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Bright Spring Neutral Colours and CE

April 22, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 14 Comments 

Colour analysis is interior decoration of the soul. If we could extract our soul from our body and stand it beside us, would the two be the same? How beautiful is it when the things we wear are like a window that lets others see to our ocean floor from high up on their own mountain road.

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.

 

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.

 

Light Summer CE And Being Not Pale

January 16, 2012 by Christine Scaman · 17 Comments 

Keep in your mind who we’re putting these colours on. Next to a cross-section of the population, this person is pale. But let’s call it light, since pallor implies ill health. Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep, they will be overall lighter than most people you put beside them. Their darkest colour never gets very dark.

The Light Summer person is light to look at standing in front of a black wall. But not always. In their natural beige brown hair and eyebrow colour, they look more medium till you start putting colour next to or on their skin. Then you notice that the lightest blusher that would be invisible on most women has a huge effect. To balance and not overtake, their closet is light. Light needn’t mean a bowl of dinner mints. How does a rainbow dress to look interesting and impacting? First, see yourself through others’ eyes.

Nobody complains about looking at rainbows. They feel fresh, hopeful, soothing, and happy. Let yourself be who you are and get media perceptions about power out of your way. The clothing, weight loss, anti-aging, personal growth, and cosmetic industries can get you to buy more stuff if they can convince you there’s something wrong with you. It’s cheaper for them to make clone colours. Please believe me, there is nothing wrong with you. In your light colours, you are breathtaking. The sun shines out through the sky and water of your eye colour. That is such a special magic and few are capable of it.

I had a very beautiful, natural, easy Light Summer client. She arrived quite certain that she was a Winter and was going though the motions of a PCA just to confirm it (and come to find out, she had recently bought light blue and peach Capris just because.) Part of her Winter conviction came from seeing her facial structure as strong or intense, which it was, more in keeping with her ideas about Winter. When I think of Spring Summer blends, fragile doesn’t describe their bone structure – or anybody’s bone structure, for that matter. Meryl Streep (whom she greatly resembled), Sharon Stone, Joni Mitchell, Carmindy, Ivanka Trump (perhaps a stronger Spring), these faces express far more than daintiness. You’ll see many fine-boned faces among all Seasons. Media’s convenient typecast of power as dark, intense, and masculine is very far indeed from what power really is. It’s important to distinguish power from intimidation, the cheapest form of power. And like all things cheap, it is neither sustainable or enduring.

Light Summer is a Summer above all. She likes precision and dislikes clutter. Like True Summer, her personality is considerate, and to a lesser degree, can work the details all day and all night, and be uncompromising about getting them right.  She is not really stubborn, just striving towards an idyllic vision that’s almost romantic, as in Utopian.

We often think of  ‘feminine’ for True Summer, all lace and flounce, but that’s not quite the right adjective. Womanly is better. Moon goddess. Fertile (her version of earthy), giving, patient, complete (hence the circle symbol).  She can be very sentimental though the first interaction may be quite formal. Relationships, wisdom, and intuition are nearer her heart than raw intellect, which on its own strikes her as unkind, one-dimensional, and too boringly linear, logical, and external.

Spring’s arrival brings the potential for a little more giddiness. She’s more cooperative, happy in the middle ground, and so easy to get along with. She loves a laugh and takes life less seriously. The sun is coming out. She has humour, self-directed humour, the single best entry ticket to self-knowledge. She doesn’t get all the way to the stronger Springs’ “If life’s not fun, what’s the point?” but she does think “Why can’t everyone just lighten up and get along? Why did God even make Dark Winters? They’re missing all the good stuff.”

She embodies the simplicity of just being pretty. A little cute but mostly pretty. A face like a doll. Christina Applegate. Light Summer is not tough or rugged, it’s tender. Not stern, it’s lenient. Not funky, but still informal. Life can get so complicated, but not here. This is the afternoon off, the nowhere-to-be day, the tell-your-troubles-to person.

Light Spring is creamy, Soft Summer is foggy, True Summer is cool and misty, Light Summer is sunny and barely misty (or do I mean myst?), like a Once Upon A Time land. The rainbow when the sun comes out. Flower petal showers. Trees always in leaf. The lightest dusting of sugar sprinkled all over, a Cotton Candyland (Light Spring is the Jellybean Candyland).

______________________________________

Polyvore

 

She wears the light taupe shoe well because her hair is light taupe. On this woman, it actually does elongate the leg.

She may carry a green purse and she’d probably even go about in green pants. Light, fresh, and fun.

Warmth? Cashmere. It comes in so many colours. Likewise, fleece. It floats.

Wash those white pants with your darks to soften the white a bit.

A serious colour? Add a girlie colour.

A lot of light? Add a darker colour in a small area. Sunglasses count. Cool frame, cool lens, light hardware.

The light colours aren’t that light. Winter’s are even lighter because they’re not pastels. Make big use of your medium range of colours to move away from the pale feeling.

Squint to blur the details and you see dappled light, the perfect light on Light Summer.

Could drift away like a thistle on a breeze.

The dress on the left, too dark? Maybe so slightly. Reminded me of bunches of grapes. Good colour flow. Wear a light shrug or Pashmina and a fun shoe. Carry a light purse. Impact without consequences.

Turquoise ruffled blouse too saturated? Maybe. Don’t care. Love the colour on this person and I see it on them just fine (rather than not seeing them in a too-much colour).

Those blue capris, that’s darker and more saturated than your navy. The pants will be what people see so the area will get bigger by proportion. The V-neck top to the right of the yellow dress is better. But, they work well enough. If you look at the whole picture, they don’t jump out.

The fun juicy accessory. Why not? So people see your Miu Miu  pink coral clutch first (in the outfit along the R side.) So what. Wear your matching lipstick and carpe diem. Light Summer has that Spring fun element. True Spring is the Hawaiian luau. The luscious scent of the lei, the side to side sway of the hula dance, all about relaxed mood, hips, deliciousness, and fun. Light Summer might not get that unfastened but she’s Spring enough for the hair to come down.

I love when Neutral Seasons  (those groups of natural colouring whose inborn pigments are neither 100% cool or 100% warm, but have in-between colouring on the heat scale) demonstrate both Seasons they’re composed of. Wearing cooler and warmer versions of their colours together, as a cool pink lipstick and a light gold lip gloss, is an example. It gives them dimensionality. I also love when they wear both esthetics together. A Soft Summer looks superb in lace (Summer grace) and denim (Autumn strength). A Soft Autumn is beautiful in a flowing scarf (Summer water/flow) and cowboy boots (Autumn leather/desert).

Light Summer’s elements are Summer (graceful, water, feminine) and Spring (sun, movement, sport, play). I love ballet effects (grace and sport) as wrap tops and skirts, ballet flats, scoop necks like leotards, or body-fitting fabric in pretty colours. I love prints a lot, that can show the dewdrops feeling and depict motion with the body’s movements. Outdoor combinations that repeat water and sun, as any kind of sun hat, floppy to baseball to gardening, are great. Small sparkly stones near or on another colour are beautiful, raindrops on roses, as beading on a cardi, better in a wave, or a necklace against a blouse, or an earring near a rose lip.

I was asked how a True Spring expresses two energetic states at once.  I haven’t come up with anything because there is only the one energy. That seeming rivalry isn’t there. But there are many ways of depicting the sun and on a True Spring, there is almost no such thing as clutter.  A yellow or turquoise Swatch, several beaded bracelets, a necklace of turquoise beads and another of different length with a cluster of small gold charms, all three at once, it just looks better and better. Keep sunshine and colour near the eyes at all times.

——-

In the each Season chapter of the book, there’s section  called Colour Equations. To help you see what was in my head when I put those together, and I appreciate that illustrating them is needed, I’ve pasted that section below:

Colour Equations

One light, medium, or dark neutral colour + one light colour or one medium colour

One light to medium-dark neutral colour + one light colour + one medium colour

Two light to medium neutral colours + one other colour as a smaller block

More restrained use of complements as gentler colours or smaller areas

Use of analogous colour combinations, moving towards True Summer’s monochromatic designs

Overall light to medium darkness effect

—————–

I was seeing this:

 

Is it pale? Well, compared to what?  Dusk? Yes. All the black in the stores? Sure. The person we’re putting it on? No.

Does it still feel too light? Add a darker block and keep it smaller. People will see it.

There’s a fair bit of colour variation but still continuity between colours, because that’s what this person looks like. Mixing up the colours even more than what’s shown looks really good. Keep a balance. The more colourful the look, the gentler the colours should be. This isn’t something to worry about if you have a Colour Book of swatches, the gentleness levels are built in.

My thanks to Natalie who pointed me to Alima Pure’s line of cosmetics. The eyeshadow and foundation selections are beautiful, with many choices for Neutral Seasons. Under Products, choose your category and when the page opens, click View Swatches. You’ll see the whole panel open up for comparisons with colour accuracy that appears very good. I can’t recommend particular colours, having never tested them, but if you have experience with this line, please do leave a comment.

