns do look unequalled in their browns, but they’re usually wearing another Season’s shade of brown (before their PCA, of course).

This very cute shoe is at ShoeMall. The photo is linked

It’s clearly light. Heathery- grayed or clear and intense? Not sure, grayed I guess, like a pastel beige, but it’s hard to decided how gray a grayish color is. Maybe somewhere in between the two. (See Icy Colours and Pastels to understand the distinction between grayed and clear color.)

Warm or cool? I’d go with cool because I can’t see sunshine yellow or dull rust in it.

So it’s cool-side and light. Therefore, we’ve EXcluded True Autumns (orange-warmed and medium-dark), Springs (yellow-warmed and light), or Winters (icy lights, never pastel, and cool). Disqualified too are their strong blends (meaning, the 3 variations of each of those True Seasons). If you’re one of those 3, you probably wouldn’t buy this.

There is still room for error because all 3 of those True Seasons have some lighter colors in their palette. Maybe this is a color that any of the 12 Tones (Seasons) could wear, though not in shoes if the hair is a really different color. Could this be an example of a color that anyone could wear, that would be pulled together by the rest of the outfit?

If I’m really not getting a fix on a color’s position in the 12 Tones, I’ll switch to how it makes me feel. This beige feels cool, light, fresh, clean – Summer. The triangles and funky design say Spring. So I’ve probably EXcluded Autumns and Winters based on that.

Lesson : Check the Colours Book. Some colours are tougher to classify and unexpected in that Season. Some are also quite close between all the Seasons and very versatile workhorse colours.

Example 3

This great sequined doublet cardi is at J.Crew. I adore J.Crew’s way with color, but I had to think about this one to find its Season.

At first glance, I can see how you might say Autumn, because it’s golden-like. You might even see that shiny doublet piece peeking out and think “…and that dazzle is incongruent with Autumn’s feeling”.

Autumn is the nectar. Spring is the juice. This top might seem cider. Doesn’t help.

But Autumn doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel heavy or dulled enough. Nor does it convey mellow, cozy, or strong, all Autumn sensations. It might be orangey, but somehow the color feels too clean, maybe even a little sharp. It’s not greyed, certainly, in fact it seems quite saturated. The color is more strong than weak. It would be hard to saturate it more (remember that saturation is quite different from darkness), to make it more intense.

If we were looking at a landscape, would this color be in the foreground or melting away in the background? It would be near because it’s still vivid. It’s worth noting here that this element of saturation can give color a third dimension, a position of depth in space. Our brains understand that far away color is greyed, less brilliant, lower in saturation.

[A question for the color experts among us : Could the same be said of cool and dark colors? Both recede. A mountain range’s colors are cooler near the horizon. A forest is darker in the distance. Are all 3 parameters, hue, value, and chroma equally able to be the 3^rd dimension of depth?]

Since the clarity of it might be confusing, though I see it as very clear (not at all cloudy) (apple juice, not peanut butter-a comparison I’m using to compare degrees of clarity, not the precise color itself), could we work it out based on its warmth? So, yes, it is a warm color. Is it warmed by Autum’s dull rust or Spring’s daffodil-buttercup yellow?  I don’t get dull rust here. It’s more some kind of yellow-ness, right?

Does its lightness or darkness help us? Well, it’s more light to medium. Since it’s warm, we don’t talk about icy or pastel. Not really helpful.

My feelings tell me it’s clear (high saturation) and yellow. I look in the Colours Books. I find it among Bright Spring’s colors, with a gentler version in True Spring. The whole outfit is outstanding for Bright Spring, with the small but important element of black, yet overall light effect. Suddenly, the sequins make sense.

The Lesson is : Never shop without your Book.

.. you won’t remember color accurately, though you think you will; after 6-9 months, you’ll be better at it

.. for Including items in your cart, there are in-between levels of light/dark, warm/cool, and hi/lo saturation. For the 8 Neutral Seasons, you won’t get the degree of in-between-ness correct. The color analyzed swatches can be unpredictable. The color variations in the 12 Seasons are quite unique, to a level that the fashion industry has not nearly caught up with.

