Who’s Right?

Are there 12? 16? 44? Google? The ultimate system is the one that places each person in their own Season, since the variations are infinite. For me, a PCA system should be widely available, offer reproducible results (meaning 2 analysts would come up with near-identical colours for the client, regardless of the heading they’re given), with swatches that the woman understands visually and rationally so she can see and think her way to buying the best items.

I like having clear-cut divisions in the colour dimensions between each group, which is do-able when the number of groups is lower. The span will include people who seem to look very different in each group, but every colour will be right for every member of the respective groups. The congruity between the colours in the person and what they wear is measured to be very high as long as the drape and swatch colours are scientifically consistent – because the genetics of human skin pigmentation is quite consistent. Could it be whittled down more? Sure. Much as you want.

Even already at 12 Seasons, the colours can be supremely hard to tell apart between related Seasons – at least, they are for me, appreciating that I am neither authority nor expert and never will be. I am a student trying to understand something complex, nothing more. Many have more sensitive colour vision than I have. How do people like me tell each swatch apart when the number of groups gets even higher than 12? I don’t. I can’t. What happens is that colours get shared between groups, or that’s what my eyes register. So in a 28 Season system, a “darker Soft Summer”, like Katie Holmes, would presumably move a bit into Winter territory or borrow a few real Winter colours, since her colouring gives the impression of blurring the Summer/Winter line a bit.

Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn’t – and that’s if a shopper can tell the difference between her Season, her Season with a touch of Winter, or her Season actually wearing Winter. Caution is needed. A person of Soft Summer colouring would look overwhelmed by her clothes or tired in the saturation of Winter, either grays or colours, as Katie can in too dark hair and makeup. So it’s the job of the analyst and the analysis system to get clients crystal clear on which colours to wear or avoid.

High colour saturation. Looks great, I think.

Katie Holmes Pictures

We know right away the photo below is more real. Her essential dustiness feels right. They had to up-colour her eyes for the picture above to look balanced. Works in the digital world, not the real one.

Katie Holmes Pictures

And then there’s being clear on which colour goes with which Season. This is muted to be Winter’s green, probably through sheerness and texture of fabric, though the black added to the green is Winterish – makes it an interesting choice for a Summer woman with more than usual darkness, but awfully hard to pin down Season. There’s too much crossover. She balances it pretty well, though her eyes are fading a bit. Lighter eyeliner and more lip colour could help.

Katie Holmes Pictures

I don’t disagree that there are darkness/heat/saturation ranges in each type of colouring group. Of course there are. With fewer Seasons (and carefully calibrated palettes), no colour is a mistake. With movement between Seasons, some could be. A very astute and colour-perceptive Soft Summer knew that even within her highly accurate palette in the photo below (from True Colour Australia), some colours were better on her. She used paint chips (Pittsburgh Paints) to further subdivide her palette to create her very own colour constellation. (with big thanks to Kathryn for permission to use the photo)

How many Seasons a PCA system has would have no influence over my choice as a client. Really don’t care. I put that on the “Paying Attention To The Wrong Things” bus. What would matter to me is:

1. When the analysis is done, what do I know, what do I have, and how successfully can I use it? First, how accurately prepared is my shopping palette – the reverse of that being, how likely am I to make shopping mistakes?

2. What knowledge about my colouring did the analyst share and teach and demonstrate? Doesn’t matter so much if she can tell the difference, though I sure hope she could…but can I tell the difference at least a little, or do I know for sure why she chose what she did? Otherwise, I’ll be haunted by uncertainty forever more.

No analyst, from any system, wants women saying “I was typed an Autumn twice, a Winter once, an Autumn flowing Summer…” You know the rest. That should never happen again.

The analysis process and the colours of the drapes and palettes need to be standardized and correct, every woman, every analysis. If

one analyst is using full spectrum lights in a neutral gray room,

one is using sunlight in a greeny tan hotel room,

one doesn’t mind if you wear makeup,

one is swirling drapes around in a busy hair salon and takes 20 minutes to pronounce a Season,

one has an unlimited number of drapes,

one has 4 sets of drapes that she mix-and-matches,

is it even remotely possible that women will understand their colouring and be given the same palettes to shop with? As long as the presence of one colour changes the way surrounding colours appear, and it does, then you have to be careful where and how you do this or have super-calibrated eyeballs. Not saying you must have those lights and the grey room. In one of my travel locations, I use overcast-day lighting. It has no colour effect on the person’s face and it works really well. Any non-neutrally coloured items in the room are covered with gray dropcloths.

We want emp. Hold on. Where do I get off presuming to speak for the group? Never would I do that. I’m the late arrival still getting caught up. Still, an outsider looking in might see a dedicated and creative assembly who have more in common than not, and also maybe a few holes, the patching of which might move the entire profession forwards. Dell, HP, and Sun don’t have to merge but they do have to follow similar rules about components and conditions to get computers to work as consumers expect. And then, everybody owns a computer, everybody knows their best colours. Fragmented as we are, mass appeal is unlikely. Not enough mass faith.

I dream of an empowered woman saying “I was analyzed by Light Interior Colours. My main colour family is Golden Autumn Light but my colouring found better agreement when a bit of Dark Pewter Light was added in. I get that Soft Copper Light colours look too pasty and bland, even though Mom was always stuffing them through dressing room doors. I took her with me so she could see this for herself.”

And her colleague responding, “That dark chestnut hair you have now took 10 years off you. I’m proud of you for having the stamina to follow through. It’s hard at first, I know. I saw Joan at Skylight Colours 10 years ago. They call my colouring Dark Chocolate Winter. Wow, I love your swatch book, the vinyl is a good idea. Look at that, you got 82 colours and I got 42, and they seem close but they’re not.  I hear you about the Mom thing. Mine, even at 50, she could wear jeans with rhinestone studs on the back pockets. She was always putting me in neon colours. Shopping for summer clothes was the absolute worst. I dreaded it for years. Loved Back to School though. I finally get it.”

My other issue is one of taste, where right and wrong don’t exist. I have to assume that all analysts look for the same changes in the face, but some may prioritize differently because of their training (which I don’t understand, jaundiced and shadowed never look good, do they?, guess I need to take their training) and some may just plain think certain things look good that I wouldn’t. The photos that many analysis systems suggest are attractive are those where I see these women almost at their worst. My eye doesn’t see a blonde Victoria Beckham as the most beautiful the woman could be. To look at, all I feel is uncomfortable and wondering what she spends on this. And these are retouched magazine photos! How do real women stand a chance?

Victoria Beckham Pictures
Think about this: Which Victoria gives you get a feeling of oneness?

David Beckham and Victoria Beckham Pictures
If you say “Wait a minute, I think she’s an awesome blonde. It’s fun to change things up.”, that’s quite fine.  Many analysts would work with you to enjoy hair and cosmetic colours that are distant from your inborn ones. Totally OK.

Me when I still believed that hair should be lightened as we age and that blonde flatters everyone:

A later me, hopefully with hair that looks more fluent and flattering with my truths. Not my best, but it feels closer to real&right.

Ask yourself: Which woman is closer to her center?

I believe that finding and holding one’s center is an essential practice when we’re tempted by wrong destinations and straying feels so easy. With a solid center, our roots might feel a little tug when the wind blows, but we won’t keep changing our position. We can sense that grounding in others, and they in us, based largely in how we look.

As you know from my book, or maybe from looking at your friends, when we look processed to a place too far from how we were meant to look or could possibly look naturally, I don’t see or feel beauty. That’s a woman who has taken her own melody so far out of tune that the parts don’t fit together anymore. What feels good and strong to look at and be around is unity.

If you didn’t read the quote in the lower L of the middle Katie photo, be sure to do so.

Related posts:

1. Turquoise For 12 Seasons
2. A Personal Shopper for the 12 Seasons
3. Rimmel Lip Gloss for 12 Seasons

So Bright Spring. Here we go. This Season…this ode to the magnificence of colour so beautiful, a heart aches.

The knockout that is Bright Spring, this woman often looks formal and dark. Once she recognizes you, her smile lights her face and she exudes warmth and charm. She looks much more complicated than she is. You expect her to stand on ceremony and convention but not at all. Her personality is quite informal. The simpler things in life make her truly happy and she knows how to pause and recognize them.

In 12 Season personal colour analysis, the Bright Spring is the person whose natural colouring is based in Spring’s spunky, sunny colours. Winter added a bit of its blue and red, but her inborn colours are not nearly as dark and detached as you guessed.

Like the fox, the seahorse, and the swallow, she’s busy when she’s standing still. She is sharp, delicate, and quite sweet, like spearmint. The yellows, oranges, and browns in her eyes (and Bright Winter’s) are the glowing, pure, peachy red-browns of the animal below, which we’ll see later in dark carrot pants and clear topaz stones. There is no sense of weight, darkness, or toughness. Quite the opposite, she reminds us that the most generously coloured life forms and ecosystems are the most fragile.

Photo: dyet

Thanks to Heidi for helping set the stage for us. It looks like Winter but it so is not. It’s young, modern, energized, over the top, waiting to dance, exaggerated, and it never stops moving.
 

If you live in the US, access this version.

Bright Spring Colour  Equations

In the book Return to Your Natural Colours that you can see pictured in the right column above Recent Posts, a chapter is devoted to each Season’s persona, natural setting, relationship with the other Seasons, best styles, textiles, cosmetics, hair colour, and jewelry. There is also a section called Colour Equations (CE), a conceptual bridge between the Colour Book of swatches that you take to the store and how to translate into colour combinations. The CEs are helped by some illustrating.

Cheat Black In

No point pretending it won’t happen. And why not, but go easy. This isn’t a green light…and don’t accelerate for the yellow, it’s about to turn red.

Use the smallest real estate possible for the black and not right under the chin. Open necks are better. Just let black bring the picture into focus.

Break it up with a lively print.

Add animation as shine, details, and accessories.

Give the eye distractions. Use pure, juicy, colour so delicious that it can’t get bogged down in the black and keeps moving along.

