The Draping Process in Colour Analysis
February 28, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 3 Comments
To be accurate, Seasonal Colour Analysis requires:
- that the drapes be precisely coloured to proceed through each level of the 3 properties of colour, namely Light>>Dark, Warm>>Cool, and Clear>>Soft
- that the drapes be used in a logical order so the results can be evaluated accurately
It is a bonus if:
- the system checks itself, so you don’t wander down the wrong road
- the system allows you to find several ways of solving a question, should you arrive at an impasse.
The Sci\ART system provides all 4 elements of a methodical approach to Personal Colour Analysis. There are 12 Seasons, which allows for the subtle variations in colour levels without providing more choice than an eye could really distinguish.
PCA systems with more than 12 Seasons are probably distinguishing the Seasons based on how colours are combined, rather than the colours themselves. That is perfectly valid. Seasonal Colour Analysis is not just about your skin perfecting colours. It is very much about how the colours are worn to best harmonize with the energy of the person wearing them.
The video below is at YouTube, at 12 Blueprints Personal Colour Analysis The Draping Process, if the embedded video below doesn’t work.
Jocelyn Is A Bright Winter
February 13, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
Jocelyn and I work together. Since we work with animals, all I see her in is surgical scrubs. I knew 4 things before we began:
- I have never seen her in a colour that she doesn’t completely dominate, with the exception of dark charcoal.
- Black (and cool colours in general) clear her skin.
- She can wear light colours as well as dark.
- There is great contrast (very light lights and very dark darks) in her colouring.
I try like h.ll to let the drapes guide the Personal Colour Analysis (PCA), and avoid all foregone conclusions. When I see someone every day, and the effects are this dramatic, I can’t help but have suspicions. What did I suspect?
- Her best colours would be very dark and/or very saturated. (see What Are Clear And Soft Colours? for an explanation of saturation.)
- There is great potential for clarity in her skin. Warm colours make her skin blotchy, heavy, green-yellow, murky, and thick-looking. Softly greyed colours (pastels) give the skin an allover-grey undertone. It’s Winter and Spring that have the clear colours.
- Dark Autumn and Dark Winter have some light colours, but not many. They just look better in darker colours. Joce looks fresh and beautiful in the right light colour.
- We’re probably looking for a Season of contrast, namely a Winter of some sort.
The expression “clears the skin” is confusing. It’s very hard to demonstrate but extremely important in interpreting ultimate skin perfection. You met Joce in the previous article, Clearing Skin With Colour Analysis and can watch this process on video there.
Joce has a strong natural flush in her cheeks. Isn’t “ruddy” a sign of Autumn? I’ve seen in Autumns, Winters, Springs, and Summers. Not useful information. Ignore it. On Joce, the redness in the cheeks blends back softly into her complexion only in Bright Winter’s colour intensity.
The boobytrap of matching brown eyes to brown (Autumn) drapes is waiting in ambush here. Yes, there was a connection between the two. Skin always takes precedence, and Autumn colours are easily Joce’s worst shades. All too easy to put brown eyeshadow on these eyes. Most shades of brown did not help this skin. Why then paint them on her face? True to her personal colour palette, her cosmetic colour was a blackened brown liner, and it meshed perfectly with her face. On a blue-eyed person, we would have used charcoal or deep sapphire.
She doesn’t have dark hair or the cliché “clear eyes”. Her hair is medium brown, but there are no orange tones in it, and very few yellow (she’s growing out some yellow dye at the moment). Have you ever in your life seen eyes like this? I promise you I did not adjust anything in this image other than to raise the exposure and sharpness 2 notches. And this is without mascara!!
As a Bright Winter, Jocelyn is primarily a Winter person, but she has a trace of Spring. When you combine the 2 Seasons of highest colour saturation, the energy of these colours in unwearable by anyone else. They will disappear inside such colour intensity, and therefore appear reduced. Never let your clothing send a message that diminishes you – or at least, don’t put down money for it!
This video shows the final draping process.
If your browser won’t play it here, watch it on YouTube at 12 Blueprints Personal Colour Analysis Bright Winter Final Drapes.
I’ve been asked why she’s wearing so much makeup in the video. For several reasons:
- I was taking photos as well as video and have learned that too little makeup is invisible in photos.
- I don’t try hard to match foundation, others can do that better than I – though you WILL finally know what your undertones are, unknowable without a PCA. I want you to see what your makeup colours look like, as your eye starts to learn this. I apply the makeup colours pretty heavily and I don’t blend. I want you to see how forgiving right makeup is and how it can dramatically heighten the magic in your natural colouring.