Your Suggestions

I enjoy this type of exercise because color is surprising and we all learn. If any of you have been confused or intrigued by a color, LMK. We’ll do another one of these articles.

The colours are greyed, right? They are still cool, but there is an overlay of grey with a trace of brown, like fog, like watching colour through a raincloud. This Season is Summer’s version of colour in shade. The whole personal colour palette shares this very faint grey-brown common denominator. Light Summer begins with the True Summer palette too, but the colours are seen in pale sunlight.

Every Season has a True note, a higher note,  and a lower note. Noise can’t exist without quiet, or light without shade. Soft Summer is Summer’s quieter, lower tempo. In 12 Season Color Analysis, this is the Neutral Season where Summer is beginning to integrate a breath of Autumn.

Drapes

Seldom do I meet such a perfect example of a Season. The skin, the eye colours and patterns, and the hair and brow colour are very much in the middle of the curve for Soft Summer. What made this PCA fun was that Shannon understood the theory and could see the color effects instantly. She was able to do her own analysis, which I love because the doors open fast and easy and the resistance wall crumbles.

Because this coloring is so medium, it seems the most misdiagnosed. The draping was straightforward. A tired face we saw in Winter colours, completely dominated by the drapes. Quite good in Summer colours, but a sense of being incomplete, of not having located the magic. A yellow face in Spring colours, with no benefit that Summer didn’t offer. A slightly yellow face in True Autumn, less so than in Spring colours, with a good eye color intensity, and a sense of “something here is working”.

There was no contest between Soft Summer and either neighbor, placing Shannon in the middle of her Season. Often, Soft Summer has a remarkably fragile bone structure that doesn’t achieve hi-def till it’s in the right colors. The warm neighbor of Soft Autumn color looks queasy, flat, pasty, blunted, and out-of-focus. The cooler True Summer was too blue-shadowed and pink-lidded.

Impression

This is a Summer more than anything. The watery feeling of the colors still applies, as does the coolness and delicacy. Watermelon, clover, and many water colors. Water and hostas can get quite dark, but they’re never crayon.

Soft Season means that not only is the person Soft to look at, with no big jumps between skin/hair/eyes, and so that is how they wear their clothes.  Low saturation colours in low contrast combinations. Gentle colour movements. No trends (too exaggerated) or sudden transitions and dark lines (too severe). Related shades work well, but not necessarily monochromatic. Classy. Subtle.

The Colours Book gives you all your swatches, automatically mix-and-matchable. Your analogous, complimentary, and monochromatic colours are all in there. How they are combined depends on the energy of the particular Season. Neutral skin has warmth and coolness, so they have a warmer cosmetic colour palette (Desert Rose type) and a cooler selection (Dusty Plums). Color analyzed makeup colors are in your Book as well.

The Summer personality is seldom overly demanding.  Refreshingly pleasant personalities prevail in all 3 Summer Seasons.  Children adore their steady and straightforward manner. The loudest voice won’t belong to a Summer. They are highly civilized and have no problem with impulse control.

Autumn inserts practicality, speed, and strength into the Summer core of these people. The moment Autumn is invited to the party, Summer’s soothing way is replaced by Autumn’s determination. The straightness of the brow conveys it in the eye photo alone. As a triathlete, this woman is nothing if not determined.

Soft Summer Hair

This is an article in itself. It is harder to understand and harder to achieve. It’s coming next. Note that the hair is photographing more red than IRL. In the next part, I’ll show you the real color.

Shannon

Your face, Photoshopped, can be yours for the draping.  It’s easy to look at and easy to be. After years of feeling uncomfortable with makeup, Shannon said this,

The colors in my swatch feel right to me, as does the description of the Soft Summer personality – it all fits in terms of how I know myself. The make-up application looked and felt fantastic and, for the first time, made me want to buy and wear make-up.

These women were often blond as children. They like being blondes and feel right that way. It seems sometimes as though everyone wants to be blonde, but the question is “Do you want to be blond or do you want to look good?”. As long as it’s the right blonde, and not a toffee color, Light Summers make great and very believable blondes.

In 12 Season Color Analysis, the Light Summer is a Summer more than anything else. Spring plays a small role, so the personal colours palette become lighter, clearer, as though lit by the earliest sun.