If there’s black  in the top, consider not wearing it in the bottom too – as the triangles top with the light pants. At its best, this look isn’t overall dark. Still, black and beige just can’t pick up any speed and on this woman. Compared to her, the clothes seem to be moving in reverse. The look is not creamy or gradual, because the woman never is.

Few Bright Springs probably guessed their Season right. They’ve lived as Winters for years, or some kind of Summer. Darker outfits (blue purse outfit on R) can look quite fine but serious and Wintery, where light is being pulled in. Take the same top and add light in everything else, white pants, yellow shoes, transparency in earrings instead of density – I think it’s better. Spring emits light.

The two models lower L – the  blonde girl (perhaps a Light Spring) shows a dull way to wear black. It’s trying to own her. We lose interest in the girl and seem consumed with negotiating the black block. The woman to the R, very possibly a Bright Spring, wears similar colours in clothes with less weight and more movement. Bright Spring is not a heavy look, it’s like aluminum foil.

Like her Dark Autumn look-alike, Bright Spring is much better in black and cream (DA’s being a far darker browner cream) than in B&W.

If you wear black, choose warmth in your other colours and  accessories. Silver looks more Winter and a little dry.

Green dress/yellow purse in the center – this print is quite random for a Winter person. This could feel unbalanced or zingy on some Bright Winters, and just perfect for the show biz energy of others.

Darks with darks can look too dark. Build an office look with greys. Add interest and entertainment, like the pink purse at the top.

Even Grey Should Be Fun
 

Light and energy must come out of it. Vivacity is always present in the face, the eyes, and the movements. They are quick and neat.

Textures and edges are smooth and shiny because the person is.   The control of their Winter side won’t let them appear shaggy, haphazard, or erratic. They do look unpredictable and spontaneous. The song “Shiny Happy People” was inspired by Bright Spring. The cardi at top L is Lurex and you can still add colour and fun with the beads.

Every woman works out her best use of contrast on her own, it seems. A general rule for this group is to keep it high and clean. Outfits in various versions of the same colour don’t usually make sense (unless contrast is very high and/or edges very sharp), meaning distance between colour types and darkness levels is quite high. If she is older, the coolest looking lady at church with her white hair, dark brows, and turquoise eyes, she’ll bring these closer together to repeat what she looks like.

There is no true red. Here, we have clearest orange, many pure lipstick pinks, fuchsia pinks, and purple pinks. Red only appears in the Winters but you can cheat that in too. That red pants outfit, lower L – cover the silver watch and look at it. Then cover the gold watch. Isn’t that intriguing, that shift in what the eye notices?

Notice that the beiges are very very pale light, barely yellowed, not earthy browned. Rather like ‘icy beiges’.

A full grey dress (middle top) needs to be jazzed up with more colour. Sunglasses like those are small but they’ll get noticed and will hold the viewer’s gaze and attention.

Gold is good. Not too hot (yellow), very shiny.

If you look inside your eyes, many will see those dark carrot pants. So will many Bright Winters.

At the center of the lower band, see the girl in the grey blazer, two-tone shoe? Let your eye travel from the earrings to her face and across to the tank top. See all the repeats?

Watermelon and moon slices, outfit R side : On a person who looks polished and streamlined (your weight has nothing to do with it), pick jeans that are the same. Next to you, faded can look like a rag. Too dark is better than dusty, wrinkled, or patchy. Keep them ultra smooth and classy. And if you want to wear leopard stilettos (or flats), please don’t let me get in your way. It looks better than most other things.

Detail + Innovation + Restraint = Originality (Sp) +  Discipline (W)
 

As you overview the collection, can you feel Winter’s presence? It causes Bright Spring to have a much tighter way of moving the body than the relaxed and unconfined True Spring.

Mixing silver, gold, and other shiny metals is fine.

If you wear black, taupe, and beige, make the print electrified and the cut, cough, distracting, as the dress in the top R.

Black and white have tipped over to Bright Winter, perhaps more so in the colorblock print at lower R, regardless of how hot the other colours are. Try to avoid pure black and white together. If you wear one, don’t wear the other. B&W only really looks good on True and Bright Winter. Even the Dark Winter could think twice unless she is very cool in her colouring.

Pure stark white pants are one of those items most of us must think about carefully. To me, they look right on the True Winter, Bright Winter, Bright Spring, and that’s about it. Take pictures of yourself and look at them yourself. You can see oh, so right and oh, so wrong within seconds. Light shoes are pretty good despite having dark hair if contrasting with the clothes. Not white pants and white shoes.

Don’t get too matchy. You can be as Classic-symmetric or  Gamine-irregular as you body’s lines dictate, but keep the humour good, free-spirited,  and lighthearted. Even at a meeting, as outfit L side, keep shine and design interest in a grey jacket, wear a pink but simple watch, add dangle and sparkle in the earring.

Bright Spring = Lighting the Darkness

 
The icy blues and greens dress at top R – yes, it could be sunnier. Maybe this is cheating white. Wear pale gold earrings so as not to cool it further with silver. It could be more contrasting but that bit of black looks more at home on Bright Spring than anyone else. The print could be less watercoloured. Whatever. The dress is beautiful. Imagine seeing that woman on the dance floor. This is heart-stopping beauty that no other natural colouring could wear so well. Don’t take my suggestions too literally. They can’t apply equally to thousands of women. Make it work for you. The dress is also an example of high saturation light colours (Spring), without being so close to white as to be icy (Winter). We often hear “high saturation” and our imagination shoots right up to dark sapphire. High sat means not softened with gray.

Our red is a wardrobe neutral too, more out there than taupe but equally versatile. For the three Springs, traditional neutrals (grey, beige, taupe) can be too monotonous, like a dial tone voiced over a wind chime or a water cascade. No  match found. Wear your colours a lot.

Consider making the clothing coloured and the accessories grey/beige/taupe.

Details are good. Orange starfish (with diamonds), not orange balls. A shiny cap on a toe. A star shower, not a single star.

Could Miu Miu be the designer?  Something about this colouring is so very young that anything remotely kiddish accentuates  a feature that already comes across very strong and you might not want at the office. I’d leave ribbons, little animals, peace signs, and hearts for after work or to the Seasons who could use some de-formalizing, especially if they work with the public. On any Bright Sring, the Winter aspect lends a seriousness and maturity that may not suit very young additions perfectly, but they wouldn’t be as out of place as on Dark Winter.

Springs have known all along that life really is this much fun.

Related posts:

1. Light And True Spring: Neutral Colours At The Office
2. The Consistent Bright Spring Landscape
3. Best Makeup Colours : Bright Winter

In Part 1, we talked about who the Romantic woman is inside. It is that essence that we want to project as faithfully as possible because therein lies true beauty. We met Roseanna, our very beautiful model, in the previous article, with sincere thanks to Maytee Garza for the Sci\ART colour analysis.

In trying to get a sense of the body to choose clothes for, because Dolly Parton was too extreme, I thought of Linda Ronstadt as an example of this very sensuous hourglass figure. She always seemed lush on film, especially as her career and body matured. But I was in error. Look at this fantastic collage Paisley made:

When I opened this, suddenly all I could see was Yang straightness and angularity except for the huge eyes (and she’s 5’2″), like a little spider. I so didn’t get this before. This combination of extreme Yin (huge eyes, small body size) and Yang describes a Gamine. Smart women whose understanding of body type are light years beyond mine suggest that Linda is a Soft Gamine – so a Gamine first, with a trace of Romantic. Happy to hear I got the R part right.

When Kibbe said hourglass, he meant hourglass. He meant tip-to-toe luscious. Carrie suggested Christina Hendricks, no doubt a perfect choice. I can see that Roseanna is closer to Christina, with fuller lips that balance the size of her eyes better, where Linda’s mouth is smaller. She gives a more womanly impression than Linda’s ethereal, waif-like proportions.

Christina Hendricks Pictures

Suddenly from these photos, who these women are inside comes clearer. Colour and Kibbe are the same. It’s all in the comparisons. What you can’t see about a garment, a swatch, a lipstick, or a body’s lines can be sweet-talked into revealing its truths by placing it besides something else, anything else. The closer in colour or line the two things are, the more their particular dialects are divulged. It works both ways. Seeing beauty as how close you can line up to the 19 year old blonde model seems to really just emphasize the differences. What’s the point in being her? That’s cookie cutter stuff. You are who the world wants to see.

Getting carried away again. Let’s look at some clothes. Costume museums would have many of these outfits, the teal suit on the stand in Poly 4 being an stiffer exaggeration. Frothy fabrics, even florals, felt out of place, better placed in Theatrical Romantic.

Here is Poly 3:

- Framing the face matters greatly when a choice is being made among details, but the hourglass is essential. Simpler necklines like the grey cardi-T top need a necklace or a hat or some accent around the face.

- Flowing means not stiff, tight, clingy, or straight – because one could think of curve emphasis as tight but this Yinnest of people is indirect so I avoided anything that felt remotely overtly revealing or even provocative. Perhaps the grey cardi-T needs more draping or something worn over it.

Poly 4: 

- These clothes remind me of the power that comes from suggestion, like a hypnosis rather than grabbing. An old-fashioned attraction rather than the modern version of seduction, the line between come-hither sparkle and the modern version, glitter, needed to be addressed. When I looked for R clothes, I held a face and body without a single masculine element. TR is similar, only more pointed, and glitter works better there, I felt. TR feels also a little more girly, girl being more Yang than woman (who is R) in that way of tomboy and still undefined sexuality (maybe why ruffles seem better there too). Could you agree? Glitter feels Yang to me and belongs with the Flamboyants and Dramatics.

- Patterns appeared to distract, distort, or just get in the way of a bone structure as delicate as Roseanna’s. The 3 colours at a time Colour Equation (this comes from the blue book, RTY Natural Colours, just in the right column on this page) depends on the woman and the print. If one of the colours is from the hair, the eyes, a neutral colour, or a colour elsewhere in the outfit, any of those would reduce the colour busy-ness and perhaps allow the majesty of this face and body to take center stage where they belong.

