By the certain age, every woman knows her “tada!!” color. When she wears it she harvests loads of compliments, both because she looks great in it, and also because she knows that she looks great in it.
But sometimes the winning color gets discovered later in the age, bringing regrets about the lost opportunities.
Let’s look at the colors from the art student point of view.
Primary colors are Red, Yellow and Blue and they can be made out of nature’s pigments. Third primary color Green is a mix of the yellow and the blue.
While not going too deep into it, I am just going to say that the secondary colors are the result of the mixing of the primary colors, and they all form an abstract illustration of the color hues aka the Color Wheel.
Opposite primary colors situated polarly as you can see in the picture:
Red across Green, Blue across Yellow.
Their combinations create the rest of the pallet and also gives you a clear picture of the temperature of the color, from hot red into warm green and to the cold and colder teal and purple.
In fashion styling that phenomenon is referred to as the Seasons and correlated with the colors of the hair, eyes and skin, like Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall types of beauty.
It all is hardly scientific and highly approximate.
And just as an Alchemy, works miracles if you believe in it.
The boldest definition of a Winter girl is a fair skin brunette with a blue eyes, Spring one is a blue or green eyed blond, Summer has more a darker shades brown or reddish hair and brown eyes, while Fall is about light skin and eyes and red hues of hair.
Of course, it doesn’t even begin to cover all the beauty types.
But it allows us to speculate about what part of the Wheel is our friend.
Now, after we slightly scratched the surface of this topic I’d like to remind you, that intensity of the color plays a huge role in the beautifying of one’s surface.
Water down or darken any color from that Wheel and you may get into next league of the Looking Good.
Try both playing with the color of your “season” and the opposite one. Notice how you can “cool of” your skin or bring out the depth of your eyes.
Eyes, according to a famous quote of Russian writer Tolstoy, are the mirror into the soul.
It’s quite easy to bring out the color of your eyes if they’re blue or green or gray, just match the color of your clothes to a more vibrant shades of your eye’s pigment.
You may even play them up with so called “relative” tint, meaning, use the neighboring colors on the Wheel. For instance, when did a blue eyed blond look bad in a cold pink or aqua?
Dark eyes are always mysterious and concealing emotions, not cooperating with the reflections – let them dominate the pallet. Like that brunette in tender blush and nude colors, that serve as a subtle background for her intense ripe cherry eyes.
Yes, that’s right, Kim Kardashian.
But what is most important in choosing of the winning color is to compliment your skin.
Wrong color can make your skin looking tired, sallow or aged.
The few that are difficult to wear for some skin types are beige, lilac, olive green and mustard.
But remember, even if you love the color but it’s not your friend, you can still wear it, just not close to your face.
The advise about how to combine colors can fill up a small town library. If you are not a stylist, designer or an artist, you don’t have to read them all.
The general idea that the colors shouldn’t fight each other in the outfit ( include nails and lipstick into the count) would suffice.
Another trick: look into the mirror and check, does any of the colors make your eye twitch? That’s the one people will notice and remember.
Here’s the Mademoiselle Chanel quote:
«Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.”
Doesn’t mean you should refuse yourself a joy of wearing a happy and bright color when you feel like it. Reminder: fashion rules are easily overridden by personality of the wearer.
I’ll just add a few thoughts about the connection between the color and the volume.
Visual illusion is a fun game, and a very powerful tool in fashion.
First, remember, black is not the only slimming color. It has a few less popular buddies that nevertheless do the same job but bring a personality into the look: dark blue, dark green, dark purple, dark burgundy, dark gray and dark brown. You find them boring? Wear them strategically situated on your body parts that you want to visually shrink instead of the ordinary black.
And the opposite, bright colors bring shine and volume if you place them where you need an enhancement.
If you are not proportionally standard, you can bring the balance into your figure by wisely distributing the colors along your body, visually correcting the lines and volumes.
For example I’d like to mention that hypothetical friend of yours with a vast upper body and a rather small bottom part, who’s wearing a hot pink blouse and tight black pants. I wish she would switch with another girlfriend, who dresses her pear shape body with a fitted black top and a bright color jeans.
They need to meet and reflect on each other.
That brings us to the chapter of the proportions, so…
To be continued.