If we’re dressing to repeat how we already look (and we are because it feels good to the viewer), the overall effect shouldn’t get darker than medium on a white to black scale. Big light blocks can look bridal or sterile, not right on a fun-in-a-quiet way, optimistic, and cheerful person. Getting too saturated or busy with colour means her clothes compete with her and win. If colours get too dark, her skin will be drained and grey (and it will follow, who needs grayer teeth?) Remember too that viewers have a lot more colours to process besides your clothes – there’s hair, makeup, eyes, and that big block of skin – that aren’t in the graphic above. They will thank you if everything matches.

The Dance

How could I forget the music? From classical ballet origins in True Summer and then loosened up when Spring appeared. Spring brings magic and mysticism, freedom and imagination.

Proving that anybody can make fire:

 

Too hot for Light Summer? Maybe that’s Light Spring’s and we need something dreamier? A reader felt a connection with this very beautiful harp music.

 

 

Colour Equations Dark Winter

December 24, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments 

Many people have no interest in their colours, but not just blandly so. They’re defensively so. They don’t mind being advice about other fashion guidelines but they do not want to be told there are certain colors that might not be best for them. Why colour?  Because colour gets below the surface. Colour gets into the hard-wiring. There’s more at stake if you let someone in. Let’s spend some time in Dark Winter’s personal space.

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.

 

 

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.

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!

 

Are All 60 Colours Really My Best?

December 15, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments 

Excellent question #4:  Are there people who are really best in only some of their colors and for whom other colors in the palette are a compromise?

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.

 

 

 

Soft Summer Landscapes

November 10, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 58 Comments 

Such a pleasant and sensible personality. I adore these people. Like any relationship, those who live with them may have plenty to deal with, but true to Summer’s politeness, the rest of us have it easy. There is a great equilibrium in this person, equal opportunity analytical and emotional processors and completely adaptable to your personal preference.

Autumn’s determination is coming on board. Settled by Summer’s consideration for others, it feels more like stability. Ask a Winter what they think. Ask a Summer how they feel. This person gladly answers to both, easily exploring both worlds, allowing them to flow in and out of one another, calm and safe, without the need to erect or protect boundaries between them. This is Part 1 of why we analyze so many of them.

The darkest of the Summers, Soft Summer does not look like a light person. They look like Kate Middleton and Angelina Jolie, like Christy Turlington and Fergie. Their very mediumness makes it strangely easy to mistakenly place them in almost any Season. And that’s Part 2.

This is the group that feels dusky to me. Many appear to have a natural tan year round. Dark Winter is often called dusky but they have too much hardness and clarity for that. Think of Demi Moore, Cindy Crawford, Hilary Swank, or Sally Field compared to Ellen Pompeo where the hair to skin to eyes transitions are incredibly gradual or not even there.

 

How The World Feels

 

So very comfortable. Not mild exactly, that feeling is more in some of  Light Spring’s colours. Just easy to be with. The Soft Seasons are surely the least demanding. These are the days when the heat and humidity of summer have passed recently enough to still feel them. Not too hot or too cold, too squinty light or too dark. The air is cool enough that clothes don’t stick and faces don’t shine. Our limbs move through downy silky air. Being outdoors is the relief it was intended to be. The easing that comes with simply being in our Nature home is denied in our lifestyle. Yet, the restoration is undeniable when we make time for it. We come from earth and are balanced and completed by intimacy with it. In Soft Summer, Nature is the shelter, support, and contentment of the bed of moss under the canopy of pine branches.

>> in clothing, the translation is in maintaining the mediumness; no piece should demand attention over any other, not eyeliner, not jewelry, not lipstick, not shoes. If you wear a light or a dark, balance it with a medium.

The mediumness on the heat scale (75% cool/25% warm) is factored into the personal colour swatches automatically.  A no brainer for you. The genius of Kathryn Kalisz was to create these 8 Neutral Seasons with 60 specific and exclusive colours that are unrepeated in the other Seasons and harmonize exactly within each Season. You have to see these colour collections to appreciate how singular and extraordinary the palettes are and how special this system of PCA becomes as a result. In this and other aspects, it is unique, correct, and quite magnificent.

The clarity level isn’t medium, it’s way low. That doesn’t mean colourless, look at the photos and Polyvore below, it just means not as colourful as the others. When life assaults our senses from every angle to get noticed, what we feel here is gratitude and a place to relax. The choice of where we direct our attention is ours for a change. In a cloud, edges are shadowy, they vanish and reappear continuously. Lines can wave, surfaces can shimmer.

>> in a composition, an outfit, there’s an undercurrent of grey that unites the elements and provides the visual continuity. Prints blur from a distance like tricks of the light. No big transitions between colour elements exist so objects blend into one another so gradually, as hallucinations, being inside a dream, a watercolour mirage.

Peaceful because sounds are muffled, the air is velvety, and intrusive presence is always veiled. Secluded tranquility enfolds us as we are lulled into believing that the only company is the one we choose.

Relief in the stillness that cushions and absorbs. Like Soft Autumn, Soft Summer’s colours are all giving and no taking

>> in clothes and makeup, colour pops don’t belong here. Stay inside the palette and keep colour subliminally gradual. Soft Summer is never explicit.

See the deer? In a B&W photo, you’d miss it. The precise edges of Ellen Pompeo’s features would be very hard to identify too.

Notice the tree trunk colour, a good blued grey. There are some great pinks and greens here to provide the feeling of gentled strength. I know one reader at least will be thankful that the quantity of pink in this photo is so small because she couldn’t bear to wear more than this. She is very much a Soft Summer in her feelings about how pink she is, a colour many have the most trouble identifying with, far more so than True Summer, while Light Summer has no trouble at all.

Colour Scales

In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, the Soft Summer comprises those whose natural colouring is

Quieted by the fog gray that settles over the True Summer swatches – this is the Most Important Thing. The Season is not muted, it’s MUTED+cool. Gotta see the grey, as opposed to True Summer where it’s COOL + muted. Look at the pictures until you can be consciously aware of the greying that flows through each element, joining it to every other as if by a barely  visible web. Like the forest in the movie Avatar, every piece is connected by a grey neural net in our perception.

Cooler than warm and a little warmer than True Summer, but it doesn’t feel like warmth yet. It feels like dull. In How The 5 Springs Add Yellow, you saw that the heat isn’t that hot yet. What Autumn adds to the palettes it influences is really gold, but there’s so little of it still that the effect is more to cloak some brightness (add Autumn gold-orange to Summer blue and you get gray by the effect of complementary colour, right?)

Medium darkness, no black or white. They are jarring. You saw this photo in Soft Summer’s Best Hair Color. If you had to pick a highlight, would yellow really be the one that feels best? And that’s a soft yellow. Bleach that up a few notches and add a chemical glint and the result would not fall from the beautiful tree. By comparison, the taupe feels good. It feels like it belongs (because it does).

 

Soft Summer Clothing

If anyone ever needed proof that accomplished Season beauty is not about going out and buying anything made in your colours, Polyvore would have to be it. Pick a colour and look at the selection. Even if you ignore the utterly silly and the stuff a 5’11″, Size 2, 20-year old couldn’t look good in, there’s still too much that makes no sense. The image below is set up as little Soft Summer vignettes.

Other than a few greiges, there is a fair bit of colour. It happens to be a bit faded compared to the other Seasons.We’re not sure if it’s the lighting, but it feels as though less colour is really light than we expect for Summer. On a sunny day, some of the colours might be quite light, but not today. Like a rainy day, there is a sense of glad acceptance, of productivity, of dressing for a charity lunch at the museum or an afternoon symphony. I’m pretty sure she gets there in a brushed silver Camry.

There needs to be darkness somewhere, not a lot, just a touch. Very light isn’t what she looks like. Isn’t natural hair colour the best? If ever a Season should emanate cool un-complication, it is this one. The hair is too often called mousy and interfered with.

We’re trying to continue the flow between how you look and what you add to yourself. If you’re lighter, you’ll wear an overall lighter effect than a darker woman would. If your hair is dark and skin light, you’ll wear more lights with darks and not strive to incorporate a medium block. The overall palette remains the same, the one that made your skin the most perfect, that made you look youngest. In women over 30, I could almost do the whole analysis just across the eye band (the client and I divide her face into three horizontal bands when we evaluate the changing drapes), so much are age effects evident in wrong colour. We all lose objectivity within 4 feet of a mirror. Try taking some photos or video of yourself to see how widely separated your light/dark span appears to others. It’s better.

Reckoning the amount of warmth is hardish. See that red cardigan center just south of middle? See how it’s not really blued? It’s more fogged? Take berries, almost any sort, and fog them. Not sugar dusted, rather dust dusted, the colour of the object still coming through. Look for the layer of good old house dust.

Less eyelet and lace than True Summer, though she can wear bits of both, and a little more bulk. Still Summer sheer but a bit straighter though not yet sturdy. Still quite ladylike, though she doesn’t really emphasize that part of herself.  Pearls and cameos certainly work, in the rosy, fleshy browns of the inside of red grapes. She is not heavy in texture. She does tasteful ruffle cascades beautifully. Some women are very feminine, others feel conspicuous in girlishness and want to get back to their hoodie and yoga pants or cargo shorts. She will almost always take the time to put in earrings.