The highlight

Their best highlight is beige to light yellow, interlaced in the natural base color. For some, a more yellow highlight works better than others. Staying closer to beige than yellow is better. On all Summers, too yellow hair flushes the skin tone red.

Louise, in Louise and Stevan Are Light Springs, has this same base color. She could look odd in an overall head as light and yellow as some Light Summers. On the other hand, a highlight that’s too ash would be draining because of the amount of yellow in Light Spring skin. The variations among individuals are endless. This game is all and only about how the skin drapes. That’s the key that gives you answers that might surprise you.

L to R, Light Summer, True Summer, True Winter

The test drapes for Light Summer show the best highlight color for this Season. I put True Winter’s stark white on the right side, just for comparison. This Season looks fantastic in their pale vanilla white.

The base hair color

The natural base is usually a medium ash brown, not golden blonde (which implies red and warm). On everyone, the more of the base that shows through, the less harsh and processed the whole head looks, and the more real and effortless the woman appears. Dealing with roots takes a fraction of the time and money, especially if the colorist didn’t start the highlights right at the part in the top layer. For many women, highlights can often get bigger and bigger till the head is one big highlight. They’re supposed to be woven in like fibers of light, but it gets away from us.

This is my favorite Light Summer hair, before she got over-blonded and over-yellowed.

Going grey

The skin cools with age and it’s expected that the hair cools. Grey feels inherently cool so it’s more difficult to make this transition for the pure warm Seasons of True Spring and True Autumn. It’s easier for the other 10 Seasons, once your mind is in a place where you can accept yourself with gray hair. The pure cool Seasons are already there. Dyed hair may be competing more with the skin than grey would.

The Neutral Seasons have warmth and coolness in the skin. They can wear silver jewelry. They might choose more grey clothes and makeup as hair grays. Gray hair virtually disappears into this head. It just looks like more blonde. They can be in their 60s with still a lot of color left in the hair, because “gray hair” is just white. Light Summer just asks for less and less highlight, and eventually just goes to the salon for a cut.

This is my sister Sonja’s hair, from Sonja Is A Light Summer. She’s 47, with some gray in there. She’ll probably look much like this when she’s 57.

There is nothing that can make it better. It’s fresh, light, and real. There is no tension in the viewer of feeling like they have to react to an exaggerated effect. Where highlights are concerned, no good comes of being an overachiever.

Remember that ANY Season can have ANY hair color. I’ve seen Light Summers with very cool, medium dark, red hair. Almost more of a pinkish brown. Leave that gift alone.

Edit August 11: I was asked to show Sonja’s part. Here it is:

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.

If Dark Autumn announces that they’re going to build a boat in the garage, move the car out. With Autumn’s energy and quiet determination, and Winter’s opulent appearance, these people are predestined to create goals and reach them. The rest of the world knows enough to get out of the way.

Valeria saw herself as a Soft Summer for a long time. A restlessness with that conclusion caused her to visit Maytee. As she says, the experience is “amazing and traumatic…but I could not argue with what I saw in the mirror”. One of the best things about a Sci\ART PCA is that you will SEE your face change with the drapes. EASILY. It is not mystical and does not require an ounce of imagination. In our mirrors, you will see yourself look as bad as possible, and better than you ever have.

In 12 Season Colour Analysis, this person is essentially an Autumn, with a daub of Winter. Autumn’s palette is respected, in that the colours are mostly warm (though foundation is often neutral) and muted down. Unlike True Autumn, these are dark colours. Much darker. The most important thing about these colours is their darkness. Even the light colours are darker than anyone else’s.

I have found this Season hardest to pin down and generalize about. It’s not in the appearance, but in the person. They’re variable in character, always evident in the Neutral Seasons, but they’re elusive. There’s a mystery in the darkness that I don’t perceive in the other Seasons, even Dark Winter.

Sensible and straightforward as all Autumns, but direct in speech, and quick to absorb change with good evidence, they speak honestly and bluntly. What I love most, I believe, is that they are not one bit threatened or defensive about new ideas. The person may demonstrate more of Winter’s reserve, or more of Autumn’s passive and natural way, but there is always an element of fire.

