Thoughts from the Dirty City

In addition to making piles, the participants of Wardrobe Therapy were asked to indentify their Joyous Colors.

Joyful Colors: These are colors that make you happy. With any luck, some of them also give you clear skin and sparkling eyes when worn next to your face. (Quick-and-dirty trick: match your eye color or go with its color-wheel opposite.) We will talk about “color my season” systems when I post my answers on this topic, but I’m urging you to start with colors you like rather than with someone’s color cards. (Mella is hereby issued a “bye” from having an emotional response to color.)

There isn’t a color that I don’t like, so that is a bit of a tricky question for me. So I’m just going to start with colors I’m told I look good in based on the “season system”.

I have always been told, and for the most party agree, that I am a winter.  I say this because I have pale skin with very pink undertones, hazel eyes and dark brown/black hair with red highlights. According to most books and websites winters look best in deep/rich jewel tones and dark neutrals. They also say unsaturated white based pastels work. For the most part I agree. All those colors do look great on me. Except, okay I don’t agree at all. In fact I think the entire system is flawed.

I studied color a bit in art school and the real trick is learning what base color looks good on you. By base color I mean a primary. Every color under the sun has a base of yellow, red or blue. Personally, I look best in tones with a blue base. Red can work too, as long as it doesn’t have a lot of yellow in it.

This is also why I think everyone can wear black (and gray, but it’s a bit trickier as the base is harder to distinguish). All blacks sway a bit to one of the primary colors. It’s usually pretty subtle. Until you put two black shirts next to each other that have a different base colors that is. Yellow based blacks always look a little green next to a red or blue based black. In a perfect world this wouldn’t happen as black is truly the most neutral of all the colors.

One of my first color study assignments was to create black paint by mixing all the primaries together. We were told nothing except that the mix would not contain equal parts of each color. Oh, and that the actual primaries are cyan, magenta and yellow. I must have blazed through a dozen bottles of each pigment never actually reaching a perfect black. In the end, no one did. It was later explained that paints are also slightly flawed and therefore will never give you perfect results. Lighting and dilution can also effect it. But it was a great way to teach just how powerful the base color really is.

(Oh, and it’s equal part cyan and magenta with a little yellow added till black is achieved. Try it, it’s fun!)

(Wait…how did I get that off course? Real it back in Bet!)

Deep breath.Wow, that was the most long winded explanation of:
I can pull of anything with a blue base and most things with a red base….just keep me away from yellow. It makes me look jaundiced.

I take that back, I love lime green and wear it anyway.

So there you have it. I have no REAL rules when it comes to color. I love it too much to limit it in any way.

Something is missing. I have written an entire post on color without a single photo or example. That will not do….

Inspiration for colors that I love, covet and am looking for right now generally come from the Pantone site. Every season they do an amazing fashion color report. Check out the full color report, along with all kinds of other color goodies here and here.

I spend the bulk of my day sitting in a desk chair, though I hadn’t really given a whole lot of thought as to it’s comfort until recently. My first day here I sat down, adjusted the height and tested the lean to ensure I wouldn’t end up on the floor. Aside from that moment the chair wasn’t even a thought, it is just here, under my rear, day in and day out.

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By this point we all know I have a kind of fetish when it comes to OPI nail polish. What you might not know is that I am almost equally obsessed with checking out fashion shows. Unlike OPI, you aren’t going to find any Anna Sui in my closet but it isn’t for lack of want. So when I heard that the new OPI line was an homage to the French Couture lines I couldn’t get to the store fast enough. So fast in fact that I bought before I blogged.

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It’s that time again! Summer is finally kicking Spring out of the way. With summer’s entrance comes a new line of fun finger hues from OPI. Just what I needed to shake the dust off another work week.

“This season, OPI goes mod-ern with Mod About Brights, the newest selection of shades in the Brights by OPI line.

Mod About Brights captures the fun and edginess of the mod “invasion” of the Sixties, but with a bright twist that makes these colors exciting and current for 2008. And with fashion right now being all about strong color and vivid, graphic prints, these are the shades that look up-to-the-minute on fingertips and toes.

If you love color, you’ll be Mod About Brights”

I am torn once again as to which is my favorite. I am really liking the orange and green, but I think the pink will be more functional. I have a little time to decide, the new line isn’t due in stores until June.

