It’s fine and everything but so, you know, safe. That’s Soft Summer with some good building blocks, but an overall effect that’s a little too generic light grey.Where’s the excitement? Where’s the fabulosity?

Many (all?) clothes need to hang on the right body to come into their own. Soft Summer colours are pearls when they find the right skin. This post in the hope that one day, women will secretly wish to be a Soft Summer and be thrilled when their colour analysis lets them claim the palette as their own. It comes from imagining how even the most casual outfit has such elegance of suggestion and impression. Much of what was said about Romantics in the previous two posts caused me to realize that I could equally well have been describing the colour effect of the Soft Seasons. Of course, Mr. Kibbe describes this in his book, where Yang colours are vivid, dark, and matte, while Yin colours are soft, bright, and glossy.

Our subconscious is the playground between what we understand and try to control and what we can’t. It speaks in the language of colour and shape, which translate to symbol and feeling. Thought is Yang and intuition is Yin (just IMO, not research). Thought could be subdivided into linear, directed thought (more Yang) and the deliberations of abstract thought that deliver information disconnected from time and space (more Yin). Soft Summer’s colours always create very strongly in me a nebulous, shimmery sensation of being in an unreal place, a manifestation of the abstract mind, the ultimate right brain landscape. Ghosts of shapes and whispered sounds seem to move into sight just above a watery surface then fade back under to another form, like apparitions. I have to apply effort to see anything else when these colours together are in front of my eyes. I always sense an incredible balance between intellect and emotion in this person too, as if they live in that mind space where Yin and Yang are very intertwined. Imagine a Soft  Summer Romantic! Wow. Now there would be gifts you’d want to tap into.

Sometimes, women try out various colours in clothes or lipstick as they try to find their own colouring among them. They’ve read to use the extremes for this test, those colours no other natural colouring, or Season, would wear as well. For Soft Summer, they find that grayed mauve lipstick and a grayed pink cardigan and take photos or ask friends and family.

Unless the former lipstick colour was crimson, it could be that folks can’t make the adjustment that fast. Especially if you still have your old hair colour, which sends every colour perception about your face and cosmetics off to the four winds.

Soft Summer may have it the hardest because they keep hearing the word grey. When you’re not sure of the degrees, there’s a tendency to over-grey. As a short rest from Kibbe Seasons, now that simply Season Polys are a snap (or almost, Bright Spring Neutral Colours still experiencing delays), here are some Soft Summers Polys enjoying my vision of a colour palette whose peaceful beauty and gracious sophistication has no equals.

In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, Soft Summer describes the colours that combine to create a natural colouring that could look like Katie Holmes, Kate Middleton, or Angelina Jolie. Her basically Summer colouring mingled with a bit of Autumn’s light, so  a Neutral Season. Various darkness levels, yes, but darkness level isn’t the TMIT for this group. It can slide up and down on the light/dark (Value) scale. What matters most about how they’re coloured and how they shop is that colour never gets very pure, bold, or saturated. It’s just a little hushed.

This is getting livelier.

Below, the incredible burgundy raisin of the palette, the elusive yellow, some good light to dark graduations that get a second look when done in snakeskin.

Still more colour, more saturation, more colour variety, keeping the flow by repeating versions of a colour rather than the copy colour. The scarf on the right has some olive beige, so fold it to hide that and wear it as a belt.

If music is the art of thinking with sounds, then our appearance can be the art of thinking with colours, in the shapes attuned to the music of our own geometry. I feel the new challenge coming on of creating all 13 Kibbe styles in one Season’s colours.

The outfit on the right was feeling metallic, in the cool stiff way of aluminum, but I liked it. The scarf is there to introduce the feeling of softness with folds and flowers and add many more colours in small blocks.

From Return To Your Natural Colours, the blue book near the top in the right margin, this section appears in every Season’s chapter. For you to see what lives in my imagination, it needs some illustrating.

Colour Equations

• One light to medium-dark colour + one medium dark to dark colour
• One medium-dark colour + one dark colour
• One light to fairly dark neutral colour + one light to medium-dark colour
• One light to medium-dark neutral colour + one medium to dark neutral colour + one colour in smaller area
• One light to fairly dark neutral colour + one light to fairly dark colour + one smaller colour block comprising all three colours
• Monochromatic, analogous, or gentle complementary colour combinations.
• Overall medium to medium-dark effect

You see that it never gets very light or very dark. Complementary colours appear as reds with greens or blues with oranges as the 5th from left (where the orange is a very light beige made from a base of orange, dropping its value and saturation enough). The overall feeling is more cool than warm but not fully cool. You can sense there is heat here.

It’s bluebells in a drizzling rain, a lake in the Scottish Highlands, the coastline of British Columbia, a California winery when the fog rolls in. In Photoshop, the saturation doesn’t go over 35% when I make Soft Season colours. To give you perspective, Dark Winter’s are about 75% to 90%, True Winter’s are 83% to 93%, and Bright Winter’s run over 92% and most of the time over 98%.