- Bright Winter is a Season of all-out glamour, like no other group. Just as they can carry unbelievably shocking colour intensity, so can they wear striking makeup.
Most importantly, I want you to stretch your preconceived limits of what is possible. I want you to start replacing the old pictures of yourself in your head.
Clearing Skin With Colour Analysis
February 9, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
Clearing the skin is a very fundamental concept in Personal Colour Analysis. Very hard to describe though.
We watch for this effect across all the Seasons. Just like all the optical effects during the draping sequence, it is more obvious in some people. In many situations, we’re looking at a person of cool coloring, and watching for some kind of sallowness to clear away the instant the warm drapes are switched to cool.
The sallow effect may look orange, green-beige, yellow, blotchy and uneven, thick and opaque, muddy, or variations of those.
When the drape changes, it looks as though a yellow filter is suddenly made transparent. The evenly coloured milky calm returns to the skin tone.
Watch Jocelyn in this video.
If your browser won’t play it, watch it on YouTube at 12 Blueprints Personal Colour Analysis Clearing The Skin.
Jocelyn is a Bright Winter. As the Analysis proceeded, we knew she would not be an Autumn because of the yellow overtone in the skin that drained away in the cooler yellow drape. Her ultimate skin perfection is nowhere in Autumn colours.
Take care with these interpretations. Clearing the skin is always a positive thing, but it may happen that when the yellow clears away, what replaces it appears clearer because the yellow is gone, but it’s not necessarily better. In Joce’s case, her skin becomes evenly grayed in the Summer drapes, making the skin look ashy. Because it’s a pale grey, about the colour of her hat and my coat, it can be deceiving. You think ‘the skin is evenly coloured, so that’s good, right?’. In some people, that greyness makes them look truly corpse-like, it’s that strong.
It’s not good but it’s different. The photos below show Joce in the Autumn very yellow drape again, with the blotchy yellow skin, pronounced shadows under the eyes, and cheeks that are too pink.
One could say that the brown eyes come out in the yellow drape. Going down that road would lead you wrong. The skin comes first. The eyes and NATURAL hair colour will automatically be PERFECT. On EVERYONE. The Light and Soft Seasons can do things to make the hair more interesting, but the base colour is automatically the right one for you and what YOU are supposed to look like. The other Seasons usually have their right colour and nothing from a bottle can improve on it. Without Kate Hudson’s skin tone, you can’t believably pull off her hair.
The black drape creates an evenly coloured skin. It looks calm. It FEELS calm. The shadows are gone. Most of us are wearing too much concealer and foundation to fight the effects of bad clothes and hair colour. Yes, you’re right, Joce is 20-something and blessed with remarkable skin. Even what she wears makes a difference.
The black tones in her eyes snap. Here eyes no longer bloodshot and red-rimmed. You’ll see Joce again in an upcoming post. The eyes on this girl have to be seen to be believed.
How The 5 Autumns Add Brown To Hair Colour
February 3, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
Pardon, but what 5 Autumns?
Well, in Seasonal Colour Analysis, there’s Soft, True, and Dark.
But Autumn’s blends include Soft Summer and Dark Winter too.
Only 1 True Season, and 4 Neutral Seasons all comprise some Autumn colour influence.
Autumn’s biggest misconception is the copper red hair. Usually, these people have brown hair.
The Autumn=copper association is often extended to include clothing colours, skin undertones, and makeup colours.
In fact, the shade of brown used to warm Autumn colours doesn’t attain copper’s heat till you’re way into the middle of the Autumn action.
Let’s start at True Summer. No orange. No gold. No yellow. The brown is grey and the grey is blueish.
As Autumn starts phasing in, we move to Soft Summer. A little brown is being added. A neutral brown, not orange yet, not even amber. The blue undertone is taken out. The colours appear to have a faint tan.
Soft Autumn comes along next. We see a soft amber brown. Yellows re-emerge, where True Summer barely had any, and they are golden as an amber-brown patina lays over all the colours of this palette. This is the beginning of the metallic quality we talk about in the skin and hair of Autumn people. It’s hard to describe. It doesn’t look like a tan, it’s much more in the skin than on it.
Finally, True Autumn. NOW the undercurrent is truly orange. Not before. Brown, remember, is just dark orange. This is an orangey brown. It is in the skin. It is also in the eye colour.
