Handbags for 12 Color Analysis Seasons
July 10, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 18 Comments
This may be as close as we’ll get to the dream of all going shopping together.
These are obviously my own taste. I don’t care for very slouchy bags that are just one big hole to rummage around in endlessly. If I had my way, handbags would be full of zippered pockets and would light up when you open them.
I like a bag to have a certain size to it, because I carry a lot of stuff.
The images are linked to their source websites. Hover the mouse over the image to see the store. Nordstrom’s site never takes you to the product page, so you may have to search it. LMK if you can’t find any of them.
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True Spring
They call this color “cream”. I liked it because it is light and the color gives the eye a place to rest. Springs look so good with color on their body, even 3 at once, that a quieter accessory still coordinates without amplifying the “color riot” effect.
The tassels bring in a little movement. Spring is buoyant with movement, happiness, and enthusiasm. With both legs in a cast, they’re still smiling. Their serious side can come and go very suddenly.
Any Season with a Spring element would do fine with this. True Spring somehow felt the most unexpected, which drew me to it.
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True Autumn
In mocha, this bag sold out the first time round, but seems to be available again.
Not dark. That’s a big thing for True Autumn. Warm, yes. Bit drab, yes.
Nice heavy fixtures, it’s practical, comfortable, natural, and strong – all Autumn.
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Soft Summer
No words needed. Uncommonly chic.
“Quietly fabulous” is the particular radiance of the Soft Seasons.
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Light Spring
It is one big hole, but it’s so dang purdy. I kept coming back to it.
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Dark Winter
It’s like a dream come true.
I’m going to be fighting Dark Autumn for it.
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Bright Winter
I don’t normally wear logos, they can pay me if they want me to advertise. Logos are blingy, and can look cheap on anyone but the Bright Winter. Even Bright Spring looks intimidated by them.
This bag is avant-garde, it’s edgy and exaggerated, and it’s cold and shiny. All very Bright Winter.
The details and charms add Spring’s movement and fun. If you’re not comfortable with knock-out glamour on your body, do it in your purse.
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Bright Spring
Check the bright pink on the site!!
The simplicity of the bag allows the color. It’s not for the office, but the the patent gleam, the light shiny gold metal, I’d notice this bag.
Problem is that no Bright Spring I know would buy this. They have far too much Winter reserve, much more than you’d think, considering they’re primarily Springs.
Would they do this?
Doubt it. They’re usually toting something black and frumpy, when they themselves are anything but.
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True Summer
In a quieter color, you don’t notice all the interlocking C’s. There’s an elegance and restraint here that doesn’t require the spotlight, all Summers have it. There’s none of the excess that True Summer so dislikes.
This is a smaller purse, but I like the circles as Summer’s essential shape. The textured silver is nice also. It comes in many styles.
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Soft Autumn
We can use words like muted, grayish, low saturation, soft, all day long. Until Soft Autumn gets their head around the word “dull”, they don’t totally get the palette.
The Light/Dark and Warm/Cool positions are medium. There is not a single extreme in the Season.
And I love this bag. Quiet, steady, calm, balanced, everything Soft Autumn is.
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True Winter
Simplicity incarnate.
True Winter often look a bit Asian. This reminds of a pagoda shape. It’s contained, but it is dark and has drama.
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Light Summer
Again, one big hole, but I have a rose-gold obsession for Light Summer. The horizontal fabric reminds me of waves. Every color may not be perfect, and Light Spring could do this as well, but I like the bag.
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Dark Autumn
Chanel meets Vuitton.
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Wow. This was as much fun as shopping with someone else’s money.
If any are sold out, call the company and bug them.
Best Makeup Colours : Bright Winter
July 4, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 15 Comments
The Bright Seasons wouldn’t be as perplexing as they are if someone hadn’t made an allusion to “clear eyes”. Suddenly, they became indefinable. Who has clear eyes? Who doesn’t?
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, a repetitive phrase so that people can find me through Google, I know you knew that, this group belongs to the Winter category. Colours are dark, highly saturated, and cool.
Bright Winter is a Neutral Season, so Winter with a Spring infusion. Spring does do some fascinating things when it mixes with Winter, maybe part of what makes this coloring so consuming of our attentions and imaginations. Maybe it’s the relief we have evolved to feel when warmth returns to tell us that we survived another cold spell. Our feeling of welcome is almost heartbreaking.
Maybe we are arrested when pure, pure color energy mixes with Winter’s power.
Some of Winter’s cold is substituted for Spring’s pale yellow warmth. Not buttercup yet, not even daffodil. More like snowdrops. There is a trace of the delicate in these people, unlike True Winter that neither looks nor acts delicately ( or if they do, you soon learn it’s pretend).
When the 2 True Seasons of highest color saturation mix, this color sings with clarity. These are the highest color notes.
Spring also lightens the colors, compared to True Winter’s darkness. Only a bit.