- Waist definition means a physical tie or belt. Using a print to create an hourglass (like the long dress in Poly 5 below) or just having some ruching bunch up at the side waist seam isn’t enough unless there’s an actual waistband. An interesting thing I learned from Susan is that a horizontal colour block at the waistline can exaggerate a waist. The swirling antique skirt at lower left Poly 4 is an attempt, with a cardi to the left of it (not TA colours) to show where I was going. I wondered if the sweater floating around, with the waist definition from the tank, could look suitably allusive to the hourglass , but maybe it looks sloppy. He said short/tight/clingy so I guess that’s my answer.

- The purple dress, how I love bronzed purple on Autumns, has the curved neck, the hourglass, and the flow without flop in the skirt that allows the curves of hip and bust. I had some Oscar de la Renta feelings but he can be too light and airy. This is looking more John Galliano for the simple abandon to ultimate curves.

And Poly 5:

Please help me with those dresses 1 to 5.

- does off the shoulder work, as 5?

- must a skirt be swirly as 4, so is the skirt of 5 too straight?

- what about the V-neck on 3? are rounded necklines much better than V?

- does 2 need more draping?

- is 1 too busy? at some point, all those swirls in the skirt form a multitude of vertical lines that gives a Grecian column effect? would you agree or no?

- the brown skirt below, is it too flat at the waist and too floppy in how it falls? I haven’t quite understood the line between Skater Pouf and droopy looking without some gathering at the waist.

Hiding this body under a trench felt very Mata Hari in a good way, a draping classic camel. The power of suggestion is who this woman portrays.

Angie

I told you about Angie, my beyond wonderful facialist. I feel she’s a Romantic. Here is her face. (She is about 5’4″ or a bit taller.)

As you see, Angie is so beautiful, it’s almost distracting. Our conversations are more productive because I’m lying down with my eyes closed. She wears multi-stranded short necklaces with huge pearls all swirled around each other and looks fabulous. Her saturated darkness brings much intensity to her very curvy body, like a union of opposites. In our existence, there really is no right and wrong, no good or bad, no beautiful or ugly. Everything flows into, through, and out of everything else. Though we hold beliefs (very limiting beliefs) about these based in many life experiences, we are equally Yin and Yang. Conceptually, Angie seems to me that individual that closes the circle between the Yang Dramatic and Yin Romantic positions at the far ends of the Kibbe scale.  That her many gifts would be placed in a body that resides at one extremity of colour and the opposite pole of line feels somehow rational or obvious.

As Susan showed us (on facebook), women of dark colouring can seem more dramatic than they are. They still look better if they dress in line for their body type. The drama of their colouring is expressed simply by wearing the palette, or Season, that holds their natural colours. This would feel very complete to be and to look at.

In the last two years, as we took the Colour Ride together, we learned this: It takes scrutiny that gets uncomfortably close to home. It takes many photos, conversations, and walking on shaky ground. It means taking the lid off your pot and examining what you most want to avoid, the beliefs you have about what looks good and looks bad and the value you’ve attached to these. Your hot spots and trigger points will try to stuff the lid back on. Talk yourself out of that or you’ll still be in the role of victim, a weak position that doesn’t tell the truth about the strength you know you have, the strength it took just to ask the “Who Am I?” questions.

I have said and strongly believe that we are Beings of Light. I  mean that as much literally as figuratively. See yourself that way. Keep moving towards the hottest, most intense part of your  light, even when the waters feel roughest. Don’t let yourself turn back on what you started. Take the time to be grateful for the clarity you will find at more levels of you than you ever expected. Notice that your pain, physical and psychological, has lessened. When you love your so-called good equally with your so-called bad without conditions on that love, you find the confidence to just love you.

Related posts:

1. The Romantic True Autumn Part 1
2. The Emmas Are True Springs Part 1
3. The Emmas Are True Springs Part 2

The best part of this one was reading his description of the person. I have the world’s most wonderful facialist, say Angie. We do Guided Facials (my term). I see her often, so incredibly cognitive is she of what I need to hear and practice to keep ascending. She is not telepathic. What she hears for me from her own voices aren’t in my head to begin with. As Mr. Kibbe says about Romantics, she has an ability to see my higher self and show me very clearly and practically what to strengthen and how to release to attain the next height. It’s as amazing as it sounds. I read the words describing this type several times, so accurate were they, like I couldn’t believe the print was on the page and I wasn’t placing the words there as I read. She is a Winter, probably True. Not floaty, ethereal, or dreamy. She’s quite philosophical, fairly blunt, and not a bit sweet.

Like the situations in life that you can’t think your way through, very much where I find myself at this time, the Romantic embodies that which can only be received and never held, let alone taken. True to their position at the highest physical Yin type, the Romantic lives life in the Yin way that gathers energy slowly, rather than Yang’s fast&hard. She lives in faith, trust, and love, more than the Yang’s impulse and industry. Romanticism is an extreme form of sophistication, that word meaning ‘to become more complex and less straightforward’. Romance is about suggestion and attraction. She’ll be alluring beyond words but you still have to come to all the way to her, as the bumblebee to the bloom. She settles and allows, living the truth that in giving, and perhaps only in giving, do we know what it means to receive.

As we try on various Kibbetypes to test their fit, I find this one a little easier to see in a person than some of the others, probably because one shape is predominant in bone and body and face. The Yang aspect of a Romantic type doesn’t make its visual presence felt. There is no traditional ‘masculine’ or ‘dramatic’ element, no straightness of brow, no density of bone, no bluntness of nose.

I bet I would have mistyped Lisa, the R model in the book, especially before her transformation. I probably would have said SC except that the Before outfit looks aging. Today, we are so fortunate in having a real woman to imagine, one who epitomizes the very Yin features to perfection. We’ll call her Roseanna. I am grateful to her for use of the photos and to Sci\ART analyst Maytee Garza of Reveal Style Consultancy in New Jersey who draped Roseanna a True Autumn.

Every time I see Roseanna’s face, I’m reminded of a Persian Linda Rondstadt (don’t assume Linda is a Kibbe certified R, she just looks like one to me).

Here’s some time travel for you to see how an R body looks as it moves. Indeed, look at the bodies of all three women. Fascinating what you see when you look.

Which Linda has found herself? To me, not the one in jeans and a shirt, not the one you sometimes see in Mama Cass dresses. It’s this one:

Note: the great women of our Facebook group, whose generous advice I have such respect for, have helped me to see that Linda is actually a Soft Gamine, so a Gamine with a Romantic drift. I’ll show you some pictures of why and a better body model in Part 2.

Autumn and Romantic

A priceless part of these Polyvore exercises is having let go of every attachment I have regarding preconceived Season shapes, textures, or persons, while only holding the colours and this particular shape. These collections come together like an act of faith, like driving directions that make you wonder why you’re going through this neighbourhood and exactly where you’ll get at the end. I now approach my own shopping that way, just buy everything DC DW and put it together after because it works in Polyvoreland. The styles mix and match automatically just as well as Sci\ART based colour palettes do.

In my head was ultra-ultra feminine with a round shoulder. I set out to dress a modern day Marie Antoinette meets Pin Up Girl. No, too corseted. Victorian meets PinUp Girl worked till Victorian became floppy. Once it pulled together, I had more feeling of luxe boudoir, almost a sultanah effect at times, a lot to do with the colour palette.

But also, what should she wear to work? What would Roseanna pull on for a casual day? If she has two children and a job, she doesn’t carry a tiny round purse to the grocery store, so bigger purses got hourglass shapes. We all get closer to Natural on our days off. Keeping one frilly fancy item, a shoe, a bracelet, sets the tone for the whole oufit.

How to combine a Season of natural/earthy/textured/functional/square with a body line of soft delicacy?

Find the common ground:

• plush, ornate, lavish, antique
• belts, boots, leather, suede
• luxurious colours named for foods, antique, knits (for the fluffy/clingy/drape)
• pale neutrals, Autumn has many neutrals
• jewels
• hair around the face (good on Autumn)
• colourful makeup with bit of sparkle (metallic good on Autumn)
• “you have to touch it to know it” – this beautiful quote from a reader says it all

Romantic Design

Whether it’s a shoe, a party dress, a sofa, or a living room,

• round, circles, flow, swirl, curve, fluid
• hourglass waist definition
• fold/drape/sash/gathers/ draping to hug those curves a little
• detail intricate
• sparkle and pearl
• clingy/fluffy/short if it’s a sweater
• prints large floral/feathery
• the shoes you’d slide on Cinderella’s foot

Why They Were Not R

In knowing where we went wrong, we learn. Here are some close calls. This would be Poly 1 because I forgot to number it, of course.

Clockwise from upper L:

- The belted gold sleeveless – that V neckline, is it severe when the face is rounded? All edges should be rounded so V seemed not the best neckline, perhaps better for the Modigliani faces among the Dramatics. Might it also be too blousy and not respect the hourglass enough? Still, I find beautiful fluidity of line when I’m trying for no straight lines.

- The bow shoes – the bow is good but edges are sharp – perhaps an Soft Dramatic or Theatrical Romantic shoe.

- The wood circle earrings – shape and shiny hanging center piece good but too chunky.

- Brown shoes – good strappiness and tapered toe but heel too solid, should be slender and tapered.

- The pink dress says baby doll to me. I felt that tiers of ruffles is not what he meant and better for TR, though that is how he dressed the R model. The right ruffle for R looks like the petals of an iris, deeper, rounder.

- Maybe for the same reason as the ruffles, I couldn’t deal with bows of any size, like the gold Ferretti top.

- The red feather dress wouldn’t work if it were straight across the top, but this neckline (sweetheart, is it?) is good. The skirt is too stiff and the feather effect feels flamboyant, seeming better to balance a Yanger body.

- Green dress: neckline too plain, sleeves too straight, the shirtdress hem looks sloppy on the Roseanna in my imagination.

- The brown Valenti dress -many variations of this dress exist. Is it a problem when the top is neither draped or softened? Would this be just too fitted and not hug the curves with Yin’s grace and ease?

- The brown empire waist – I learned from Zandra’s very useful commentary on the D TSu to think about where a garment waist would sit on a body. This would miss the best part of the woman and look heavy, like if you hung it on half of a butterfly, you’d have no idea what the shape underneath was.

- Antique gold Marni dress on L side – skirt not swirly enough, needs more waist emphasis. Sleeves could work.

