Without the 12 colour harmonies created for the Seasons by Kathryn Kalisz, founder of Sci\ART, I would never have seen and felt the unique language of each Season. Would have missed it completely. I know this for sure.
Some of the colours are provocative and unexpected, but your reaction is, “For goodness sake, would you look at that? How did she know?”
Palettes in which colours are random or leave you with reactions of, “Give me a break, that would never belong here.” are not able to capture the spiritual beauty of each Season.
True Winter's Voice
True Winter's spirit might be especially elusive, perhaps why it defies verbal descriptions and has become the subject of so many attempts to define it. The unique radiance of True Winter speaks to me as space and solitude on the most majestic, mysterious scale. It is the silence of the ice cave, the rising of a blue white moon over a frozen lake, the jewel that resembles a planet, the yellow flower that could be the sun.
The earthly images always seem to be metaphors for another immensity, the power of a quiet that cannot be confined. The drapes feel the same way. They hold reserve and dignity, as does True Summer, but with seclusion that sets them apart from the empathic, emotional, approachable quality of Summer.
Something about their ultimate nobility makes them as private and isolated as royalty. They are so apart, so elevated from everyday life around them, dismissing the busy fun of Spring and work ethic of Autumn, that they appear concerned with a higher ideal. If there were one Season for which I am happy to see people own their Luxury Drapes, it would be True Winter, a group of colours that seems less willing to compromise what they stand for. No other Season continues to surprise me as much.
True Winter Appearance Variations
Few people guess themselves correctly to be True Winter in their natural colouring, or Season.
If eyes and hair are dark, they tend to guess Dark Winter. We have seen the photos of Sandra Bullock and Kim Kardashian. I’m not convinced about Kim. If you like to guess from photos, get past the colouring of the face where, let’s face it, you’re looking at eyes and hair, and imagine the person wearing the palette. The entire palette – lips, cheek, jewelry, hair, not just clothing. Do you think the Dark Winter lipstick might look like smeared food on Kim? I do.
Here are 3 types of human manifestations of the True Winter colour group. There are probably about 6. Doubtless, I would find many others if I lived in a more racially diverse place.
The Dark Hair, Dark Eyes True Winter
This is Elaine DeFehr, our analyst in Winnipeg, Canada.
Elaine can wear very high colour saturation. The architecture of the face loses when colour contains the wrong kind of yellow.
Every human being contains yellow. For the cool Seasons, it's a cool yellow, slightly greenish from the blue added to cool it.
Foundation has to match overtone and undertone. How cosmetic companies label and pigment their foundations vary widely. You want the colour that disappears. Elaine’s foundation looks fairly dark and might be labeled warm, to match the olive-yellow skin tones. In this photo, she wears very little foundation.
The True Winter with evident yellow or olive overtones may wear red in blush and lipstick better than fuchsia. Elaine's favourite is Ultima II Rampage.
If you are interested in a colour analysis in Winnipeg, contact Elaine by email at elaine@yourcolourharmony.com
The Lower Contrast True Winter
or
Is-She-A-Summer True Winter
A woman arrives to model for our recent analyst training course in Vancouver. She is about 5’10”, maybe taller, of mixed First Nation and Irish/Scottish ancestry. The skin colour is Caucasian but unusual, without much colour, as if you had to describe the colour of window glass. Hair is dark brown. Eyes are medium gray-green.
Hers were among the most interesting colour reactions I have seen. The most pronounced variable, meaning what changed the most, was the texture of her skin. We could not eliminate True Summer in the early stages, the appearance being ok but not shockingly great in pure black.
Isn’t ‘perfect in black’ the rule for True Winter? Nothing applies to every face. That’s why the system cross-checks results from 112 colours in about 20-30 comparisons. Besides, early in the PCA process, the analyst does not know the face well enough to make sweeping decisions.
At the Red Test stage, the picture began crystallizing. She was clearly of true cool colouring. Only at this stage did her eyes react with the colours she wore.
This True Winter can be, if not monochromatic, then not very colour-animated to look at. The skin can be beige gray with little natural blush. The eyes and hair colours would not look much different on a B&W TV.
It takes Winter colours for the person to appear, let alone sparkle. Nobody can think the way to a Season. Put the colour on, then compare with another colour, then decide. Humans make decisions by comparing.
Luxury drapes are very helpful to customize the Season for this person. Matte and textured fabrics were excellent. Next to shiny, smooth, slinky fabrics, even in her Season, the skin appeared more textured. B&W felt too sharp for her soft, steady character. The combination said things about her that were not true. Black-brown was striking, a moment when the Feeling folks in the room wipe away tears. She was fabulous in all purples, easily tolerating any amount of red and darkness level.