Her song, being around her, can feel like this (sorry, couldn’t embed it). That slowed-down, soothing way she moves, the softness of the way she moves her mouth and the sounds she makes, those are very characteristic of Soft Seasons. Ever heard Jennifer Aniston interviewed? Lots of soft oo and mm sounds. Angelina Jolie is similar.  She’s quiet, controlled, unhurried, loving but forthright. She is more reserved than Spring spunky. She’s exactly halfway between emotional and analytical.

More colours apart than True Summer, ie: less monochromatic.  Not all over the map but introducing some variety absolutely works. The combinations in this Season are particularly amazing to me. Maybe they just sound amazing. Hold these colours together in your head till you see them clearly: antique turquoise with grey pearl ; dove grey and cocoa rose; sage and stormcloud blue ; pewter and softest rose. Feels good, doesn’t it?  Always softness with strength. The two, together at once, in colour, texture, and design, are the very heart of Soft Summer.

She is Vivianne and Nimue, ruling priestess, Lady of the Lake, loving and seducing Merlin, and granting Arthur Excalibur. She is a moon goddess and the caretaker of Arthur’s dead body on its journey to Avalon. A Camry?? What am I talking about? She lives in a land of chivalrous knights and drifting mists. She drives a Phantom Silver Ghost, of course.

The taupes are tremendous and there are many. In everything from eyeliner to shoes, this is a neutral to be worn and worn. Entire outfits can be based on light dark variations, since any Summer does well in monochromatics.

People ask about maintaining best contrast in their Season. You know, the Colour Book does the thinking for you. If your best look is low contrast as here, the palette won’t give you black, white, or any extremes that are are outside your range in the first place. You’d have trouble setting up max contrast in Soft Summer if you tried. You do want colours to flow easily. That means that you can wear your darkest and your lightest, sure, but insert a medium darkness element to bridge the two ends and bring them closer.

Soft Summer fabric can be matte. The makeup should be. With artificial frosting, this complexion ends up going more muted (read, greyer) by comparions while the frost look hard and glittery. Fabric is also gorgeous with a soft sheen, lustrous like the inside of an oyster and the surface of the pearl within.  Some gleam on the lips repeats this just right. As Autumn arrives, gently textured textile, like a light boucle works well, so a little more weave, a little more grain.

The greens are completely magically beautiful. For any Autumn, your teals are transformative, workhorses of your wardrobe. The greener colours can be underdone once Soft Summer is able to spot her teals.  That light lustrous shirt, I love it a lot.

Seasonal Colour Analysis Makeup Colours

Kidney purple was a description I loved from a reader regarding the excellence of Dior Addict lipstick Londres. We have some brilliant shoppers, experts in their colours, among our readers. If they’d add their favorite cosmetic colours to the Comments, many women will be grateful, I as well. I would try NARS Tokyo Duo eyeshadow. MAC Syrup lipstick and eyeshadows MAC Shale, Yogurt, Aria are good. Their Malt is a great eyeshadow to reduce frost and saturation in other eyeshadows you may own. Lips? Clinique Voluptuous Violet, Lauder Soft Amethyst, Bobbi Brown Rose Petal, Cover Girl Honey Plum Glow, could all be good. The great red lip with a little more depth for evening? You might look at Mercier Dry Rose.

We’re after believable beauty, not the kind that obviously came from a bottle. Attention getting elements are not believable here. Whispered suggestions, uncertainty about what you heard and thought you heard, Soft Summer colours and shapes move in and out of your perception like ghosts of their original form.

There is no point in reading someone else’s lines when it’s so much easier and more real to play your own part. Heidi described it brilliantly as dialing in the tuning band on a radio to find your own frequency. Stay close to who you are and far from who they want (or tell) you to be.

 

True Summer Polyvore

November 2, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 9 Comments 

To fill out the Dress For Your Landscape: True Summer, we had a request for a Polyvore. You know I can never just show a picture. There has to be words. And then too many words keep happening.

True Summer is particular. There are no scratches or smudges on her glasses. She keeps special cloths and fluids at home and office and purse and car. And watch her clean them or take off her nail polish. Like she’s in her own private hell. If Winter wants control, True Summer wants precision.

She’s helpful and tailored but not excessive, like a flight attendant. At all times, gun to her head, she is well behaved and ready to negotiate. In one word, and I know I’ll take some heat, the word I hold in my head when I search is ladylike.  There it is, the word we all love to hate. 50% of readers would swear I just said prissy.

Not prissy, prude, prim, proper, whatever. OK, maybe a little bit proper. Therefore she has personal restraint enough for all for us. Etiquette does make the world a better place and if everyone had more of it, oh, how good that would be. For this woman, a tub of Haagen-Daz really does have 4 servings.

This is a challenging clothing style to find in our Lady Gaga world. Ballet flats are too sweet. This woman isn’t that. She takes life pretty seriously, not as competition but as a force for good. She won’t have the bag in the shape of a frog and probably not a pink or yellow one either.

True Summer is least harmonized by menswear influences. This is a rounded body with many curved lines that glides when it walks. Boxiness, straight lines, rigid designs, they are not nearly as good as swirls. I think this is where the constant searching and feeling of unrest stems from that women have about shopping. The clothing industry has all these gaps it could fill instead of making more of the same. Women know what’s out there isn’t right and can’t quite put their finger on why.

I tried to think in terms of outfits so there are groups within groups here.

True Summer sets by christinems featuring strappy sandals

Colours are a little muted. White white jeans will positively glisten next to the rest of the colours. They appear aggressive on a part of our body where that can send the wrong message unless that’s what you’re trying to do. Jeans in the very colour and texture of chalk would be perfect. No heat, no shine. Part of what holds the whole picture together is that little bit of greyness that hovers over it. No greyness and the item won’t fit under the umbrella so it sticks out there, getting wet, which looks neither strong or attractive. Pretend you can’t see the orange purse.

Some darkness is necessary. This person is usually quite medium in darkness, but some seem quite dark. The odd one has white blond hair, quite an effect next to the navy blue eyes, but there the eyes hold the dark.

Green is underdone because it’s hard to find. There are several. The prototype is clover, blued and a very smidgen dusted. Still a lot of colour. You know that background feeling of a grey fluff round the outer edges of a clover leaf? That’s very much the essence of True Summer, that  gentle blurring of the overall effect. The moon is like that, a very effective grey- white glow on this Season.

I won’t say too much. Ask if you wonder what I was thinking.

Wearing The True Autumn Landscape

October 28, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 36 Comments 

In 12 Season personal colour analysis, there are 4 main Seasons, or True Seasons, named after the 4 natural seasons. True Autumn is the homeland for the most flattering colours of the person whose natural pigmentation is made of colours that are:

- absolutely warm; even the colours we think of as cool have been warmed by comparison to their appearance in the cooler Seasons; like True Summer, True Autumn is more saturated than people think. Most folks’ ideas of True Autumn and True Summer live in the Soft Autumn and Soft Summer palettes.

- muted, but not nearly as much as the Soft Autumn; yes, True Autumn’s salsa and curry are muted compared to True Spring’s fruit punch and citrus, but we don’t think of them as grey ; we do think of Soft Autumn’s cactus as greyed; True Aututmn’s entire palette viewed at once looks like a hot glow, well beyond rosy blush; to emanate that kind of heat, we are moving away from pink and into red

- medium to dark in value; most colours are medium, few are very light, and none darken all the way to black ; the overall look needs some darkness to give the feeling of richness and depth, too much lightness looking too powdery

This series of landscape articles (True Summer, Soft Autumn, True and Bright Winter , and Bright Spring have been posted) serves as an opportunity to see ourselves with objectivity. Unless we transfer colour and clothing decision outside of ourselves, objectivity is too far to far reach for most of us, certainly for me. We are far too invested in our complexities to have any idea how we look to others.

The world is full of odd psychology, a common one being to inadvertently reward ourselves, our kids, our pets, for the very behaviour we’d like to be rid of. We want to look like our friends or like celebrities, but what if we’re imitating them and not really loving how they look? Buy a magazine aimed at your demographic and mark the pages of the women you would love to look like. How many have complicated hair? sparkly eyeliner? sparkly purple eyeliner? frosty pale lips? Is their hair and makeup like yours?

It’s also interesting that in trying to look like our friends, we end up looking less like them and more like us. All those blonde highlights out there accentuate the differences between us rather than making us more similar, which only works in your favour if yellow in hair is flattering to your skin. If you put a room full of women in the same red dress and really looked at the women and not the dress, the differences between them, meaning who looks good in that red and who doesn’t, become easy to see. What looks good on our friends doesn’t help us know what enhances us.

Finding people of similar colouring to ours to try clothes, makeup, or hair on can be very useful if that person can be found but there’s such variation of appearance among members of the same Season that our counterparts are not always available. Or, the celebrities look like the average for the Season and we don’t. Still, some retain enough of themselves to have good real world comparison value.