The R Choices
Poly 2:

There are two more Polys to show you! Are these purses too heavy?

I am all over that nail polish.

Related posts:

1. The Romantic True Autumn Part 2
2. The Emmas Are True Springs Part 2
3. The Emmas Are True Springs Part 1

The only ensemble in which I could abandon colour for all neutral tones on any Spring would be the Light Spring in a selection of creams and beiges. This monochromatic scheme leans on the Summer influence of that Season and it looks really good. The Bright Spring needs more contrast. The True Spring needs more colour. Colour is so in place and at home on Spring that we miss it when it’s not there. They absorb it into their body the way Summer does blue and Winter does contrast. Colour is as necessary at the office as on the beach.

One Light Spring said,

One thing that I struggle with a bit is integrating the neutrals and the colours of the light spring pallet. With light summer, the greys work beautifully with the brighter colours of the pallet but I find it hard to wear the browner neutrals with our colours. I tend to wear a colour (or two) with blue denim, a neutral (or two) with blue denim, a colour (or two) with cream or ivory, or two or more colours. I can’t seem to make the leap into mixing a wide range of my neutrals with the colours. As an aside are white jeans doable for light spring, should I only look for cream?

Before I forget, I’d go for ivory buff or light grey in jeans rather than white. The effect of white can be bit like black in that it gets bigger than it actually is if it’s not balanced. It can twinkle in places where most of us don’t have that outcome in mind.

We looked at Light Spring landscapes in Light Spring Looking Serious. The white needed to lighten that palette makes many colours appear milky. Not so in the misty Light Summer or the clear, pure True Spring.

The whole series of landscape articles came about as a way of seeing yourself the way the rest of us do and to objectify what you add to the picture. Which earrings belongs? Which lipgloss doesn’t? True Spring’s landscape… tulip fields? For sure, but watch the saturation. As beautiful as those are, they can be such a riot of red, orange, and yellow that the image screams COLOUR!!!!! instead of sunbeam hugs  True Spring is an easy, playful caress, not a blood pressure spike. True Spring is warm and yellow above all. Imagine the difference between the coral reef and the crayon box. Colour is not shocking, it’s freehand and sunny. Yellow light is radiating from every pixel of this picture. So would the person to look young, healthy, and tuned into their own frequency.

Photo: Auroqueiro

Spring generally does not care for suits, feeling too constrained physically and mentally.  They’re not sure where life will take them next, want to make the choice themselves (but may have to overcome wanting every choice), and will resist any restrictions on the possibilities. Even in a perfect tan suit, it can look bland and more mundane than the wearer. The opposite can be true too, where a Winter in their suit looks more imposing than the wearer is or wants to convey. Blazers are in right now. It’s a good time to create some inspired jacket/pants combinations. For situations where a full suit is needed, I would choose your navy over tan unless you find the tan suit that articulates enough light and interest to not look like menswear. Blue would look snappier.

Spring’s stereotype is to have their extroversion translated as effusiveness. Not quite. They have caution and shyness. They are not diving into waterfalls any more than anyone else. Spring is not giddy or superficial, though deep philosophical conversations may feel lacking in wit if they drag on. The extrovert functions best when surrounded by other people. Spring will be bored at a conference alone for a week in a strange city. Winter may feel oddly energized by the freedom from emotion that strangers allow, like they’re living a dream ..oh, wait, we’re not talking about me here. Spring is less likely to exercise alone at home than the introvert who thinks and decides inwardly and moves away from extended contact time with others.

Every Spring I know, all 5 types, has a pure and unaffected sweetness. When they smile, they can literally light up a room, so much so that it takes you by surprise. Attire that feels like this

Photo: Colin Broug

while superb on the right woman, looks bland, repetitive, dry, hard, and monotonous, that is to say, wooden, on Spring. There’s just not enough going on for a person who feels like this to look at

Photo: Ziepo

and maybe this

Photo: Topsoft

or even

Photo: cassie g

Spring, all five Seasons whose natural colouring has those attributes, has a necessary delicacy and lightness of touch. Like the mimosa, the leaves fold when touched. That anything so tender and sensitive could live in the first place, and more, share a beauty that seems other-worldly , even for a moment, this is the wonder of Spring.

Photo: juliaf

True Spring is emotional with feelings that run near the surface. They are also deeply spiritual, whatever their Creator or Source image happens to be. For a being so sensitive, to be brought face to face with the question we all ask, “What is my purpose?”, not knowing the answer or knowing where to turn can be very debilitating. True Spring takes life very much to heart and can be worn out by life’s complications, wondering why things can’t just be simple. You’d think everyone would want that but oddly no.

Bob Marley. Sun Is Shining, the Songs of Freedom, Island in The Sun, Is This Love, pick one.Why can’t it be enough for life to be happy, easy, and safe?

Barbara J. Winter: “When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.”

Spring’s Neutral Colours

Let’s look at these colours, these greys, browns, beiges, taupes, and creams. Since any True or Light Spring who wants to look old and tired need only drape herself in black and/or white, I think of the darker blues as neutral colours too. Blue may have more colour signal than the other neutrals, but that’s on everybody else. Spring can wear a lot of colour before it approaches noticeability. Correction: Spring ought to wear a lot of colour. In some ways, colours are True Spring’s neutrals and it’s everyone else’s neutrals that Spring needs to plan.(Light and Bright Springs rely more on grey to be their neutral.) Because Trues share absolute warmth with True Autumn’s browns and greys, knowing you’re buying the right one can be hard.

Spring Neutrals             vs            Autumn Neutrals

peach brown apricot                        orange brown lion

clear beige sand                                brown beige cappucino

nearly greeny beiges                        nearly greeny greys

light and fresh  sunny                      heavy and thick earthy

stout beer is darkest                          coffee is darkest

blonde, Palomino, flax                     ochre, umber, sienna

bunny, chipmunk, house cats         bear, moose, wild cats, and often dog colours

yellow ivory, almonds                        antique ivory, old lace

wild chanterelles!!!                             cigars, light to dark

This Polyvore shows the True Spring (Left) and True Autumn (Right) browns and greys. Think about the diff between beige and camel.

- across the top left: a range of Spring greys with a bluer one on the right end to show you a Summer grey – how do you do this in stores ? Like for any other colour, go around and gather a bunch of items in that colour family. Even if they’re close, they’ll help your mind see which are the yellower ones, which are greenish, etc.

- center top L and R, side by side, the black ballet flats pants are Spring while the coral top pants are Autumn; greeny yellows are more Spring while Autumn’s greened greys look like army Jeeps

- Autumn will go darker than Spring; Spring will look good and make better outfits in lighter pants than Autumn; Autumn’s light colours are darker and heavier

- orange browns, mustard, red browns are Autumns; peach, blush, and yellow browns are more likely to work for Spring ; those in the center with the blue top, I could see on either, they have a pinker quality than the Autumn ones to the right

Words won’t really help you shop. Here’s the easy way: own your Colour Book of swatches. Own the Book of the Season that causes the most confusion, like True Autumn, though you don’t really need to. In the case of browns and greys, there are not many overlaps or similar colours except maybe among the very lightest. Why certain colours go into each Season doesn’t matter. I don’t know either. You’d have to be expert at mixing paint to have devised all those precise tones. If you match the Book as closely as you can and think about the overall weight the colour of the entire item conveys, you will be fine. The difference between 85% and 100% isn’t that important. The rest of the outfit will create a beautiful finished look.

Related posts:

1. Light And True Spring: Neutral Colours At The Office
2. Light Spring Looking Serious
3. Activewear Jackets for The Light Spring Woman

David Kibbe, Where Are You Now?

Maybe you had your colours analyzed and you know you’re a True Winter. Armed with those most-flattering colours, how come it’s not coming together for you? You read about the drama of Winter and say,

“Why do they keep forgetting about me? Dramatic styles feel intimidating and say nothing about me at all. I love softness. Is my self-perception off, like it was with my colours, or is there still something missing? I’m frustrated with feeling frustrated all the time over how I look.”

Once you know the colours in your skin, your Season, it takes one trip to the mall to realize that even if you buy items colour-matched with a spectrophotometer, they don’t always look right or good. Who could argue? Your colour analyzed palette comes in many different styles. Which is yours? You can’t be great in both the swirly silky print blouse and the Hugo Boss blazer. The strong vertical stripes that work on me will do nothing for the woman who is defined by abstract, splashy florals, though our Season is the same.

I’m not talking about taste because that can be part of what got us into the trouble of not looking impacting in the first place, buying what we like or what we were told to like. A 15 year old says “I don’t want to be stuck wearing only square clothes if I have a square body. I want to wear the clothes I like. That makes me feel good.” And it looks good when you’re 15 and still searching for yourself. The style carousel very much depicts the brain storm going on inside. The whole picture fits because it is a true representation of the wearer.

We outgrow wearing the brain storm because we outgrow being the brain storm. Our self-assurance comes across in part by having settled, like the demons in the Golden Compass (in Philip Pullman’s story, our souls exist outside our bodies in the form of animals; before puberty, the animals shape-shift with our emotions and moods; after puberty they settle to a permanent species). Adults learn who they are and settle, which feels more settling to look at than a woman who is still trying out different identities (does that look like Midlife Crisis?). At this point in our lives, beauty that could happen on its own is important to find. Once processing is involved, it is as stressful to look at as hair that’s been straightened to within an inch of its life, best left to the young.

Mr. Kibbe is right. You do look better with his advice. You can be as literal or encompassing as you choose, just as you can wear some of your best colours or exclusively those. On shopping days, I (a Dramatic Classic) still wear leggings, boots, a long belted T under a shorter off shoulder sweater, not my best look. Big deal. On first impression days, it’s a jacket, the point being your best jacket isn’t mine and are you really sure you can pick out your best line, cut, and detail in any item of clothing? As many of us will  figure this out alone and get it right as were able to figure out their colours without expert guidance – that is to say, very few.

I am strongly attracted to classification systems that work. This one does, whether you’re in the business of dressing yourself or others. 13 styles, or image identities, are described in detail, including all aspects of clothing, hair style and colour, and cosmetic colours. These are gathered under 13 consistent shape/line/colour umbrellas, all of which relate back to essence you’re trying to project, the same one you already project through your body’s inherent lines.