For that last outfit on the R, I coloured the top and bottom blocks as analogous (green and blue are beside each other on the colour wheel). I imagined a colour halfway between the two for the handbag – because any colour that you could imagine as being between two of your colour analysis swatches is also most likely in your Season too. The scarf/neck detail is Soft Summer’s orange, bringing in a complementary effect.

As always, you own the Colour Book, you own the system. All the theory has been worked out for you. You mix them anyway you want to, your appearance is still a smooth even ride that others are happy to take.

Related posts:

1. How Summers Intensify Eye Colour
2. Best Makeup Colours : Soft Summer
3. Shannon Is A Soft Summer

The Flamboyant Natural (FN) Soft Summer

Design = Colour + Line.

We look best when we wear the colours that already exist within us. We look best when we wear the lines that we are too. Round bones and muscular builds look fantastic in certain lines, not the same as those for straight bones or narrow builds. It always comes back to dressing who you are rather than seeing how close you can get to media’s stereotype.

It’s good for a woman to have an understanding of the shape of her body and face. You’ll buy different earrings, I promise you. This is Mr. Kibbe’s book, the most usable book on body lines that I know.

Sticking to your colour and line guides actually opens doors. Like good manners, limiting our options when we shop appears to expand our opportunities, for looking 99 times better just in how a jacket closes, feeling stronger and more complete, and in the control we have over many other aspects of our lives.

Paisley and Taya did Flamboyant Natural Polyvores on facebook recently. I thought I’d try, should be easier than the Dramatic True Summer that still haunts me. Soft Summer colours are so plentiful, surely I could find them in any style? When will I learn to keep quiet?

I’m a Kibbe beginner so don’t assume that what you see below is correct or Kibbe-approved.

Flamboyant Natural (far more detailed descriptions in the book)

The Person: big-boned, wide, blunt features, not lush in body or facial elements. She’s Natural with a shot of Drama.

Example: I think of Andie MacDowell with her very strongly defined bone structure. Who else? Mrs. Obama is possible in that a suit can seem too stiff and constraining on her but sometimes her proportions look more Classic and contained in shape. Maybe it’s her Winter colouring and ethnicity that give her an appearance of being larger and more exotic. Could Jessica Simpson be FN?

Angelina Jolie seems too voluptuously Yin in the face and petite in the body. Julia Roberts? Not blunt enough. We need a strong Yang presence, more masculine features, as I have in my Classic way, so not the ultra-girly version of big-boned as Mariah Carey. How about Khloe Kardashian? Using this photo, let’s pretend she’s a Soft Summer. In fact, she probably is.  Scroll down this page and compare her shape and colours to her sisters’. Do you find she looks fabulous in the picture near the bottom in the blue outfit? The bag, earring, and shoes all look so good.

Khloé Kardashian Pictures

The Effect: wild, free, uninhibited, bold, strong. Makes me think of Dynasty meets Bohemian.

Jewelry: big, bulky, and not just artistic but extremely artistic. Here lives the drama side.

Clothes: oversized rectangle, oblong, or asymmetric. To me, that = straight sides with round edges. Must remember ‘not square’ and ‘no points’ when purse shopping. No hourglass, sharp, very straight, or delicate, all of which don’t sound like a good fit for Khloe. Also lots of separates are good (thank heavens, the shopping for top-to-toe looks for my Dramatic Classic shape is seriously hard). Will keep in mind ‘wide-loose-simple neck-sleeve-waist’ when shopping.

Accessories: this woman has a wild side and so should her stuff. She’d even be a rule-breaker and step outside the prescribed molds, wear colour a bit too saturated, wear many pieces at once putting a whole new spin on ‘unmatched’. Bold, big, simple, unique, with round edges. Makes me think of a Cossack hat, which actually could look really good on Khloe. Seems a natural fit, oddly. Every pot has a lid, ay?

It can be easier to know which colours suit which people by imagining many different colours of lipstick and hair on them.  It’s always in making the comparison that we see what seems so obvious afterwards. I saw all the wonderful NYPD officers in Manhattan and thought their uniform could be my perfect Dramatic Classic outfit, epaulets, gun, hat, and all. I think of our DC women, variations on Demi Moore, and we’d all look darn good in that get-up, like Khloe in a coonskin Davey Crockett/Daniel Boone hat.

I imagine extremes for all the Kibbe types and see what feels like the best fit – not that this is how I see the woman but that she could wear these outfits and look surprisingly good and right, while everyone else would look strange.

Dramatic : Vampire Queen, Catwoman.

Soft Dramatic: extreme in a luxuriant way, whether fabric, detail, shape – the clothes Valentino designs. Sensuality above all. Nevermind how big the bow is. Or where it is. Why is there always a feeling of a tragic past or overcoming some deep adversity in this group (not unlike the ‘born for a gentler era’ of the Soft Classic)? Is it their regal yet vulnerable bearing? I guess that’s the Diva part. Often exotic looking. Cher.

Flamboyant Natural:  sarong worn as long dress with huge Georgia O’Keefe flowers and loads of big colourful necklaces.