Keri Russell could be a True Autumn.

So could Susan Sarandon. You can see that their overall colour effect feels toasty, medium on a darkness scale, and glowy. Their natural coppery heat just looks better surrounded by warm, muted, medium dark colour. Scan their Images and decide how dark their best hair is to flatter the face. It’s fairly dark. Many True Autumns wear their hair too light (Kathie Lee Gifford) and the glow be long gone. Red hair is by no means a necessity but these women are very seldom beautiful as blondes or in ash hair tones.

 

We belong to our planet home at such an organic, elemental level. We each hold wondrous beauty and the divine unknown within us. We each represent a painting of a scene that we know, love, and trust, but we can’t always see the resemblance with ourselves. Like music, colour is a language that tells us information about the world we live in. Like technology or medicine, the value of the language is so much broader when we can use it to live better, happier, freer, stronger, and more connected to the people that matter to us. Oh, and live cheaper, let’s not forget that.

What’s the world feel like for the very timely True Autumn Season? In Canada now, we are given these:

 

Melinda feels it this way, from this photo:

I love the traditional pictures of fall leaves and sun shining softly through a canopy of colors, but for some reason these pictures just stir up something else in me that I feel so connected to.The first set of pictures, the rocks and bronze river, reach into some deep emotions for me. Warmth, intensity, passion, strength, and solidarity all come to mind. Such a range of emotions that are rooted deep in my soul.

The pictures below speak to my surface, if that makes sense. The bright vibrant trees and the gentle softness of the sun echoes an almost tangible warmth, comfort, coziness, and welcome that you just want to walk into. The leaves add a crispness that just makes you feel like dancing. Joy lives there and you can feel it.

 

 

What they all have in common:

- warmth: well, yes, we know this, but replace the word with passionate heat for this article; if your mind says greyed before it says richly glowingly warm, hand the item over to Soft Autumn.

- darkness: it’s getting darker; daylight hours are shorter; in the overall effect of an outfit, there’s still enough light to read by.

- dryness: cooler air holds less water; the grass is browner, the harvest is dry enough to bring in ; not very shiny or reflective, no sparkles.

- dustiness: the Earth is busy and dry.

- productivity, we know there’s cold on the way and we need to get our house in order, but the sun can still warm our back and make colours and faces glow.

- a sense of depth, which you’ll recreate with layers, darkness levels, and patterns

-  the overriding presence of brown in every colour we see; a petunia would stick out like orange pop at a coffee shop ; Autumn is Spring, oxidized, the wine and the nectar, not the fresh-squeezed juice.

- there are no cool blued colours; the reds are not direct red, but indirectly lit as rust, muted red-orange, and browned reds; even the light seems indirect, as though it’s coming from lower down in the sky, which of course, it is.

- texture:  Melinda loves several photos that are stone based and I see True Autumn that way too; the glint of metal is not here yet, not till Dark Autumn arrives, which is still not very flashy, but it’s ramping up, and ramping up more in the Dark Winter, the least flashy of the Winters, and then more as it gets colder; True Autumn can work in small metallic elements well because they look metallic but too much is too hard on a person who really isn’t.

True Autumn Clothes

- never met one who likes clingy fabric, possibly related to age

- that blue cardi in the center may be too muted, may be Soft Autumn, not warm enough for True Autumn, but I like it and I could adapt it here because of the darkness; shopping ain’t perfect; you might love an item that’s close enough; there are swatches that can look pretty similar between unrelated palettes; at the mall, make the very best match you can and know that the rest of the outfit will situate the colour into your Season; makeup may be a bit less forgiving because it’s painted right on the face

- if Winter’s fabric extreme is the scuba suit, True Autumn’s is burlap, the ultimately brown colour, the utilitarian feel

- the camel is really oranged; I like the way a turtleneck frames the face and hair and even better if it’s a great colour that distinguishes it

- coloured and textured and opaque tights should be worn, they’re good

- not quite cute enough to be cozy to me, though many people do get that feeling from these colours. I find them too hot to be that benign, but the colour heat is still comfortable, not reckless. You can touch it without being burned. In fact you can hold it as long as you want.

- about white, remember how it didn’t really fit well into Soft Autumn’s landscape? , it will add yet another 5 years here

- about black, it’s too cold to harmonize with anything, and many colours don’t get that close to black, so I hope that skirt to the left of the amber beads is chocolate; the overall darkness effect should leave enough light to read by; having said that, concessions will make shopping more fun ; if you found a perfect faux leopard short jacket and it happened to have black buttons that were not enormous and the overall effect was of rich caramel, gold, and chocolate brown, and if your hair were medium dark or more, that coat might be absolutely lovely

- red is by nature a warm colour and I love a red coat, it gets noticed and manifests the very strong lifeforce of these persons; seemingly low key, they have some of the strongest moorings I know, levelheaded and reliable as the stone we saw earlier, absolutely nothing darting, fleeting, sporadic, or flighty ; I love neutrals (black ,white, grays, beiges and greiges in the U.K. ) a lot, but on both True Warm Seasons, I absolutely love lots of colour, personifying people that are so alive, busy and loving their life, not fussing, just getting on with it

- not the military style that suits Dark Autumn better, who is a much more straightened out, direct, vertical person, approaching Winter’s stationary vertical line (Bright Winter’s line will shift to the diagonal, Spring’s is becoming horizontal, explaining why horizontal stripes look so good to me on a Spring, and in my head, Summer’s line is horizontal wavy, like a ruffle) ; this character isn’t so “with intention” as the Dark blends, who lock onto a target; that rigidity is muted in True Autumn, as the colours are, so you have a straightforward person no doubt, but not shot out of a cannon

-  what’s the theme song? It’s a steady beat, not as threatening as the Jaws movie theme, a Winter gets that, more defined contrasts and all,  Dark Winter, I’m guessing. I’m looking for a steady drum, maybe Adele  Rolling In The Deep? Close, but not hot enough…The Circle Of Life, maybe… heat makes molecules agitate and move faster. Thinking. Not Spring’s reggae. Hotter, darker, tribal, smoked light, uncontrolled heat (this is the part where the True Autumns say “Who me?”) Hotter than Soft Autumn’s Hot August Night. This is pretty hot,

Dhoom Again

 

Once Dark Autumn arrives, Winter will put the cold clamps on and there will be heat but it won’t be on such display.

- what do they drive? A Dodge Ram 1500? Too truck. Classier? Cadillac Escalade? Too flaunty. A Navigator? Better. A Jeep Wrangler Rubicon? Feels about right. Dark Autumn drives a Jag XJ. Dark Winter drives an Audi A6 Avant after they trade in their 2010 Nissan Maxima, having found an Audi that comes in Batmobile black. True Winter? Black Porsche. Bright Winter? Lamborghini with the doors that flip up. Bright Spring? A Merc E Class convertible in a smart and snappy colour. Back to our topic.

- I like the bow in the jacket at the mid-top, it’s not too ribbony, it’s solid and square in a very browned neutral; strength and femininity together are curiously magnetic, I feel

- no real pinks present; mix pink with pumpkin puree and that’s True Autumn pink, looking much better in clothes than makeup where browned colours are better unless the pink is very golden

- no pinkish reds; if you take tan leather and dye it red, that’s the cool red, maybe like a red Frye boot ; that’s the red lipstick too, like paprika, not as dark as chili powder ; I like a browner day lipstick – if Soft Autumn’s was the rosy cinnamon stick floating in the warming pot of apple cider, then True Autumn is the cider itself, and Dark Autumn is the clove

- Spring thought about peach, blossom, and candy; Autumn thinks of the jars of preserves, not the raw salad (Spring); Autumn thinks about strong, heavy, straighter now that Summer has gone, mead and liqueur, Bailey’s, Kahlua, a duller finish but lots of touch information (fur, flannel, corduroy, tweed, leather), nectar (colour is getting thicker, more opacity), the hive, the honeycomb (repetition, industry, work = functional (Spring=fun, Winter=flash, Summer=feminine); the bumblebees of the world, going about their business, these are the builders; think of blocks, bricks, order, structure, steps, strength, progress

- colours start at medium, not light; only the beiges get very light and they’re still browned, like vanilla whipped into cream, like brown buff, light wheat, light brown peach; cottage cheese is too light and mozzarella too yellow

- I find it harder to know if I have lots of golden heat when I assess a possible True Autumn colour vs. Spring, where I can always tell max yellow heat. What I look for is a bronzed brown glowing feeling, like hot copper overlay, which how the person’s skin tone looks. I want to sense abundant sultry heat, not greyness, not lukewarm, not summery, though still very hospitable, nothing hostile.