Lines communicate and our lines communicate about us. Art students do an exercise where they draw an object using the bare minimum number of lines. They do another where a model changes position every 5 seconds and the students capture her form only with a few lines till she moves again. As with colour, when two visuals don’t belong together, they push each other further in opposing directions. If the face is asymmetric, a symmetric hairstyle will have the face looking downright lopsided. Two lines, three lines, and our brains are making decisions about what’s in front of us.

Though we don’t wear shoulder pads today, I was amazed at how relevant and usable his writing still is. The styles really do create 13 very different pictures.  Only you will write the book where you agree with every word, but his is so enduring because so many women still connect so strongly with it. A straight line then is a straight line today. The quantity of information for each identity is huge with little repetition between them. I typed mine on a card, laminated it, and carry it with my Colour Book. I learned long ago that I don’t know how I look to others from the front or back. What has especially fascinated me is watching women get their style right and having all this remarkable, defining geometry appear out of their face, just as colours suddenly appear in your face when you wear your own Season’s palette. Who knew that both were there all along?

Any image identity can go with any Season. While there are recurring pairs, Dramatics among Winters, Softs among Summers, Naturals among Autumns, any of the 12 types of colouring can be found within any of the styles. I know Gamine Dark Autumns. I know Dramatic True Summers. His models are a Dramatic Autumn and a Romantic Winter. Figure out each one separately first.

Celebs are tough to characterize because they’re all so thin that it hides their body type.  To give you the drift, Christina Ricci seems a Soft Gamine. Mariah Carey is a Romantic. Melanie Griffith may be a Soft Natural. Ashley Judd is a Theatrical Romantic. If they shared one another’s best styles, every one would have detracted from herself. Even on their Size 4 bodies, when it’s right, it’s oh-so-right. Kathryn noticed how perfectly Dramatic Classic styles suited Rene Russo in the movie The Thomas Crown Affair. I so agree, like they were made for each other.

Shopping is just a quest to find yourself out there. The prize goes to the one who can most accurately and authentically represent the inside on the outside. That look is unbeatable by any bank account or new wave. Kibbe’s book takes a lot of reading and thinking. So much like learning your own colouring, it places us in a temporary chaos that is important and necessary. Our usual shopping structure both supports and constrains us. Like in a Primal Soup, creativity and innovation are taking place under our radar from which we pull new idea relationships. We are inclined to move away from that chaos, but it’s an important place to move towards. A lot is happening there that is good.

Today, I’d like to try my hand at being a woman whose colours and style don’t mesh so easily. We start with a Dramatic True Summer, a Season we’re used to seeing embodied in lines that are curved, flowing, watery.  Maybe today’s model is the True Summer who says she wants to wear black and scarlet instead of her better palette. Maybe what she really wants and doesn’t know it, is an outlet that expresses the drama she knows herself to possess. All she can articulate is resistance and she assumes it’s to the colours.

Working with animals teaches you to listen harder. They’re all telling us what they want or need. When you miss enough diagnoses that were right in your original patient history, you learn to put your arrogance on the shelf.  If the colour system isn’t working for the woman, it’s not her who’s broke. Rather than say to her “Wear your colours for a week, you’ll get used to them”, which isn’t entirely wrong advice, perhaps incomplete is a better word, I need to think about where her reservations are coming from. As we know, there are thousands of psychological levels here, but at the heart of it, what is missing for her? Perhaps, this woman needs to discover her own lines. Then, she can assemble the apparel outlines inside which she’ll paint her colours and feel good at last.

What’s a Dramatic look like? Not the luscious dumpling Romantic that the singer Adele is. Draw a Dramatic with a ruler not a compass, not just the lines of the face but straight across the shoulders and long, narrow, and straight down the body. Kib’s examples would be Joan Crawford or Jamie Lee Curtis. Adjectives like statuesque, sharp, and imposing apply the instant they walk in the room. The very beautiful Darin Wright, creator of the outstanding Season-analyzed cosmetic line eleablake, seems to me a Bright Winter Dramatic. You’d fashion her statue with a chisel and hammer from a piece of marble, not from dough, cloth, or cotton candy.

How would she dress? Far more briefly than in the book,

YES: sharp and geometric; sculpted, sleek&long, crisp; mod to heavywt  fabric; bold, sweeping, clean, angular (plunging V, thin turtleneck, mandarin, halter necks); mid-thigh jackets; coat dress, sharp shoulders, narrow no-waist;  colours as ensembles, monochromatics or neutrals or pastels; prints Picasso, bold; jewelry thin, sharp, asymmetric.

NO: round, swirled, draped, broken or horizontal lines; sheer, clingy, rough; frills, ruffles, gathers; shapeless necks; flouncy, nipped waist, fussy buttons, shapeless or boxy; heavy-chunky.

How do you do  sharp geometry in a cool and soft colour selection in every single item for everyday life?

Dramatic True Summer by christinems featuring high heels

It was surprisingly mind-expanding (and tiring) to have to get into another headspace. I pretended Darin was looking over my shoulder – “Girl, I’d no more wear a shell, matching cardi, and pearls, I’d look like my Grampa!!!!!!!!!!! Someone get me a cold compress and a glass of wine, look what she’s doing to me!!!!!!!!!” It is most interesting what our eye doesn’t see when we’d swear we looked at every item on the Polyvore screen. Through Darin’s eyes, I saw items I would have never registered.

I thought about the word ‘modern’. No particular sense of humor as in not funky or groovy. Not trendy, which has no strength. Modern became clean&futuristic, very much a Winter association in my head up till now.

I thought about what ‘bold’ means. Not sassy, one of the modern versions of bold, which can look tasteless and juvenile and for this category. Keeping boldness of style a separate entity than boldness of colour mattered since True Summer colours don’t come across boldly and I was trying to keep the number of colours controlled. Sometimes, I used an accessory, an unusual colour, or a contrast level to bring up the boldness of an entire ensemble.

Drama while keeping the bling down meant rediscovering how to convey drama through line instead of Dollar Store sparkle or cleavage. Every single item had to convey continuous vertical line and/or extreme angularity and/or unique geometry. Only a few items had more than one of these at a time, very hard to find in this palette. When I look at the Polyvore, it seems too conservative. If the clothes were in Bright Winter colours, they’d jump off the page more, but on a True Summer, she’d become a ghost.

I got a funny feeling of homesickness out of nowhere. I really had to shut myself off and be Darin. Like playing that Rush Hour Traffic Jam puzzle, I had to be very plastic about moving colour and style around one another. It’s a brilliant exercise. By the end, I couldn’t even stand a round watch face, or even a square one.

And I shall never complain about trying to find Dramatic Classic clothes in Dark Winter colours again. Try to put a Polyvore together, like watches for all 12 Seasons or all 13 Kibbes. You really have to get out of your own head, but when you come back, your own head is lot clearer. By deciding why an item is wrong for a Season or style, you learn more than by deciding why it’s right or going on the “I just like it, that’s all.” instinct.

Next is the Romantic Soft Autumn. Make a Polyvore outfit of any type of Romantic Autumn if you have time and send me the link. I’ll post it along with mine.

Related posts:

1. Dress For Your Landscape: True Summer
2. Elisa Is A True Summer
3. True Summer Jewelry

The Look

Winter does more than that. It inflicts intensity and complications (which is different from Autumn complexity) on a warm, natural, functional, undemanding (Autumn) group of colours. I said a lot last time about choosing dark colours that are still fathomable and knowable, glowing and rich as Autumn is, instead of black which is too Winter in every way. Black should be occasional from head to toe. Even in footwear, the dark bay Hanoverian horse is better than black. The shadows are black but where the light strikes, it’s brown. If black is necessary, matte is better.

Photo: Brunatka

The dressage photo above says a lot to me about the intersecting line between Dark  Autumn and Dark Winter. Animals tie us back to our own earth origins and many are necessarily Autumn.  The horse is Autumn. The rider’s outfit cost thousands but if you stood beside her, she’d be dusty and smell of hay. The white bandages, saddle blanket, and breeches are Winter’s but the picture is about the horse. The animal is not black. He is darkest brown.

Winter doesn’t only mean verbs like ‘inflict’. It really never graces, embroiders, or enhances, and it barely embellishes. It bejewels. The rich texture of True Autumn becomes luxurious texture.  As Nana said about all Autumn, you must feel it to know it – fur, suede, velvet, raw silks. The photos in the previous post were chosen because they had texture – tapestry, fur, roughness, or the scaly skin of the cobra in the music of the bellydance. Texture expresses heat just as colour does. Absence of texture feels colder.

Autumn is close enough to touch while Winter has receded out of arm’s reach. Winter can feel more modern, like a 21st (or 23rd) Century city.  Dark Autumn speaks of old luxe, dignified though not monastic. Vintage-antique (the Chanel cardi with handsewn silk flowers and bronze piping) works better than vintage-kooky (the daisy skirt).

As they bridge rural and urban, old world and new, tradition and Winter’s yet unwritten edge, estate and city streets, their scope of looks is enormous. Buckles, zippers, chains, jackets with metal buttons. Riding boots (with breeches, suede knee patches and all), cowboy boots, cowboy hats, tough chic, biker, army. As long as the message expresses strong, work, utilitarian, muscular to some degree – because that’s what the colours say. Then add in Winter’s majestic and serious. Pouffy, polka, bows, round collars, to me, makes no sense. The colours are of Nature matured. It looks inconsistent and scrambled if styles are the opposite, as if the colours, the cut, and the person are all moving in different directions at once. Unstable.

Autumn is honest  so keep to the natural look of things. No pink leather or leopard shearling is what I’m saying. This is the Marlboro guy (actually, he’s True Autumn to Indiana Jones’ Soft Autumn). They borrow better from the guys (RayBans, neckties) than from the theater (cat eyes, glitter gloves). Brown is the color of work, countryside, and common sense. A very difficult colour to get right but so worthwhile since it is Autumn’s black.