Some Bright Winters react to their palette with “Obviously”, which the happiness with which most people greet their colors. The great David Weinberger said, in the cluetrain manifesto, that “laughter is the sound knowledge makes when it’s born”. Color analysts see it every day, in the laughter that people almost have to suppress when they see their palette. They are joyful and peaceful. And they’re a bit confused by the strength of their reaction.
Some Bright Winters react with “Oh, heavens, I could never do that.” One piece at a time. Let yourself do this. Being safe when you know more is like visually dumbing yourself down. NEVER be less than everything you can be. Buy a bright tank and wear a yellow one underneath. Wear dangly silver earrings. Wear a sheer bright gloss.
These are the C0lour Analysis cosmetic colors that perfect this skin tone.
The eyeshadow in icy violet is incredible. Merle Norman makes Freesia and it is gorgeous for a reason. The icy is Winter. The violet is the complement of yellow, a component of all Spring skin.
The other hilite is yellow, or creamy, but still quite neutral champagne. Everyone can do neutral champagne. Just avoid brown, beige, buff, gold, pastel.
Eyeshadow for the Brights is my biggest search challenge. You can do a clean light grey and deeper charcoal (left column). You can add in a bit of brown and get to taupe (right column) but barely any. Will you be able to find 2 separate products? You might, but you wouldn’t need to.
Shimmer in makeup is a definite possible, though never necessary. The industry just makes so much of it that it’s easier to find. Winter has a still polish. Spring expresses dazzle and movement. Merge the two and the shimmer works. One facial feature at a time.
Eyeliner is charcoal, or black-brown. Purple can be great, but certainly more playful; it’s lighter than True Winter’s and will look purpler. Spring allows imagination, energy, and FUN, but it’s still very contained in this group. Winter’s sapphire can also work. These eyeliners might be better as accents, rather than for surrounding the entire eye. You might just do an inner rim of the upper lid, or the outer section of the upper lid, merging with the charcoal. Just because you can look great in circus gear doesn’t mean you should.
Lip and blush usually take time to get used to. Start light or sheer with makeup. Your Color Analyszed swatches give you lighter choices too. The lip often has a fair bit of natural color. The rest of us would love it on you immediately, but I get that it’s you who has to wear it. Ask someone you trust. I love Mercier’s Lip Pot in Hibiscus on Bright Spring, but on Bright Winter, it is still too flat. They dominate it, and the lip color becomes dullish and grayish and boringish.
As for the clear eyes thing, it sure wouldn’t help you pick them out of a line-up. They are often Black-Brown (see Jocelyn Is A Bright Winter). They can be Virginia turtle eyes, which become OMG with charcoal eyeliner. They can be Asian.
Everyone’s eyes are amazing. Once we notice them, we all find it hard to stop looking. That’s why it’s so important to get rid of the distracting clutter. Calm down the skin, the hair, the over-makeup, and let your eyes leave an echo.
How Springs Intensify Eye Colour
June 29, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 18 Comments
The whole premise of color analysis is that by wearing the colors already in you, same value, warmth, and saturation, you get the youngest, healthiest, most perfected skin. You also look least artificially made-up in color analyzed cosmetic colours.
When Spring eyes are light in color, they are usually quite light. If they get surrounded by dark eyeliner, hoping to bring attention to them by creating a deliberate light/dark contrast, the problem is that the dark color doesn’t appear anywhere in this person’s natural coloring, so it looks false. And because this person can’t balance such darkness, the effect is to do what a dark line around a light shape always does, to close it in and make it appear smaller.
Don’t make yourself insane looking for red-browns and green-browns and purple-grays and yellow-grays to complement the eye color itself. What you perceive the eye color to be may not be correct, and the effect backfires. What colors enhance the skin enhances the eyes, it’s the automatic guarantee of PCA. They are in your personal colour palette or swatches.
Sorry for all the links, but these images are copyrighted. May take some patience. They should open in a new window.
For all 3 Springs,
1. Makeup cannot be earthy or pastel. A lot of makeup can’t decide if it’s clear or not clear. If you don’t know for sure, don’t buy it. The disaster of earthy makeup on a Spring can be seen here (please excuse the title of the article, but you see the painful effect of orange-brown eyeshadow?) Now add the frost to a color that doesn’t make sense this frosty, and it takes it to overkill. One of those “On whom does this look good??” colors.
Same concept on the model below. For me, the eyeshadow and blush are too orange-brown. It looks unnatural and heavy. We see lines under the eyes, like she’s getting tired from competing with these colors.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
When makeup is too cool, the effect is anemic, here again on Ms. Theron. There’s something ghostly about the skin, rather than healthy and glowing with vitality.
And when it’s good, here, same model. Only the Light Season can do this spun gossamer, sugar fairy look so beautifully. Spring adds yellow light, Summer does not. (The eyeliner is still sucking color out of the eye.)