- very little blue, just one bronzed colour; the blues are quite greened because the yellow contribution harmonizes better in warm coloured outfits while cool blues don’t; I love purple with the warm hair tones, it’s unexpected and not very red because Winter isn’t here yet

- there are warmer and cooler greens; the cooler greens really are green, not teal or avocado, and a little dull, like Green Bay Packers green

- as more distance between colours on the wheel are fabulous when combined, we get a very rich cornucopia effect; profusion was Spring’s word, abundance is Autumn’s

- animal prints in small surface area supports the lifeforce without looking swallowed; Dark Autumn can balance a whole item better and same with metallics as Winter’s hardware orientation arrives; this woman isn’t that decorative and feels overdone in glitz, she’s got 1000 cookies to bake for the Cookie Exchange, is hauling the boat out of the water by herself, wants to fit a bike ride in this day, has a pie crust to roll out, and would love to hear about how you’re doing once she’s finished what she set out to do; she sure looks gorgeous with a  metallic thread in a scarf, a copper glint to her lipstick, a gold or brass buckle on a belt or purse, or stripe in a shirt

- using matte and dull finishes makes the odds of getting the colour right higher automatically by creating some muting, as some of the shoes below; the green heeled sandal at the top of the Polyvore below may be too emerald but in sueded fabric, it could look like dull teal and fit into this painting

Here are the shoes, the belt, the bag, the HAIR!! (See also True Autumn’s Best Hair Colour). Warm, rich, lustrous, and brown. There is nothing faded about this palette.

 

She wears a purposeful watch, maybe a menswear style,

to go with solid functional bag, square like a briefcase or at least not completely slouchy,

shoes you can live a real life in,

and a necklace with weight.

Supremely business stylish, this lady is up-to-the-minute, resourceful, and lives in the present. Autumn is grown-up, self-sufficient, and mature. Her male counterpart is Indiana Jones, though they dress him as a Soft. U2′s Bono sans glasses seems True Autumnish.

Think about the quiet light and stony strength of the pyramids, not the blinding jackpot glare of El Dorado. Marketers have a much better handle on what young women want and how to sell it to them. If True Autumn has trouble finding clothes, it’s because the styles in shops are too young and her colours are often limited to brown and green. Imagination belongs everywhere.

The pieces have some weight and bulk, not Spring’s hearts and lucky charms, not Summer’s lacy water, or Winter’s hardest-substance-on-Earth jewels. To add interest, touches could be Egyptian, Bollywood, hot stone-lava, old coins, wood, jade, brass, enamel and ceramic which remind of firing and heat, and natural semi-precious stone. Even stones should be noticeably browned down. Leather looks great, strong without being hard, in Southern Comfort colours.

She can accessorize endlessly, with items from many categories at once. Scarves were made for this woman because they look textured and warm and give the impression of depth. What she does best isn’t really to accessorize, like Bright Winter who can wear jewelry on her neck, ears, and wrists, all at once. True Autumn layers.

It’s easy enough not to stumble into Dark Autumn, just keep black out. Colour can go pretty dark but you should be able to see that it’s not black in all but the dimmest lighting, and this applies equally to shoes and eyeliner.

Reptile can work if it’s quiet, not too cold and slithery. True Autumn is more plain-spoken. Dark and oily don’t belong in this brew, they look like a black panther marching up the forest path in the photo above. Panthers don’t march, they prowl. She might do crocodile, though Dark Autumn better. Snakeskin is best on Winter, but if the colour is very gentle, even a Soft Autumn can look great. The texture offering is good, it just needs adapting because of the message the wrong version can send.

Periwinkle is supposed to be an Autumn classic but it doesn’t send thrills through me. I do love the Soft Autumn in their version.

Going back through this to pick out random keywords that could define this colouring: abundant, deep as in plush, deep as in layers, medium-dark, texture, strong but not maximally hard, work, build, structure, browned, coppery, golden, matte, small to medium metallic or fur or animal element, functional, opaque, molten, rich hot glow.

Spring  may be excited, but more than any other, oooee, baby, True Autumn is exciting.

Susan Is A True Winter

October 21, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 6 Comments 

So, we arrived.  And because we were late, we did not waste any time jumping into it.  Lauren asked me about my previous PCA experiences. I told her, and she said, “Well, I think you might be some kind of winter, but whenever I start a PCA, I throw everything I expect out the window and start like I don’t know anything about what season you might be.”  Good advice for many endeavors, I would say.

The warm drape was obvious – I was NOT warm.  No big surprise there.  Then the neutral drape.  Hmmm, not as good as I expected, but then, we started with the lightest colors, so difficult to tell.  Then the lighter cool drape.  I tried to be open-minded from the start and give the cool drapes a chance.  Hmmm, not bad.

There were four sets of test drapes for warm, neutral and cool, and cool won out every time.  By the time we got to the deepest cool, a beautiful purple, I couldn’t deny the clearing of the skin, it looked so smooth and even.  Though I (and I’m sure Lauren, too) was pretty sure of the outcome by then, she still ran me through all the paces of each season, showing me how BAD the autumn drapes were, even compared to spring drapes, and how BAD the summer drapes were compared to true winter.  It really wasn’t much of a contest, but I’m really, really glad I got to see the evidence with my own eyes.

After the draping, we got out my makeup.  Lauren went through all the colors, and finally decided on the brightest fuschia lipstick I owned, Revlon wild orchid, for my lipstick.  Bobbi Brown pale pink (not really pale, actually, quite hot in my opinion) would be the cheek color, and we used hardly any eye makeup at all, partly in the interest of time.  Still wearing the grey gown, I looked at myself in the mirror.  Was that me?  Did we get it right?  But I knew we had.  I had seen it with my own eyes.

Then Lauren began draping me again with the true winter drapes and the makeup.  And I’ll admit, I looked into the mirror with that lovely pine green drape and the tears came, unbidden as always, and with some measure of surprise.  What was this?  Why was I crying?  Was it the relief of finally knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt?  Or was it that as I looked in the mirror, I looked different, and as I have said before, different just looked too different to be good?  After the emotional moment passed, I looked again and thought, “Who IS that woman?  Is that really me?”

Well, of course it was me.  I knew that.  My bottom hadn’t budged from the draping chair, even when Lauren graciously offered me a water and bathroom break.  No thank you, I’m good, I replied.  Keep going.  This is fascinating.  Besides, I’d waited a long time for this experience.  No breaks needed, please.

But still that face … that reflection, did not seem mine.  Pale skin, practically glittering eyes, deep pink lips … that reflection possessed a combination of delicacy and radiance I certainly wasn’t familiar with.   Very high contrast. Striking I could deal with, and often felt on some occasions.  But delicate?  Radiant?  I was reminded for a moment of the makeup colors used in films to depict geisha girls, only this reflection possessed an energy and strength more vibrant than any Oriental stillness.

I couldn’t decide … was it the eyes that surprised me?  Or the pale skin?  Or the vivid lip color?  I decided it was the eyes more than anything.  I had on so very little eye makeup that my eyes felt vulnerable, center stage, almost.  And even as I write this, I am reminded of a winter trait I read that true winters don’t mind being seen except when they don’t want to be .  Very accurate, that one.

So it was the eyes that threw me, as they had others in analyzing me.  Those eyes that had learned to be sensitive as a child, to read the signs around me, and act accordingly.  I learned to play it safe, because being good, fitting in, being perfect = being safe (maybe).  I became, underneath all that poise, the anxious child who learned early on at the appearance of negative emotion to “fall back on her safe but limited repertoire.  [I] did not take chances ….and turned my back on the unknown”  (Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness).

I won’t go into my history here of how these dynamics played out in later life, as daughter, wife and mother.  It is interesting to me, however, to notice the times in my life I lived and felt in harmony with my TW colors vs. the times that I didn’t.  Many women have written eloquently here of those stories.  They are worth reading!  But suffice it to say, looking back I do notice a pattern of how color mirrored my perceived expectations of how I should act and be.

And now, here I was, face to face with a woman I knew, but not in her fullness.  I come from a long line of strong women, but their strength is more in what they endured and not necessarily in the strength to be their authentic selves in a consistent manner.  My mother was fortunate enough to enjoy that kind of freedom in her later years.  I am so proud of her for that.

I realize that sometimes we get so busy and on auto-pilot that we become  vulnerable to outside expectations.  We forget the power of choice is still within us.  We forget the lives of intention we dreamed about as young women.  We just get on that treadmill and go. (Or maybe this is just a true winter thing?)

I left my draping feeling freed yet vulnerable at the same time.  I think one reason I subconsciously wanted to be DW was I felt the autumn colors would ground and empower me, as well as make me more approachable with their warmth.

I wrote to Christine that evening: Way back when we were making collages with the Style Statement book, someone mentioned the phrase ‘vulnerable strength’ in regards to mine. At the time, I was struck by the phrase but didn’t want to own it. After seeing the drapes on me today, I realize my vulnerability, that delicacy, is one of my strengths, when I allow it to be. But it is also what I have most feared … I still can’t believe that kind of delicacy can balance those strong true winter colors, but it does … there was NO denying the drapes.

Christine replied: But ultimate vulnerability and ultimate strength DEFINES True Winter. The most extreme opposites must exist at once. That’s the contrast that the colours speak of. It must have been a beautiful experience for you and a big leap towards making peace with yourself, what we’re all trying to do.  