Halle Berry Pictures

See how his white shirt and the white wall are greying her face and lips? Do you get the feeling that if those were replaced with cappucino brown, she’d go all five-star dark golden?

Down below…now we’re talking. Pageant Queen makeup has no place here. Pink isn’t right regardless of complexion depth.

Halle Berry Pictures

Strong flavours. Mustard, spice, vinegar. There is nothing nothing wishy-washy here. A T-shirt and pants?  I hope they were free. This is the legging and the dark cognac equestrian boot, the tribal print scarf and ethnic earring, the leather vest, the heavy medallion necklace and the oversize belt, the bronzed burgundy suit jacket. Like a wine cellar, it’s a Season that acquires itself over time. You should hear the drums, taste the wine that fills your whole head, and feel the heat of the forge.

Fabrics don’t have to be completely stiff or lines utterly straight. We’re dressing womens’ bodies after all. Drape is better when it’s not overdone and the fabric has some depth, like heavy velvet curtains.

Wear prints like stained glass.  Patterns are pronounced, definitions between colour blocks are quite distinct and strong, and colours are prominent. A Rubik’s cube geometric is too repetitive. An element of antique, abstract, indigenous, or unrestrained is good.

Colour Equations

This section is taken from the Dark Autumn chapter of the book, Return To Your Natural Colours.

• One very light colour + one medium-dark to dark colour + one medium to dark colour as accent
• Two medium-dark to dark colours (or neutral colours) that are different
• One light, medium, or dark neutral + one dark, medium, or light neutral + one colour as accent
• One medium-dark to dark colour + one light, medium, or dark colour + one colour as accent
• Little use of complementary colours, in small areas only
• Overall medium-dark to dark effect

What that looked like in my head:

Translated into clothing:

Dark Autumn casual by christinems featuring wide leg pants

Dark and cool recede. Here, with dark and warm, a push/pull visual effect is created that adds tension (Winter’s complications) and interest.

If you think about it, you can see some clearing and cooling. Previous fluidity is beginning to set and stiffen. We have to add in the person, her warm chestnut to warm black hair, perhaps her faint red highlights, her bronzer and flesh-tone eyeshadow surrounding her dark chocolate eyes, spiced peach lips, deeply coloured stones in warm, golden settings, the purse and shoes, to fully appreciate the dark warmth. The viewer has a lot of colour to integrate.

Icy, cold colours make sense frosted. Muted colours don’t. Muted colours are gentle and calm, not metallic. Dark Autumn colours are barely muted, so gentle gets replaced with assertive and maybe even a little pushy. Sometimes, we worry that dark=power and light=weak, which may be true in dictionaries but it’s not how others see us. What others see is probably dark=force and light=ease (but not pushover). Dark Autumn colours wears metallic well in their warmest clothing and cosmetic colours since they convey the heat that smelts metal from ore. Metallics in their colder range are less successful.

Was your first thought when you saw the Polyvore, “I was expecting tribal and spicy. This looks pretty normal.”? It has to be normal enough to wear to the office. Try putting it on a light, sunny blonde and suddenly, if it’s not spicy, it’s at least truly weird. She’d look like she decided to wrap herself in a Bedouin tent. Your personal power is among the wonders of this world but it only works for you, and hers for her. Power fizzles like a wet match when you try on someone else’s.

So, you know your Season, you’ve been buying the right colours in clothes, is there another step? Always. Combining your colours in absolutely stunning combinations is another level. I am thankful to Stephanie, source of so many awareness expanders, for introducing me to Shigenobu Kobayashi’s books. In his Color, Image, Scale, he takes a big selection of colours and shows you twelve truly gorgeous 3-colour combinations with each one. Isn’t it interesting how 3 and 4 in the graphic above feel very different, beyond just temperature, simply from the change in accessory colour?

Whatever your Season, unless you’re incredibly creative, I doubt you’d come up with some of Kobayashi’s pairings on your own. I assure you that I wouldn’t. For Dark Autumn’s most striking use of complementary colours, insert a complement between two similiar rich colours in your palette. It looks fantastically good. The split complementary colour scheme is worth getting to know too. You pick three similar colours (analogous, colour wheel neighbors) and then add the complement of the middle one. It is worth scanning your colour analysis swatch book into a computer, or a photo of it, and using a computer program (Google it, there are  many) to give you the complements, finding them in your Book, and writing the pairs on the back. Getting the complements exactly right sets up much more vibration than guessing and only being close.

Many Dark Autumns are darker than Halle Berry. How about this woman, wearing Dark Autumn’s version of white? From the clean whites in her face, you’d swear she must be wearing white, but white will grey her. It takes this colour to do what white does on a  Winter face. How cool is that?

Jessica Alba Pictures

A straight body, straight across the shoulders, they walk stiff and straight, not Summer’s rolling walk or Spring’s sashay. Rectangular body, linear. Similar lines in the clothes.

Comfort colours, which are often food colours, are staying in True Autumn. Dark Autumn is wild and hot and passionate > red, of course. All the reds and oranges work. Complements also raise energy, with great opportunity to use them in dark and mysterious ways, as dark olive and burnt orange/red orange/browns (dark orange).

Something about dark grey can be very warm – as Bobbi Brown was thinking when she named her eyeshadow Hot Stone. MAC Copperplate eyeshadow is a heavy good grey for Dark Autumn. I used a dark grey blouse to cool the leopard skirt. A big thick grey block can be too heavy and stuck. Add a necklace, a jacket, the coolest bag and watch, maybe the leopard skirt. Give the eye somewhere else to go. Take care with animal prints. Buy the suitcase set or the wallet. Animal prints are like leather pants, they can work against you all too easily.

Jeans are good. Keep them dark without a whole lot of orange stitching.

Dark Autumn dress by christinems featuring a cowl neck dress

Winter brings red and more black. Some of its blue is cooling the colours but you’re not seeing it as blueness yet.

The colour of Eva’s dress isn’t dark per se. For a light colour, it’s dark though. It has weight, substance, density, and naturalness. Maybe the colour is a little warmish and would suit a True Autumn more perfectly, but I give it to her anyhow for daring to be different so successfully. See how Alba’s above is a little cooler, a little glitzier, perhaps less burlap? The whites of Eva’s eyes aren’t quite as clear. Who cares, Eva took a step towards Eva and away from cookie cutter.

Eva Longoria Pictures

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Colour is one half of a most beautiful appearance. Style is the other half. In the late 80s, David Kibbe wrote a book called Metamorphosis. He outlines 13 body types and goes into great detail about every aspect of appearance pertaining to that body type. Like Sci\ART’s 12 Tone Season system, Kibbe’s is a logic system that works for me without being overwhelming or impractical. Yes, it takes time to understand and implement but when it’s right, the result is incredible. Geometry comes out of the features of your face like colours do when your palette is right. The book is so good that we talk about it a lot in our Facebook group. The next section may seem confusing without having read it.

The Dark Autumns I have met have been some type of N, C, and interestingly twice, G. They look like they have black in the way that they look like they have drama but they are more square than angular and sharp. The clothes and fabrics above are all structured because I have those women in my head when I select clothes.

I ask myself, what does a Theatrical Romantic Dark Autumn wear?  I searched and searched and found one I liked. Those who read RTYNC know that for me, certain colours make sense in shapes that evoke feelings and patterns we are familiar with from Nature. Of course, there are as  many versions as there are women. We all own more than one cookbook. None of us owns a cookbook from which we make every recipe, even from the very rare book where we tried them all. All I’m saying is that colour is more than just colour, the same colour on me and on you looks and feels totally different to the audience, and we all have a different idea of what looks good.

I looked at that dress (off shoulder, center, bottom row) for a long time wondering if something so filmy makes sense in a food and earth colour. How do you feel about it?

Einstein said “Imagination is better than Knowledge.” Turns out it takes a lot more imagination to be yourself than to be someone else. I love about Kib and colour that both only want you to stay true to who you were meant to be because you’re already her. You really can’t not be her, ever. Your roots grew a tree that is perfect and like no other. Forget cookie-cutter. Forget “I must be blonde or size 6.” If you’re clinging to those, you’re probably neither and people can see that. Why force your opposites to fit you? Knowledge of your colours and the essence of your body type is where you start. Trust the process of finding them. From there, imagination lets you interpret what hangs from your branches infinitely, always holding the truth of your tree. Renata chose the very adept  words ‘emotionally grounded’ to describe how knowing your colours and your style feels. So right.

Related posts:

1. Valeria Is A Dark Autumn
2. Dark Autumn Landscapes
3. Dark Autumn Jewelry

Ellen Page is an example of a very commonly seen Dark Winter face. Autumn’s squaring of jaw is often present (True Winter’s is longer and narrower, like Cher) but the colouring is cooler and clearer than Dark Autumn. The trace of Autumn heat is surely here in the hair, eyes, and skin unless the person is quite close to True Winter.

Sure, she could be a Bright or any Season for that matter, but this face is the dance of Dark Winter to me.  This is the very rare client that gets out of the car and I have to fight with myself not to push her into the one Season that’s fairly singing its own name. This is a far more difficult analysis, with much more second thinking, than with a person whose natural colouring group is less obvious.

And God love the girl for the natural hair and brows. She looks strong, young, healthy, and smart. The blue in the eye makeup isn’t blue enough to say BLUE EYE PAINT and it complements the orange tones in the eye. I think she looks simply great and you know how much it takes for me to say that. As women, we lose the sense of this being enough. We need to manipulate as if media’s solutions could make it better. Learning to see what is right in front of us as special is the PCA version of living in the moment.

Click to visit Teen Idols 4 You.

I see this face over and over in Dark Winter. The size of Winter, fathomless and colossal as a galaxy, the space they need and demand, with the human warmth, the comfortable welcome, and the great generosity of Autumn. Tell me this is not (Sci\ART analyst) Maytee Garza‘s face.

Some Dark Winters have a longer face or softer colouring or lighter eyes, lots of variations. Some have a more gamine feel, like Victoria Beckham or Winona Ryder. We don’t do colour analysis based on these traits but every type of natural colouring repeats certain facial features a lot.

