Jocelyn Is A Bright Winter
February 13, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
Jocelyn and I work together. Since we work with animals, all I see her in is surgical scrubs. I knew 4 things before we began:
- I have never seen her in a colour that she doesn’t completely dominate, with the exception of dark charcoal.
- Black (and cool colours in general) clear her skin.
- She can wear light colours as well as dark.
- There is great contrast (very light lights and very dark darks) in her colouring.
I try like h.ll to let the drapes guide the Personal Colour Analysis (PCA), and avoid all foregone conclusions. When I see someone every day, and the effects are this dramatic, I can’t help but have suspicions. What did I suspect?
- Her best colours would be very dark and/or very saturated. (see What Are Clear And Soft Colours? for an explanation of saturation.)
- There is great potential for clarity in her skin. Warm colours make her skin blotchy, heavy, green-yellow, murky, and thick-looking. Softly greyed colours (pastels) give the skin an allover-grey undertone. It’s Winter and Spring that have the clear colours.
- Dark Autumn and Dark Winter have some light colours, but not many. They just look better in darker colours. Joce looks fresh and beautiful in the right light colour.
- We’re probably looking for a Season of contrast, namely a Winter of some sort.
The expression “clears the skin” is confusing. It’s very hard to demonstrate but extremely important in interpreting ultimate skin perfection. You met Joce in the previous article, Clearing Skin With Colour Analysis and can watch this process on video there.
Joce has a strong natural flush in her cheeks. Isn’t “ruddy” a sign of Autumn? I’ve seen in Autumns, Winters, Springs, and Summers. Not useful information. Ignore it. On Joce, the redness in the cheeks blends back softly into her complexion only in Bright Winter’s colour intensity.
The boobytrap of matching brown eyes to brown (Autumn) drapes is waiting in ambush here. Yes, there was a connection between the two. Skin always takes precedence, and Autumn colours are easily Joce’s worst shades. All too easy to put brown eyeshadow on these eyes. Most shades of brown did not help this skin. Why then paint them on her face? True to her personal colour palette, her cosmetic colour was a blackened brown liner, and it meshed perfectly with her face. On a blue-eyed person, we would have used charcoal or deep sapphire.
She doesn’t have dark hair or the cliché “clear eyes”. Her hair is medium brown, but there are no orange tones in it, and very few yellow (she’s growing out some yellow dye at the moment). Have you ever in your life seen eyes like this? I promise you I did not adjust anything in this image other than to raise the exposure and sharpness 2 notches. And this is without mascara!!
As a Bright Winter, Jocelyn is primarily a Winter person, but she has a trace of Spring. When you combine the 2 Seasons of highest colour saturation, the energy of these colours in unwearable by anyone else. They will disappear inside such colour intensity, and therefore appear reduced. Never let your clothing send a message that diminishes you – or at least, don’t put down money for it!
This video shows the final draping process.
If your browser won’t play it here, watch it on YouTube at 12 Blueprints Personal Colour Analysis Bright Winter Final Drapes.
I’ve been asked why she’s wearing so much makeup in the video. For several reasons:
- I was taking photos as well as video and have learned that too little makeup is invisible in photos.
- I don’t try hard to match foundation, others can do that better than I – though you WILL finally know what your undertones are, unknowable without a PCA. I want you to see what your makeup colours look like, as your eye starts to learn this. I apply the makeup colours pretty heavily and I don’t blend. I want you to see how forgiving right makeup is and how it can dramatically heighten the magic in your natural colouring.
- Bright Winter is a Season of all-out glamour, like no other group. Just as they can carry unbelievably shocking colour intensity, so can they wear striking makeup.
Most importantly, I want you to stretch your preconceived limits of what is possible. I want you to start replacing the old pictures of yourself in your head.
How The 5 Autumns Add Brown To Hair Colour
February 3, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
Pardon, but what 5 Autumns?
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.
Can I Borrow My Neighbor Season’s Colours?
January 26, 2010 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
Short answer: you may have to.
So remember, when you get your Personal Colour Analysis, be sure to know if you fall on the cool or warm side of the Season. That means : when we’re finally down to testing between your last 2 Seasons, are we testing your #1 BEST Season against its warmer neighbor, or against the cooler one? Perhaps THE most exciting part of the analysis. Everybody tingles at this point.