2. Eyebrows matter. PCA brings attention to your eyes like never before. They’re the focal point of your entire being. The brows are the frame for the eye. Keep them neat and shaped. Especially important for Light Seasons who don’t wear dark makeup well.
3. The waterline of the eye is the inner rim of the lower lid. In your best colors, it will be the same color as the rest of the skin, which is calm and pale yellow-beige. That looks healthy, cleans up the white of the eye, and sharpens the iris. You could put a line of cream eyeliner there.
4. Don’t underestimate the power of jewelry. It is near the face. Violet eyeliner doesn’t look entirely grownup in makeup, but violet in jewelry can be remarkable. As Spring infuses everything it touches with happiness and movement, so can it wear a lot of bright, clear color. Even costume jewelry and plastic beads work very well. They express the exuberance, the enthusiasm for life that is felt even at the outer reaches of the Season.
If you’re young and want to wear violet eyeliner, be sure it comes from your Personal Colour Palette. Don’t buy a purpley grey or brown. It’s the color of the string on the necklace linked above.
5. Mascara is cool brown to black brown, depending on how dark you are. Black looks like spider eyelashes. Some of the dark-haired Bright Springs can wear black. Hard Candy makes a cool brown mascara. Smear a few out and look at them.
6. Wear your eye color and wear its complement color in clothing.
7. Wear a yellow-cream or yellow-peach eyeshadow hilite. It brings out yellow in the eye.
8. Think about accessories. The inside of eyeglass frames can have another color bonded to it. It looks cool, and I find it imaginative. Spring is a bit exaggerated and they can manage this effect nicely. (image linked to source)
Light Spring
These people are usually very fair. Some have ash hair and look like Summers. Some have yellow-green or brown in the eye and believe they’re Autumns.
The woman who gets my vote as most consistently ruined by makeup and clothing. At least, her hair is usually good. True of the Light Seasons, the less they put on her, the better, younger, real-er she looks. Here not too bad, but I searched.
This is a Light Spring eye. Notice that there there is yellow in it. It may be a green yellow, but it is certainly not an orange yellow. The eye belongs to Louise in the article Louise and Stevan Are Light Springs. Notice how cool and ash her hair looks and that she is not particularly light, though Stevan is. Notice too that the lashes are not very dark.
Repeat effects using makeup if eyes are blue or green will be the cream eyeshadow hilite or the cream waterline pencil, but go easy with this waterline thing. It can look bizarre quickly. If you love a pale aqua eyeliner, you’re under 25, and you are not in a professional situation, have at ‘er.
With Summer’s cooling effect, Light Spring still has more greys in their palette than browns. You want an eyeliner that defines without overtaking. Rimmel Stormy Grey is good. Summer may have left an unexpected charcoal rim to the iris and this repeats it nicely. Don’t ignore your grey clothes, for the same reason.
Keep makeup light in color. Don’t be talked into pops of color that just compete with what you are. Even contour eyeshadows should be light. Louise does not wear dark makeup.
If there’s green in the eye, wear your clear light red lips, even as a sheer. Red and green are complements.
Go easy on the frost. The Summer Spring blends have a deceivingly fragile complexion. Makeup effects can take over and fast. Do a thin shimmer in 1 place at a time, maybe inner corner of eye. Or maybe do a lipgloss over lisptick in a light peach-gold like MAC Instant Gold Lustregloss.
True Spring
These are the fair-skinned, light-eyed, yellow blondes. Uma Thurman, Charlize Theron, Cameron Diaz are the stereotypes.
Same repeat effects as Light Spring if eyes are blue or green.
Brown eyeliner is good. Warm yellowed gray also works. As ever for Spring, it is not an orange brown. Can Spring still wear orange? Absolutely, a clear orange. It’s just that the browns are not oranged.
Balance the eye with lively lip colors. Flat and safe looks like Nicole Kidman in pale hair and lips. Spiritless in a Season based on the very opposite concept. The whole face, the entire presence is drained and diluted. True Spring can balance a lot of the right colors and look fantastic in them.
Brown eyeshadow is fine. Light and clear. Picture those women in beer and honey eyeshadow, it works. In flowerpot or antique deep gold, too heavy, doesn’t work.
Wear bronzer that’s not too yellow or brown. It should be a sheer, pale, yellow-golden-beige. This is Stila 01 at Sephora. Sweep it up onto the forehead, around the eye.
Add a touch of cheek highlighter in a light yellow gold if you’re young. This is the face of the glowing outdoors.
As ever, wear your eye colors from your Colours Book somehow every day. A scarf, a pin, an earring, a purse, a hairband.
Bright Spring
The very fascinating Bright Spring never fails to surprise everyone, the analyst included. If the eyes are light, you’re wondering why they look so bad in Summer pastels, which is where you thought you were headed. If the eyes are darker, you’re wondering why Autumn drapes look tragic, while all the lines are eased away by the Spring drapes.
These women can use the light/dark contrast of dark brown or grey eyeliner with light eyes, because the darkness of the hair can balance it. The grey must be clean and crisp, and less dark than Winter. Merle Norman Galaxy and Annabelle Mercury are good.