Up to Dark Autumn, a trace of Winter is felt. Winter’s colours are cooler and bring in red, the essential colour of the Winter group. The result is the red-orange undertone that defines the perfect disappearing blush and lipstick on Dark Autumn. Colour Analysis is all about cosmetic colours custom-coloured for your skin.
Since Winter is dark, we must add another Winter effect for Dark Winter : the addition of perceptible black. What orange remains is turning neutral brown again, like it was in Soft Summer, but a darker version caused by the black.
Now, we leave Autumn altogether and it’s True Winter. Orange is gone again.
Watch me do it.
Be careful.
Soft Summer’s hair is almost always too light and too highlighted with a colour that’s too yellow. At first glance, they seem like light people and it looks ok. The Colour Analysis drapes soon show us how aging the light hair is for the skin tone. Once it’s corrected, it is much better.
A Soft Autumn can too easily be put in too red hair. It is overkill every time. Unless Nature gave you red, it is VERY hard to get right from a bottle. Like thinking a bottle can replicate your childhood colour. Won’t happen. This is light tawny hair.
True Autumn in light tawny hair looks F-L-A-T. And instantly 10 years older. They need warmth and rich colour. They do not need highlights, lowlights, or other bizarre f/x. The colour should speak for itself.
Dark Autumn often adds a red rinse. You NEED to know if you’re on the warm or cool side of the Season. If the red is too cool, like red wine, it can be very artificial. Artificial works on the staff of the hair salon, not the clients.
Dark Winter should do what all Winters do. Think twice before lightening hair. They can have a dark force that is to be reckoned with. Breaking it up with frosted tips, well… I’d rather have the force. The skin-perfecting hair colour is a dark neutral brown, most of the time.
What’s the hair lesson? Nature will never give you hair colour that is your skin’s perfection. They accord automatically. Your natural colour is always your best base colour.
Can I Borrow My Neighbor Season’s Colours?
January 26, 2010 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
Short answer: you may have to.
So remember, when you get your Personal Colour Analysis, be sure to know if you fall on the cool or warm side of the Season. That means : when we’re finally down to testing between your last 2 Seasons, are we testing your #1 BEST Season against its warmer neighbor, or against the cooler one? Perhaps THE most exciting part of the analysis. Everybody tingles at this point.
In Wrong Colours Away From the Face, I said that I don’t buy into wearing colours that are not in your #1 BEST Season, unless people will only see you sitting at a desk.
To present a unified whole, you can’t have 1 big block that’s way off. The colours want to connect together to create a force, but they can’t if one is flowing against the current.
How you combine the colours of your personal colour palette depends on the energy of your Season. The colours themselves should all work together because they are all the same in 3 respects – how Light/Dark, Warm/Cool, and Clear/Soft they are.
If you’ve been reading here, you already know what I mean by that. For anyone new, let me explain. Any colour is described by where it sits on those 3 scales, its Light/Dark , its Warm/Cool, and its Clear/Soft positions. The colour might be one the blues, reds, purples, etc. in your body, or in the world outside you.
Colour Analysis finds those precise colours in your body and replicates their precise position on those 3 scales. We then give them to you in a so-brilliant Colour Analysis Swatch book. They’re called YOUR colours for 2 reasons : A. They’re the colours to shop for. And B. They literally are YOUR colours, in your own body.
Let’s look at Dark and True Autumn colours. Neighbor seasons. Some people straddle between the 2. But the MOST important aspect of Dark Autumn’s colours is their darkness. True Autumn’s MOST important feature is the warmth. Any 2 neighbor Seasons do NOT share the MOST important dimension in their colours. You screw up the whole accord by throwing in another dimension.
You will see clearly and easily during your Personal Colour Analysis how far behind your perfect season the runner up is, even when you border closely. Some shades may be permissible, but none will be as good as any in the perfect one. So, in our Season example above, the Dark Autumn may look pretty good in True Autumn’s darker shades, because darkness in general is forgiving. It still won’t look like magic.
When the off-colour is worn on the bottom half, away from the face, it STILL disrupts the harmony of the whole body presentation. When the off-colour is way off, the flow of the appearance is distorted in favor of the more dominant colour. That’s why Light people gain 15 lbs on the bottom half in black pants.
Of course, your skin tone perfection will suffer less when the off-colour is far way. Still, the viewer will perceive disagreement.