In Wrong Colours Away From the Face, I said that I don’t buy into wearing colours that are not in your #1 BEST Season, unless people will only see you sitting at a desk.
To present a unified whole, you can’t have 1 big block that’s way off. The colours want to connect together to create a force, but they can’t if one is flowing against the current.
How you combine the colours of your personal colour palette depends on the energy of your Season. The colours themselves should all work together because they are all the same in 3 respects – how Light/Dark, Warm/Cool, and Clear/Soft they are.
If you’ve been reading here, you already know what I mean by that. For anyone new, let me explain. Any colour is described by where it sits on those 3 scales, its Light/Dark , its Warm/Cool, and its Clear/Soft positions. The colour might be one the blues, reds, purples, etc. in your body, or in the world outside you.
Colour Analysis finds those precise colours in your body and replicates their precise position on those 3 scales. We then give them to you in a so-brilliant Colour Analysis Swatch book. They’re called YOUR colours for 2 reasons : A. They’re the colours to shop for. And B. They literally are YOUR colours, in your own body.
Let’s look at Dark and True Autumn colours. Neighbor seasons. Some people straddle between the 2. But the MOST important aspect of Dark Autumn’s colours is their darkness. True Autumn’s MOST important feature is the warmth. Any 2 neighbor Seasons do NOT share the MOST important dimension in their colours. You screw up the whole accord by throwing in another dimension.
You will see clearly and easily during your Personal Colour Analysis how far behind your perfect season the runner up is, even when you border closely. Some shades may be permissible, but none will be as good as any in the perfect one. So, in our Season example above, the Dark Autumn may look pretty good in True Autumn’s darker shades, because darkness in general is forgiving. It still won’t look like magic.
When the off-colour is worn on the bottom half, away from the face, it STILL disrupts the harmony of the whole body presentation. When the off-colour is way off, the flow of the appearance is distorted in favor of the more dominant colour. That’s why Light people gain 15 lbs on the bottom half in black pants.
Of course, your skin tone perfection will suffer less when the off-colour is far way. Still, the viewer will perceive disagreement.
I know it’s hard to find good colours. Winters can’t find saturated colours. Summers and Lights can’t find professional clothes. I know the fashion industry and cosmetics colour offerings are disorganized and incomplete. They are desperately unevenly weighted. As you learn to excel at colour decisions, you’ll buy your clothes when you find them, rather than by Season. I was looking at Ann Taylor’s website recently. Soft Autumn will do very well. True Summer, head over to Banana Republic. The 3 Winters, wear what you have (unless you need something black or charcoal, always available).
It helps to know whether you’re on the cool on warm side of your Season (your PCA will tell you) so that you know how to err. If you can’t find your perfect red, you’ll know whether to allow cooler or warmer shades. In a perfect world, the stores would be colour-coded, but IRL, their palettes are far more restricted. They might bring in 4 of the same style shirt, but not 8. They do NOT want you knowing anything about what suits you. They want that merchandise out the door, preferably the day it came in. You may have to be close sometimes, but you’ll learn how to do that too. We’ll talk about it a lot when we meet.
It takes months to learn to match colours precisely, even with your Book. Since we ultimately understand colour by visual comparison, not by me or anyone else talking about it, it helps to gather several similarly coloured items in the store and compare those to your Book. You’ll be better able to tell if the match is perfect, and if it isn’t, then how it differs. Is it browner? duller? darker?
It takes a month or 2 to start to enjoy the empowerment when you shop. It gets stronger and stronger as you bypass trends and disregard advice you know to be wrong. And both are everywhere.
I so understand the frustration in the beginning of feeling like nothing is right and wondering when it ever will be. But even at the start, you are better than you used to be. Then, the pieces start coming together, and your good decisions far outweigh the bad. Your eyes will get better and better at recognizing it. That will FEEL like magic.
Activewear Jackets for The Light Spring Woman
January 25, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
Because the Spring Season speaks primarily of movement and animation, you look great in active wear.
As always, staying true to your personal colour palette, I like this Zella jacket at Nordstrom.
Turquoise is certainly among your perfect clothes colours. It’s being marketed as THE colour this Season, but only 3 Seasons can wear a true clear turquoise, and the Light Spring is one of them.