They never wear brown in eye makeup very well, unless it’s a light taupe like Dior’s Earth Reflections. Notice (linked below) how there is no orange in the colors and they never get extremely dark.
They are deceptively light, though they don’t look it. The same rules of Spring apply, meaning not going overly dark or bold. This remains delicate skin.
Heather Karuza, who writes the very worthwhile makeup/nail blog at Coloruza.com…a Bright Spring could look like this. That could well be that Autumn-looking eye of this Season. The dark hair-light skin contrast makes one think of Winter, but this girl is not really all that dark. The skin on the throat is light and yellow.
Here, in clearer colors, showing also the Dior 5-shadow Earth Reflections.
Here in more Dark Autumn makeup.
You see why they’re so intriguing, ay?
(PS- Heather, if you read this, the e-mails from the site didn’t get to you. Hope it’s ok for me to post these links. If you prefer not, I’ll take them down. C.)
Best Makeup Colours : True Winter
June 24, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
In 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, True Winter is the pure Season whose most important color fact is its coolness. The saturation and darkness are fairly high but not at the max. Every color, light or dark, is cold, crisp, hard, frosty, dry like the inside of a freezer.
There are 5 pages of pinks and purples in True Winter’s Personal Colour Palette. 5 swatches on each strip, that’s 25 pinks and purples. They far outnumber everything else.
The color at the core of this being is red-purple, all very clear and blue-based. The palette is so cold that it almost feels a bit unfriendly to look at. There isn’t a shred of warmth. No brown, no orange, no beige, nothing we associate with comfort. Combine that with the relative darkness, and it’s uncomfortable.
Like these personalities can often be, Winter demands that we make some space for it. We feel commanded to notice it but prefer to keep our distance. It likes to argue and will resist any sort of control. And yet, its beauty is awesome and unto itself.
True Winter has some serious strength in their coloring. They can balance much more makeup than most others. They can wear eyeliner along the inner rim of the eyelids and look even more remarkable. On the rest of us, it just looks vicious.
If someone told me they liked my eyeliner, I’d throw it out. When you look at pictures of Laura Mercier or Mrs. Obama, you’re not looking at their eyeliner. Here, the color analysis cosmetic colours would harmonize a sapphire and deep purple eyeliner, as long as it’s not obviously, ridiculously purple. The sapphire has to be pure, dark, and cold. Not teal, just pure deep blue. Merle Norman makes a nice Sapphire eyeliner. Bright Winter can balance this too, with their drop-dead glamour signal. Everyone else pushes the limits of credibility.
It may take time to get used to these fuchsias, rubies, dark plums, and crimsons in blush and lipstick. Begin with sheer colors, but don’t compromise the color. Your makeup will be invisible, or worse, it will be noticeable as some weird, warm, wishy-washy shade on your skin tone. Don’t go there.
The basic eyeshadow is a clean, crisp steel grey. A cool taupe (grey-brown) can work as a good alternative. MAC Satin Taupe is fairly good, but very shiny. This group can handle shimmer makeup, consistent with Winter’s polish, but nobody should overdo the frost, especially after 40. Summer’s cool taupe could work, but it’s not quite the same because of its inherent softness. If these colours look warm on your screen, they’re not intended to.
Turquoise For 12 Seasons
June 15, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
Turquoise is an IT color this year.
Q: If there’s a shade than flatters both Reese and Julia’s skin tone perfectly, what is it?
A: Trick Q. There isn’t one.
Better to find the precise shade(s) that looks riveting on you. Have an accurate 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, and you will know for sure, forever after.
The colors shown are by no means the only turquoise option you have, whatever your Season (except True Winter). Since this is a blue and yellow based color, Seasons intimate with those colors, the Summers and Springs respectively, have more choices among their Color Analysis swatches.
Turquoise is warm and cool at once, so every Season has at least 1 choice.
True Spring’s colours are juicy and intensely happy. They’re ripe and dripping with pigment.
Bright Spring’s are clean, crisp, and pure. They are found in compositions that are the same, like this dress. These persons are deceptively Wintery in their appearance, and they wear clothes that are not-quite-Winter. The overall effect is light, not dark.
Light Spring is a Carribean shoreline on a sunny day.
True Summer is gauzy sheer, but not particularly light. Refreshing but gentle, like Blue Fescue grass.
Light Summer’s are icing colors.
Soft Summer is very grayed. When you add Autumn’s brown to Summer’s blue, you’ve mixed complementary colors. The result is gray, like sage.
True Autumn turquoise is greener.
Dark Autumn’s turquoises are dark enough to be teal.
Soft Autumn turquoise is how color appears in the desert.
True Winter only has the one. I wonder why. No heat-from-yellow (or heat-from-orange) tolerance? No, because Summer has many. Because yellow is light? Because there are other ways to make turquoise?