 Well, I would be lying if I said I am ‘already’ totally at peace with myself and my true winter colors.  In clothing, I think TW is easier for me to embrace than in the makeup, perhaps because I have always loved makeup and enjoyed using it to achieve a certain ‘look.’  I’m sure I’m not alone in this … it is the mindset, the foundation, that cosmetic sales are built on.

A template, or model, is usually helpful, at least when one is trying to visualize a season IRL.  And I found one in the most unlikely of places … Christine’s mention of Elizabeth Taylor as a possible true winter.  That example just clicked with me, which is odd because my husband and others are constantly telling me I look like Sela Ward, but even DH admits Sela has a hardness about her when compared to me.  He says my demeanor and expressions are more like the French actress, Marion Cottilard, whom our own Rachel feels might be TW.

So, why Elizabeth?  I look nothing like her, I am built very little like her, but I found in her the epitomy of extremes that define TW.  If you look closely at her acting and the roles she chose, there exists the ultimate in vulnerability, and strength, and oh my goodness, the range of emotion that woman could access and display!  And it was in being true to that range of emotion that she was always herself.  She was vivid, radiant, even striking at times, but also, undeniably human, so she felt just a bit more accessible to us in her films than she would have otherwise.  We trusted her because she was Elizabeth, always.

So, I ask the question again, Why did I cry, beyond the relief of finally KNOWING after a year and a half of WONDERING?  I understand and live every day the notion that winters are about control, and oh, the relief and elation of knowing moved me.  But I also felt a LOSS of control as I viewed myself, at least initially.

I knew, even before I walked into that room, that I would have a choice to make.  I could fight the results, or surrender.  And I had already made the choice to accept whatever the outcome might be.  On reflection, I think I cried at the sheer beauty (and relative newness, at least for me) of the experience of surrendering to what was.  I’ve lived long enough to know that it is only through accepting and validating what is that we can move on to what can become.

I’m not sure how this newfound sensibility of BEING true winter will impact my life with myself, my husband, my children, and others around me.  I’m done with being something I’m not, whether consciously, or by habit, or to remain safe.   No one really liked me that way, anyway.  What’s that lovely Dr. Suess quote?  “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter won’t mind.”   

 So, as I review the pictures of myself and remember what the drapes told me, I ask, “Is all that delicacy and strength and vitality and radiance mine?”  You betcha.  And nothing can change that.  Not to be overly dramatic – but I am a true winter after all, so here goes — it’s a part of me no one can take away.  I’m feeling less than myself?  I’ve got my colors to remind me who I am.  Someone is messing with me?  Yip, colors still there.  Struggling with a problem?  My colors are there to remind me of how to access my strength and creative, even joyful, solutions.  We all need that tangible reminder sometimes, of the energy that is ours, that energy that is part of our unique offering to the world.

In his book, Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman wrote:  In a commencement address to a Canadian girls’ school, Robertson Davies asked, “As you come up to accept your diploma, what is the word in your heart?  Is it no, or is it yes?  The last twenty years of my work are summed up by this question.  I believe there is a word in your heart, and that this is not a sentimental fiction.  I don’t really know where this word comes from, but one of my guesses is that it forms drop by drop from the words we hear from our parents.  If your child hears an angry “no” at every turn, when she approaches a new situation she will be anticipating a “no,” with all the associated freezing and lack of mastery.  If your child hears an abundance of “yes,” as e.e. cummings sings:

yes is a world

& in this world of

yes live

(skillfully curled)

all worlds”

So, given all this, I choose to say yes to my colors.  I say ‘yes’ to those extremes of feeling vulnerable, and being strong, and all the places in between, because it is only through acknowledging my vulnerability that I can develop compassion for myself and others, which compassion I believe to be the root of all strength.  I say ‘yes’ because I CAN – yes to playful and serious, soft and strong, wise and confused, sassy and kind.  I say yes to these things because they are ALL me and because the choice is mine, radiant little control freak that I am .  The choice really was mine all along, but PCA provided me with an undeniable experience of seeing how I could live with more intention vs. living in the shadow of my and other’s perceived expectations. I think PCA helped me to let go of living in that shadow because my PCA so didn’t turn out how I expected.  But what did materialize was even better …

 

The Consistent Bright Spring Landscape

September 16, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 23 Comments 

Rarely do the people whose natural colouring fits into this Season realize it. When Julie Andrews played Mary Poppins, she portrayed the average of this appearance and character to perfection. Her hair was dark but the overall effect was of light and clarity. Even her speech and manner were clipped and brisk. She was elegant and groomed and made riding the carousel in a sidewalk chalk picture normal and natural, elegance and magic at once. In Mary’s world, imagination and reality were the same and make-believe didn’t exist.

The word Season describes your natural colouring. In the colour world, there are 12. A personal colour analysis tells you which is yours. Why use the word Season, it sounds so dated? Because you are a child of a planet whose landscapes change as it circles (actually, ellipses)the sun on an axis, and we call those changing scenes seasons. The pigments of your skin fit into certain of those landscapes without beginning or end. There is no me, there is no you, there is no line that separates us from our world. I didn’t make that up or believe it from a yoga video. They’re called mirror neurons and they’re quite real. For honouring and celebrating the amazing coolness of being here, Season is a great word.

Your pigmentation causes the same frequency and wavelength of light waves to be reflected from your body (because that’s what colour is) as those reflected from your seasonal landscape. Nature’s wizardry doesn’t end there. The waves that move in that frequency and wavelength can be absorbed by the retina of another being and create electrical energy that becomes biomolecular energy. This generates an image in the brain tissue of that other. Were that other’s eyes closed and you could stimulate those eye neurons in that same way, you’d generate the same image in their brain.

Season is not about how skin looks, it’s about how it reacts. It needs to be given something to react to, like drapes or makeup or clothes. Otherwise, I don’t have a clue. You could argue that human pigmentation can’t possibly be narrowed down to 12 groups. Sure enough, you could have 20 or 30, but at some point, a very powerful way of improving your closet and your bank account would be too weak to work. There would be too many similarities among them to make each unique. The fact is, an eye isn’t able to tell that many similar colours apart.

The pigments that make up a Bright Spring person look a lot like the True Spring colours, meaning they’re clear and pure, warmed by yellow, and fairly light. When those colours get mixed with a bit of Winter’s, they become even more clear, but less warm and less light. With input from 2 True Seasons, Bright Spring is called a Neutral Season. They have warmer and cooler versions of each colour in their skin, hair, and eyes, and so in their colour palette.

Though the Spring presence is biggest, Winter always deals a strong hand. Often, these people resemble Winters, have been told they’re Winters, and dress like Winters. Once their hair turns white, they move over to Summer’s wardrobe and would look better if they’d stuck with Winter.

Landscapes

With the great distance between the parent Seasons of Winter and Spring, the landscapes are as variable as the individuals. The colours speak to me as lush and wild, so the landscape the same, like a jungle. The overwhelming collective life force of Spring and the violence of Winter co-exist. Winter places a cool veneer on the surface but the invisible reality is of life energy gathering force to sustain the frenzy of freedom and bloom that is coming in True Spring. Tension is building, for when this spring uncoils, True Spring will very truly have sprung.

These people have a thousand variations. My picture is pretty hot, or at least building up a lot of charge. AC pictures the melting snow running among the newest flowers. In the comment dated August 23 following The Brown-Eyed Spring article, which is also about Bright  Spring, she said

One of the pictures that I have of Bright spring in my mind is of a landscape with frost and the first yellow and purple spring flowers peeping through the snow, the sound of water running under the clear ice, the crisp clear wind, the feeling that it may all freeze over again, but also the knowing that eventually it will be spring. Life will prevail.

She is in fine tune with her colours because she is on the cool side of her Season, so it’s apt that her inner landscape be cooler. Most interesting that the picture she resonates with coincides exactly with her position among the Seasons.You can follow a link to her very beautiful face in the comment mentioned above. Perhaps, her colour story looks like this.

The Persona

Tinsel.

This person sparkles. They have wit, conversation, joy, and humour. Winter gives them formality, organization, and some seriousness with the darkness in their appearance, but it’s not heavy-handed. Spring’s sunshine relaxes them, still with enough cool to give them quickness of movement.

Playful, cold, and clean, it’s all fun and games but there are many reasons for not wanting to get in this water. Winter=risk. A Winter element brings an edge, something that isn’t too comfortable. Winter will never make everything too easy for anybody. Like neon, we brace for this colour. In the beginning, you need to roll the dice and have a little faith that you look years younger. Don’t look at the drapes, look at the face when you’re choosing a Season.

These persons look more delicate than they are, like the finest icicles and waterfalls. This is not daintiness, frills, or fragility. Rather, think of the morning after a freezing rainstorm. The branches are coated with a thin layer of ice, looking like frozen feathers. The world looks more tough than soft, but we feel no threat. The sun is getting warmer, we can hear the music of melting ice, and we know the tough part is temporary, almost pretend. In scenery that seems so tight and yet is so easy to snap lies a contradiction that feels excitable and exciting, almost high-strung, to know everything could change in an instant with the right touch.