I appreciate the flowing lines in the stitching. In 12 Season Colour Analysis, you are a Neutral Season, blending Spring with a little bit of Summer. Those wavy lines integrate your Summer touch with the flowing water effect, while still being gently zigzagged enough to suggest motion. As a gentle Spring, this gentle zigzag is a perfect mirror to your message in colour.
By comparison, this is not a good choice.
The draping, the batwing sleeves, the heavy ribbing and neck, and the prominent zipper do not express serious commitment to motion. Fabric with a very slight shimmer, like many activewear knits, is better on you. You are not well served by heavy fabrics like velour. Light, soft knits and synthetics are better.
You will express your personality better with some colour transitions. Your Summer trace is monochromatic, but not to this degree. Repeating a colour in the print of a top with a solid bottom will do well. Since you are predominantly Spring, you can certainly mix and match colours fairly freely. The jacket above was made for another Season.
A final great choice, below, the Nike Border Long Sleeve top. The fundamental shape of the Spring Season is the triangle.
The stitching at the armpit to neck conveys the triangle. The asymmetric Nike swoosh, with its lift at the corners, is a great little detail that says movement, and so Spring.
The colour could be yellower, ideally, but if you are on the cooler side of the Season, it may be perfect.
Elisa Is A True Summer
January 7, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 14 Comments
Elisa has always believed herself to be a Spring. Her freckles, warm brown hair, and natural flush in her skin caused her, and others, to conclude that the colours in her design followed Spring’s colour rules. When assessing a colour, be it in you or outside you, we ask the same 3 questions, because any colour has 3 properties.
Spring colours are all:
Lightness or Darkness? > light, or at least never very dark
Warm or Cool? > warmed, and by yellow NOT orange
Clear or Soft? > clear, or highly saturated, NOT dulled
The premise of Seasonal Colour Analysis is that every colour in your natural colour composition answers those 3 questions in the same way. Your swatch book is a group of colours that fit on those scales in those exact same positions too, thereby replicating the colours in your design. That is how the magic happens.
I can see how one might look at the light-medium warmish brown hair and see warmth, light, and clarity.
Her eyes are not warm though. They are a medium-dark blue-grey.
The dark brows could make Winter cross your mind.
But nevermind the hair and eyes. We established long ago that they are not used in defining the Season, they’ll just lead you astray. We look at skin.
Without a proper analysis, you can’t really understand skin. You have to watch how it reacts to colour. Are freckles not a sign of warmth? No! They’re another red herring, kind of like the “clear eyes” concept. You have to look beyond them, at the skin. So we’re back to Plan A, with how did the draping go?
Both Elisa’s skin and her eye patterns performed precisely as True Summer does. The moonlit, luminous translucency that only True Summer does so well was there for sure. The absolute inability to handle the slightest degree of heat, or it’s instant pasty skin, was there. This skin tone seems to look turquoise in turquoise, and melon in melon.
In fact, Elisa is a study in contrasts. She has warm hair, dark eyebrows, deep blue eyes, and freckles (which feel warm). She could be placed in any number of Seasons, but none would feel right. Once we neutralized all the variables, it was clear that she is a True Summer.
Makeup often seemed too conspicuous so became something to avoid. We looked at how to accentuate her features with the same understated elegance that is true of her entire palette. These are Grace Kelly clothes and colours. This is the skin and eye colour that was made for BlueGrey eyeliner (Annabelle makes a perfect (and perfectly inexpensive) pencil by that name). Everyone can wear makeup beautifully, but the fragility of this skin is easily overwhelmed.
Elisa has some natural shadowing around her eyes. It was least pronounced in the True Summer colours, but wasn’t obliterated altogether. That’s called Photoshop. Many women fight that (and many other “imperfections”) with too much concealer, which ends up looking caked and even more obvious. There is a little foundation here, but no concealer. I usually apply concealer or foundation, but seldom both. Those products are overdone, and take a lot of time. I want to show you how to recognize your cosmetic colours.
Cosmetics counters and makeup artists are usually good at matching foundation. If they won’t allow you to take a few samples home to try in daylight, don’t buy the product. I ask women to bring their foundation to their PCA. So far, none have been wearing the right colour but they knew that already.
In your right colours, you will see the area under the eye become as illuminated as possible. Wear a little makeup, but allow your face. Ignore our magazine-obsessed culture that has us trying to delete our individuality.