Natural: 1920s tennis dresses, or any dresses while skirts were still straight, with the loose sailor style neck, box pleats, and the big ol’ wide brim hat.  Most women’s sporting outfits from back then could be good. (KB, this feels like your natural home, I could even see the turban hat with large flower on side. Google ‘dress patterns 1920s’ and you’d be set).

Soft Natural: flapper styles, clothes from J.Jill. I once thought of the Olsen twins as being here, but I’m thinking they’re straight N. This woman is more feminine, less broad and blunt in her bones. Tori Amos?

Dramatic Classic: police uniforms. Talbot’s to White House Black Market. No wonder I’ve always loved men’s shirts and ties. If anyone knows where I could buy some of those NYPD pants, please LMK.

Classic: soccer Mom, khakis, twinset, pearls, classic Timex. Also 1960s TV housewife attire. Stewardess suit. Brooks Brothers to J.Crew. LL Bean. Martha Stewart wear.

Soft Classic: Talbot’s moving to Garnet Hill. Draping, knits, curves, the traditional feminine. The outfits you see when they do the 360 on What Not To Wear.

Theatrical Romantic: skating outfits.

Romantic: Scarlett O’Hara gown, parasol, lace gloves, and veranda. Not hard to picture Mariah Carey on the tree swing. A nostalgic feeling, Mr Kibbe calls it ‘from another era’.

The three Gamines : I have no handle on this look yet. I keep seeing Fortune Teller for FG but I’m still studying. Feel free to help out.

———

Back to FN.

The problem with these oversize loose tops is that they can look like tents unless the garment is built to define the shouler line. Holding in my mind that strong horizontal element across the shoulders to give the shape and an easy sleeve let me scan clothes really fast. Do you think length of the blouse matters? Long sounds better on the women I think of, unless you’re Farrah Fawcett tiny sporty. Long jackets are better. From the photos of Khloe, various lengths seem to work. The length of her taupish jacket seems less relevant than the strong shoulder and heavier texture.

Oversize-irregular-but-stiff felt like searching for a kimono with shoulder pads and no belt, not so much a flimsy tunic. Smocks must be out, too fussy. Peasant styles are too flowy and would seem to droop in the shoulder. Hoodies with a shoulder shape would be good, with their low heavy draping and plush texture.

Wraps seem a style that flatters many bodies, but this woman could look bandaged if not mummified if they were too skintight. She needs freedom to move.

Went out on a limb with the one shoulder blouse, I think it could be great if it sticks to other guidelines. The bone size on the woman would establish the strong horizontal across the shoulder.

Learned

- Texture makes a difference. It felt important and necessary. Rough is natural.

- Jewelry- anything that most people would feel was wearing them. Look at the ring with the blue outfit. This is the flamboyant part. You can buzz through 100 Polyvore pages or store displays in 5 minutes. Belts too, looking for the opposite of shy. Also, jewelry can add a lot of texture, as the chain mail bracelet. Can do a lot of jewelry at once.

- Found no prints that really work.

- Dresses big, bold, sweeping? No finds. Dresses in general are hard because they create a continuity that can seem monochromatic in Soft Summer colours. On this person, the piece are better broken up and layered. Even, unbroken lines aren’t really found in Nature. Rough is better than resin. The blue and grey dress (not, it’s grey, not white ) in the last Polyvore might be D, though it does feel ‘big, bold, sweeping’. The print elements and shoulders are round-edged, which, along with the pastel colours, I hoped would add enough Yin (curve) to work.

- This is one of those looks that doesn’t come together on a hanger. The right woman has to wear it. I keep thinking these images should scream “FLAMBOYANT!!!” but they don’t. Is it just the cool palette? No, I think it’s the straightness and simplicity. If he’d called it Intrepid Natural, I’d have different expectations.

- The asymmetry appears to matter a lot. Though not essential, the look works better when the left side is not the same as the right. The opposite would be true on a Classic type.

- Hard to do wild colour combinations in Soft Summer. Worked at using warm and cool versions of same hue together, going slightly outside the Season’s colours, as a slightly too warm green, and using wide variety of colours in one ensemble instead of being carefully matchy – interesting how a more natural and relaxed vibe comes across from that alone.

- Back to Intrepid Natural. A daredevil element should figure into each ensemble for this to feel right on this woman. It can’t be too safe, even if it’s just a big watch, a huge purse, some piece needs over the top in size or artistic prominence, regardless of the palette, because that’s what these people are to look at, as Carrie so smartly pointed out (Farrah’s hair and teeth).

- A crease down the front of pants is a good way of establishing vertical line. It helps make a good T effect in the ensemble grey pants/white top, lower R, 3rd collection.

- It really takes all the elements for the geometry to come together. Once I started selecting items, I had no idea where this was going. It just felt odd. Add in the jewelry, shoes, pants for tops, and I could see the end result as making sense and could then tell what needed removing. The accessories seem to be running the show but they need the right backdrop. I’m still blown away by how effective this book is but it does take patience and willingness to be wrong, like everything else. All you need to see is one photo of yourself in three different necklaces to light up your sense of why it works and get the value.