I know it’s hard to find good colours. Winters can’t find saturated colours. Summers and Lights can’t find professional clothes. I know the fashion industry and cosmetics colour offerings are disorganized and incomplete. They are desperately unevenly weighted. As you learn to excel at colour decisions, you’ll buy your clothes when you find them, rather than by Season. I was looking at Ann Taylor’s website recently. Soft Autumn will do very well. True Summer, head over to Banana Republic. The 3 Winters, wear what you have (unless you need something black or charcoal, always available).
It helps to know whether you’re on the cool on warm side of your Season (your PCA will tell you) so that you know how to err. If you can’t find your perfect red, you’ll know whether to allow cooler or warmer shades. In a perfect world, the stores would be colour-coded, but IRL, their palettes are far more restricted. They might bring in 4 of the same style shirt, but not 8. They do NOT want you knowing anything about what suits you. They want that merchandise out the door, preferably the day it came in. You may have to be close sometimes, but you’ll learn how to do that too. We’ll talk about it a lot when we meet.
It takes months to learn to match colours precisely, even with your Book. Since we ultimately understand colour by visual comparison, not by me or anyone else talking about it, it helps to gather several similarly coloured items in the store and compare those to your Book. You’ll be better able to tell if the match is perfect, and if it isn’t, then how it differs. Is it browner? duller? darker?
It takes a month or 2 to start to enjoy the empowerment when you shop. It gets stronger and stronger as you bypass trends and disregard advice you know to be wrong. And both are everywhere.
I so understand the frustration in the beginning of feeling like nothing is right and wondering when it ever will be. But even at the start, you are better than you used to be. Then, the pieces start coming together, and your good decisions far outweigh the bad. Your eyes will get better and better at recognizing it. That will FEEL like magic.
Can Wrong Colours Make You Ill?
January 20, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 4 Comments
…or, title option, do your clothes make others feel, um, unwell?
Women and men have told me that they buy clothing colour by feel. Both have asked me to remove a drape because they felt sick, one to the point of becoming faint.
Are they exaggerating? Too theatrical?
NO! It’s VERY real. Everybody senses colour, more than we see it. We may not all feel it to the degree of physical revulsion, but we all experience a mild discomfort in the presence of wrong colours. We don’t take the colour choices in our homes lightly for that reason.
Since most people go around in wrong colour, we’ve grown used to seeing it and compensating for the feeling. But why does it happen?
The short answer is “sensory mismatch”. It means that 2 of your senses are receiving information that your brain feels cannot make sense together. The result is nausea.
Motion sickness in a car means your eyes are seeing “movement” but your brain is getting information from your ear’s balance system and your limbs saying “not movement”. The 2 don’t jive. The brain decides you’ve been poisoned and you’re hallucinating, so it expels the toxin by vomiting. At least, it’s believed to have evolved that way.
To explain it with colours, we go back to the most fundamental principle of how Personal Colour Analysis (PCA) achieves skin perfection and ideal appearance.
Every colour, in you and outside you, answers to 3 characteristics only. How Light/Dark, how Warm/Cool, how Clear/Soft (ask me in a Comment if I can clarify those concepts). Every single shade in you, every single blue and red and purple in you, fits in EXACTLY the same place on those 3 scales. Fascinating in itself, I ponder this often.
PCA finds you a group of colours that also fit in EXACTLY the same positions on those 3 scales. Your Colour Analysis swatch book is simply an exploded diagram of your own precise colours. It’s far, far too complex to do this without a true 12 Season Colour Analysis, for clothes colours or makeup. Then, when you WEAR precisely the same colours that you already ARE, the colour energies are in absolute synchrony and it is strong.
With wrong colours, the sensory mismatch isn’t between your eyes and ears. It’s between your eyes and subconscious colour associations. Your eyes are seeing one set of colour wavelengths emanating from the body’s natural colours. There’s a whole other set of waves coming off the clothes. The signals are all jammed. It feels tiring to look at, and for some, nauseating.
Most people dress in such a skelter of colour that there is no signal at all. They don’t look ON. All the wrong colours together neutralize what colour potential exists.
Is my theory scientific fact? I don’t know. I didn’t read it anywhere. It just makes sense to me.
Emily is a True Winter
December 11, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
Emily has passed the milestones of her first 20 years. The next 20 years will involve marriage, career, and family, often all at once. It’s in these years that women have the least amount of time to spend on themselves, both inside and out. The demands can be overwhelming and once we emerge on the other side, many of us still look like the students we were when we last bought age-appropriate makeup.