One of the biggest misconceptions about True Summer’s colours is that they are all dusty lavender and Wedgewood blue, “old” colours. In fact, the most important feature of True Summer colours is NOT their dustiness, or softness, or grayishness, all the same idea. It is the COOLNESS.
These are not at all confined to being light colours, though Summer is thought of as light. Relative to Winter, it is lighter, but they can do surprisingly dark colour.
In this graphic, the high saturation (hi sat) colours are on the left, as you can see. The lo sat colours are only softer BY COMPARISON. They’re the colour of denim and flower petals. The True Summer personal colour palette contains these same beautiful colours, at about 50% saturation or less.
The hi sat shades on the left are pigment-saturated, pigment-soaked, pigment-logged. Winter needs them and usually doesn’t wear them saturated enough, in part because they’re hard to find except in workout clothing. Few women over 25 feel safe buying these colours.
Elisa is married to the most mannerly man you’ll ever meet. Aggression and confrontation are disturbing to this personality. Hurry and pressure flusters them more than most. It is very calming to this character to be able to depend on certain things, especially decency and kindness. Courtesy is the most essential prerequisite of all.
The Right Sweater For Dark Winter Men
January 4, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
Our first job is to define the principles of all Winter dress, since Seasonal Colour Analysis for clothing absolutely applies to men. This way of using colour and style probably extends to the Dark Autumn, who has enough intensity in his personal colour palette and the Winter trace that allows him to wear clothes in a Winter way.
That way is as follows. It is expensive, smooth, poised, and formal. Patterns, and prints are balanced and repeating, not random. This is an image of wealth and luxury, of tailored clothing and timeless design.
One could not necessarily call it reserved, since the colours of Bright Spring are all-out, freewheeling, highly saturated colour. (See What Are Clear And Soft Colours? for the meaning of saturation in colour).
The Dark Winter is certainly reserved, to the point of being serious. This group shares all Winters’ quiet mood, but with dark colours. There is nothing playful or youthful here.
What does the Autumn hint bring in? First, it brings in a little brown, which warms and mutes the colours. They seem less distant and cold. Autumn also allows a bit of texture, without getting into rugged cable knits that are too functional and not polished enough.
Smooth cashmere and wool work very well.
I also like a ribbed sweater, like the one above at Banana Republic, as long as it’s not too chunky. It respects the impression of the Winter style, so repeating and balanced, but introduces a little texture. The rough surface is the bridge to Autumn.
Zip-neck sweaters are great if worn in a formal way. A full-zip feels to me too much like a hoodie, too juvenile or casual, almost sloppy.
Horizontal stripes are too sailboat or rugby shirt. This group expresses “serious” best.
Argyle comes in every colour. Does it work if the colours are Winter? To my eye, the styles don’t mesh. All those zigzags in argyle are too animated, and look hectic on Winter’s quiet energy.
This is a beauty at LLBean, in the colour Mountain Red. It’s shown in the catalog with a white shirt and looks sharp. With a charcoal pant, casual or formal, this guy is getting noticed for all the right reasons.
V-neck, crewneck, and turtleneck all feel good on these men (only my opinion). The choice of shirt is important. The aim is simple drama. An iceberg has simple, quiet drama. A circus does not, it has complicated drama. A day on a sailboat has no drama.
The colours should contrast strongly (very light with very dark). Dark charcoal, eggplant, or ruby, with a crisp white shirt. An icy grey shirt and a midnight blue sweater.
Soft Summer Jewelry 1
December 15, 2009 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
It always begins with the same question. What does this person feel like?
How we decorate what’s INside on the OUTside?
The Soft Summer person
These people are very True Summery in most ways. They are not reclusive, shy, or introverted. They don’t need to be the boss, though they could be good at it. They don’t require center-stage attention. Theirs is a more subtle, serene, quiet energy.
The trace of Autumn puts a different spin on things. The Soft Summer is usually more sporty, with faster and more focused physical energy. They have a cut-to-the-chase practicality that gets the story told or the job done sooner, without True Summer’s inclination to dwell on details.
Petal and pearl necklace. Love it in charcoal too. Love it.
