Your Color Type Decoded
Have you ever had your colors done? Like, a color analysis?
It’s understandable that for many this theory feels like an ancient beast from the depths of the 1980’s when everyone and their mother (especially) was pegged into one of the four seasons. If you picked colors within your “season” for hair and makeup you would be guaranteed to always look your best. Although color analysis is still done by everything in the range of educated professionals to online quizzes it has lost some of its former glory. Some would even go as far as to say it is a surefire way to detect a “I will start living more truly to myself” – crisis of women 40 or older. Besides, why stick to the rules? We are liberated modern women and men. Can’t I just dress in any color I bloody like? And isn’t black always the new black?
With this cheery introduction(!), you might be surprised to learn that I am actually a BIG fan and advocate for understanding your best colors and how they affect how you look. This is intimately linked to my general esthetics which are very much based on how beautiful some color combinations look together. I’ve always been more of a color person than a graphics one. Nothing excites me more than an unexpected and amazing color combination. A mustard yellow with a pigeon blue. How a certain shade of brown pairs so beautifully with ballet pink. It’s so natural for me to look for these combinations and their enhancing potential in the faces of people I meet. I even admit to secretly fantasizing on public transport about dressing people with particularly interesting- or beautiful coloring in the perfect color to bring out their beauty (hey, it’s not like I’m fantasizing about un-dressing them, which would be worse, maybe).
The 12 Color Types
The problem, I believe, of color analysis is that is so decidedly un-modern. The information that is to be found about it online and in books (again, often from the 80’s) doesn’t feel fresh or useful and mostly lacks any sense of fashion and style. These seem to be a clear line drawn in the sand on this one. Either you are slightly less fashionable but like the idea of dressing in your colors. You spend a lot of time mood boarding “cute” outfits that fall within “your season”. The other camp is more interested in the wonderful world of fashion and style and therefore know that black is everyone’s go to color and color is worn depending on the season's fashion. If you are r-e-a-l-l-y stylishly confident you might have some signature colors picked out, but those are based solely on the fact that you think they are cool. There is not a lot of grey scale on this I have taken note.
But I can’t be the only one who sees that both sides lack what the other is missing (if your utopia is a world of perfectly beautifully dressed people, sure). I can’t be the only one who cringe when gorgeous actresses are put in colors (and styles) that are incredibly unflattering and totally wrong for them, only to be hailed by the press as looking amazing. No-she-DOES-NOT! I don’t care if it’s a fa-shun statement and straight of the runway. It does-NOT-LOOK-GOOD.
Fashion and style is many things. I respect fashion for its cultural reflection, history and way to communicate. I respect personal style immensely. The very personal choices we make in what we wear and how it makes us feel. But I also respect beauty and aesthetics. Understanding beauty, seeing what is beautiful in yourself and celebrate it. And I feel sometimes these are forgotten in both fashion and personal style. Why do we all want to dress in black and look cool (black is a great color by the way, just not for everyone every time) when our very personal beauty is right there but remains hidden without the right colors to reveal it? Instructive articles about “how-to-build-your-capsule-wardrobe?”, “start-with-the-10-black-pieces-everyone-needs”, makes me go no, no, NO! We do not all need the same pieces in the same color. Where is the style in that? Where is the beauty? We need the pieces that will work for us and bring out our magic. Because that is what color is right? Magic. Light hitting surfaces, bouncing back in a unique mix, making us feel things, making us not being able to stop looking.
Before I start getting really preachy (too late?) I also want to add that a lot of stylish people do this very well and look amazing at it. I just feel that wearing colors that actually suit you is not spoken about enough. Again going back to the “how-to-find-your-style-article” it’s often stated that you should “definitely look at what colors suit you”. But how? We wonder. Or, it is spoken about in a too simplistic and un-knowledgeable way; “all blue eyed brunettes are winters!” Both ways are not very helpful.
The sources with true knowledge about the matter often have a rather, how to put it? “Hippie aura” and often do not present themselves in a way that would make most people interested in style look twice. One of the biggest trends in the world of style and fashion is going back to more simplistic versions of how to dress. Articles and videos about how to create a capsule wardrobe and how to find “your style” are more popular than ever. Simplistic YES amazing! One size fits all NO!
And that is why, dear reader, we are here to help! In this series we will slowly but surely have you convinced that dressing in great colors for you will change your life and your wardrobe. We will try to present this forgotten ancient wisdom in a modern and fashionable way that you may actually want to consider it. No pigeonholing, no dressing in three colors only. Does that sound interesting? No? Let us know!
Now let’s get started with our first profile BRIGHT SPRING!