Dark Winter is bluer and sharper than Dark Autumn.
Bright Winter is electric acid turquoise.
Valeria Is A Dark Autumn
June 11, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 11 Comments
Valeria’s Personal Colour Analysis and makeup selection/application was performed by Maytee Garza. Maytee is the owner of Reveal Style Consultancy , located in Morristown, New Jersey. I thank Maytee for allowing me to use the results of this long-awaited PCA. Thank you to Maytee and Valeria for permission to reproduce the photographs. (Photos were taken in a mirror, if you notice a slight background texture).
If Dark Autumn announces that they’re going to build a boat in the garage, move the car out. With Autumn’s energy and quiet determination, and Winter’s opulent appearance, these people are predestined to create goals and reach them. The rest of the world knows enough to get out of the way.
Valeria saw herself as a Soft Summer for a long time. A restlessness with that conclusion caused her to visit Maytee. As she says, the experience is “amazing and traumatic…but I could not argue with what I saw in the mirror”. One of the best things about a Sci\ART PCA is that you will SEE your face change with the drapes. EASILY. It is not mystical and does not require an ounce of imagination. In our mirrors, you will see yourself look as bad as possible, and better than you ever have.
In 12 Season Colour Analysis, this person is essentially an Autumn, with a daub of Winter. Autumn’s palette is respected, in that the colours are mostly warm (though foundation is often neutral) and muted down. Unlike True Autumn, these are dark colours. Much darker. The most important thing about these colours is their darkness. Even the light colours are darker than anyone else’s.
I have found this Season hardest to pin down and generalize about. It’s not in the appearance, but in the person. They’re variable in character, always evident in the Neutral Seasons, but they’re elusive. There’s a mystery in the darkness that I don’t perceive in the other Seasons, even Dark Winter.
Sensible and straightforward as all Autumns, but direct in speech, and quick to absorb change with good evidence, they speak honestly and bluntly. What I love most, I believe, is that they are not one bit threatened or defensive about new ideas. The person may demonstrate more of Winter’s reserve, or more of Autumn’s passive and natural way, but there is always an element of fire.
Hair
Dark Autumn can look very Winter. The hair colour is often a most interesting bronzed black, easily just looks like black-brown. It’s the dark colour in this dress. This girl looks great. She combines Winter’s simplicity in the absence of neck and ear jewelry, with a dramatic effect at the wrist. She can balance what would be excessive weight and clutter on someone else. Even the shoes are great, substantial, stirring, and essentially the same as the hair color.
Avoid a cool red highlight or rinse. Though a Neutral Season, with both coolness and warmth in the skin, this is predominantly still warm skin. Auburn if you feel you must have red.
Avoid blonde highlights. They look like you’re frosting your hair with gray. The whole impression should be of luxuriant darkness. Highlights of any sort can break up the full-on, sensational dark force of this look.
Use a laminate to heighten the hot shine.
You’ll say Valeria’s hair looks good. Yes it does, but this woman has extraordinarily good skin. That can make an analysis much more difficult, because like children, it’s very forgiving. But, do the eyebrows seem a bit dark by comparison? Not only is there an imbalance, like something is being forced, but dark eyebrows can look very severe. Severe=aging.
This is my hair color visual for Dark Autumn : a coffee bean. Flip her hair color in your head. Did you feel the pieces click into place? You could even hear it. Could you see the bronze depth emanate even more from within the eye? The synergistic power, where the whole is so much more than the parts, roots you to the spot. Pick the lighter or darker roasts, choose the shade on the bean that matches the intensity of your look, but it’s those rich bronzed browns. Even in the almost-black haired people, there is a bronzed quality to the hair color. Find the colorist who can do that.
The Superlative Dark Autumn
…needs time to get comfortable wearing colours that should strike and excite the senses. The darkness mixed with the heat can feel volcanic. Just as the clear brilliance of Bright Winter’s palette should accelerate the viewer’s heart, so should Dark Autumn’s look evoke the distinct feeling of a controlled furnace.
…Like the sensation of hot sauce in your mouth, this is not a comfortable heat. It’s peppery and strong and undeniable. Valeria’s most telling comment, coming off of a Soft Summer self-image : “I nearly fainted when I saw the turmeric.”
The moment Winter appears in the picture, it tries to take over. A sharp feeling is in the air. In Bright Spring, where a hint of Winter is added to Spring, we see this powerful Winter effect again. Winter’s signal, inside and out, is power. But with Dark Autumn, there’s heat to contend with too. Like temporary containment, the pressure valve won’t hold forever.
…can wear black because they can balance the darkness, but can’t fully balance the coldness. Dark Autumn needs to heat black up. Wear gold or bronze jewelry instead of silver. Add flame colors, hot metallics, rich neutrals (from brown sugar to eggplant), and hot spice colours.
…do texture and weight better than anyone, and not simple tweed or corduroy. Oh, no, we’re talking velvet, leather, suede, metallic. Autumn’s strength and Winter’s wealth.