Jewelry for the personality
To speak for them, their jewelry must follow the same tendencies. The pieces are less lacy and feminine than True Summer. There is a feeling of more solidity, but they’re by no means chunky. Autumn and Summer combined can make for a very headstrong individual. The jewelry should not feel retiring or lightweight. These can be among the most persistent, immovable personalities so a persevering quality in the jewelry is appropriate.
The metal is silver, unless they border their warmer neighbor of Soft Autumn quite closely. Theoretically, as a Neutral Season, gold could be worn in small proportions. It would be the deeper, more mellow gold of Autumn, rather than Spring’s very yellow gold that just looks cheap on anyone else.
Good behaviour and personal restraint are the hallmarks of the Summer personality. What better jewel to define that sophitication than pearls? I think they suit the Soft Summer colours even better than the True Summer. The colours of a misty morning, of a foggy harbor, with the light of day coming through…I love the feeling of that with a seashell- coloured pearl. Creamy pearls would even work well, just not too yellow.
Soft Summer’s colour code
Just as clothing colour combinations can venture further from True Summer’s best monochromatic (several shades of the SAME colour) look, so can jewelry. Different colours can be combined, as long as they all remain true to the personal colour swatches in the Colours Book.
Remember that while you may mix different colours from your personal colour palette, such as antique rose and jade green or pearl with orchid, how beautiful would that be, all the colours themselves are of low saturation. The whole look of this season revolves around that concept. We saw in What Are Clear And Soft Colours? that these colours are all closer to grey than in the Clear Colour seasons. Are they dull and drab? No way. They’re just relatively a little grayer. They’re willow, sage, and clover, not grass.
I’m so happy to be doing this season, I get to talk about one of my favorite companies, J.Crew. All the pictures are linked back to their site.
Shadow facet bracelet at J.Crew.
The bracelet above is gold, but there’s not much of it. The colours are of low saturation. This mauve or brown-tinged gray is basically your eye shadow. The weight is heavier but there’s a classic and understated feeling.
I’ve been wanting to put these up. They are so sweet. You’ll find many types of pearls on this site, but these are so pretty.
A dainty but more solid pearl.
The Pearl Twisted Hammock necklace is stunning.
J.Crew doesn’t do a lot of silver in jewelry or I would have posted it. Also, keep watches in mind for all 5 seasons comprising some Autumn, or jewelry that DOES something. Autumn’s song is the “search for the truth and get the job done”. Functional pieces represent the efficiency they exude.
You’ll find more of these pieces. Look for classic with a kick, the summary of the Soft Summer person.
True Summer Jewelry
December 1, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 11 Comments
Presuming that cameos and pearls have been done, though they’d be most appropriate, what does the most feminine season of all wear?
True Summer word pictures
I find True Season personalities more faithful to their Season than are Neutral Season characters, who show far more variability.
True Summer is deeply decent, sensitive, and so civilized that they put the rest of us to shame. For Summer, the word pictures are flowing, the most beautiful blues and roses, pastel, still water, hazy, graceful, precise, detailed, refined, fine, and understated.
Just as Summer’s colours are soft, so is the feeling and reflection of the jewelry. Nothing moves or changes quickly. Matching elements and pieces are in keeping with the monochromatic scheme that suits Summer best.
Multiple different styles : feels too much like a miscellaneous assortment on Summer’s soothing ambiance.
Sparkle, dazzle, and movement : excessive energy variation feels inexpensive and random.
Summer is quiet, focused, and particular. The message on their answering machine is slowly and clearly enunciated. Ask for directions, and you will be awhile listening, but you’ll get there on the first try. Ask a Spring to meet you at a certain time and you’ll be lucky to see each other the same day.
Big, heavy, chunky pieces : no (proportionate to the person wearing them) . The size of Summer’s jewelry is small. It does not insist on the spotlight. The size is intended to convey an uncommon jewel of extreme value.
Metals
The metal is certainly silver, though you could veer towards the warmer white gold if you approach the warmer Soft Summer (like Jennifer Aniston), or rose gold if your 12 Season colour analysis showed your skin tone to drift the other way, towards Light Summer (Princess Diana gave that impression). If you have a Wintery air, you can harden the metal to platinum.
Sapphire
Stones from your personal colour palette always work. Sapphire in pink or blue are perhaps the best. This brooch was custom-created, but it perfectly represents the rarity, the investment piece (as Searcy said) quality of this Season.