Like so many women, in every age group, Emily doesn’t wear makeup. It’s easy to understand. Very few women can accurately choose what cosmetic colours suit them best. Many have tried but the result didn’t speak for them, so they felt like impersonators; or the sales pressure was too intense, and the upsells too mind-boggling, to honestly express uncertainty. We’ve all seen, or been, the woman at the makeup counter looking completely overdone. You can FEEL her thinking “Get me home before someone sees me.”
Emily would like to know what clothes look best and some help choosing makeup that doesn’t make her feel painted. She has the sense and good taste to want to be noticed for the right reasons.
When the colour is wrong, you can never achieve the magic, no matter how lightly or heavily you apply it. When you start hearing “Just apply a thin layer and blot it to a stain”, forget it. If you need all those shenanigans, the colour is wrong and besides, it won’t last 10 minutes. We all know what makeup- sitting-on-top-of-skin looks like. When the colour melds with the skin, you can apply quite a bit before it starts looking fake.
Put a light, wishy-washy colour on a True Winter and unattractive things happen. Their eyes are dull, almost empty. The person so dominates the colour with their inherent colour intensity, that all you see is a face that appears ill. The skin is dull and shadowed. What happens to the skin happens to the whites of the eyes. As they yellow or grey, the crispness of the eye colour is terribly diluted. It makes you FEEL sad to look at that face.
Emily’s colouring is so strong that she wore many of the Bright Winter drapes well, the most brilliant shock colour there is. Bright Winter requires a little heat in the skin, which Em doesn’t have. As a result, the Bright Winter drapes drained the colour from her face and turned her skin grayish, like the walls of the room.
Though I’ve often said eye colour isn’t relevant to Season, I want to clarify that. Any Season can have any eye colour and that remains a fact. But just as the drapes are looking to make a connection with the skin, so are they searching for the like colours in the eyes. They are astonishingly and precisely coloured to A. force a reaction in the skin, and B. to detect an exact colour match in the person’s skin. When the association is made, it’s electrifying. Em has navy blue in her eye. Watch it come out when like colours find one another.
Lessons
1. If you’re not used to lipstick, use sheer colours but stay true to your swatches. The blue-eyed winter with a soft feeling about her may do better in soft fuchsia than red, but too much colour would be outside Em’s comfort zone. We used Cover Girl Amazemint in 615 (Cozy Plum) and it’s lovely.
2. Even young people should use shimmer makeup very carefully, if at all. Even on a young True Winter, it makes Emily’s upper eyelid too prominent. Frost is attention-getting. It says “Lookit me! Lookit me!”. Classy makeup doesn’t do that. It’s your supporting player but it is not YOU. Let your makeup be a diffusion of your own colours floating over your face, but let people look at your eyes because they are the shine in your face.
3. Here is an example of Winter who might deepen her hair to match the brows, but always remaining true to the base shade. Nature will never colour you wrong. Her hair is the right colour but Emily could enhance the dark brows/milk skin effect more by deepening her own shade a touch. It will look real because the brows are dark, but more dramatic (not necessarily better, just a stronger visual effect).
4. This is also a place to think about how bad it looks if a Winter were to lighten her hair. The dark brows become more prominent, and look severe. Severe=aging.
For any Season, even if you don’t do much with your brows, there will be more attention on your eyes than ever before. Finding a stylist who can remove stray hairs without altering the shape to look like Pamela Anderson is good.
5. As a Dark Winter, my eyeliner is browner and lighter (MAC Grey Utility). Em will wear a crisper darker grey (Graphiti). I don’t believe anyone of lighter complexion than Frieda Pinto can wear black eyeliner, certainly not in the daytime. True Winter’s grey consists of black and white. It’s a pure, true grey.
6. You all know I think blue/green/purple on a face that can be seen as a color is a cartoon, right? Don’t ever wear it to a job interview, and only to work if you are an artist of some sort. Estee Lauder Black Plum and Merle Norman Sapphire are examples of colour that doesn’t look like colour. They are less hard than black and the viewer doesn’t strongly perceive purple or blue.
When she saw her pictures, she didn’t recognize herself.
It takes a certain courage to step up to a personal colour analysis. Like having your fortune told, as empowering as it is, you may hear some things you’re not ready for. I’ve been told that I read palms. What I really read is potential. To see yourself as you never have, both inside and out, takes endurance. It also brings the responsibility of answering the question “What are you going to do with it?”
