Using the Fabric Colours Sets

What are the Colours Sets?

The Luxury drapes are now offered as sets with the same fabrics previously available only to professional colour analysts. These are the colours our clients wish they could remember and would love to take home.

Applying your colours to your purchases has a learning curve and this selection of your colours in a variety of textiles will be invaluable as you practice. You will see first-hand how overall appearance harmony is created from your natural colours to everything you wear.

The Fabric Colours Sets are practical. The colours are chosen to participate in an interactive wardrobe with multiple opportunities for self-expression. They are not chosen to be breathtaking for the Season, which might differ for every individual, and is an ideal which may narrow the use of your palette. Your breathtaking colours will appear and evolve on their own and in the meantime, who wants to be confined to their 10 favourite foods, songs, or colours, that might be available or not? Better to think in terms of colours combining together in your entire presentation, the way notes combine to create music.

The colours are my interpretation of the Sci\ART colour palettes for the 12 Seasons. Various colour analysis companies and systems may have their own interpretations or Season names.

 You can find more information and a video in the blog post, Introducing the Fabric Colours Sets.

 

What you receive

The set includes 15 pieces of fabric measuring approximately 9x4 inches = 23x10 cm.  Although their size is too small for proper colour analysis, it is large enough to compare with the colour palette and developing an overview of your wardrobe, cosmetics, and hair colours as one. Fabric pieces are the same size as in the Neutrals Sets to work together for visualizing colour combinations.

As with the Neutrals Sets, fabrics are contained in a plastic envelope, which may have a zipper, string and button, or Velcro closure. Some fabrics may have fabric glue along one or more borders, signifying only that they were once a full-size Luxury drape. Hand wash only as necessary and iron quickly on a low setting, avoiding any glued edges.

Specific colours in each set vary by production run, but you will always find one or more colours from each colour family. Throughout the set, certain colours may span the light to dark, warm to cool, or soft to bright dimensions for the Season. For example, you may find light and dark reds, warm and cool greens, or soft and bright blues within the Season, along with complementary colours, those colour combinations that are especially energizing for being opposites on your colour wheel. You will also find colours that we do not use for testing, such as purple and orange, and sometimes a surprising colour, such as sunflower yellow in Dark Autumn. 

 

Purpose of the Luxury Colours

You may have seen these as full size drapes during your colour analysis. Once the Test drapes have identified your Season, the Luxury colours are your first look at how your colours will come to life in your wardrobe, bringing together all the principles and most flattering effects observed during the analysis process. 

The term Luxury may be misleading for implying that these are special occasion colours. As mentioned above, these colours are an expansion of the Test Drapes, presenting a wider range of colours, textiles and textures to use for any and all colour purchases. My goal is for you to be self-sufficient and confident in your every day, every outfit, every item, colour choices, with a strategy for the compromises and substitutions that shopping is sure to require. The more colours you have to work with in actual fabric, the more easily you can visualize the other palette colours, and 'paint' outfits that express your colour harmony in your way.

The Luxury drapes explore the borders of each Season more freely than the Test Drapes. How bright does Soft Autumn become and how does it look more 'earthy' than similar colours in Soft Summer? How bright could Light Summer red be and still harmonize with Summer?

Are you between two Seasons or love one of the neighbour Season but feel unsure about how to borrow their colours? You’ll see which colours slide together easily with the neighbour Season and where and how they drift apart, for example between True and Bright Spring. 

You see a bracelet you love in a store or online. Are you going to buy it? Observe how it looks with the colour fabrics to see whether it is distinct or fading, expensive looking and belonging, distractingly shiny or hard-looking, or dulled and losing its lustre.

 

How to use

The first step may be to find the colours in your palette. There should be a very close counterpart to the palette colour without needing to be an exact match. Between any two similar colours in neighbour Seasons, several colour steps could be imagined. The idea is to use the palette to recognize those that are create beautiful harmonies with the other colours.

For those fabrics with a similar version in your palette, decide first if the fabric has a same or similar version in the palette. Similar or close enough is a Yes for this step. Next, still observing the same palette strip, ask yourself if the fabric colour could #1, slide into the strip easily, and #2, make reasonable outfits with each colour in the strip. Sometimes, a colour can look like a match but seem discordant with other colours on the same strip. The relationships should feel comfortable.