Diamond, fine cut
If you once thought yourself a Winter and live in the True Summer’s darker realm, as do many Summers that I see, you can integrate a Winter element. Jaclyn Smith and Farrah Fawcett gave that impression. Both dramatically weakened their impact when they chose yellow in their hair over dark ash brown and ash brown, respectively. Use diamond, but choose one that is more delicately cut. You can also use blue sapphire with diamond, but choose a piece that is exquisite and detailed, rather than heavy or bold. Summer is not an attention-seeking presence.
Tourmaline
Tourmaline is not a single mineral, but a group with similar properties. There are many perfect colour options among these stones.
For green-eyed summers, there are some uncommon options among these stones. Watermelon Tourmaline is a rare and beautiful gem.
Rose Quartz
For the lighter women in this group, rose quartz is very beautiful. It is perfect in its soft lustre and very compatible with your colour palette.
Look at the purple amethyst while you’re there.
Basics
What if you shop at Sears? Circular silver hoops are a staple. Where the classic shape of the oval defined Winter’s Jewelry, Summer’s circle is associated with childhood and grace.
These hoops are silver. I like the wavy lines. They feel flowing and smooth, but have more substance if you’d like something less delicate. Lacy filigree fulfills the criteria for Summer’s jewelry but as Searcy points out, it doesn’t always look expensive.
Opal
Opal, of course, must belong in this group, as do turquoise and aquamarine. The Shades Of Blue wire necklace feels right to me. These are made upon request by the artist, Janine Antulov. Follow the link to read her description of the creation of this piece.
It doesn’t have to feel like ultraconservative Grace-Kelly jewelry. The rules are guidelines, intended for you to add your own spin. That’s how we speak for ourselves subconsciously. Design something unique that resonates most strongly with your True Summer colouring and personality.
The Mystery of Brown
November 28, 2009 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
This article is the second of 3 connected posts. The first one was What Are Clear and Soft Colours?
There, we talked about muted colours belonging to Autumn and Summer. They’re lower intensity, duller, dusty, either grayish or browned. Summer has some lighter, softer grey browns, often with a blue or mauve tone. Autumn’s colours are darker and more golden-brown.
Spring and Autumn Browns
But Spring has true brown colours too, just like Autumn. When you shop for clothes or makeup, how do you pick Spring’s camel coat from Autumn’s?
Left, Spring. On the right, Autumn.
These colours are not rendered precisely. If you own a Colours Book for True Spring or True Autumn, you may notice that. It doesn’t matter. This illustrates the point well enough.
A color like camel can be very soft, or low saturation, or it can be very bright, or high saturation. It depends on how much gray is in the mix. Look at the 2 camel browns in the middle row. The Autumn one appears more golden, more dark, and more dull and murky.
The Spring brown FEELS closer to you because of it lightness. It almost feels more transparent, though transparency is not one of the ways in which we define colour.
Undertones
The difference between the spring colors and the autumn colors is this:
The springs have a yellow undertone, while the autumns have a gold undertone.
All of the spring colors have yellow added to them, and all of the autumn colors have gold added to them. So, the difference is between yellow and gold. Gold is a deeper and darker shade of yellow.
Spring colors feel light and bright. Autumn colors feel deeper, richer, darker, lower in saturation.
Autumn browns are of lower saturation than Spring because there is more grey in the mix. If they were musical notes, Autumn would resonate far more deeply. The register feels lower. Autumn’s colours are more golden, but a golden color has more gray in it than a yellow based color. Gold is a darker version of yellow AND it is of lower saturation, hence its place among the Autumn colours.
The color brown is actually orange that has been darkened. A dark orange is a brown.
Shopping with knowledge
When we get to 12 tones, vs 4 Season Color Analysis, the differences are slight, but do make a huge difference in the final result, and they are harmonious with each other. The key to having your entire wardrobe work as one, within itself and with you, is for every item to follow YOUR inborn synchrony. It’s important to match the colours as closely as possible to evoke the right feeling. For those of you who have been draped, you saw that your runner-up Season was not even remotely close to your best.
Below is an example of how to apply this information. It is easier with clothing than cosmetic colours. This is a Laura Mercier eyeshadow at Sephora. One of my many reasons for disliking eyeshadow palettes is that they make no sense together. And don’t get me started on lip palettes, which I have even less good feelings about.