Em will travel her own colour journey. It won’t look like mine or yours or anyone else’s. Some of it may not gel for years. Doesn’t matter. She’s got a lifetime to refine it. She’ll feel confident and beautiful wearing makeup and know that people see the real Emily. It takes more time to convince yourself of all that it can be, and how powerful the final effect is, when every element meshes.
Once you get to the makeup counter and are told that you don’t really need to follow your personal colour swatches, you really have to dig deep and find some fortitude. Why would you NOT use them? Why would the sales assistant NOT use them? If they’ve never had a PCA and watched the process, they don’t understand why you’re holding the book you have, or what the other Books look like. They’re tremendously good at what they do, but colour analyzed skin tone perfection is a key that can only be turned one way.
You have become empowered to know things about your skin and colouring that they simply can’t know. But YOU know. YOU saw it. This is one situation where close enough is NOT good enough.
Soft Autumn Jewelry
November 14, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 7 Comments
Begin all your purchase decisions by remembering the key words about your Season, whatever your Season. The word feelings that should drift across the Soft Autumn screen are “quiet, softly golden, warm but not hot, gentle lustre, natural (maybe even organic, very much of-the-Earth)”. It doesn’t need to be a wood and shell necklace, it just shouldn’t be busy, dazzling, and attention-seeking.
This is my sister-in-law, Holly. She is the perfect model of the Soft Autumn.
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, this colouring group is primarily defined by Autumn’s colour characteristics– warm, muted, and dark. BUT, there is a trace of Summer in this blueprint, making them a Neutral Season (ie: a blend of 2 True Seasons). The result is that their skin tone perfection colours are cooled and lightened a little bit. They remain muted or soft because both Autumn and Summer colours are soft, giving this group a double dose of softness.
Quietly sensual is the mantra. You look far better in natural metals and stones than plastic, large hunks of metal, bold, busy pieces, or anything that appears artificially coloured. Your entire sensation is of comfort and nurture. Complicated pieces look hectic and tiring. To the viewer, it FEELS “against the grain”.
You may look a little like this young woman below. (I didn’t put this lovely face in black, or big round hoops (a Spring exaggeration), or a silver cross (Winter probably, too many right angles to be Summer, a season of circular shapes). Is she a Soft Autumn? Without being draped, who knows?). She is a good example of the Soft Autumn, with her squared jaw and warm Autumn look, modified by Summer’s feminine full lips and nose.
Are you beginning to notice that members of the same season often look similar, or share certain common features? Keep watching, you’ll see more. Big round eyes? Start thinking Summer.
As a neutral season, silver is within your realm, but may not match your all of your clothing items. Use pale golds, rose gold, and especially semi-precious stones and gems. Turquoise, coral, jade, amber, topaz, any stone that is mined from the Earth itself, and offers this soft and gentle glow, within your personal colour palette, is for you.
True Autumn’s (see True Autumn Jewelry previously published) heavier effect is replaced with a more delicate impression and less of a forceful colour impact. The colours are more tawny than hot, and the feeling is more flowing and lighter in weight. The glow is paler. The pearls are creamy, not white.
The natural radiance of these persons is a wonder of easy, easy colour to look at. Sometimes, a Soft Autumn finds their palette endlessly bland but it isn’t. It is so natural, so free of stress, worry, and challenge. This jewelry never imposes or aims to impress. Using the earth’s stones and gems in simple, unfussy designs adds the luminosity and touch of brightness that feels like warm apple pie, a vanilla and brown sugar scented candle, or a mid-afternoon glass of wine on the beach.
Louise and Stevan Are Light Springs
November 11, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 6 Comments
Spring personalities were put on Earth to make the rest of us smile. Louise and I work together ( she is a veterinarian too) and I’m grateful for it every day.
Although Louise gets the credit for making me laugh (not easily done), her husband David is a pro photographer. He took this picture as well as the breathtaking pictures of Louise that follow.
A quintessential Spring, Louise can talk about any topic under the sun. She is always open and friendly, assertive, sincere, optimistic, and FUNNY. As she says “If you can’t look on the bright side, what’s the point?” Louise says what comes into her head. She is spontaneous, not careful or rehearsed. She is not withdrawn. On Take-Your-Child-To-Work Day, my kids want to be with Louise for the day, not their serious, business-like mother.
As always, colours repeat not just how you look but your personality. These are ice cream dessert colours. They’re happy and impulsive.
