Wrong Colours Away From The Face
October 3, 2009 by Christine Scaman
Divergence
There are those who believe that even if black is not among your good colours, you can still wear it away from your face, or with a right-coloured accessory. I have tried to agree with that but I can’t. To my eyes, it throws the look completely off balance, even if it’s just dark shoes.
Whenever people cannot agree about something, it’s because there must be many right answers. If there were only one right way, we’d all be doing it, not unlike dog ear cleaning methods. A large amount of it comes down to opinion or taste.
When colours fight, one will win. One will lose. For any person with very light colouring or very low contrast, black is overpowering. It will win, meaning that in the contest between what is getting noticed, it will be the black. The person wearing it fades to grey, the edges get fuzzy, and the whole image is weak.
Working examples
I know a heavy set blond-haired, blue-eyed man. He favors dark shirts and pants, presumably to look thinner. Because his body clothed in black takes over his face, his head seems to shrink by comparison. His body appears disproportionately large, even larger than it already is, because the eye is occupied with looking at the body all the time. The black sucks your gaze down from his face.
Of the 12 Seasons in personal colour analysis, only 4 or 5 can balance black without disappearing in it.
There are darker Summers out there, almost Wintery looking, but they can’t wear Winter’s dark drapes well. They can wear black as pants and shoes, because their hair tones approach black. Also, their coloring is dramatic enough to balance that same effect in the colour black. BUT, they do not do well in a black top on its own, scoop-neck or not. Black looks too heavy, dense, and solid.
Many of these women have thought of themselves as Winter for so long that they are comfortable in black. Once they see how old and tired they look in the solid colour, they quickly learn to adapt it with their cool roses and incredibly sophisticated neutrals. By softening the black with better colours and feminine details, it becomes a possibility for some of them.
Does the darkness and statement of black contrast well with light and/or warm hair? Maybe if there were nothing else to look at but clothes and hair. But the face pays a price. Seasonal Colour Analysis in clothing aims to perfect the skin tone above all else.
The essential element
I do agree with the convention that pants and shoes look best in the range of tones of the person’s hair, and not going darker than the darkest tone in the hair. You have many tones in your hair when you study the range from lightest to darkest or warmest to coolest. You still have a lot of choice.
A reader introduced me to the work of Jennifer Butler. Her site is full of good stuff. This is a very short YouTube video on this topic.
Watch some of the videos, or the main large one at the top on her Videos page. Her work is fascinating and hugely creative. I loved watching all the videos on her site. She is very comprehensive in her ability to incorporate colour, style, silhouette, and the individual’s inner essence with awesome (and humbling) skill.
Since I’m the Budget Colour and Style Analyst, I prefer the IKEA version of clothing, clean straight lines. Gathers, details, smocking, jewels – I don’t know, the final look always seems complicated. Perhaps she’d leave me to my simple ways, who knows, though I’m the first to admit I could use her help.
Colour and style expert Irenee Riter has an enormous amount of information on her website. She takes yet another approach to colour and human beings, with Color Ovals and InterSeasons. On this page, some more on wearing your hair colour
See the image about 1/3 down the page with the comment “looks like a head sitting on a dresser”? That’s exactly what the light-coloured man looks like in the dark suit, plus 200lbs.
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11 Responses to “Wrong Colours Away From The Face”
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Christine, i have enjoyed your Greener Tea and now, your color site… good job! you are teaching me some things that will change my closet… hard to grasp, since I am older and want to look slimmer,too…so black has been a staple…
I love this post! It’s great to see that although there are disagreements, it can prove that there is no wrong way to dress and makeup. But with that, it can also be more confusing. Especially if a person is like me and wants to know all he/she can about coloring and the ones that are perfect for him/her. And even how to use them in his/her wardrobe, as accessories to include nail color. I guess maybe I have to accept that there will never be a definitive source of colors right for a person?
Hi, Samantha,
I’ll agree with parts of your comment
, like “there is no wrong way to dress”, but I’ll modify it slightly to say “you can never argue about tastes and colours”. You have to decide what your sense of taste dictates to you.