- The most important aspect of the shoes went through some shopping stages and evolved into ‘simple’. Too strappy would look as if it couldn’t hold her up. Too chunky and the picture gets bottom-heavy. Rather than just looking at Khloe, your learn more by comparing the shoes (and everything else) on the sisters. Khloe’s are good! Texture via shoes counts, as rope on a wedge heel or sole detail.

PS – Khloe, your hair is perfect. I admire your ability to dress for your body type. If you go lipstick shopping, look at Givenchy Paradise Pink. Remember to celebrate that you have more inches of completely gorgeous than most anyone else.

Related posts:

1. Dressing The Essence of…Claire Danes

David Kibbe, Where Are You Now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dramatic True Summer by christinems featuring high heels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

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

Like every other aspect of choosing your  most beautiful colours, recognizing your best eye makeup depends in large part on recognizing everyone else’s too, at least in a general sense.

Tricia Bratley is a (trust me) beautiful (shockingly so and I’m going to prove it in the next post) Bright Winter. She lives on the Wirral Peninsula in the NW U.K. And she loves makeup, all makeup, not just her own Season’s, in which she is most accomplished. Tricia assembled the palettes you see below, took the photos, and so graciously sent them to me to share with you.

This series sets Summer and Winter neutral (as in grays and taupes) eyeshadows, colour eyeshadows, and blushers, adjacent. Within each palette of eyeshadows, you may find options for the three Seasons within each True Season, but Tricia focussed primarily on the True Summer and True Winter when she organized these collections.

These palettes consist of MAC colours. If you have any questions about specific pans, please post them in the Comments and Tricia will come in and answer.

Neutral Eyeshadows

Summer

Summer neutral eyeshadows.

Winter

Winter neutral eyeshadows.

——–

Coloured Eyeshadows

Summer

Summer colour eyeshadows.

Winter

Winter colour eyeshadows.

—–

Blush 

Summer

Summer's blush.

Winter

Winter's blush.

These photos are so good that there is nothing I  can add. Enormous thanks to Tricia for her work and her generosity

Never fear, the True warm Seasons are next.

Related posts:

1. Warm Season Makeup Palettes
2. Colour Analyzed Makeup Favorites
3. Best Makeup Colours : Bright Winter

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.

Photo: mvasquez13

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.”

Photo: Domba

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.

Related posts:

1. Light Summer Looking Serious
2. Kip Is A Light Summer
3. How Light Summer Goes Grey

There are three dimensions or measurable properties of colour that we use for personal colour analysis:

- value – how light to dark

- hue – or heat level, how cool to warm

- saturation or chroma – a colour’s position between the most greyed version of the colour and the purest version of the colour

Your colours don’t zigzag all over the place on any of those scales. They stick to a fairly close setting. Who has colours that are extremely warm and extremely cool at once, or very clear and very muted? Nobody. We can have several positions along the value scale but there is still a logical and consistent range that is respected within each of the 12 categories. The genetic paintbrush is very organized. It decides what your settings are on the 3 scales and from there, faithfully picks the paints for your own personal colour wheel, a predictable slice through Planet Colour.

However, whatever the settings on your 3 scales, which is what decides your Season or natural colouring group, one of those matters more than the others. It’s The Most Important Thing, or TMIT, for that natural colouring to glow with their most perfect skin. Once that attribute is fixed at a certain setting, colours that respect that setting are more likely to work well for you. That setting on that scale is your TMIT. The other two scale settings matter but they are less critical.

Your TMIT setting can’t be known just by looking at you. That’s done with drapes, by knowing the Season first. Sometimes when you’re looking at photographs without seeing the person in various colours, you find yourself thinking about their TMIT. I believe Color Me Beautiful calls these Dominant Traits. They ask themselves “Of Dark, Light, Clear, Soft, Warm, or Cool, which of these is the person MOST?”, or the reverse as “Which of these is the person LEAST?”

Tricky because some people don’t really look like what they are. You might look at a woman of medium-dark complexion, quite dark brown eyes, and fairly dark brunette hair and think that she seems Dark, when in fact, she’s a Soft. Look at this gallery. What do you think about Pics 13 and 28? (As a side note, I wonder if Revlon Lip Butter in Tutti Frutti would look like Pic 15 on a True Spring. Who else could look that good in clear orange?) As you go through all the photos, try to pin down their TMITs.

The intensity of a brown-eyed True Winter can be so undeniable, especially if complexion is dark, that you think “Wow, they’re really a Dark”, when what they are most importantly to perfect their skin tone is Cool. Think about Kim Kardashian, often thought a Dark Winter. She  might well be. She doesn’t have the squareness of the Selena Gomez/Salma Hayek Dark Winter jaw. In fact, her long face is more a True Winter shape. She looks terrific in B&W&red. Scroll down the photos, worth the trip in itself, till you get to her. Does she need browner colour?  You could say her lips and cheeks are Dark Winter now, quite possible. The point is just that you can’t tell by looking at one photo.