Every person in a Season is encouraged to wear all the colours. Narrowing down the palette is repetitive and unnecessary. The person often narrows themselves right out of the Season, breaking up the magic. The individuality is not in which palette colours to include, but where and how much of the various colours will be worn, in which shapes, textures, and prints.
The Odd True Winter
or
You're Wrong, She's an Autumn!! She's a Spring!! True Winter
My daughter, Alexandra.
Dark brown eyes, quite orange-red headed as a child, now light-medium brown with a definite red (not orange) cast, more pink or violet than rust.
Many Winters have purple tones in the hair and yellow in the eyes, mostly True and Brights.
Alexandra’s skin is very pale. She doesn’t look it. Colour is never what we think we see, remember, or predict. Colour is a reaction in present time. We didn’t evolve to see colour exactly. We evolved to see well enough to eat. Our visual system compares. It compares colours, contrasts, edges, movement, something, and then it decides. So put the two colours together and decide.
To give you foundation colour context, Clinique Alabaster foundation goes on dark and gets more yellow by the second. MUFE’s lightest colours also turn into heavy gold streaks, giving her a yellow face on a white-gray neck. Their very white 205 blended into the neck, but would have been too white as a full face. Bottle after bottle, however cool the product in the bottle, it applied yellow and went more so by the minute.
Thanks to Aislin and the great staff at the Sephora in Windsor, Ontario, we happen upon NARS Sheer Glow in Mont Blanc. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Light enough, with the correct type of yellow and no colour shifting. Face and neck in perfect unison.
Alexandra is best in fuchsia-purple cosmetics. They find the same tones in her hair and eyes. Red can look heavy, partly due to her age, and not as good an extension of the face. Bijou is her beautiful best gloss in the Blueprints makeup line. The second colour in the eyeshadow palette creates a lovely pearly taupe grey.
You can see the Blueprints line of Season-customized cosmetics at the 12 Blueprints Store.
What’s the lesson?
Season is where you start. Within a Season, the people all share more in their colour reactions and essential aspects of their colour dimensions than they differ. Having this information, when you shop, you know what to look right through, it’s not for you. Inside your Season, the person is an individual. The 12 Blueprints analyst will coach each client in using the palette to best effect for her or him.
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Some of the colours are provocative and unexpected, but your reaction is, “For goodness sake, would you look at that? How did she know?”
Palettes in which colours are random or leave you with reactions of, “Give me a break, that would never belong here.” are not able to capture the spiritual beauty of each Season.
True Winter's Voice
True Winter's spirit might be especially elusive, perhaps why it defies verbal descriptions and has become the subject of so many attempts to define it. The unique radiance of True Winter speaks to me as space and solitude on the most majestic, mysterious scale. It is the silence of the ice cave, the rising of a blue white moon over a frozen lake, the jewel that resembles a planet, the yellow flower that could be the sun.
The earthly images always seem to be metaphors for another immensity, the power of a quiet that cannot be confined. The drapes feel the same way. They hold reserve and dignity, as does True Summer, but with seclusion that sets them apart from the empathic, emotional, approachable quality of Summer.
Something about their ultimate nobility makes them as private and isolated as royalty. They are so apart, so elevated from everyday life around them, dismissing the busy fun of Spring and work ethic of Autumn, that they appear concerned with a higher ideal. If there were one Season for which I am happy to see people own their Luxury Drapes, it would be True Winter, a group of colours that seems less willing to compromise what they stand for. No other Season continues to surprise me as much.
True Winter Appearance Variations
Few people guess themselves correctly to be True Winter in their natural colouring, or Season.
If eyes and hair are dark, they tend to guess Dark Winter. We have seen the photos of Sandra Bullock and Kim Kardashian. I’m not convinced about Kim. If you like to guess from photos, get past the colouring of the face where, let’s face it, you’re looking at eyes and hair, and imagine the person wearing the palette. The entire palette – lips, cheek, jewelry, hair, not just clothing. Do you think the Dark Winter lipstick might look like smeared food on Kim? I do.
Here are 3 types of human manifestations of the True Winter colour group. There are probably about 6. Doubtless, I would find many others if I lived in a more racially diverse place.
The Dark Hair, Dark Eyes True Winter
This is Elaine DeFehr, our analyst in Winnipeg, Canada.
Elaine can wear very high colour saturation. The architecture of the face loses when colour contains the wrong kind of yellow.