Hair

Dark Autumn can look very Winter. The hair colour is often a most interesting bronzed black, easily just looks like black-brown. It’s the dark colour in this dress. This girl looks great. She combines Winter’s simplicity in the absence of neck and ear jewelry, with a dramatic effect at the wrist. She can balance what would be excessive weight and clutter on someone else. Even the shoes are great, substantial, stirring, and essentially the same as the hair color.

Avoid a cool red highlight or rinse. Though a Neutral Season, with both coolness and warmth in the skin, this is predominantly still warm skin. Auburn if you feel you must have red.

Avoid blonde highlights. They look like you’re frosting your hair with gray. The whole impression should be of luxuriant darkness. Highlights of any sort can break up the full-on, sensational dark force of this look.

Use a laminate to heighten the hot shine.

You’ll say Valeria’s hair looks good. Yes it does, but this woman has extraordinarily good skin. That can make an analysis much more difficult, because like children, it’s very forgiving. But, do the eyebrows seem a bit dark by comparison? Not only is there an imbalance, like something is being forced, but dark eyebrows can look very severe. Severe=aging.

This is my hair color visual for Dark Autumn : a coffee bean. Flip her hair color in your head. Did you feel the pieces click into place? You could even hear it. Could you see the bronze depth emanate even more from within the eye? The synergistic power, where the whole is so much more than the parts, roots you to the spot. Pick the lighter or darker roasts, choose the shade on the bean that matches the intensity of your look, but it’s those rich bronzed browns. Even in the almost-black haired people, there is a bronzed quality to the hair color. Find the colorist who can do that.

The Superlative Dark Autumn

…needs time to get comfortable wearing colours that should strike and excite the senses. The darkness mixed with the heat can feel volcanic. Just as the clear brilliance of Bright Winter’s palette should accelerate the viewer’s heart, so should Dark Autumn’s look evoke the distinct feeling of a controlled furnace.

…Like the sensation of hot sauce in your mouth, this is not a comfortable heat. It’s peppery and strong and undeniable. Valeria’s most telling comment, coming off of a Soft Summer self-image : “I nearly fainted when I saw the turmeric.”

The moment Winter appears in the picture, it tries to take over. A sharp feeling is in the air. In Bright Spring, where a hint of Winter is added to Spring, we see this powerful Winter effect again. Winter’s signal, inside and out, is power. But with Dark Autumn, there’s heat to contend with too. Like temporary containment, the pressure valve won’t hold forever.

…can wear black because they can balance the darkness, but can’t fully balance the coldness. Dark Autumn needs to heat black up. Wear gold or bronze jewelry instead of silver. Add flame colors, hot metallics, rich neutrals (from brown sugar to eggplant), and hot spice colours.

…do texture and weight better than anyone, and not simple tweed or corduroy. Oh, no, we’re talking velvet, leather, suede, metallic. Autumn’s strength and Winter’s wealth.

…can add theater, because it looks like tension and feels like excitement. Winter is never easy, it demands space and attention, just as Winter in personalities is not always easy. Everyone else has to adjust a little.

Dark Autumn’s palette is the feeling of dealing with food that’s almost burnt. Your attention is high, your movements are urgent while you ignore everything else. Red is already here now. Black is almost upon us. Something is about to happen. You feel it happening? You’re reading a bit faster. A reaction is demanded. There are only moments left till Winter’s black coldness descends. The viewer ignores everything (everyone) else. They feel the need to do something.  We need a moment to catch our breath, dab the sweat, and calm down.

Pure Winter classic, gypsy fortune-teller, Aztec priestess, military command, jungle exotic, Middle Eastern bazaar, Spice Island queen, are all so good and so seldom played up enough. These are your best skin, your youngest face, your slimmest body.  So much more than appearance, here we actually react to colour as flavor. Every sense organ seems invoked.

…look 10 years older in white. Every line is deeper and darker. In Summer’s light pastels, their skin looks like cement, and that’s not just me being descriptive. The skin looks like grey, rock-solid stone.

…grey the hair well. It heightens the drama. They look even better in the greys and the cooler choices in their Personal Colour palette.