This is one of the weak points of Photo PCA – you never saw it happen. Your mind can’t get completely at ease with the Season. One relative comes along and expresses doubt about your lipstick colour and you feel all unsteady again. You can’t say back to them “I thought I might be Dark Autumn too! But, oh, my dear, you should have seen how drained those colours made me look. And I learned that a Dark Autumn looks near dead in my Summer pastels (so does a Bright Spring)!”

Once your Season is known from a correct in-person draping, your TMIT is most important when you go shopping. And that’s when you’ll begin choosing and wearing your rightest makeup.

The TMITs

Light Summer: Lightness!  Saturation (clearness) is low-medium. Neutral cool.

Light Spring    : Lightness!     “              “            medium. Neutral warm.

Lightness in a colour will help it work well for her. Her eyeshadows, suits, eyeglass frames, nail polish, and shoes are more likely to be beautiful if they’re among the lightest in the selection at the store. It doesn’t mean that every colour she wears must be light, not at all. She has her version of dark tones too, but they’re her version, to look dark on her.  Nevermind that they’ll look medium or light on someone else, we’re not talking about them here. Too dark colour on a Light and oldness will happen. Dark colours are not forgiving at all, meaning that she really needs to get them right or they’re way wrong and she is subtracting from herself.

A so-smart reader asked “Since every Season has its best black, does each have its best white?” Sure, yes. The Lights will do raw cauliflower better than latte, but many could get away with latte just fine if it’s mostly milk. Just being light in value raises a colour’s odds of being pretty good. As long as the other scales, of warmth and clarity, stick near the middle, things will probably be quite ok. Once we raise the darkness level to cinnamon or nutmeg, we run into problems with aging, fatigue, and 5 oclock shadow effects and they’re not even dark colours. The woman needs to have her colour analysis swatch book to wear the best suit for her speech.

Soft Summer: Softness! Value (darkness range) is medium. Cool to neutral.

Soft Autumn: Softness!      “                “                “                  “     .Warm to neutral.

Another so-smart reader pointed me to Cobie Smulders. I see her as Soft Summer. Is her hair too dark for that Season? No. But notice her eyes. Yes, they’re light-medium blue, but what are they MOST? Blue or hazy ? I’d say hazy (at least in this photo). Someone might say icy. The overall impression isn’t light and it isn’t dark, it’s medium. She seems cooler than warm, but more soft than cool. Someone might say “She’s definitely mostly cool. She’s a True Winter.” Who’s right?? Who knows?? Drape the woman already, then you know.

Cobie Smulders Pictures

That white is hard on her. The white is owning the whole picture somehow, it keeps nagging at our attention. A Winter would subdue that white into behaving itself. The same woman in that great soft pine green that is pure beauty for a Soft Summer blue-green eye (we could pretend the beads are not there):

Cobie Smulders Pictures

Doesn’t always work. Like that green, not every colour that would look fantastically good on a Soft Summer’s colouring is obviously grayed, though many are. Same as True Autumn can have reds and golds that are so rich and so hot, you’ll think red and gold before you think heat (but with time, you’ll come to think HOT or at least, GOLD, first).

Some Soft Summers have a brown eye that is most perfected by their red wine colour. Some, who lean towards the warm side, can have warmer greens like avocado and army in the eye. Their eye colour is incredible in Soft Summer’s medium taupes and can even look great in Soft Autumn’s greens and browns. As long as the colour stays soft and muted and they don’t try Soft Autumn’s reds, oranges, and yellows, the skin will remain beautiful. I love this effect on Soft Summer and it’s not common. You see it sometimes in Dark Winter too, the very cool skin with the very warm eye, like the last golden-green-brown leaf left before the first snowfall. The contrast looks remarkable and even better when repeated by wearing warm and cool colours from their palette together in outfits.

Dark Autumn: Darkness! Saturation is medium to fairly high. Neutral warm.

Dark Winter  : Darkness!        ”                    ”             “                “     . Neutral cool.

I find most people cooler than they think they are, but are confused about how to get a little cooler with their colours without going all the way to pure cool. Demi Lovato carries darkness well. She can look Warmer&Dark and Cooler&Dark quite well as long as the Dark takes precedence.

The Warm version:

Demi Lovato Pictures

There are cool photos in her gallery. The picture she presents of herself is often cooler than warm. Below, Demi goes too cool and we lose it. She’s become cooler than she is dark. It becomes hard and uncomfortable to be with compared to the molasses cookie above. It’s that dark toasty woman that we want to get close to. We wonder how close we could get and if our intuition is right, could we be singed? Winter is coming in and even in small amounts, a vague sense of unease or jeopardy comes with it.

Demi Lovato Pictures

Bright Winter: Brightness! Value is medium to fairly dark. Neutral cool.

Bright  Spring: Brightness! Value is medium, not too dark. Neutral warm.

It’s the pure colour that you should become aware of first, before Thinking Mind engages and starts chewing on “Well, let’s see, I don’t perceive greying down of the colour, it looks neutral and somewhat warm,…” Grab onto that moment before dissecting mode turns on and proloooonnnng it. Spend some time just feeling what’s happening there. Soon, you’ll have more control of it and will be able to slow down that time. Think of fresh basil or parsley. Before you get going on how cool, how dark, what enters your awareness is GREEN.