Next, look how the fabric colour works with the other palette colours. Is it able to make beautiful, balanced, and belonging colour combinations with many palette colours, not necessarily all, which may depend on preference or taste? Do any palette colours look surprisingly beautiful or unappealing? This is a practice in slowing down and training our eyes to pause and look at each palette colour individually with the fabric.

Keep the windows of your imagination wide open and picture the colours in a variety of textiles. In a recognizable situation, when you search for hairstyle pictures, you don’t limit yourself to those in your colour. Instinctively, you know to keep shape and style separate from colour. Apparel is the same.

Be open all sorts of colour combinations, from conservative to highly expressive. Every person would have their own favourite outfits and uses for their colours, even with the same Season, depending on age, cultural influence, location, and many other factors.

As I mention with clients, don't see the colours as 15 turtlenecks. Every colour may serve its own purpose in any outfit, as a watch strap, a stone in a necklace, a button, a coat, a belt, or of course, a turtleneck sweater. Colours might be used in small or large areas, or appear in lace, cotton, or vinyl.

If you have the Neutrals Sets for your Season, pull them out. Your overall presentation will include these a lot for most outfits. They act as the backdrop for your colours and assist in creating high or low contrast looks. White, navy blue, black or alternative, and possibly olive, teal, red, rust, or other blues, are included in the Neutrals Sets and therefore are not found in the Colours Sets.

Your Season-customized makeup? Bring that out as well. Your colours are your colours wherever you wear them. Interpretation may differ by item of apparel, jewelry, or cosmetics, but once you understand how the system works, progress in applying it is fast. Think of your presentation holistically, as this blouse with this lip colour and this bracelet, because this is how others see us.

Beginning with your own colouring, let's create your presentation as a tapestry woven with threads of those very same colours. Your taste combined with the inherent harmony of the palette will ensure an appearance that is unique and uniquely beautiful, in one gorgeous outfit after another and always with excellent makeup and hair colour.

 

More applications

Show-stopping colours. The colours that silence the room or evoke strong emotional reactions. Pause and tune into the pleasing physical sensation of colour harmony.

Saturation range. For example, the True Summer set may include a colour that is on the border with True Winter, still within a brightness range that could participate in a Summer wardrobe. Placing your own clothing among the fabrics may be useful for picturing these limits as well.

Energy. Each Season is able to express a particular radiance more beautifully and authentically than any other. The Season chapters in the book (LINK) describe this energy in greater detail. Expressing its voice clearly is one of the reasons I favour 12 Seasons. Adding more would blend the colours to the extent of blur these 12 unique and special voices.

Hair and cosmetic colours. Objective assessment of these choices may be more challenging, for hair colour especially since the palettes do not translate as easily to hair. Many women finally understand how hair colour participates in presentation when they see their current colour next to the Luxury drapes, and more importantly, their next step is clear. You may also notice that every colour goes with every other, meaning that the same makeup will work beautifully with every outfit.

Texture. You will see how colours may be presented most faithfully in some textiles. For example, Light Spring fabrics include lightweight cotton and knits, sheer and smooth fabrics, and some with gentle shine, which could apply to apparel, makeup texture, or jewelry. Soft Summer fabrics may be more substantial and often matte or woven, which tend to mute colour. 

Shine. In the Bright Season Test drapes, some fabrics are shiny so that the analyst may observe the reflectivity that takes place in your skin or the effect with your own colours. In our everyday lives, most textiles are not shiny, as you will see in your colour sets. The reverse side of shiny drapes also demonstrates a matte version. Include shine of jewelry in your uses for the Colours Set, as colours and type of shine for metals are an extension of the colours and reflectivity of fabric and react similarly with our skin.

New colours. You may find some colours that are not in your palette and yet harmonize well with it. For example, the ranges of icy colour in Winters and pastels for Summers and where they may overlap as a light, shimmery, pastel. Or, you may find a bright yellow in Dark Winter that may require an open-minded view as to why it is included and how it might function in your wardrobe.

Warmth. Every Season has a range, including the True Seasons, because the Seasons transition from one to the next, like Nature's Seasons. In the Bright Spring set, you may have blues of similar value (darkness), where one is more teal (green) and one more purple (red or blue).  

Explore. What surprised you with the colours? What has been challenging in wearing your Season? There is no wrong way to wear them. What I have written about the Seasons' unique languages is my own vision, with tremendous flexibility for each person. You have begun a journey of insight and expansion that will be rewarding and surprising, as they seek their own true expression. Use your imagination too. Self-discovery is ongoing and colour is among the most powerful languages with which to meet ourselves.