A personal style is an act, of embracing oneself through the understanding of who you are externally and internally. By dressing authentically with an appreciation of your own aesthetics in hand with your beauty, you may enhance physical attributes through self-expression within fit, complexion, balance, proportion, and harmony. This article will focus on the harmony component, specifically of color, to aid in cultivating the mind and training the eye for visuals through a complete guide to seasonal color analysis from the history, principles, and vocabulary. Seasonal color analysis is a resourceful tool in your styling arsenal as you can determine which hues are the most flattering to harmonize with oneself or contrast with the intent to highlight personal attributes.
With this, you will receive the foundation to formulate your wardrobe in terms of colors that are best suited to you as well as how to style colors not traditionally found within a personal palette. This is not to be an experience to limit, but rather to hone and explore. This resource will give you the fundamentals needed on a personalized level so that you may create your coveted image of fashion and develop your sense of style in an embracive manner through the utilization of seasonal colors. As time passes, light reflects in the landscape, and the seasons provide fresh visuals in the sentiment, essence, and vision of the season’s spirit, these hues express the beauty of nature. We possess this same natural coloring inside and out. This was introduced by Philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He breathed life into the romantic notions of color through his poetic outlook on the hues nature possesses innately in relation to personal perceptions. Though at this point in time, there was not yet exploration of this concept in direct relation to clothing and complexion but laid the groundwork for the understanding we have today through the creation of color psychology in the 1800s. Goethe believed color was rooted in perception alongside elements of light to interact with darkness.
Into the early 1900s, Swiss expressionist painter and professor Johannes Itten defined the connections colors have to distinct emotions that carry weight as well as strategies for harmonizing colors through combination in a manner that appeals to the eye and resonates with the heart. With his findings, the art world evolved as his work shed light on the interactions of color in relation to complexion which resulted in seasonal color palettes inspired by the world around us and reflected in ourselves.
In the last 1900s, color theorist Suzanne Caygill paired Goethe’s color psychology with Itten’s season theory, hence the theory of “Quality of Color ” came to be for application which created the clear, muted, rich, and sharp qualities that resonate with pigmentation found in eyes, skin, and hair. She explored the relationship between one’s complexion personality and style within color palettes correlating to seasonal periods. Later during this time, psychologist Carole Jackson published “Color Me Beautiful” with a focus on simplifying the process for individual use rather than a broad spectrum so that people every day could style garments that not only displayed personality but embraced the physical self while curating a coveted aesthetic.
To begin we will look at the principles of color starting with a hue which is the spectrum that defines how cool or warm a specific color is. Our degree of hues indicates our temperature and tones. The more yellow the warmer, red is neutral, and blues are cooler. Value is the measure of quantity by which light reflects off a color on a spectrum of light to dark. Those with true dark features have naturally dark hair and eyes with rich and deep coloring. Those with true light have light hair and eyes, traditionally with fair hair as children. With this, you discover your personal depth to see how deep a color should be to suit overall coloring today. Alongside value comes contrast which refers to the degree of disparity in value levels between multiple colors.
Though traditionally when seasons are thought of there are four distinct categories, the flow theory of color analysis allows for a dimensional analysis by which the seasons flow into one another through the color dimension of chroma which refers to the brilliance and intensity.
The intensity is defined by the degree of shade, tone, or tint. Shade is the deepening or darkening, the tone is an added grey that retains the general value, but in a duller manner, and tint is the increasing the light value through adding white. The chroma spectrum indicates the saturation to determine muted/soft or bright/clear levels for oneself. If clear, the skin appears vitric and the eyes gleam starkly, there will be high contrast of the hair, eyes, and skin.
If muted, skin is gentle, eyes are softer or dusky, and hair is demure in color. In order to understand our season of belonging, we must observe and acknowledge our natural principles. With an understanding of hue, we can interpret our tones. The undertone of the skin is the temperature our skin possesses due to the chemistry of pigments that results in your overall hue. Skin-holding hints of blues, pinks, or blush are cool in the undertone as peachy, yellow, or golds are warm in the undertone. Though it is impossible to be a true neutral as this is a spectrum unique to each individual, some may appear neutral to the naked eye because of how we perceive color and light.
One’s undertone is often dictated by natural hair and eye color. Brunettes, jet black, or blondes of ashy, blueish, or auburn nature with blue or green eyes tend to be cool. Red, brunettes, raven, or strawberry blondes with golden, bright, or copper hues with hazel or brown eyes are warm. An overlap of these traits combined will result in a more neutral complexion with a warm or cool essence on the spectrum. The hue spectrum defines how cool or warm a specific color is in the purest dimension of the color that we experience with one’s natural eye. The more yellow the warmer, red is neutral, and blues are cooler. The cool undertone will fall under Summer and Winter, while a warm undertone will be under Autumn and spring for that specific feature. It is important to not rely on just skin, eyes, or hair separately, but to recognize each as there are cases where not all features are within the same season. Our true tone is the combination of our undertone and overtone, some people are both warm and cool while others may have a mix of neutral or differing tones over and under.
The overtone is the coloring of the external appearance in regards to eyes, hair, and skin through the combinations of features and levels that translate onto the value scale from light to dark resulting in fair or deep features that are distinctive to us. For example, one may have a blue tint, but the undertone has a yellow variable. When shopping for garments, the colors best suited to you are not purely to be chosen by the overtone but are a result of the undertone and the interaction between the over and undertone. This spectrum is a dimension in relation to value and temperature. Think of this like a lens on a pair of glasses, the natural eye is neutral but then with a yellow tint the world looks warmer and deeper, yet the eye remains neutral. This is the same way the undertone remains present. The warmer tones appear yellow, neutrals are reddish and cool holds a blue tint.
Just as skin and hair hold an undertone, eyes contain one as well. Brighter, intense, or lighter are warm as muted, gentle, and opaque are cooler. Those with low chroma have more neutral and unified features that appear equal in value to the naked eye. Their hair, eyes, and skin hold a less and equally saturated appeal as if the overtone color were toned or tinted by their undertone. Those with high chroma have intense, contrasting features that are as if the overtone color were shaded or deeper. Winter and spring are brighter and clear as Summer and Autumn are often muted and soft.
Within each respective season, there are three sub-seasons that allow for a color to have variations in tone, value, and intensity, hence creating the space to create a truly personal color palette that isn’t restrained by the traditional colors of the season. It is beneficial to note the nature of other seasonal color palettes in order to better recognize our own or to understand how it will interact with ourselves if we want to sport a color outside of our season.
True summer, the main seasonal category of Summer which overall is cool, light, and muted by holding more blues with hints of yellow through toned variations, is Cool plus Muted, Light Summer is Light plus Cool, and Soft Summer is Muted plus Cool. The winter mirrors this with a purely blue base holding tinted variations that carry a lightness but possess an additional degree of shading which results in a deepening that carries the spirit of the cold within a cool, deep, and clear palette. True winter is Cool plus Bright, Bright Winter is Bright plus Cool, and Dark Winter is Dark plus Cool. Autumn contains a more yellow base with a blue essence that is balanced with shaded and toned variations resulting in warm and muted for true, soft Autumn is Muted plus Warm, and Dark Autumn is Dark plus Warm resulting in a warm, deep, and muted overall palette. The spring has a purely yellow base as a result of tinted variations, hence true Spring is warm plus bright, Bright Spring is bright plus warm, and light spring is light plus warm.