I don’t get the same feeling here:

True Summer: Coolness! Saturation is medium. Value is medium.

True Winter   : Coolness! Saturation is mid to high. Value is mid to fairly dark.

Stand a True Winter next to a Dark Winter and ask someone “Who’s darker?” The TW may have dark hair, dark eyes, but if the complexion level is the same, it’s often the DW that gives the darker overall impression. They seem a little shaded, less shiny, their whites not as blinding, as if their skin were so slightly and evenly cross-hatched with a graphite pencil.

Now, if you’d said “Who’s cooler?”, the TW always seems not necessarily frost-coated like a windshield, but they’re more absolute, more hard, more definite, more clear-cut and less ambiguous. They seem cleaner. Better to ignore the hair colour a lot. Seems to me I see more variation in natural hair colour among the True Winter than any other.

I was asked recently about the difficulty True Summer has in finding shoes (and mascara) in a world of brown and black. Compromise the darkness but not the coolness. In time, you’ll insist on being more discriminating. You’ll have found yourself enough great items to give you confidence in holding out for the right shoes. You won’t need to buy stuff just to have shoes at all. Use soft blacks, navies, and cranberries. Borrow some True Winter greys. Choose textiles that mute colour. Look for medium colours like denim, teals, mauves, and taupes. It takes time for every Season to build a background wardrobe. 

True Spring     : Warm-ness! The kind added by pure, clear yellow, so the feeling stays warm, bright, and light in that order when you shop. Saturation is mid to fairly high. Value is medium.

True Autumn  : Warm-ness! The kind added by darker, duller, richer gold. So the feeling is warm, muted, and mid-darkish when you shop. Saturation is medium. Value is medium to med-dark.

I find these the most difficult people to decide their TMIT just by looking at them or their photos.

People ask “How can I be warm and cool at once?” It depends on how warm and cool you’re talking about. You won’t see really warm and really cool colours together in one person. Nobody’s setting on the Hue scale will swerve around that much. If your inborn colours are all completely warm, you won’t contain any completely cool colours. You might be 90% warm and 10% cool, but for shopping purposes, you’re so much more warm that you would shop as though you’re 100%.

For those people whose colouring is nearer the middle on the cool-warm scale, the Neutral Season folks, they can have slightly warmer and slightly cooler versions of their best colours. “OK”, you say, “how slightly?” That question can’t be answered well with descriptions or numbers. You need to own the palette that the colour expert made for you.

So if you know TMIT, often built into the Season’s name, plus the approximate heat level, the other parameter is a fairly safe bet at medium. Or ‘what I should worry about less’.

Related posts:

1. Turquoise For 12 Seasons
2. Handbags for 12 Color Analysis Seasons
3. Rimmel Lip Gloss for 12 Seasons

Today, I was looking for something I would notice the hot minute it walked in the door if the right woman wore it. The other requirement was that I’d feel comfortable in it, could eat, drink, and dance, wouldn’t be constantly hitching up or pulling down. You know how that goes.

Spring

Light Spring is across the bottom right. Pretend you don’t see the orange belt. Replace with gold, silver, violet, so on. Summer’s flowing water is here, making peace with the larger fraction of Spring’s livelier colour and unrivaled ability to sparkle. Is the sequined dress too browned? Could be, but I’m trading on the sequins delivering lighter colours in the highlights, making it Spring, and a colour that is not oranged, so the dress doesn’t convey earthy (Autumn).

True Spring takes up the left side. Notice how the colours are yellower and more activated than the Light. The styles are also more energized. Though this person is far more resort-relaxed than manic, she can easily dominate colours that are less vivacious. The whole effect then goes dull. Her makeup is equally way up there. Lip and cheek colours are noticeable and she looks alive like there’s no tomorrow. She’ll be up till dawn, the smile won’t leave her face all night, and she’ll do it all again the next night.

Bright Spring is shown in the top right. In 12 Season colour analysis, this colouring is a blend of Spring’s with Winter’s pigments. Its very ability to confuse makes it all the more flexible. This woman often looks very Winter, seeming cool and dark, and yet her natural colouring is far closer to Spring’s yellow light than to Winter’s red and dark blue. Because of that, she can cheat black in very nicely, though better in small blocks and not too near her face. The rest of the outfit should have Spring’s movement, whether in beading, ruffles, a play of light on fabric, like flapper styles. The elements of play and frivolity are so good on Spring, but toned here by Winter’s seriousness.

Summer

Light Summer is in the bottom left. A stronger water rippling effect than Light Spring. The feeling of being inside a cloud or a bouquet of flowers. As Summer arrives, Spring’s foot on the gas is letting up even more. Summer is appropriate always, though in Light Summer, daydreams are still about play. If Autumn’s around, daydreams are about the next job. Summer’s water has a sequence, a cascade, a fall, a flow, like the lines of a ripple or wave, like a ruffle, or even the colour wheel sequence of monochromatic colour schemes. Spring disorganizes, even though there’s only a little. In Light Summer, the dance feels like the wings and flight patterns of butterflies.