Every human being contains yellow. For the cool Seasons, it's a cool yellow, slightly greenish from the blue added to cool it.
Foundation has to match overtone and undertone. How cosmetic companies label and pigment their foundations vary widely. You want the colour that disappears. Elaine’s foundation looks fairly dark and might be labeled warm, to match the olive-yellow skin tones. In this photo, she wears very little foundation.
The True Winter with evident yellow or olive overtones may wear red in blush and lipstick better than fuchsia. Elaine's favourite is Ultima II Rampage.
If you are interested in a colour analysis in Winnipeg, contact Elaine by email at elaine@yourcolourharmony.com
The Lower Contrast True Winter
or
Is-She-A-Summer True Winter
A woman arrives to model for our recent analyst training course in Vancouver. She is about 5’10”, maybe taller, of mixed First Nation and Irish/Scottish ancestry. The skin colour is Caucasian but unusual, without much colour, as if you had to describe the colour of window glass. Hair is dark brown. Eyes are medium gray-green.
Hers were among the most interesting colour reactions I have seen. The most pronounced variable, meaning what changed the most, was the texture of her skin. We could not eliminate True Summer in the early stages, the appearance being ok but not shockingly great in pure black.
Isn’t ‘perfect in black’ the rule for True Winter? Nothing applies to every face. That’s why the system cross-checks results from 112 colours in about 20-30 comparisons. Besides, early in the PCA process, the analyst does not know the face well enough to make sweeping decisions.
At the Red Test stage, the picture began crystallizing. She was clearly of true cool colouring. Only at this stage did her eyes react with the colours she wore.
This True Winter can be, if not monochromatic, then not very colour-animated to look at. The skin can be beige gray with little natural blush. The eyes and hair colours would not look much different on a B&W TV.
It takes Winter colours for the person to appear, let alone sparkle. Nobody can think the way to a Season. Put the colour on, then compare with another colour, then decide. Humans make decisions by comparing.
Luxury drapes are very helpful to customize the Season for this person. Matte and textured fabrics were excellent. Next to shiny, smooth, slinky fabrics, even in her Season, the skin appeared more textured. B&W felt too sharp for her soft, steady character. The combination said things about her that were not true. Black-brown was striking, a moment when the Feeling folks in the room wipe away tears. She was fabulous in all purples, easily tolerating any amount of red and darkness level.
Every person in a Season is encouraged to wear all the colours. Narrowing down the palette is repetitive and unnecessary. The person often narrows themselves right out of the Season, breaking up the magic. The individuality is not in which palette colours to include, but where and how much of the various colours will be worn, in which shapes, textures, and prints.
The Odd True Winter
or
You're Wrong, She's an Autumn!! She's a Spring!! True Winter
My daughter, Alexandra.
Dark brown eyes, quite orange-red headed as a child, now light-medium brown with a definite red (not orange) cast, more pink or violet than rust.
Many Winters have purple tones in the hair and yellow in the eyes, mostly True and Brights.
Alexandra’s skin is very pale. She doesn’t look it. Colour is never what we think we see, remember, or predict. Colour is a reaction in present time. We didn’t evolve to see colour exactly. We evolved to see well enough to eat. Our visual system compares. It compares colours, contrasts, edges, movement, something, and then it decides. So put the two colours together and decide.
To give you foundation colour context, Clinique Alabaster foundation goes on dark and gets more yellow by the second. MUFE’s lightest colours also turn into heavy gold streaks, giving her a yellow face on a white-gray neck. Their very white 205 blended into the neck, but would have been too white as a full face. Bottle after bottle, however cool the product in the bottle, it applied yellow and went more so by the minute.
Thanks to Aislin and the great staff at the Sephora in Windsor, Ontario, we happen upon NARS Sheer Glow in Mont Blanc. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Light enough, with the correct type of yellow and no colour shifting. Face and neck in perfect unison.
Alexandra is best in fuchsia-purple cosmetics. They find the same tones in her hair and eyes. Red can look heavy, partly due to her age, and not as good an extension of the face. Bijou is her beautiful best gloss in the Blueprints makeup line. The second colour in the eyeshadow palette creates a lovely pearly taupe grey.
You can see the Blueprints line of Season-customized cosmetics at the 12 Blueprints Store.
What’s the lesson?
Season is where you start. Within a Season, the people all share more in their colour reactions and essential aspects of their colour dimensions than they differ. Having this information, when you shop, you know what to look right through, it’s not for you. Inside your Season, the person is an individual. The 12 Blueprints analyst will coach each client in using the palette to best effect for her or him.
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