…strive for a bronze glow in makeup, though not necessarily through use of bronzer. When you know your Season, you know your cosmetic colors. In right makeup, the colors diffuse away into your skin because they are already there. The ultimate in polish and sophistication, perfect balance, this is your best and healthiest (healthy=young) “no makeup” look.

This makeup is so gorgeous, I asked Valeria for the products used:

Maytee matched my foundation (not sure what brand she used but she mixed several for the right shade). Then she applied a sheer brightening powder on my cheekbones and if I’m not mistaken, a brownish/reddish/peach-ish blush, just a touch. On the eyes, she used: all over the lid, Navajo from Bobbi Brown; on the lid, Ash by BB, and in the crease, Hot Stone, a neutral matte brown, by BB. She then lined my eyes with BB’s Espresso eye shadow (especially good liner color on Dark Autumn) and used black mascara. On the lips, she used the Whirl pencil by MAC (its a mauve brown shade the same as my own lip color) and Givenchy Gloss Interdit in Coral Frenzy.

In Valeria’s Words

“My experience with PCA was wonderful. The process itself was great fun. However, anyone going into it with preconceptions: be prepared to have them shattered. Be prepared to trust your analyst, trust their training and years of experience, and be prepared to let go of how you used to see yourself. In this sense, PCA can lead to some profound revelations. For me personally, it was about more than just color and style. PCA gave me the answer I’ve been searching for, and with it, it gave me confidence and brought me to a new level of self awareness. It both empowers and releases. It also inspires.

Seeing yourself the way you were intended to be, being at your best and most beautiful, is a wonderful thing. Everyone should get the chance to experience it. There is nothing like it.”

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?

The yellowing effect of ivory on Summer skin…

The drained, tired skin of an Autumn in soft white…

The disappearing Summer bride in Winter’s aggressive, hard, cold, frosty, sharp white…

Know your perfect white with a Personal Colour Analysis. Achieve your skin tone perfection on this of all days. Your wedding gift to yourself.

Have your Colour Analyst send 3 e-mails.

One to your dress shop, so they can choose the perfect color and style.

One to your makeup artist. If she works with a PCA, there is a cosmetic colour palette and particular radiance in her head instantly.

One to your florist. If he understands PCA, he makes a composition, knowing the flowers to use and not use.

Your jeweler, your hair colorist, everyone needs to know. When the team works together, you become extraordinary.

Are you getting warm? I am.

We look at the colours of satin for the 4 True Seasons. In correct Seasonal Colour Analysis, there are 12 personal palettes. The other 8 are Neutral Seasons, or blends of the 4 Trues.

(I do not own the Sci\ART Bridal Drapes Set of 12.)

Did I say grey when I should have said white? Yup.

Did I say Summer when I should have said Spring? Yes again.

I was trying to be animated, you see…

They integrate Autumn’s open minded acceptance of new personalities and ideas and Summer’s gentle kindness. Autumn’s very natural disposition, completely without airs or pretense, is still here but tempered to lessen the more abrupt honesty. One feels so comfortable in this presence that our own masks and guards fall away. There is no threat, no tension, and no judgement.

For us all, our best appearance happens when our truest inside is projected on the outside. We find a profound peace in that place.  The Soft Autumn’s eyes/skin/hair are of similar colour intensity, which is to say very muted. There are 2 concepts here and we wish to repeat both in personal decoration:

1. The colours of the hair/skin/eyes are themselves very muted and soft.
2. The transitions between the colours are very muted and soft.

Hair color analysis

For both Soft Seasons, the natural hair colour can be a medium gray-brown. These women feel much more alive with hair colour. Done right, it can amplify everything sensual, almost organic, about this palette.

Hair that’s too pale and yellow, the ubiquitous blonde highlight of which there are too many out there, doesn’t even look like their hair. For too many of us, it began as a few highlights, and pretty soon nobody can remember when they weren’t blond.

Too dark is very severe. It competes with the skin, and wins, setting up shadows and aging effects.