True Summer is in the top left. She will be classy, cool, and correct. She may have had a tray of Champagne but you’ll never know it. She won’t give away what she doesn’t choose to. She controls herself utterly (while Winter tries to control everybody). I think of streaming water, of composure, of modern femininity. Is the pink dress too red of a pink? Maybe but I’d still put it on her. The package works.

Soft Summer is on the right side…that navy dress, is that not greatness? I have sat and stared at that dress. Just knocks me over. The muted mauve-raisin-quid semper (Latin for what ever, now that you ask), that is the most interesting colour. I’m pretty sure its pinkness pulls it into Soft Summer but it sure borders Soft Autumn closely (and is a match for Dior Addict Londres lipstick). I love an interesting colour and I love it to pieces on the exact right person. A match made in absolute heaven for the eyes. Then the makeup that jives so right…you cannot stop looking and couldn’t repeat what was said when you spoke with her. Your sense of sight took over your whole brain.

Autumn

Soft Autumn is on the left. I left the dress in the bottom left that is in Soft Summer too. That’s a fascinating colour, rather halfway between both palettes. I think it’s a little purpler than orange, but a Soft Autumn who is a bit darker or not too freckled and apricottish, and maybe even if she is, could look beautiful. All black parties are deathly. They’re like a boredom and a depression all rolled into one. All these beautifully coloured humans swarming around dressed like a cloud of black insects. Especially at a party! It’s a celebration. Even the Softs should shine a little. One day, we’ll have traveling PCA & A Party, a block of hotel rooms, too much wine, too much song…the admission ticket, no solid black. Don’t care if you’re a Winter. Digression done. As Summer leaves and Autumn comes in, fabric has more weight, more structure, still with the feminine grace of Summer.

True Autumn is in the top right. Words fail me with the red dress but that would be way too much red for many a TA. That could sure be your lipstick with the other two dresses. Is the skirt on the golden one too gathered? It’s very important when you read these ideas of mine to think about whether you feel it the same way and not just accept it. All I’m really trying to do is have you hear, smell, taste, link, and feel what these particular colours awaken in you. Connect your five senses together and trust that what they say to you is true. What I like about the gold dress is the overstitch pattern which reminded me of a quilt, an Autumny association. Jacquard says Autumn to me most of the time.

Dark Autumn, bottom right, like Bright Spring, can impersonate someone whose natural colouring contains black. If the area is small and the rest is hot and dark, what comes across is mostly hot and dark, which is just right. The dress in the center has lace. On a woman who is not really all that lacy, its effect is overridden by the solid dark bands. It’s interesting how a detail can make a feeling. A light grey cardigan could be Summer’s if it’s sheer or ruffled or has same colour buttons. It can be Winter’s if the buttons are more prominent and hard and shiny, like big diamonds studs. Here, those very ordered lines bring more structure than the lace softens down.

Winter

Yes, I know it’s 3/4 black. It is a colour that Winter’s style just looks right in. And, as every woman reading this knows all too well, choice is limited at any price point.

Bright Winter is the group on the right. There’s no stopping with dress-up looks for Bright Winter. Hopefully, she has an excuse to wear many dresses in the next three months, this is her time to shop and to shine. I was looking for intense sugarplum which I didn’t find (but did see yesterday in a fleece at Old Navy and I can guarantee it would cost less).

 True Winter‘s dresses are in the top left. True Winter is so cold and clean that it has an edge that cuts. Without Spring’s delicate flirtiness and Autumn’s blunter touch seen in Dark Winter, True Winter is unadulterated biting cold. Associations of cut or bite: knife, sharp, snake, scrape (as in diamond edge). So why the flowers? To me, they were edgy and abstract.

Dark Winter is bottom left.  I wasn’t sure about the dress with the roses, but there was something Spanish about it that I kept coming back to. Winter isn’t really a traditional floral type of woman but it’s interesting to see a style rendered in a way that makes it untraditional. The textile felt too heavy for a Bright. I’m also thinking about ‘matte glamour’, hardware, cannon black, gun grey, always the Winter edge but one dulled by Autumn here. Bright Winter is the laser relative to DW’s cannon. Dark Winter’s is the simplicity that can own a room full of more is more. A Bright could wear the gold leaf but I put it here because the gold seemed deeper and browner, rather than the BW’s titanium type of brightness. A braided rope belt is Autumn’s touch.

Related posts:

1. Junior Party Dresses for the 12 Seasons
2. Rimmel Lip Gloss for 12 Seasons
3. Turquoise For 12 Seasons

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.

Telegraph Interview by Steve Marsi at TV Fanatic

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.

Photo: Splash News.

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.

Related posts:

1. Soft Autumn Landscapes in Clothes and Makeup Plus Blue
2. Best Makeup Colours : Soft Summer
3. Shannon Is A Soft Summer

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.