I talk about liking lips with colour more on Winters than the erased lip that mostly looks good on the almost-children in magazines. A young Winter is an exception. Even in her medium pinks and purples, there’s so much colour already that she can look like she’s dressing up as Mom. An icy lipgloss can really be great (Bobbi  Brown Sugar Lilac – I’m pretty sure that’s the name. It looks more iced violet than  grey in the tube.). Not pastel (more greyed, there’s tons of these frosty greyish pinks, don’t buy them). Not medium darkness, should go on very light. Icy is hard to find but it’s good. More age appropriate, conveys a coolness, and better at letting the beauty of the face speak for itself without cosmetic getting in the way, which is the best kind of beauty and the best use of cosmetics.

—–

I tried to do a Polyvore. And failed. I couldn’t even get a single one together. I’ve seen what’s there too many times. Going to try something new. For those who have, or will have, my book, you’ll see a section in each of the Season chapters that describes how I see the colour palette being used to best effect. Dark Winter is the first chapter we talk about so let’s begin with it here.

For me, these colours have an austerity, perhaps because they are dark and cold. They feel serious. Soft effects (draping, smocking, cute collars, floppy bows and sleeves, unfinished edges) or busy details (wildly random prints, buttons and stuff for no reason like insets or logos, tons of ruching), styles that show a lot of skin (because sex and power are opposite currencies, the more of one, the less of the other. Dark Winter is the oldest soul Season and look better dressed more quietly, as the philosophers they so often are), clothes that seem too big (batwing and dolman sleeves, shapeless) – well, you can read the book but I don’t care for this on a Dark Winter. This person takes all that and makes it look unimportant, trite, and fussy. Peter Pan collars belong in Spring’s Neverland for a reason. On someone else, those styles can be flattering, slimming, and fabulous. On Dark Winter, it looks like those projects where your kids took your antique silver vase to school and brought it back with beads and  macaroni glued all over it.

I’ve had Dark Winters see their palette and hear the way I see the colours interpreted on this person and feel un-represented. They wanted Bright Winter. They say “Oh, but I love colour!”  Believe me, colour analysts are not trying to tell you not to wear colour. We are trying to help you avoid colours that make your face look oily, old, heavy, and unevenly pigmented. As pretty as a colour is, it won’t be so pretty after that happens. Wear YOUR colours any way YOU see them. Could you meet me halfway and say that Mrs. Obama might not be doing herself favours in frosted coral eyeshadow, peacock blue eyeliner, and hot fuchsia lips? Even one at a time, she is not that person, regardless of her position in the world.

I tried to keep the negatives out of the book, but with maturity comes an easier acceptance that every quality we have is in equal measure our flaw. We will excel and surpass at some things, which must be balanced by those places where we are weaker. This is a self-contained individual, not one who shares a lot of the internal stuff or leans on others easily. Some have incredible intensity, far more than the situation warrants, while some are much more passive. Once the cage is rattled, the fun times are over, because once they let go…Dark  Winter draws a very clear line at anything that smells like B.S. Unlike the Summers, they will not necessarily keep your feelings safe. In colour, this translates as heavy, humorless, dark, unfriendly, morose, somber, and solemn. Don’t email me to say that this vision is grim and depressing. I’ll email back to say that your interpretation forgot the counterbalances that the hawk brings to the kingdom. Piercing focus, deep introspection, and the majestic, solitary stand-apart-ness that gets noticed first.

There is a core of stillness and hardness in Winter people. You can feel the steel rod down the center, and if tested, it will not bend, no matter how lightweight they seem on the surface. The palpable presence of that steel rod is the source of the strong vertical line element that I find works so well in the appearance of Dark Winter clothing. I think many of them sense this hard place too and translate it as “Earth”, that type of un-movable rock-solid center. For me, Earth energy (and I’m not an energy specialist) means secure comfortable homey regular everyday practical common-sense resilient considerate fair. That’s not Winter, that’s Autumn. Perhaps my misunderstanding, since analysts I respect enormously (Angela Wright in The Beginner’s Guide to Colour Psychology) attribute earth to Winter, where the world turns into itself, gathering power from the earth for the coming growing season, and the person of that colouring is similarly inwardly directed. I feel Winter’s need for big elbow room more strongly and feel an air association, as in space rather than breeze or wind.

At the center of Winter is a titanium wire – wait, this is Dark Winter, make that a tungsten cable. Its strength is not in Autumn’s sturdy squareness, but rather in its thin linearity. Winter is the conflict, even the contradiction, of everything and nothing, black and white, playing themselves out at the same time. Winter is the superstar who never feels good enough, who thinks herself a loser. In True Winter, where the polarities are most widely apart, the line between the two becomes thinnest, near invisible, just a fold in a force field. You can feel the hinge but you can’t see it, like the flip side that must always be, eternal and joined as matter and anti-matter.

From the book, the section is here:

Colour Equations

• Black + white + a third colour block from the palette
• A medium-dark to very dark colour (or black) + a white or an icy colour
• A medium-dark to very dark colour (or black) + a brighter colour from the palette
• A neutral (grey, brown, or black) + one other colour + possible third colour in small area
• Two dark colours of the same or analogous colours
• Two colour maximum, where black, white, black-navy, black-brown, and neutrals count as colours.  Third colour possible, as small area only, in an accent or accessory item.
• Overall medium-dark to dark effect

(Note: For the equations above, and those in the following Seasons, the terms light, medium, and dark signify the darkness level within the palette itself, not on a full white to black scale.)

————

From the top graphic:

Your hair and makeup are already a colour. When you look at others, you register every colour, meaning them plus their stuff. Chemical hair colour and  makeup already add a lot of colour activity for the viewer’s eyes. Clothes and jewelry beyond that and the eye has nowhere to land, nowhere to focus, and nowhere to rest. Dark Winter looks good with a lot of still territory. Gray, white, black. Perhaps the lipstick in the tuxedo image (#1) is enough, imagining in the earrings, hair, and eye colour adding three more colours.

#2: We’re always needing big separation between lightest and darkest. And an overall dark look.

The red and navy (#3) – feel how much more energy there is just by adding the blue. That navy is so close to black but it feels a lot busier. Not wrong, might be great in your eye, just a different feel. Anything added would be white, gray, black.

When the lower block changes to black, it’s such a small thing, but the feeling for me is sharper, cleaner, calmer, and could accept another small block of colour better. With black (#4), as with white and gray, there’s a feeling of settling that is right, as life settles at night, as moving water settles to frozen ice. Contrast is always high. Winter is not a tone on tone look. Contrast can be high without sparks flying, as large blocks of purple and yellow could achieve, and more so if they’re very bright and clear purple and yellow.

I like a lot of red on Winters. Red is a big colour on Winter. When you get your red right, it becomes a neutral, like gray in your wardrobe. We wear a version of it in lipstick every day. I think Jennifer Butler said that everyone has their neutral red and I agree with her. We are conscious of the colour red in every other person, though not the same red. Dark Winter could wear Bobbi Brown’s Rum Raisin lipstick and cover it with her Sugar Lilac gloss (to clear and purple and lighten that lipstick a touch more) or White Brightening gloss and that would be very good. If you want lips that last till noon, put a good coating of Lauder Double Wear Ruby on, then another coat, then cover it MAC Fast Play which dulls and browns it that tiniest trace to accommodate the Autumn influence that lives here.

Complimentary colours together are very energizing and heated, so work better on the hotter Seasons. When the feeling is colder and stiller, the teal (blue) and brown (orange) in small areas bring in that mutually elevating effect without being revving the motor more than a dark and quiet group logically would. The lower block in #5 is black-brown. That’s your eyeliner, clean, red based, dark, Cover Girl Vivid Ruby. The teal could equally be a stone in an earring, a necklace, a clutch, a laptop case and can go much darker.

Two darks together are aferocity that Dark Winter does well. It’s become hard for me to discuss this character and separate myself, but they seem able to generate a strength of intention to be reckoned with. This isn’t a warm and fuzzy person at all. They’re business and move to the power position pretty fast. All black is kind of too mafia. Two dark but different colours works for me. The Dark Seasons do an overall dark look very well (#6). It’s their thing. For DW, I like when the colours are close if not the same, like a tuxedo, like a pinstripe suit, all those linear vertical elements. All black is, well, you know, never amazing.

I love grey a lot on all 8 Neutral Seasons. And T. Rex gray is right about perfect here. Pants, jackets, eyeshadow, socks, wristwatch bands, it’s all part of the final picture and it’s all getting noticed. Bobbi Brown’s Rock eyeshadow mixed with the darkest colour in Clinique’s Totally Neutral trio and you’re there. Make lighter versions for the lid and darker version to put above the crease.

From the second graphic:

As my friend and Sci\ART analyst, Mary Steele Lawler, from Mississippi, pointed out from her colour mixing courses: ” If one paints a warm bright color in a landscape background the painting will be distorted. This is a color fact, because in real life distance causes colors to cool down and become mellow while Bright and Warm make colors advance.” So, you get what she’s saying, that it would look like foreground-type colour plopped into the background for no good reason. The picture makes no sense. The viewer doesn’t get what they’re supposed to make of the whole thing or get past the question: “Why in the world did the artist do that? What can I be missing here?” That’s yellow highlights on a Soft Summer head whose natural pigmentation is of coolness and distance, so background colours.

Therefore, the coolness level has to be the same throughout the elements of a composition that are in the same plane for you not to look dizzy. Nobody understands the concept of colour consistency better than artists. Colour is just as disciplined as drawing. Until the vanishing point in drawing was understood, nothing looked anchored down. This is a set of rules artists don’t break if they want their work to look real. They don’t take liberties with the natural physics of colour behaviour either if they’re aiming for a believable work of art. Kalisz explained her PCA system by simply saying that it adhered to “how colour is”. She didn’t add or invent arbitrarily. She stuck to those rules that Nature put in place long before colour analysis came along.

#1 – somber, grave, looks good on these people, on this personality.

Since this is a Neutral Season (in 12 Season personal colour analysis, these are the 8 groups of natural colouring that are made up of blends of 2 True Seasons; their personal colour palettes contain just slightly warmish and just slightly coolish versions of every one of their most perfect colours), I set the saturation to pretty high. I stay on the halfway-to-cool side of a colour’s warm to cool spectrum. The dark cool olive and the cool yellow (#2) are the same at the same coolness and provide a high value (light/dark)contrast. Any added colour block is quiet. Picture a colour here, it’s too agitated.