…can add theater, because it looks like tension and feels like excitement. Winter is never easy, it demands space and attention, just as Winter in personalities is not always easy. Everyone else has to adjust a little.
Dark Autumn’s palette is the feeling of dealing with food that’s almost burnt. Your attention is high, your movements are urgent while you ignore everything else. Red is already here now. Black is almost upon us. Something is about to happen. You feel it happening? You’re reading a bit faster. A reaction is demanded. There are only moments left till Winter’s black coldness descends. The viewer ignores everything (everyone) else. They feel the need to do something. We need a moment to catch our breath, dab the sweat, and calm down.
Pure Winter classic, gypsy fortune-teller, Aztec priestess, military command, jungle exotic, Middle Eastern bazaar, Spice Island queen, are all so good and so seldom played up enough. These are your best skin, your youngest face, your slimmest body. So much more than appearance, here we actually react to colour as flavor. Every sense organ seems invoked.
…look 10 years older in white. Every line is deeper and darker. In Summer’s light pastels, their skin looks like cement, and that’s not just me being descriptive. The skin looks like grey, rock-solid stone.
…grey the hair well. It heightens the drama. They look even better in the greys and the cooler choices in their Personal Colour palette.
…strive for a bronze glow in makeup, though not necessarily through use of bronzer. When you know your Season, you know your cosmetic colors. In right makeup, the colors diffuse away into your skin because they are already there. The ultimate in polish and sophistication, perfect balance, this is your best and healthiest (healthy=young) “no makeup” look.
This makeup is so gorgeous, I asked Valeria for the products used:
Maytee matched my foundation (not sure what brand she used but she mixed several for the right shade). Then she applied a sheer brightening powder on my cheekbones and if I’m not mistaken, a brownish/reddish/peach-ish blush, just a touch. On the eyes, she used: all over the lid, Navajo from Bobbi Brown; on the lid, Ash by BB, and in the crease, Hot Stone, a neutral matte brown, by BB. She then lined my eyes with BB’s Espresso eye shadow (especially good liner color on Dark Autumn) and used black mascara. On the lips, she used the Whirl pencil by MAC (its a mauve brown shade the same as my own lip color) and Givenchy Gloss Interdit in Coral Frenzy.
In Valeria’s Words
“My experience with PCA was wonderful. The process itself was great fun. However, anyone going into it with preconceptions: be prepared to have them shattered. Be prepared to trust your analyst, trust their training and years of experience, and be prepared to let go of how you used to see yourself. In this sense, PCA can lead to some profound revelations. For me personally, it was about more than just color and style. PCA gave me the answer I’ve been searching for, and with it, it gave me confidence and brought me to a new level of self awareness. It both empowers and releases. It also inspires.
Seeing yourself the way you were intended to be, being at your best and most beautiful, is a wonderful thing. Everyone should get the chance to experience it. There is nothing like it.”
Choosing The Ideal Bridal White
May 24, 2010 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
The colour of bridal satin is as important (more important!) than the style.
The yellowing effect of ivory on Summer skin…
The drained, tired skin of an Autumn in soft white…
The disappearing Summer bride in Winter’s aggressive, hard, cold, frosty, sharp white…
Know your perfect white with a Personal Colour Analysis. Achieve your skin tone perfection on this of all days. Your wedding gift to yourself.
Have your Colour Analyst send 3 e-mails.
One to your dress shop, so they can choose the perfect color and style.
One to your makeup artist. If she works with a PCA, there is a cosmetic colour palette and particular radiance in her head instantly.
One to your florist. If he understands PCA, he makes a composition, knowing the flowers to use and not use.
Your jeweler, your hair colorist, everyone needs to know. When the team works together, you become extraordinary.
Are you getting warm? I am.
We look at the colours of satin for the 4 True Seasons. In correct Seasonal Colour Analysis, there are 12 personal palettes. The other 8 are Neutral Seasons, or blends of the 4 Trues.
(I do not own the Sci\ART Bridal Drapes Set of 12.)
Did I say grey when I should have said white? Yup.
Did I say Summer when I should have said Spring? Yes again.
I was trying to be animated, you see…
Skin Undertones
April 15, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 58 Comments
You may want to skip this post. There will be no concrete answer at the end. It will be a thought repository for my ramblings till someone helps me understand this. If you can’t stand the nitpickiness, I’ll understand entirely.
I realize that I’ve been referring to “undertones”, as in the Eyeglass Frames videos too randomly. I said that the dusty plum of the Soft Summer frames was essentially the undertone of that skin.
Traditionally, undertones are thought to be either cool, neutral, or warm, not coloured.
Overtones are the outside colour of the skin, like the names of foundation, porcelain, bisque, buff, natural, warm beige, etc. Light/medium/deep also refers to overtones. The overtone must be in the top epidermal layer, presumably the relative melanin/hemoglobin/carotene amounts.