In medicine, people always want THE right answer. It’s very understandable because it makes everything so much simpler. That’s just not the reality. 10 doctors will handle the same problem in 10 different ways, all of them right. To another doctor, all 10 methods were the same in the end, just looked different from the outside. To the patient, they heard 10 different solutions, not 10 same solutions described in 10 different ways. Confusing? I would think!
I will diverge on the point of “never be a definitive source of right colours”. I have yet to question the Sci\ART system as correctly analyzing everybody. Some people are fascinatingly complex. I saw a young woman today who was a True Summer, but with a trace of Soft Summer. We figured it out in the end but we had our work cut out to define it definitivey. She left entirely empowered about where to go with wardrobe, hair, and makeup. Now, how you use those definitive colours, that’s up to you…
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Hi, Karen,
Nice to see you here. Everyone hides in black. You’re not alone. It is easy to find and feels concealing. But that’s all it is. We can all do so much better. Let me know if you have any particular questions I can address in a post. Love to hear where people find confusion!
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Christine, Thanks for your response!
I am trying to apply the principles I am learning here—..
I really enjoy the Jennifer Butler videos.
Before i pose my question, I have a comment to make: Christine, you are so generous with your information, and that is sucha wonderful quality, I pray that you are rewarded in wonderful ways for sharing what you know so freely. I think about that a lot. I love justice and fairness and i believe firmly that you will recive some wonderfully RICH clients who want all your services!
now to my question: it may be silly, but here it is: I have been called every color by all kinds of experts(!) except autumn. I am a blonde who turned darder blond as I aged., ash in my hair- coloring looks better.,but I have tried my “natural ” hair coloring and everyone agrees that I definitely need blonde highlights… I look better with blond streaks and dark on the scalp and dark streaks. mixed. My eyes are bluewith tiny flecks of both whilte and brown. the …the ring around the iris is dark gray. .I freckle easily and a tan is hard to achieve and keep. you can see blue veins in my skin.
I think all that adds up to cool summer(doesn”t it?) two tones layered look better on me than just the straight color.
here is the question: when I wear bright colors (even yellow), but especially bright red ,purple, bright blue, I get many compliments. all my supposedly “good for me” colors seem blah to me. and evidently, I look blah,too, because folks ask if if I feel well when I wear the softest summer colors,too. and I seem to prefer gold to silver.
what’s wrong with this picture that I cannot see? thanks for the help. sincerely, karen
[...] she wear black? No. She looks sad and severe. As you know from Wrong Colours Away From The Face, I believe you look most connected when your darkest colour (especially for big items like coats, [...]
As a wintery summer I have found that I can wear black – as you say, away from the face and softened with summer colours and accessories. I also find that black seems less overpowering in a matt finish. I am far more comfortable in black cotton, velvet or silk than in satin or or most synthetics.
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I agree, Jane. Black is a very workable colour for this colouring group, done in a certain way. I see it with the lovely roses and off-whites, and it can be so feminine. It’s also so very much easier to find professional and formal clothing if you can wear black.
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[...] Wrong Colours Away From the Face, I said that I don’t buy into wearing colours that are not in your #1 BEST Season, unless people [...]
Something about the idea of “wearing one’s hair color” has been baffling me. I have determined with….90%? certainty that I’m a bright spring. (I finally found an analyst, but have to wait on travel plans for an official analysis.) I look terrible in brown. But my hair is brown. How do I wear my hair color and not look ill?
Hair colour, like all of our colours, are matched to suit us and each other because they are created from the same pigments (variations of melanins, carotenes, hemoglobins) and pigment proportions..at least, that’s what I believe to be true. I haven’t measured it, don’t know how one could, but it makes logical sense to me. So your B Sp brown hair will be different from a S Su brown hair in that if you isolated every pigment, they’d be different, then mixed in varying proportions. So her brown will be dustier and yours clearer, yours made with more pinks and hers more blues. There are many ways of making apparently same or similar colours to our eye, especially brown which takes contribution from all 3 primaries.