Light bounces everywhere. We know the thaw is imminent. Just a little more sun, a little more time, already we anticipate the gladness of Winter’s passage, and might even miss its majestic and solitary beauty just a little. While still quiet and cold, the colour information tells you this isn’t November.

This is a charming and very social person. Spring’s easy smile greets you, more friendly than you really expected. Spring’s love of dialogue appears, less reserved and more joking than you really expected. You’re carried along by an optimistic and open personality, but one who never fully lets themselves go. Winter still has a hand on the wheel and decorum will matter. It crosses your mind to wonder why this dark landscape is so sunny. How can it feel so right to have the sun out at night?

The Clothes

Since who we are not is 90% of the inventory of any store, 97% in Bright Spring’s case, let’s get a sense of what that looks like: earthy, heathery, dusty, misty, hazy, dilute, creamy, undefined, slouchy, rough, rugged, chunky, cozy, faded, subdued, faint.

The person is: spirited, vivacious, happy, charming. They’re the can of ice cold 7Up. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, ready for action, curious, and interested in everything. The body carriage is upright and perky, movements are quick and snappy, and none of this goes with the adjectives in the preceding paragraph.

What would it feel like to be standing by those crocuses above or in the jungle at sunrise with your eyes closed? The air is clean and brisk. It’s soft and sharp at once. You smell wet ground and new life. You’d prefer to keep one eye open, having no sense of being snug or sheltered, but it’s still ok. You’re pretty sure nothing’s coming to get you. Birth always brings so much hope and promise that this feels more like a party. Life is so vital right now that it feels a bit unsteady. When you open your eyes, you expect that it will look different than moments ago. How might you do that with apparel?

Bright  Spring is :

- funny, quirky, unique, unexpected, bold, bright, artistic, varied >>  a deep and pure blue-purple shirt with silver writing, whirls, or sparks.

- unconventional >> if you do floral, make the flowers blue or green or extreme purple and turquoise (black flowers are a harder take on life, leave them to Winter). If you do tweed, make it pink (tweed being Autumn’s texture, but everyone needs warm clothes; think of a one-of-a-kind Chanel suit).

 

- the problem with plaid is the same as with paisley, it is widely recognized as a workday fabric. It says practical (Autumn), not playful (Spring). The prominent squares say functional (A), not fun (S). Flannel is another less-than-perfect fit. By its texture, it dulls colour and says “grounded” >> Bright Spring might feel useful, sensible, and pragmatic, but others see decorative to ornamental. Crystal is not down-to-earth. The Zen moment is when everything you add to you keeps your compass pointing the same way. Compliments become holistic, about the whole you, because no element sticks out, pointing away from your True North. Pick shiny over muffled in fabric.

- Winter looks right when they’re overdressed for the occasion compared to everyone else. BSp carries some of that, though they wear informality better >> high end workout clothes are great. Jeans are often (not always) too rough. This person shines. They’d look good in a dress made of tin foil. It’s light, delicate, shiny, and hard till you touch it. Softening effects, like scalloped edges, are less good. Youthful looks work on Bright Spring with care, keeping enough formality to balance the Winter that looks bigger than it is. Polka dots to satisfy Winter’s classic style could be great in a formal and still symmetric design, or it becomes too young.

- Spring is young >> modern textile is better. It takes up more dye, not dulling fabric. The same colour is more muted in wool than Lululemmon knit.

- I want to direct you to a comment AC added, dated Sept 11, is this woman getting a handle on her colouring, I ask you??,  after How Winters Intensify Eye Colour. She has realized that her colouring is assembled like a triadic colour scheme, meaning 3 colours equidistant on the colour wheel. Of course it is, the brilliant woman! Triadic colour schemes are brilliant on Springs. Anything based on a triangle is, but take care. Bright Spring isn’t that zingy. That scheme is very invigorating at any darkness level. This natural colouring is more settled. Use the 3 colours but keep one element smaller in proportion.

- The palette shines light outward, while Winter palettes always absorb more than they reflect. As light gets hotter and we approach True Spring, the sun will heat up even more. Below, you see Bright Winter on the left, Bright Spring on the right.

- anything too crayon/child’s drawing/cheery/playful is the extreme to avoid. Winter is very grownup, formal, majestic, regal, like kings and queens >> find the balance that still says elegance and excellent taste. You can wear a lot of colour well, but use those grays, small areas of B&W, and some darker colours that feel more serious.

- colours that are too soft, too pastel, too grayed – from a distance, those elements would all flow together, which is Summer’s watercolour look. Bright  Spring’s facial features are very distinct from one another. Outfits look better when they are too, with adjustments for your own personal appearance >>bold elements and intense colour are better. Following The Brown-Eyed Spring article linked above, there is some great discussion for those interested in the use contrast, with links to Imogen Lamport’s excellent explanations (If you don’t know her blog, you should. I find her better than anyone at explaining fashion concepts and their practical, real world, real body, real budget application). I’m sorry, I’m not very helpful, my brain locks up, but grateful that Fil, Imogen, and others can help.

- most of you easily have the darkness to wear black. When it’s solid, it looks too heavy and dark >> when it’s lightened up, it looks more delicate and crystalline, and if ever a word described you, that would be it. This Pointelle Cashmere Cardigan is great. Every Spring should take advantage of transparency, in clothes, makeup, jewelry, hair laminates, wherever. Wear a bright shell underneath, not black or white or neutral, all of which are too serious and not invigorating enough. As much as crystalline is real and right on you, the other big word for me is glaze. So thin it could crack, transparent sugar.

Bright  Spring’s Makeup

Winter’s red influence is far-reaching. Logic might tell you that this person will wear their warmer bright melon well in blush and lipstick because the Spring element is dominant in their colouring. To my eye, the pinks look better. They can be warmer and cooler but they feel more right than orange variations.

Every Season has their extremes, True Spring’s tambourine jingling hippie, Soft Autumn’s Earth Mother, Bright Spring’s harlequin, bells on the hat and all. The makeup takes some courage here, at least the lip colour. Start with sheer since transparency works. Hair can be very dark but the skin usually is light and bright and needs that in makeup. Lauder is one of my favorites for clear colour in lip products. Wild Rose, Lush Rose, Rich and Rosy, gloss in Fresh Berry and Wild Coral.

Mixing MAC Dollymix and Fleur Power is good. Shiseido RD 401 is a nice blush. Smashbox Radiance is too.

Eyeshadow is harder than anything to find, especially if you prefer matte textures or have mature skin and wear them better. Nothing here you’d call brown. The greys in the beads in the choker and in the diamond shaped earrings below are examples of good colours. The colour is mostly grey and neither earthy (which is usually an orange grey or brown, like a saddle, or a green grey or brown, like army), nor Winter’s hard, dark, cold knife grey.

Examples? Help me out here if you know of any. Become the artist and mix your pigments. Use Clarins Vanilla Beige or MAC Chamomile under the brow, and then again to lighten and yellow MAC Print a little, turn it into that cleanest yellowed taupe. MAC Mystery was suggested, a really good clean brown. Make your life easy, and mine so I don’t have to scour the makeup counters in search of something hard to find on a good day, and buy Mediatrix, Conversationalist, and Upbeat from eleablake. I’d have to buy Daisies and Diamonds too, to make colours I already own right and to bring out the yellow in these eyes. (and check out Dishy blush while you’re there).

Bright Spring Accessories

Do not have a brown or black purse. Connected to a person so sparkly, it looks like luggage. Ditto the generic brown or black shoe, suitcases on feet. Black is fine if it’s not chunky and usual.

Choose patent leather over suede.

Wear fun and colourful exercise type shoes (and clothes).

Wear coloured coats and shoes, ballet flats in fun patterns, sparkly accents, gold or silver threads woven into scarves.

One part of shopping is crazyeasy for Brights : jewelry. Wear lots of it. It looks good. You sparkle and so does it. Not matched? No problem. From Harry Winston to costume jewelry. Fancy, cheap, pretty, silly, all fine if it reminds you of the thinnest layer of crackling glass.

Look for delicate, not heavy and complicated, not 10 interwoven strands of pearls and chains. I looked for purity of colour, for colour a person would notice within 2 seconds of shaking your hand, for movement, jingle, like bells on a velvet rope, like crystals suspended in mid-air. When I think of Winter, I keep coming back to dry. Spring, I get sugary, so I looked for a little sweetness in the frost.

I like hearts. Above, they’re little twinkles. Bright Winter is big glitter, harder words for a colder Season. This is frost, not ice. Swarovski is all you really need.

Learning and becoming your Season is like hearing a language you grew up with. I had a Russian grandmother. Understood it fine till I was 10 and we moved from Montreal. Now, I get the odd word, but there’s still roots in that soil. At first, it will feel very foreign, very “I have no idea what this colour language is saying to me.” Look inward for truth and you’d admit it plucked a string. Something felt a ping. From there, you keep moving towards it. Because you already are it, you’ll move fast. You’ll find a place waiting for you that will enfold you, while another person would always stay the square peg. You can choose to stand still, but life is much more fun if you keep moving towards the heat.