These clothes are certainly not menswear tailored, but neither are they always flouncy. They may be sporty but they are mostly about movement. The relaxed, informal personality looks natural in jeans and comfortable textures. With the Summer feminine blend and the light delicacy of the colouring, this could be an ultra-feminine person, but Louise is the easy and casual type.
Many Springs are fascinated by the natural world. They jumped in the puddles as children, not over them. Louise is never happier than in her garden. She looks great in beautifully coloured fleece. If she chooses, she can look very feminine, but she does not carry dark/serious/formal so well.
You might look at Louise’s hair colour, see the medium ash brown (it is more ash IRL) , and say 2 things:
- She’s too dark to be a light season >> Remember, hair colour is irrelevant. It is hidden during the analysis so that we don’t make this exact mistake. Hair colour can be anything. We are only concerned with perfecting the skin.
- Her hair is too cool; Springs have golden hair >> She certainly is closer to her cool neighbor on the Summer side, but her skin perfection colours are more yellow. This is the Summery version of this season. Not everyone falls precisely into their season. They may be closer to one neighbor or the other.
What does it look like when the person veers on the warmer side of this season, moving very close to True Spring. Meet Stevan. His colours are still light and he and Louise share the same personal colour palette. He is as handsome, sunlit, and friendly as he appears in this picture. Stevan smiles easily and is genuinely interested in others, the hallmark of a Spring. His hair is as golden as his skin tone and his character. (Before anyone asks, Stevan is the bigger one, but that so-cute baby has golden potential.)
I’m such a fan of nature’s contrasts. When cool hair is paired with warmer skin, as you see with Louise, or the reverse combination we saw in Pam Is A Dark Winter, these are striking to look at. The one is a showcase for the other. It is especially important to understand your coloring if this is your blueprint because sales people will (inadvertently) match clothing to the degree of warmth/coolness they see in hair and eyes. They have little choice. Without personal colour analysis, it is impossible to understand the precise degree of warmth/coolness of skin tone.
Pam really has to stick to her guns when someone tells her to wear warm lipcolour or add copper highlights. Her skin is mostly cool so her makeup and clothes are mostly cool. She knows her cosmetic colours from her swatches. Louise has to insist on apricot, salmon, and warm pink when someone tries to sell her fuchsia. Her Spring colouring dictates that she must avoid dusty, grayish colours at all costs. She looks for CLEAR and LIGHT, but as the cooler example of her season, it’s a pink-salmon rather than a coral-salmon.
However, in her hair colour, her highlights will only be barely yellow, not too golden, respecting the summer coolness of her natural colour. Stay with the contrast you were born with and heighten its elements. If Stevan were to highlight his hair, he would use a much more yellow colour than Louise, respecting the clear, pale golden warmth of his natural colour.
Can she wear black? No. She looks sad and severe. As you know from Wrong Colours Away From The Face, I believe you look most connected when your darkest colour (especially for big items like coats, pants, and shoes) is no darker than your darkest hair tone. There’s altogether too much black out there anyhow. It’s an evasion for not knowing what to really wear. Though a light season, Louise has a deep emerald turquoise, a Chinese blue, a gorgeous violet. They are not oppressive. They are sophisticated with the incredible neutrals of champagne, cameo, and seashell.
Colour conveys feeling in subliminal ways. It speaks of imagination and youth. It also conveys hot-ness. It can be done the cheap way, but that’s another evasion. Why not do look expensive? Why not look like this?
When the colours you WEAR, repeat the colours you ARE, you have a secret weapon.
Pam Is a Dark Winter
November 4, 2009 by Christine Scaman · 3 Comments
Pam is a real woman who lives in the real world. Like the majority of women, she’s gorgeous and doesn’t know it. She doesn’t have time to dwell on it anyhow. She has a family and a job. She hasn’t been in school for 7 years but it’s been hard to find time and money to spend fussing about her looks since then. Pam has become a confident, interesting woman. She doesn’t want to look like a student anymore.
True and Neutral Seasons
A PCA (personal colour analysis) session devotes a fair bit of effort to sorting out whether the person is one of the 4 True Seasons (True Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter). We knew right from the start that Spring was going to be the worst of the 4, and that probably included any of Spring’s blends. There were heavy brown shadows under her eyes and her skin was yellow, with too much redness in the nose.
Summer was manageable but Winter was better. Autumn and Winter were about the same. The intensity of her eye colour was dramatically enhanced in the Autumn drapes but her skin was unevenly yellow.