They often have a copper subtlety in the hair or freckles in the skin, and someone along the way will have suggested some shade of red. This can be wildy successful, but red is also tough to get perfect from a bottle. It has to be extremely gentle, so the viewer isn’t even sure if it’s there. Full on True Autumn’s molten, burnished heat isn’t here yet. This is the end of September. (See How The 5 Autumns Add Brown To Hair Colour)

Don’t get frustrated with the hair colour, it is the biggest struggle of all. It takes most of us 4 times to get a shade where we go to the colorist and just say “same as last time”. You really do learn interesting things with each hair attempt. This hair (actually the same colour as in the first picture) may be a bit dark and red, but it has found the warm copper in her eyes. Nobody can do metallic color in the eye except Autumn and it is remarkable. You’d want to keep some of that, either in the hair or in clothes.

The color mistakes

1. Black. It is dark, cold, heavy, dense, everything this group is NOT about. Even black mascara looks fake. Their better-than-black is milk chocolate or maybe a bit darker.

2. White. Stark and draining, it adds years. Like black, white is at the extreme end of the contrast scale, in opposition to the basic concepts of this coloring. Their neutral opportunities are enormous, with the coolness and heat both present.  From eggshell and sand, through buff, honey, and caramel, mocha, dove grey, endless choices.

3. Dark lines. Eyeliner, lipliner, eyebrows, any sharp colour transitions. All you see is the dark line. The most dominant colour block will draw the eye. Everything else will recede. Dark lines in makeup, like dark details in clothes, look severe and aging.This Season looks very good in flesh and nude tone lips. On most coloring groups, lips need more definition to add youth on mature faces. Here, softer tones look warm, glowing, and natural even on older women, since that is the basic energy of the group.

4. Avoiding the feminity. Though they certainly look more Autumn, their nature is nurturing. Rather than the soothing feel of Summer, this trait is more about fostering and encouraging the growth and happiness of those they love, very womanly aspects. Their husbands have stopped asking who they’re making asparagus quiche for this week. They know the SPCA staff by first names. Heirloom “it was my grandmother’s” jewelry or floral prints combine the more Autumn personal colour palette with these very loving, deeply female characteristics.

5. Only using metals in jewelry. Antique and vintage jewelry, heirlooms, pearls, hair accessories with flowers or natural beads and stones or scarves are fabulous here. Even textured metal is inherently hard, though it certainly can work in soft gold and copper.

6. Missing out on a gentle bronzer. Their look is not made up. It is natural and real. Bronzer can be so flattering and warming. Much of what’s out there is dark, red, orange, or dull. This should be a light golden tan colour.

Lipstick

You’ll be wanting to know what lip colours the model is wearing. The first picture is Bobbi Brown Rose Brown. The second is Chanel Incognito. You’re not staring at the makeup, right? It is neither stronger or weaker than the face. The skin is calm, even, and real. The harmony between who she is inside, how that is depicted in the color story on the outside, and the all the colors she has added is so perfect that it becomes fascinating. An effort is required to pull your eyes away from hers.

We all have about 4 lipsticks that will look custom-colored for our face – more if you get into subtleties, but most of us would be beyond happy with 4 perfects. A Neutral Season, with both warmth and coolness, can play with this in makeup color (the Colour Analysis cosmetic colours are precisely rendered in the Colours Book, easy to match at the makeup counter). A warm pink is one of Soft Autumn’s choices. A more orange (but not peach, this is an earthy Season) light terracotta, is the other, the pink-orange of a flowerpot in the late afternoon sun. Lips like these cost the industry big coin and a lot of Photoshopping.

Eyeglass Frames

We wondered about eyeglass frames. This is an old pair she sometimes wears.

How about these choices?

These frames repeats the copper-red now in the hair, so effective at intensifying eye colour. There are no hard horizontal lines to diminish a large round eye. There are no hard lines or corners at all.

Great shade of copper. Softened frame shape. A little groovy chic with the upward flare of the corners, a nice soft flowing curved line (the Summer element integrated! coincidence? I think not).  Not heavy at the temples. Unobtrusive but elegant, delicate but strong, an addition to Adriane rather than a fight for attention.

In our model’s own words

Anyone who has experienced a Colour Analysis learns that looking your most beautiful and genuine is not about what you do or don’t spend. It is about what you do or don’t buy.