The Emmas Are True Springs Part 2

August 11, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 44 Comments 

I’d like to recognize Maytee Garza of Reveal Style Consultancy for performing the analysis for the first Emma in this article, as well as the Emma from the previous article. Sincere thanks also to the women who allow photos to be used, providing us with a richer understanding of human colouring and its inevitable associations with our natural world. From me and every reader, know that we appreciate it.

In Part 1, we talked about the draping process and offered some makeup suggestions. Today, we’re on to the person, the hair, and the look.

In 12 Season personal colour analysis, True Spring is the springboard for the clear and warmed-by-yellow palette. Spring people in general have the attribute of looking young for their age for a lifetime. Youthful skin, pointed effects (like a heart shaped face), or upturned features (like Julie Andrews’ nose or the outer corners of Mrs. Laura Bush’s eyes) are often found in this Season and its five blends. When you’re reminded of faeries and elves, you’re often in the presence of Spring. It’s the cuteness sometimes, and more often the light humoured, lighthearted, easy possibility of magic. The whole thing – the lightest touch, the sprinkle of gold dust splashing from the end of a wand, the musical trill, and the reminder that life’s limits are all imagined. Spring is enchanted to the point of being not real.

I put thought into avoiding the stereotype pictures on this site. It uses up barely any mind space because those stereotypes are quite hard to find among real people. Today’s beautiful Emma may be more Spring-like, but I expect someone could have said Summer or even Soft Autumn.  There are many  Spring indicators. You see the sublime skin quality, poreless, flawless. Spring is able to illuminate the skin from within, like a light backlighting the face, better than any other group.  The hair colour (more later) is strongly Spring. The warmest colours in a so delicately chiseled face – it’s not a big step to fairy princess. And of course, she is not yellow in True Spring’s drapes. Everyone else is, even the Spring blends, and I don’t mean just a bit yellow. Only a True Spring can clear the jaundice in those colours.

The Person

I once said about True Spring something like “I lost the keys, forgot the map, didn’t get money, but I’m ready to party. What are you so mad about?” But that was wrong, they’re not dizzy in the least.  That was before I had ever analyzed any. This is much more of a “Come on, people, now, smile on your brother” personality.

I once expected this person to be a bit manic, like a day on a rollercoaster. I put too much emphasis on the stereotype, forgot to balance the picture, and came out with Goldie Hawn on Laugh-In. We all do this with the personality traits. Once I realized that my dentist is a True Spring and then I had analyzed some, I fixed that notion.

True Spring is a relaxed and peaceful individual, one who can hold the faith that the world can work in our favour. They are undeniably cheerful, but not cheerleader. They easily trust in the value of play rather than work. They are more informal and less sensitive and focused on the details than Summers. Winter’s drama and intensity of character are not here, and neither is Autumn’s keep-your-head-down-till-the-job-gets-done drive.

If they have trouble choosing, it’s because every choice is a good choice. They can see the positive side of anything. Spend a little time with them and you find yourself as contented by life’s little joys as they are. This isn’t a sugar rush. It’s a carefree optimist with a song going in their head all the time. A summer day, a pool, and a beer are enough.

The Hair

Remember that hair is the feature least tied to skin colour. Everything I say about hair colour goes after the disclaimer of Usually…

Besides covering grey, I can’t think of a time when chemistry improves base hair colour from what Nature gives us. That’s the colour we had at 25, before we darkened with maturity. It’s the most believable, flattering, low maintenance colour we can wear. Some look great with lights woven in, many don’t, in any Season. Highlights are not a necessity, just a marketer’s dream.

The hair base is beige, though may be dark. Emma has outstandingly beautiful hair colour, a very successful base colour for many True and Light Springs. There is warmth and weightlessness in this colour, a translucency compared to the heavy, rich warms of Autumns. This is not Grizzly brown. Many True Springs have darker hair, sometimes brown enough to cross over into Autumn type browns. Absolutely no absolutes with hair.

When red exists, it’s yellow-based, so carrot yellow-orange, not squash brown-orange. Nicole Kidman, not Miley Cyrus. Shiny brand new penny. A reader helped me with the information that this colour is called Venetian Red in some lines of hair colour. It has a peach quality, where you can feel the pinkishness. Gold in hair colour is a heavier warmth, not what any Spring blends strives towards.

Spring is all about light, more so than any other. Yellow hair, varied like the colour of PeachesNCream corn can work here, but I suppose we all outgrow it and its maintenance at some point. For many who have highlighted their hair for so long that they can’t recall the base colour and the whole head is a highlight, look at the nape of the neck. Reset the head to that, or a shade or two lighter. Weave in filaments of sparkle. Stop.

Grey can be a tough transition for the pure warms because it seems inherently cool. Lighten the highlights at this time so the grey disappears into them. Eventually, a creamy grey that’s not platinum like Helen Mirren’s could be gorgeous. When she wears a more a natural grey, she seems more Summer in some ways, but you can see the yellow in the skin. She may soften to Light Spring, may lighten and soften the makeup then too.

Hair styles are fun to think about, but depend on so many things. Spring hair is beautiful when it moves, when it makes light dance. Ponytails, layers, swingy bobs, lots of ways to do this. When I think it suits the person less is when it’s heavy and lies too flat, like the straightened hair so many young girls wear. Spring is so much about the celebration of life that hair should join the party.

Pixie hair styles suit pixie faces, as in the very adorable (big big Spring word) Michelle Williams.

Interesting thing to think about for a minute: wispy hair suits wispy faces, something I see a lot in Soft Summer (Shannon Is A Soft Summer) and Dark Winter (Victoria Beckham). There’s some overlap here, people you’d wonder which they are, like Winona Ryder or Katie Holmes. A digression.

The Look

This is the fun part. When the colours and styles you add to you are a natural extension of you, that’s when it feels most right to look at you (and to be you). How do you become a continuation of a crystal green sea, a cloudless day, of what this feels like?

 

Words like hibiscus, frangipani, bamboo, orchid, sun, palm, banana, reef. Heat, scent, and colour to load the senses, at no risk.

1. True Spring should always inject colour. Try a purple bar on rimless or half frame eyeglass frames instead of silver or gold. True Spring does things out of the blue. Colour shouldn’t be too safe, there’s no need for it. This is not the budgie, it’s the Scarlet Macaw.

2. Adds movement. Think about several beads dangling off a hoop earring, a few light shiny bangles, or a charm bracelet or necklace. Lots of ways to be imaginative and grownup at the same time.

3. The natural colouring doesn’t feel linear, serious, or hemmed in. Neither should the clothing. To adapt a menswear jacket, choose light crisp cotton with a sheen and a colourful fabric detail in the roll-up of the cuff.

4. Tunics, smocks, hippie stuff, embroidery, the whole Peace Free love& Sandy feet thing.

5. Jeans are bright and blue. Denim’s fadedness seems contradictory to Spring’s clarity. But denim is about relaxation and holiday. These are great, intended for fun and amusement, not weeding. They are neither overly faded (read grey) or dark.

Denim can be about work too, what makes it so versatile. Avoid rugged cuts and weights.

6. Fun and funky. Aviators, colour pops, oversized purses, colourful coats and footwear, this is who can wear them and look terrific.

7. Suits are light shining on grey, tans, and bright navy. PCA puts you very far ahead by just knowing what to not buy. Keep it light to medium in darkness. No steel, soot, scalpel, ice, or black.

8. Spring is warm but delicate, especially when the facial structure is as porcelain fine as our Emma’s. Her face so puts me in mind of a young Sissy Spacek. Though her intrinsic colours are hothouse blooms, a colour riot or a very bold design may overwhelm her. For all of us, our neutral greys, browns, taupes, and so on, are the anchors for the more animated colours. They help quiet multicoloured prints and often include our hair colour tones, toning the busy-ness and looking more organized. This tunic uses warm colour in a delicate way, has random not repetitive design, and has many angular effects, like wings.

9. The colour of the dress is fresh and green, like you’d find inside a greenhouse. Spring’s message expresses youth and movement very strongly, and this dress does both in the tiered ruffling, but toned down for a grown woman to wear.

Could the green be too blue? Maybe, might be good on a Bright Spring, or a True Spring on the cooler side of her Season. Not every item in stores will be perfect in every way, as you already know very well. A shiny gold necklace, a warm pink lipstick will pull it into True Spring.

We often talk on facebook about knowing whether you’re on the warm or cool side of your Season, since in the real world, you may have to compromise your palette in one direction or the other. The concept is confusing to many but needn’t be. Your Sci\ART draping makes it clear whether you tend warm or cool by which is your runner-up, second best Season. Just buy that Season’s Book to give you a very clear sense of its boundaries and how to make the crossover with your own Season. You’ll greatly expand your understanding of your own Season and make shopping all the easier

10. The jewelry – the person looks like happy magic and so should the jewelry. I loved this, on another True Spring, our third beautiful Emma.

 

The necklace detail,

 

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