“The Best Color in the world is the one that looks best on you.”
–Coco Chanel
Imagine a landscape full of beautiful colorful flowers, where you can see all the colors that you can ever think of. The image has the power to soothe your restless mind, as it takes you into a whole new world. So, why are people not conscious about what colors they choose for their wardrobe? Fashion industry has a different color theme for every season, but what is important is the fact whether the color for the season is the right color from your individual color palette or not?
It’s a very legitimate question, and only you can answer it for yourself. Have you ever faced a situation where you are all dressed up and standing in front of your dressing mirror? You are wearing something that you bought for yourself from a designer showroom for a very special event by spending your hard-earned money, but suddenly you realize it doesn’t look that good as it was looking in the store. Don’t worry, it’s a very commonly faced situation by most of the people. Both men and women end up buying such clothing items that either don’t suit their body shape or their skin tone and texture, and then these items get added to the huge stack of those already existing ‘not be used’ items of their wardrobe.
What can we do to avoid such unrewarding purchases?
This is where the power of color makes an entrance. Colors have the power to bring things around you to life, and the right color for your clothes will make a similar effect on your personality. You have to choose a combination of Right Style and Right Color to make yourself stand out in the eyes of other people. We have earlier discussed about dressing styles for Hourglass body shapes and Inverted Triangle body shapes, and today we are going to learn something about the types of color tones suitable for different types of personalities.
According to Doris Pooser in her book ‘Always in Style’ – “Your Personal Coloring has the same three characteristics as colors do- undertone or base tone, depth, and level of brightness- and is determined by your skin tone, hair and the color of your eyes as seen together as a whole. What color characteristics do you project? Just as the cut of your clothes should complement your body lines, the colors you wear should enhance the colors that are really you.”
Characteristics or Dimensions of Colors
The Power of Colour Warm and Cool– Colors could be either warm or cool and this decides the undertone of the colour.
Depth– Colors could be either deep or light. For e.g., imagine a color range from Deep blue to Light or Sky Blue and this decides the value of the colour.
Brightness– A color could be either vivid or muted or soft and clear, and this decides the intensity of the colour.
Seasons and their Characteristics
What is your Season? Or do you actually have a Season? The answer is Yes, as every person has a season and on that particular basis a person can be classified as one of these: Winter, Summer, Autumn or Spring Personality. You have to design your colour palette according to your particular season or your personality.
Winter Personality
Winter
People with a winter personality have a clear and cool milky white, rose-beige, olive or black skin tone. The colour of their hair is usually black, brown-black, blue-gray or siver-gray, and their eyes are cool and deep or ice with ‘spokes’.
Spring Personality
Spring
People with a spring personality have a clear and warm, peaches and cream, ivory, peachy pink or beige skin tone with a high cheek colour. The overall look of a spring personality is bright and there is a strong contrast between the light skin and dark hair. Hair can be strawberry blond, golden blond, golden brown, warm black or creamy white. The eyes are warm and clear, and they have a halo or marble.
Summer Personality
Summer
A person with summer personality has a muted, porcelain, rose ivory, light rose, soft rose, and rose-beige skin tone. The hair colour is mostly flaxen blond, ash blond, taupe, blue-gray and silver-gray. The eyes are cool, soft and hazy or cloudy.
Autumn Personality
Autumn
People with an autumn personality have an earthy, beige, golden beige, orange, caramel, and golden-brown skin tone. They have sometimes reddish-brown freckles on their face. The colour of the hair is Red, Auburn, Copper, Sift Warm Brown, Red-Brown, dark Brown, Golden Gray. The eyes too are warm and woodsy, and they have speckles and starburst.
You can guess from the various seasonal personalities that their characteristics are defined by the colours of the season. Most of the people don’t fall into any of these extreme categories, instead the actual personality is always determined by the flow dimensions.
A combination of various dimensions like undertone, value and intensity and your particular season decides the given colour flow pattern for your personality.
A cool undertone has blue and yellow based colour palette and includes colours for winter and spring season personalities. Similarly, a deep colour value includes colours for autumn and winter personalities and a soft undertone include colours for summer and autumn personalities. Based on this classification we have a flow which decides the colour palettes for different seasonal personalities.
Here are some of the colours for various flows:
Cool Winter Colours– Hunter Green, Ocean Green, Ocean Blue, Blue Plum, Steel Blue Royal Navy
Cool Summer Colours– True Gray, Cold Gray, Charcoal, Soft white, Cranberry, Burgundy
Warm Spring Colours– Light Tan, Tan, Golden Tan, Sable, Sand, Light Camel
Warm Autumn Colours– Deep Cinnamon, Pimento, Deep Coral, Old Gold, Sunflower, Warm Navy
Deep Winter Colours– True Gray, Dark Chocolate, Cheery Red, True Red, Spruce Green, Pine Green
Deep Autumn Colours– Deep Purple, Bright Teal Green, Brown Burgundy, Mulberry, Purple Navy, Boysenberry
Light Spring Colours– Pearl Gray, Dove Gray, Nickel, Deep Rose, Watermelon, Coral Pink
Light Summer Colours– Bright Navy, Warm Violet, Aqua Marine, Bright Teal Green, Cornflower, Orchid
Clear Winter Colours– Pink Red, Brown Black, Poppy Red, Electric Pink, Pink Pearl, Pink Frost
Clear Spring Colours– Bright Aqua, Spice Blue, Clear Navy, Clear Violet, Ice Purple, Purple Frost
Soft Summer Colours– Taupe Brown, Rose Brown, Rose Taupe, Smokey Brown, Mushroom, Rose Beige
Soft Autumn Colours– Teal Turquoise, Soft Teal Aqua, Soft Teal Navy, Soft Navy, Grape, Red Grape
Now you can see for yourself that a deep person will have rich colouring, a light person will be fair, a warm person projects a golden glow, a cool person will project a neutral personality, a bright person will showcase a clear glow which is accompanied by a contrast of dark hair colour and jewel- like clarity of the eye colour, a muted person refers to toned down colours. Based on your seasonal personality and the personality of the colur that is decided by its dimensions you can choose your own colour palette.
We have to keep in mind that focusing on the right colour should not be the only factor that helps us to decide our outfits. Instead, we have to refer to our body shape that can be either hourglass, or inverted triangle, or oval or a triangle and we should try to complement the body shape with the right colours and patterns in order to reach the perfect conclusion about dressing up perfectly.
Dressing up is an art, and like an artist we should always looks at enhancing our creativity with new tools and techniques.