To see the entire line visit OPI.com

(my picks up to now, I will have to see them in person to make my final choice)

Sunset Gold
Pantone 13-0940
Intuitive
Articulate
Funny

You were born with a nice combination of strength and sensitivity. You function best when you have a partner or a good friend with whom to share your adventures. People can talk to you because of your depth of understanding. The challenges that occur in your life serve to uncover your innate strengths which may lie dormant if not for those experiences. Wearing, meditating or surrounding yourself with Sunset Gold helps increase your self-descipline and transform hurts and setbacks into knowledge and opportunities.

Awwe! Well that’s nice

Get yours here: http://www.colorstrology.com/

I have already discussed my passion for for fashion and color here, pointing to Pantone, one of my favorite places to garner inspiration. So you can imagine my delight when I discovered a side project/website from Pantone called myColor myIdea. The site features celebrities from a wide variety of fields with their idea of the perfect color and the inspiration for that color. Nothing as exciting as the color report I mentioned in an early post, but a nice added bonus to the mid-season doldrums.

I am convinced I must have fallen asleep at my desk while waiting for the clock to strike 5. It must be a dream. While perusing the list of celebs that have put their stamp on the Pantone page of fame I had to do a double take when I saw Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, Executive Vice President & Artistic Director at OPI on the list.

Anyone that knows me, knows I have an unnatural obsession with OPI nail polish. For some women it is shoes, for others it is handbags, for me it’s OPI. I suppose I should be thankful seeing that shoes and handbags can go for several hundred to several thousand $$ and nail polish is only $10 a bottle. Each season I pick my new favorite color and it usually doesn’t leave my fingers until a new line comes out and a new favorite is discovered. Thankfully that happens every season so I never have to wait long.

And wouldn’t you know it, her favorite color, it’s red. My very first bottle of OPI was OPI red, and it is still one of my top five favs. I feel I must also mention my beloved “Lincoln Park After Dark” my favorite from the Chicago line that has graced my toes for years since. It is my favorite amongst favorites, myColor -her-Idea if you will. If there were one person I would want to trade polish with it would be Suzi. So seeing her on the Pantone site made my day, thank you yet again Pantone!

Each season around the time of Fashion Week, Pantone, the undisputed Kings of Color, comes out with their fashion color report. It is the ultimate guide to the seasons runway rainbow. So if you are into fashion but feel intimidated by the onslaught of runway show after runway show, this a great guide to have on hand.

About 30 designers are highlighted with descriptions of the prominent colors used in their line, their color philosophy, inspiration, and their signature colors. The guide also includes a list of the designers must have pieces (it’s like a fashion cheat sheet). The designers top picks for paint color are also listed. But for me the most exciting part of the guide is the very last page. It takes everything in me not to skip ahead to the good part. What I am talking about is the Pantone SMART Color Systems annual pallet.

What this is is a general list of all the top picks from all the top designers. It also breaks down each color listing not only the Fashion+Home numerical reference number but also the CMYK build of each color as well as the GEO number. That’s right, a designers delight! I have always used fashion as inspiration for my graphic design work. So to have not only a list of what inspired my inspiration, but to also have a color breakdown of the colors they used is enough to melt my mascara. At the top of this list is usually Pantone’s pick for color of the year. This year that color happened to be Blue Iris.

I know what you are thinking. How can blue be the color of the year? Blue is so…well it’s blue. It is the most standard, universal color on the wheel. How could they pick blue when there are so many brilliant, exciting colors stomping down the runway? I already told you, they pick the most requested color by the designers. Whenever I see Pantone’s “Color of the Year” I feel a little let down. It isn’t ever the color that stands out, or shocks the socks off of you. Instead it is that color that runs a thread through the entire season. It’s this years neutral. The color that pairs well with all the other colors on the pallet. This year isn’t the most exciting pallet in history, but considering the state of the global economy I am tickled to see things aren’t going completely drab and dreary, and that beige isn’t even on the map.

As a designer, color is one of my greatest passions. Sometimes the amount of color combinations out there can become overwhelming. When this happens, or when I find myself in a Red-n-Blue rut I dig through the Pantone website. It is a labyrinth of inspiration. Not only do they have one of the most complete color libraries on the planet with perfectly complimenting pallets already laid out for you, they also have one of the best in-house design staffs anywhere.

Anyone interested in downloading the Fashion Color Report can find it here:

http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/Pantone.aspx?pg=20557&ca=4

The Winner Is: Blue Iris 18-3943
CMYK 75 58 2 0
GEO 59-1-4
Closest match in the PMS Matching System is 7455
(This number is not provided on the SMART Color System. I used the Pantone Finder located here: http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/colorfinder.aspx)