You can get any combination of undertone and overtone. So warm undertone + ivory overtone, or cool undertone + ebony overtone, etc. Porcelain and ebony overtones can share the same cool undertone.
Worth noting too is that you can have a false overtone. The red flush in the skin of women with too-yellow hair, or the yellow overtone in the cool dark Seasons when they wear too-warm colour, these are just effects created by bad colour.
Where is the undertone and what exactly is this colour that we are calling cool-neutral-warm? I mean, cool what? Cool grey? Cool blue? A cool colour that varies by Season, but is of the cool classification?
I looked for input from respected sources.
1. Bernice Kentner of Color Me A Season, always ahead of her time, describes undertone as a real colour, a combination of 4 variables. From her book, The Magnificent Eye, she describes undertone as the result of an equation made up of 4 variables:
. the thickness of the skin which varies by Season and determines which colours show through
. the yellow-brown colour of all skin, beneath the top layer
. the meshwork of oxygenated (red) and non-oxygenated (blue) blood vessels beneath the skin
. the velocity of blood flow in those vessels; so Autumn’s faster blood flow shows more red of arterial blood
I don’t know about the blood flow velocity. I would think that ultrasound would have detected those differences among people. If she means how fast the capillary beds are cleared, well, I don’t know.
I absolutely agree with her that Seasonal Colour Analysis is not about overtones. If it were, women who wear the same foundation would be of the same Season. If it were, yellow skin would wear warm foundation, but it often does not (or should not).
2. Lauren Battistini at Color My Closet makes the fundamentally important point in this post, that undertone refers to how skin reacts to color. If your skin is most perfected by cool colours, then your skin’s undertone is cool. Not certain if I can extrapolate Lauren’s words this far, but maybe this means that undertone is not a real colour at all, and isn’t located anywhere in the skin’s biological layers. It is a reactionary term.
Personal Colour Analysis is about identifying the precise degree of darkness, warmth, and saturation in the colours of your body, and so in the colours that perfect your skin when you wear them. It has nothing to do with overtone really. We’re looking for the skin’s reactions, or undertones.
In the Comments, Lauren says that each Season has a “core color”, using the example that Autumn is orange. Each Season does have a signature or core colour (Winter=red, Summer=blue, Spring=yellow), but that is not quite the same concept as skin colour, though there’s some overlap.
3. Imogen Lamport at Inside Out Style Blog writes an excellent blog with practical real-world advice. In this post on skin tone and makeup, a client writes in with a question. Imogen offers several examples from her experience as a colour analyst.
If I understand this right,
Now you may be more obvious and have a warm yellow or goldish undertone and overtone and therefore warm colouring, or you may have a pinkish undertone and overtone and be cool.
…means the pure Seasons are those where overtone and undertone accord. She cites examples where the two may conflict – but I’m still confused.
4. Beauty School Blog is written by makeup artist, Jen. I find it a fresh take on makeup blogs, with good lessons, a genuine voice, and a wider spectrum of topics. I found this article very thorough. But I’m still confused. If the undertone is a real colour, then which colour is it exactly, and where is it?
5. The colours of melanin. This, at Dead Dog Cafe, doesn’t fully attack the topic but does implicate different forms of melanin.
Pheomelanin, yellow to red-brown (ie: orange) : small quantity + blue vessels > green or sallow of some cool Seasons.
” ” ” : large intensity + blue vessels > warm gold of Autumns and Springs
Eumelanin is the black/brown pigment of non-Europeans.
6. The 12B concept of undertones. The pictures posted along this article show how undertones appear in my head. There is no scientific testing here, only what I see when I look at this skin. (Dark Autumn could be redder. Bright Winter could be lighter and yellower. Light Summer, I couldn’t decide. Close enough to make the point.)
What use is it?
Foundation is matched to undertone (cool/neutral/warm) AND overtone (ivory to ebony). These images don’t help with that.
But these are your fundamental lip and blush colours. These are your from-within, most intrinsic colours. Using them for eyeglass frames, ties, scarves, and accessories looks good, though the viewer would never know why.
Am I way off? Have I over-simplified or over-complicated?
I’d surely love to hear your opinions. This feels like a linchpin in my understanding of skin and colour. It’s really just a theoretical point, but I think about it.
5 Sunglasses For 5 Seasons
April 7, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 2 Comments
Some sunglasses for Soft Summer, True Spring, True Autumn, Bright Spring, and Dark Winter.
The principles of 12 Season Colour Analysis guide us in so much more than just what colours flatter your skin the most. Those make you look younger than all the other colours.
It’s in how you combine the colours that you express all the images and feelings of that Season, that harmonize best with what your natural coloring is already doing.
By choosing the style that reinforces the colours properly, you become quietly fabulous.
Aim for the heart. You will love the trip and find a new soulmate in yourself.
2 points in this video are confusing. Maybe more than 2.