My friend is a writer and an eloquent communicator. She sent me these thoughts (you can read her comments in full on the Testimonials page):

In a culture eager to financially capitalize on women’s (and increasingly men’s) insecurities, we are constantly vulnerable to manipulation by the clothing and cosmetic industries. Christine’s analysis brings a halt to this grinding exploitation. Equipped with a new way of looking at color; with, in fact, utterly retrained vision, we are able to say “no” to that which does not serve our authentic selves. And when we say “yes,” it is with self-assurance devoid of indecision and guilt.
Christine often mentions how wearing our true colors makes it easier and more relaxing for others to engage with us. There is an ease; a sense of effortlessness; a lack of obtrusive striving for that which does not inherently belong. I think we all want to experience this “naturalness of expression” in our both our professional and personal lives. We’d like to give it and to receive it; we are social animals, after all. Christine offers the gift of this life-changing awareness. It is a shift-of-consciousness that is transforming and freeing, all at once.

Well, in Seasonal Colour Analysis, there’s Soft, True, and Dark.

But Autumn’s blends include Soft Summer and Dark Winter too.

Only 1 True Season, and 4 Neutral Seasons all comprise some Autumn colour influence.

Autumn’s biggest misconception is the copper red hair. Usually, these people have brown hair.

The Autumn=copper association is often extended to include clothing colours, skin undertones, and makeup colours.

In fact, the shade of brown used to warm Autumn colours doesn’t attain copper’s heat till you’re way into the middle of the Autumn action.

Let’s start at True Summer. No orange. No gold. No yellow.  The brown is grey and the grey is blueish.

As Autumn starts phasing in, we move to Soft Summer. A little brown is being added. A neutral brown, not orange yet, not even amber. The blue undertone is taken out. The colours appear to have a faint tan.

Soft Autumn comes along next. We see a soft amber brown. Yellows re-emerge, where True Summer barely had any, and they are golden as an amber-brown patina lays over all the colours of this palette.  This is the beginning of the metallic quality we talk about in the skin and hair of Autumn people. It’s hard to describe. It doesn’t look like a tan, it’s much more in the skin than on it.

Finally, True Autumn. NOW the undercurrent is truly orange. Not before. Brown, remember, is just dark orange. This is an orangey brown. It is in the skin. It is also in the eye colour.

Up to Dark Autumn, a trace of Winter is felt. Winter’s colours are cooler and bring in red, the essential colour of the Winter group. The result is the red-orange undertone that defines the perfect disappearing blush and lipstick on Dark Autumn. Colour Analysis is all about cosmetic colours custom-coloured for your skin.

Since Winter is dark, we must add another Winter effect for Dark Winter : the addition of perceptible black. What orange remains is turning neutral brown again, like it was in Soft Summer, but a darker version caused by the black.

Now, we leave Autumn altogether and it’s True Winter. Orange is gone again.

Watch me do it.

Be careful.

Soft Summer’s hair is almost always too light and too highlighted with a colour that’s too yellow. At first glance, they seem like light people and it looks ok. The Colour Analysis drapes soon show us how aging the light hair is for the skin tone. Once it’s corrected, it is much better.

A Soft Autumn can too easily be put in too red hair. It is overkill every time. Unless Nature gave you red, it is VERY hard to get right from a bottle. Like thinking a bottle can replicate your childhood colour. Won’t happen. This is light tawny hair.

True Autumn in light tawny hair looks F-L-A-T. And instantly 10 years older. They need warmth and rich colour. They do not need highlights, lowlights, or other bizarre f/x. The colour should speak for itself.

Dark Autumn often adds a red rinse. You NEED to know if you’re on the warm or cool side of the Season. If the red is too cool, like red wine, it can be very artificial. Artificial works on the staff of the hair salon, not the clients.

Dark Winter should do what all Winters do. Think twice before lightening hair. They can have a dark force that is to be reckoned with. Breaking it up with  frosted tips, well… I’d rather have the force. The skin-perfecting hair colour is a dark neutral brown, most of the time.

What’s the hair lesson? Nature will never give you hair colour that is your skin’s perfection. They accord automatically. Your natural colour is always your best base colour.