The Red Drapes determined that Pam is neither a purely cool season (Winter), or purely warm (Autumn). In the neutral drapes, we began to see how remarkable Pam could look. I LOVE this part, because one of these red drapes is going to so click that I’ll take one look and think “oh, boy, this is going to be amazing”.
When we like the skin effects of one season but the eye effects of another, the skin wins. This endeavor is always about creating the most perfectly illuminated skin, cleared of yellow, ash, ruddiness, shadows, or blemishes. Pam is very clearly a Dark Winter.
The photographs show calm, evenly coloured skin. Yes, Pam has skin to be envied. But Pam’s also a Mom with 2 young kids. She doesn’t sleep well every night. Still, in her perfect colours, you can see the luminous, flawless, poreless, Snow White skin, the white teeth, and the crisp whiteness of the white of the eye.
Pam’s colour memo to the world
You know that I’m all about how colour FEELS. We react to it because of how looking at it makes us FEEL.
Look at the expression in her eyes. She FEELS comfortable. These are the colours that she recognizes BECAUSE they live inside her already. Pam is experiencing what it’s like when colour speaks for you. It’s telling the world who she really is and it feels familiar, like a truth you’ve always known but have never heard spoken before.
She is easing into her Winterness. Winter is not an informal, casual, or scruffy season. The individual’s energy is tailored, simple, and elegant. She will completely dominate overly relaxed clothes. To the viewer, that would FEEL like “hard on the eyes” because of the continuous conflict with Pam’s own energy. This season is not frilly or fussy; if anything, it borrows a little of Autumn’s masculinity and adds a faint menswear touch.
In Winter’s appearance, there is no movement, playfulness, or softness. You can see why these colouring schemes were named after the seasons. Outfits in a single dark colour convey the dark and serious look. Details are minimal or absent. When present, they are simple and expensive. Dark-light contrast should be extreme. One colour garments that repeat the hair colour are truly majestic. Nobody can compete with the power of this look on Dark Winter’s energy.
These colours allow her to look as she is. Pam is calm, a little remote, a little shy, but now, she is aware of her beauty. She is a little formal. You won’t know everything about Pam in the first hour. This is very typical of the Winter character. Add a little Spring to Winter, and you up the emotion. Add a little Autumn, and you increase the determination. Pam does not back down.
She looks a little detached. She looks aristocratic. Pam won’t carry off a beach blonde look. She’ll look odd in exotic prints and fabrics. She isn’t made for lavender and lace. That would look almost crazy, like putting a True Summer (say, Bo Derek) in a man’s suit and plaid shirt. So, instead of jeans and hoodies, Pam is empowered to know what colours will intensify what is special and distinctive about being Pam.
Dark Winter makeup and hair
Pam usually wears no makeup. It feels too fake, too dark, too conspicuous. That is not who Pam is and it feels clownish. In these pictures, she has a dab of concealer blended with moisturizer under her eye. She is wearing a fair bit of blush to add some life and shape to the face. Eyeshadow (medium-dark cool gray-brown)and eyeliner (black-brown) are minimal. The final touch is a plum-brown lipstick, covered with a Caramel gloss to tone it down so she won’t feel too obviously made-up. This is beyond movie star skin but it looks natural. It took 5 minutes, 5 products, and it looks effortless and real and natural.
Pam’s hair is a dark ash brown. What would highlights do? The same thing they do to any Winter. They look terrible. The whole dark force is disrupted with light stripes. The same thing happens when Winter wears light, frosted lipstick. They look flat, chalky, weakened.
Does Dark Winter have a lighter side? Oh, yes. It’s just a little contained.
Your colour feeling
The trick is to find what you CAN do, what is consistent with who you are inside. Why is that so hard to know? I wish I knew. Why is it so hard to know your deepest obstacles, those you put in your own way, since that’s where most of them come from anyway? I don’t know that either.
After a lifetime of playing it safe, you have to ease into saying so much about yourself. As Marianne Williamson said “It is not our darkness we are afraid of. It is our light.” Many people are wearing someone else’s clothes and spending a lot of time and money to send out signals that detract from who they really are. Many others are trying to send out no message and render themselves invisible, so they live in comfort clothes, but that’s an equally detracting memo about who you could be. In the eye of the beholder, both say “doesn’t feel good, look away”.
Colour is deeply imprinted on human beings. With an understanding of your personal palette, you develop an understanding of how it feels FEELS to be you.
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