In the next one (#3), I was aiming to show a print. Though the two greys are quiet, the print adds energy and so does a saturated cool coral pink, a variation of red, a  colour to which humans are highly perceptive. The lower block is inert, or has no inertia, if you think of each element as having a momentum, a propulsive capacity to itself. Because each one of us is an energy field made up of light. Our appearance should have inertia, moving towards other people, our future, our goal. Isn’t that person just more fun and memorable than the static one (whose foreground colours are plopped in their background – does that look like you’re moving in reverse?) ? That lighter gray, I’d even take to cool light oatmeal or champagne, outside the swatches, but the Autumn blend makes those colours very convincing. If that’s what’s in the store but the pink is perfect, fine.

The  purple and black (#4) is overall dark, where the purple energizes, warms, and dulls the black to the right extent (which is  to say not a lot for DW). The clutch is meant to convey silver. Could be earrings, cuff, watch, necklace. Substantial diamonds are good because they add big presence without putting in another colour block.

#5 is there to remind that A. we can do a lot without black, that  B. all teals are important colours on Autumns as turquoises are to the Spring blends, and that  C. white is fine but not alone unless you’re very cool and near True Winter.

———————

Dark Winter does say December to me.

Photo by Leocub.

To all of you and to those in your lives who remind you of how much there is in you to love,

I wish you the happiest holidays of all!

Related posts:

1. Best Makeup Colours : Dark Winter
2. Pam Is a Dark Winter
3. A Dark Winter’s Story

Short answer: No, there are no such people. I would say you are best in all 60 colours of your Season’s colour palette, your personal colour analysis swatches, though many women will only partially agree.

From the analyst’s position, what I care about is that no colour brings out the imperfections that we worked for 2 hours to eliminate. In that context, all 60 colours do work. Many others might too. From the question above then, it depends on your definition of “really best”. Mine is the youngest, most flawless, and evenly coloured skin tone possible. Your personal issues with powder pink or baby blue are not foremost in my head as long as I have you in your best pink and blue.

No doubt, women have preferences in their palette. Some will just never see themselves in yellow, especially True Winter and Soft Summer. It may take a woman 10 years to overcome being a green-hater. When we conclude the draping, there are 15 beautiful Final Drapes (not the test drapes) that we look at to begin exposing the client to more of their most beautiful colours. She will always love some and not love others. Few will ever own an item in every colour in their swatch book.

She will always look better in some when we see her colours the second time wearing her perfect makeup colours and the hair down.  And she’ll look worse in some because wrong hair colour is detracting from how beautiful and balanced she could look, but it’s important for her to see that. As awful as the gray cap is, it’s a real moment in personal growth when you see yourself looking better in it than in your present hair colour. This is when you truly get it.

You have no worries here. Having something to work towards is empowering in itself. By that stage of the session, you will find your mind supplying you with the colour your hair should be or the colour that will perfect the skin. It’s a brand new voice for everyone, nudging you to make the right change. What the colour should be will appear in your head as soon as you stop trying to be the boss of yourself. It’s a very polite voice. It won’t interrupt the traffic flow in your head till you hold up the STOP sign.

It’s also in how you wear your colours. A Dark Winter in a big block of light colour won’t look quite right. She needs darkness to balance it with the larger proportion of dark colour in her and set up the contrast that every Winter needs. If her complexion is very dark, that block of light will work better because the contrast will already be in place.

Many Soft Summers don’t feel right in some of their lightest drapes. Flip one or two of the medium and dark colours over her shoulder at the same time and the picture clicks. Soft Summer is the queen of the sophisticated colour combinations, where sophisticated can mean “to become less simple and straightforward through experience or education” and “to develop into a more complex form”. Soft Summer is very much about layers of meaning, intention, and nuance, in their thoughts as in their colours. When other Seasons combine colour, they drive up the energy. Soft Summer colours are so gentle that they can be combined and still keep the picture elegant and so refined. For me, this Season’s magic isn’t fully apparent until its colours are combined. I’d say the same about Soft Autumn. They’re not so much speak-for-themselves colours, like True Autumn and True Spring. They seem to support one another with a synergy other Seasons don’t achieve as well, or at least, as graciously.

Many Bright Season persons need time to adjust to the colour brightness and energy if they had no inkling of the outcome. The analyst’s job throughout is to keep them focusing on their face, not the drapes. It’s easy to get scared off if you’ve been dressing like your friends or if your cosmetics salesperson thinks “She’d look unbelievable in this red but there’s no way she’ll try it, let alone buy it.”

True and Dark Autumn usually love all their colours. If they arrived wearing blonde hair and black whatever, they recognize there’s a little work to do but they don’t shy away. They are job-oriented anyhow and now have their better alternatives. The next time you see them, they’re glorious.

Light Summer can be surprised, having lived as a Soft Autumn with warm golden hair for 20 years. Since it is impossible not to like this palette, the adjustment is easy. They look better in the gray hat and their Final Drapes than they do when the hair is down but the problem is plain to see. They are usually just excited to get going though apprehensive about how to explain to the colourist what needs doing. They go in armed with photos of what they do want and what they don’t want.

Light Spring is usually happy too.  Springs are very natural people with lots of spunk and spirit and a good bit of daring. These personalities are not caught up in the complicated inner quests. There is often something very spiritual in their life. Emotion runs close to the surface. I seldom find Springs bury a lot of themselves, much more WYSIWYG. They’re hard to repress and anxious to get going. Black’s not good? Fine, give me grey then. They’ll be sending me links to gorgeous products they unearthed within about 2 weeks of their PCA.

Related posts:

1. Can I Borrow My Neighbor Season’s Colours?
2. What are Clear and Soft Colours?
3. Best Makeup Colours : True Autumn

Answer: Only ONE. I have never met anyone who isn’t most perfected by one palette alone. One group of colours has the ability to bring out a never-before-seen version of every person that no other group of colours can do so well. Based on 100 PCAs, that is a truth. (Would other analysts concur?)

#2b: “What does it mean to be on the warm or cool side of my Season?”

During a draping, some people are No Contest better in their Season than any other. There’s no hesitation in making the choice of the best colour. I find this happens often with the True Seasons.

With other people, the call between the best Season and the 2nd runner-up is harder to decide. There might be flattering effects with both, though one will always be better. The person will fit into their Season but edge a little closer to whatever that 2nd runner-up was, cooler or warmer. I see this more often with Neutral Seasons. Why?

Seasons are a continuum of 3 colour qualities (light/dark, cool/warm, soft/clear) that continuously change as they progress along a circular road with 12 cities on it. On that road, every city’s climate is either warmer or cooler than those on either side. For those who bought my book, you’ll see that in The Season Circle diagram. Your colouring, your personal Season marker, can sit right in a city or anywhere along the road between two cities.

The Neutral Seasons are those 8 groups of natural colouring that contain some warmer and some cooler versions of their particular best colours. How much of both can vary. It’s not 50:50 or 75:25 or fixed among the members of any group.

You might have two Light Springs, persons whose colouring is found in the colours of the Spring group that is influenced by a little of what Summer does to colour.

One can be 80% Spring and 20% Summer, so they are warmer and run very close to the next Season on the warm side. They might wear some of that warmer neighbor’s colours successfully.

The other person might be 60% Spring and 40% Summer, so closer to the cool side. They’ll share cool colours better.

Both are most perfect in the Light Spring palette because that’s where the majority of their pigmentation is found. You’ll find people who are 51% of one Season and 49% of the neighbor.

#2c: If I’m close to my warm neighbour Season, can I wear their colours fairly well?

Sometimes yes. If you know you’re on the warm side, when you have to make colour compromises from your perfect Season in a store, opt to trend towards the side your colouring moves towards, that is a trace warmer.

How much warmer? Not a lot. There is a definite heat shift between any 2 neighbour Seasons but if you overstep it, you’ll turn your skin, eyes, and teeth yellow.

I talk a lot about The Most Important Thing (TMIT). It really helps me make good judgment calls. Some people fit into the Lights, Brights, Darks, or Softs, and tend towards the other neighbor in that same group. That means both Seasons share the same TMIT so they can borrow some of those other colours that comply with TMIT. For example:

A Light person does well in light colours, they’re very forgiving. Lightness is TMIT for both Light Summer and Light Spring. So a Light Summer might wear some of the other Light’s (Light Spring) lighter, cooler colours. Even better if she tends on the warmer side of the Light Summer anyhow.

A True Summer’s TMIT is coolness. If she’s fairly dark or contrasting looking, she can wear sometimes wear some of True Winter’s light to medium colours because they’re cool too. Many True Summers will be lost in the saturation of Winter, whether the icy lights or bold darks, but some can pull it off in a small surface area. The coolness shared by the two palettes will help create some unity with the rest of her True Summer clothes.

The draping will tell you how well she’s likely to work this. True Summer and True Winter are quite a ways apart, further in my mind that the Softs, Lights, Brights, and Darks are from each other.  I think that’s one reason why Kalisz arranged them not to share or be neighbors (the other reason being “What for? Kalisz made 12 UNIQUE palettes which a shared Season between True Winter and True Summer would revoke. It would be a null Season.) The other attributes of Light, Bright, Dark, and Soft seem more reasonable as neighbours that could share some colours.

Short answer, IMO, the Softs, Lights, Brights, and Darks who are very close to the neighbour of that same type can borrow some colours, the warm ones if you’re on the warm side, the cool ones if you’re on the cool side. Lights will do better borrowing light colours, and Darks, the darker colours. It won’t always work. You need to be way over there, very near the neighbour you hope to borrow from. The last contest with that runner-up Season should have taken some careful observation. Don’t expect to be as beautiful as in your own palette because you’re borrowing from your second best Season. The heat difference alone may create more disharmony with the rest of the appearance than the item is really worth.

Related posts:

1. Hair and Eye Colour and Season
2. Pretty Your World 12 Season Cosmetics
3. When Your Season Doesn’t Feel Right