Related posts:

1. Elisa Is A True Summer
2. True Summer Jewelry
3. Finally, A True Summer Blush

Since I hang my drapes in this order, let’s look at the colours this way:

Light Spring

- a very light yellow green

- a clear blue, not purple enough to be periwinkle

- purple, which transforms Springs into someone you’ve never seen before

- with note that the aqua-turquoises for any Spring blend are a sure thing, just like teals are no-brainers in any of the 5 Autumn blends.

True Spring

- the home of Jello colours

- every green is beautiful, but pure golden leaf green is such a proclamation of life on this planet, the interaction on True Spring colouring is phenomenal

- beige yellow, one of the hair tones, it affirms the delicacy that Spring always has in their behaviour and their face, like Joni Mitchell, so spiritual and creative and never ever over-bearing. Lovely people. In The Emmas Are True Springs Part 2, Emma 2′s face always reminds me of these qualities (and that artist).

- sunny orange red, and this is the lipstick intensity that’s needed or this person will dial less vibrant colours down to greyer and boring

Bright Spring

- intense teal

- sharp mid-dark grey, which looks elegant and interesting as can be because the person is quite colourful, so it’s intriguing when the clothes play the role of quiet counterbalance without reducing the overall thrill

- the u-tone (undertone for future ref) blued rose

Light Summer

- their marshmallow white

- violet-washed sky blue

- clear red; muted colour can be hard to show in this format; it’s the cherry Popsicle

 True Summer

- swimming pool blue, a happy colour as Ashley said so well, lovely and young on this skin

- pure rose

- dark stormy sea blue is very powerful, an essential in a business suit; add the whitecaps in jewelry, like filigree silver

- with honourable mention to the undertone, forget-me-not blue

 Soft Summer

- antique turquoise, try to find it in pearlescent, it is simply beautiful in fabric

- muted dark pine (the best eye colour intensifier on every single person, if this trick doesn’t work, I’ll doubt the Season)

- pale mauve, it looks very pretty with every suit, feminine without being girlie which this Season does not identify with; it takes only a mist of pigment to have enormous effect when natural colouring is very gentled with grey, colours as soothing as the person (Light Summer and Spring are not soothing, they’re more get-up-and-go, somewhere in the sunny>> jolly>> spunky>>bouncy spectrum) (now I think of it, True Summer isn’t soothing either, or not soothing to me; if Winter wants control, True Summer wants precision)

- with runners-up burgundy and pewter, both very sexy masculine on the men

Soft Autumn

- brown; I like brown on this Season best of all, not a favorite on the other Autumns, though they certainly have brown

- some form of warm willow green (can anyone think of a better name? avocado, I guess?)

- warm muted yellow, they glow in this colour and never seem to have any idea, I find it really captures my attention

True Autumn

- chili pepper red

- their very green teal

- glowing hot gold, add a metallic thread

Dark Autumn

- blackened colour is so good; sometimes, the person seems darker than a Dark Winter, whose whiter whites and pinker pinks can make them seem lighter because they’re clearer; DA has light colours but they’re hard to find, would almost need custom-dyeing ; it’s amazing to me how the colour is quite coal grey and still so intensely purple

- my favorite being the black tobacco; the dark grey brown of loose black tea is also great, makes a fabulous eyeliner

- cherrywood brown, very defining colour

Dark Winter

- battleship grey is always here, maybe because I love it, it’s the eyeshadow, it’s an essential neutral in a Season that wears them more than anyone to reduce the overall number of colour elements, and it looks real good; I’ve been thinking a lot about how the colours are made lately; interestingly, I made this one by making a balanced R-G-B-equal grey, like duct tape grey, then decided DW’s heat is Winter red and Autumn orange, but more red, so I raised that setting. So that’s interesting to some of us.

- those who read here know that saturated purple-brown-more-purple-than-brown is where my thinking of where DW’s undertone lives but undertone floats from warm to cool, depending on the position of the person in the Season. This deep currant is the warmer position. To make it in lipstick, use Lauder Mulberry Double Wear. Bite Balm in Claret is an outstanding way to brown colour without darkening it, something I spend a fair bit of time doing. This will get you to lunch, even with a cup of green tea and a client every 20 minutes.

- black-navy showcases the majesty best, but iced violet had to be here

True Winter

- it’s B and W, not B or W, and more B than W

- dark purple blue, the u-tone

- icy pink, not sure why I always like this, perhaps it insinuates the high contrast of the extreme of youth and innocence in colour on a person that is ageless and enduring, solid and hard, the extremes of dazzle and hard rock reality

 Bright  Winter

- sweet, funny, cute people, they need sugarplum purple

- always dimples or mischievous eyebrows (interesting, I see this more in the Spring/Winter blends, not the True and Light Spring), and BIG colour capacity, fantastic in electric blue, not too dark, hard to look away from; worn in a tank top with a white tank beneath, it looks really right

- the lightest of the Winter group; Winter red + Spring yellow makes an icy peach, my favorite of the icy lights on this colouring; they look great in iced white gold gloss over every lipstick, iced peach eyeshadow highlighter; to me, it’s gorgeous

Related posts:

1. Lockets for the 12 Seasons
2. Rimmel Lip Gloss for 12 Seasons
3. Turquoise For 12 Seasons