1. The plum colour of the frame for the Soft Summer glasses doesn’t show up well. The colour is here. Fabulous blush and lipcolour for the Soft Summer, straight out of the personal colour swatches.
2. The point about using frames to balance an unbalanced face shape could be interpreted in various ways.
For one, as I’m sure you’ve seen, people with small faces, or heart shaped faces, wearing big shiny lenses…well, it can look like a bug, you know?
On the other hand, if the face narrows at the chin, a frame that gets wider at the bottom of the lens would counterbalance that.
Since there is no such frame as triangular, another option may be to use a frame where the lines curve from the center out to pull the eye outward, but without curving from the outer edge inward as the aviators do.
This concept is illustrated nicely in this short video. I watched this whole series and learned a heck of a lot.
Bottom line, try them. Bring someone brutally honest with good taste. The first rule of being my shopping partner is to NOT tell me everything looks good. Luckily, I have teenage daughters built-in for this purpose.
All the glasses for these videos were provided by Holland Optical in Chatham, Ontario. Call them at 519-352-8632. Seriously outstanding selection, in a marketing world where so many retailers are just repeating the same thing.
Matching The Swatch Book : Coral
April 3, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 12 Comments
This is Part 2 of the post that answers a client’s question re: deciphering her blues and corals when shopping with her Colours Book.
Part 1 is at Matching The Swatch Book : Blue. Today is about True Summer corals. This would not apply to Soft Summers, who have very different colours. Light Summer may have an occasional similar swatch, but not a whole page.
Coral is one of the more difficult colors to predict in 12 Seasons Personal Colour Analysis. Any color, like turquoise or peach, that has an inherently warm AND cool component, is tougher to grasp confidently.
As we said in the Blue post, it’s often the colours in more distant, seemingly unrelated, Seasons that can be most similar. I looked for the most similar corals to True Summer’s.
They are not among the 3 Summers (except maybe the odd one in Light Summer). No coral in the Spring or Autumn palettes would confuse you if you had your Colours Book.
The corals of True Summer and Dark Winter are similar tones. Side by side, Dark Winter certainly has a dark brown element that takes away the rose-petal freshness of True Summer’s but they are quite close.
Wow, ay? So, how might you tell them apart?
1. True Summer is absolutely cool. You should be able to find no heat, no yellow, no brown. OK, but hard to do with coral, since it always seems a little warmish.
2. If it’s a cosmetic colour, don’t compare makeup colours on your arm or face. None of us can ever be objective enough about our face and arms get messy. Paint it on white paper to compare it to your Colours Book.
3. Does the item convey a feeling? True Summer should express cool, serene, fresh, feathery, and delicate. Choose a visual to help. Rose petals, watercolor, mist, water are True Summer. It should feel true to one of True Summer keywords : gentle.
For True Summer, it’s watermelon, not geranium. Soft plum, not deep eggplant. Soothing, not strong. The personal swatch book may feel hard to interpret, but when you see it in the entire piece of clothing, the colour is easier to figure out.
If you see a trace of sunshine, it’s wrong, it’s Spring. True Summer is absolutely cool.
Ask yourself “can I see black in the shadows?” . If yes, it’s Winter’s. And this is a good way to make a colr go one way or the other. If it’s a tissue or sheer fabric, wearing a white or dark tank underneath can pull it towards Winter or Summer very effectively.
4. Compare it to 2 items that you KNOW to be warm and cool. It will be easier to position yours accurately when you have a range with endpoints.
5. Consider the fabric. Colour is an emotional expression that is conveyed by weight, by combination, by style and stitching lines, as well as hue.
If you feel a heavy or somber presence, it’s probably off. Even when True Summer gets darker, the feeling is still graceful and fine. Winter colours look (and feel) aggressive on a True Summer.
If the colour feels like it would have to be velvet because the feeling is so solid, that is not True Summer. If it feels made of gauze or linen, it is right.
If the colour were curtains, the True Summer would let light through. Dark Winter is occlusive because of its degrees of saturation and darkness, both way higher than Summer.
6. What story is being told by the colour? What background does it create? a watercolour or an oil painting? a sheer or a tapestry?
7. In a swirl with Summer’s other colours, would it be dominant, or too aggressive, and overshadow all the more delicate colours?
All True Summer’s colours are very slightly faded. Spring has the odd similar swatch but it is distinctly more saturated, a clearer colour. In the graphic above, I could have softened (reduced the saturation, grayed) the Summer colours even more. As soon as Spring appears, the colours become rainbows to parrot plumage, but they’re clear, not dusty colours. True Summer is just the slightest bit washed out.
If you love the item and your instinct is that the colour is right, buy it if you can return it. Try it with the rest of your palette, in different lighting. Often, a colour that is extremely close can be made to work well because of what it’s combined with, since so much of Season harmony is conveyed by how your colours are worn together.
I believe these are the last stages before becoming completely colour confident. Don’t do it from memory, you’ll lose money. Always consult your Colours Book.
You’re still moving forward.
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