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.

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