Besides a Bright Spring, who would use everything here? That group might be 15% of the population.
Anyhow, looking only at the brown eyeshadow quad, do you notice that it is not gold or orange? The colours feel bright, lit with a pale yellow light. The musical note would be high and clear. These may be browns but they are not “earthy”, which gives a much heavier feeling.
The no-fail guide
But you know, with your Colours Book, you don’t really have to worry. You might think that the camels and honeys and light browns are quite similar between Seasons. When you actually look at the swatches in the Books, they’re obviously different. Your concern is not another Season’s colours. Always match YOUR personal colour palette as closely as possible and you will succeed. This is a visual judgment, not a verbal one. Colour is always best understood when compared to another colour.
Don’t try to shop from memory. Your success rate will drop to 50%. You won’t remember as well as you think you will. Always, always shop with your Book so you can meet my goal 
– which is to never, ever have you buy the wrong thing again.
And that should be done in natural daylight. Take the article up to a window to check the color, or be sure to ask the sales clerk if it can be exchanged if the color is off in natural light. Stores usually use the cheapest lighting possible, which is the worst for viewing true color.
I scribble the product on a piece of white paper because the swatches are painted on white cotton canvas. The sales assistant is standing there watching and possibly feeling quite irritated, but at least it’s not unsanitary. Is this a woman thing? Would a man recognize an easy and successful sale?
What are Clear and Soft Colours?
November 26, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 5 Comments
Let’s say that every colour begins as grey. Drop by drop, you add a colour pigment. As you increase the amount of pigment, so do you increase the “saturation”. The colour is becoming more clear and intense. Finally, there is no grey left and what you have is a pure colour.
Understanding saturation in 12 Season Colour Analysis is key to using your colour analysis swatches correctly for selecting clothes AND makeup.
Colour Saturation
This might look like grey>dusty rose> watermelon> fuchsia. You see how the grey is being subtracted? We began with a soft, muted, dusty colour of low saturation and ended with a more pure, vivid, brilliant colour of high saturation. Another word for saturation is chroma.
A clear colour is pure. It is very far from grey. It is closer to full saturation.
Here is another comparison chart. The colours on the right are not becoming darker, or warmer, or cooler. They’re just clearer or brighter, relative to grey.
Playing with colour parameters
You could darken a colour without removing the gray : grey > heather mist > lilac > lavender > mauve. But now, you’re playing with a different aspect of colour, namely the lightness/darkness. The saturation is not changing so much. These are all soft, muted colours.
You could equally change 2 parameters of colour at once : Wedgewood blue>sky blue>sapphire. We are increasing darkness and increasing saturation at once.
Colour has a third parameter, that being warm/cool. Personal Colour Analysis is determing exactly where your colouring stands in terms of all 3 criteria.
True and Neutral Season colour saturation
Who needs to know? Pretty well everybody, actually. The Summer and Autumn seasons wear absolutely muted colours. Though Autumn’s are more golden-brown and Summer’s are more grey, both are duller than the truly pure Winter and Spring shades.
The True Seasons are absolutes insofar as the colour clarity or softness. Either the colours are clear or they’re not. For the 75% of you who are a Season blend, or a Neutral Season, your colours are softened or muted to a degree. The PCA tells you how much.
In fact, the True Seasons are absolute with respect to all 3 parameters of colour – warm vs. cool and light vs. dark, as well as bright/soft. Therein lies the problem with 4 Season Colour Analysis.
The Neutral Seasons are born with a personal colour palette that is warm/cool/light/dark/bright soft to some degree. It is in the particular combination of the degrees that you arrive at the 8 Neutral groups.
The saturation of grey
Can grey itself be more or less clear?It sure seems crisper and sharper in the Winter greys than in softer Summer greys.
Winter’s grey is pure. That means that it is made of black and white. That’s it.
Summer’s greys have blue in them. Spring’s have yellow, and Autumn’s have brown.
Yellow?
How about a pure vs. muted yellow? Daffodil vs. butterscotch.
Brown
Brown is a little complicated. Brown is a dark orange, but it’s also an important characteristic of the entire Autumn group. It is most certainly NOT a characteristic of the other Seasons, or at least, it takes a much different form.
It’s incredibly important to get it right because it is such a wardrobe neutral and cosmetic colour staple. The Mystery Of Brown is the topic of the next article.
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