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January 6, 2017

PrismX11 Dark Autumn Palette Review, Part 2: Palette Comparisons

There is now another brand of Sci\ART palettes at a similar price point to the standard True Colour International and Invent Your Image palettes. They are by PrismX11, and have been developed with a Munsell color scientist. Each color on the palettes has been measured using a spectrophotometer. I go into the specifics of this palette in the first part of the review.

Today, I’m going to talk about the differences in the colors on the palette.

TCI (left) and PrismX11 (right)

The general first impression is that the PrismX11 is significantly darker. Part of this is because the dark colors are at the top of the palette. The Invent Your Image palette similarly seems darker, even though the colors are actually more or less the same as the TCI’s. But the PrismX11 does not have the brightest colors on the TCI palette, the saturated colors along the top.

Direct Comparisons

The first strip has grays. The darkest gray and black seem warmer; the lighter shades seem cooler. The TCI lighter grays I would describe more as stones or taupes; the PrismX11’s are true grays.

The second strip has some deep, neuutral olive greens and a nice avocado/pistachio color. This strip of olives is less yellow than the TCI versions, and there are no real midtones. The light color is more complex than the one found on the icies strip. It was hard to get the colors to render correctly in Photoshop, but I did the best I could. The photo of the palette as a whole is probably a better representation of what this strip looks like.

Strip three is pale oranges/creams and some browns. The TCI versions have a pinker cast to them. Even the lighter brown is more yellow on the PrismX11 palette. Note the dark brown, for which there is no TCI equivalent–this palette has a LOT more browns. If you are looking for a palette with more neutrals, this is a good option.

Strip four is more browns and a yellow. This yellow falls between the two shades on the TCI palette. The closest shades on the TCI palette to the bottom two are the olives, but unlike the first olives we saw, these are less green than the TCI olives.

Strip five is more browns and oranges, and the darkest browns are redder than any of the ones of the TCI palette. The shades that are similar have more depth and more yellow in the TCI version. The pale color basically looks like a medium-warm skin tone.

Strip six has blood reds. I think this would be a great strip to have when you go lipstick shopping. Many of our lipsticks are in the category, and the TCI palette doesn’t have great equivalents. The colors I have here are much cooler, kind of plummy. As far as the light shades go, the lighter shade from the TCI palette is a light warm coral/pink, and the TCI color is basically a band-aid color.

Strip seven is full of great lipstick colors! The biggest difference is probably the color at the bottom. Its closest TCI equivalent is the bright coral shade, and I think the more muted and deeper version in PrismX11 will probably be considered more wearable by most DAs. Otherwise, the colors are a little richer/less clear, apart from the pretty rosy brown that is missing altogether.

Strip eight has purples, and I think the fact that the TCI palette has only orchid or very dark purples is one of the most confusing things about it. Here we have some true purple and red-violet shades, which I’m sure will be welcome. The bottom two shades would also function nicely as bold wintry lipstick choices. It’s a little less red than its TCI equivalent. And the darkest purple here is slightly lighter and cooler than the TCI version.

Strip nine has even more purples and we start to move into the blues. The light purple here is kind of unexpected for DA, but I’m into it. And again the darker purple is cooler. It’s a very classic darkish purple, no real strong plummy tones. The one blue I did find that works with this strip of blues from the TCI palette fits nicely, but it’s that odd lone blue found on the strip of olives. Here this blue is taken darker as well.

Strip ten’s blues are pretty similar to ones found on the TCI palette, but you can see the brightness level never gets quite as high as it does on TCI.

The blue-greens of strip 11 are a similar story. There is just an increased complexity that is hard to describe. The brightest blue-green on TCI is one you could easily mistake for a spring color. The brightest/lightest green on the PrismX11 palette is one I could perhaps imagine on the walls of a stately country home.

Strip 12 is green with no additional descriptors needed–it’s not jade or teal or pea or olive. It’s just plain old shades of green. Grass, maybe? I like these kinds of colors on myself, so I’m glad to have this added branch of the green family.

Strip 13 is the pea greens, mainly, but oddly enough, I couldn’t find much in common with the TCI pea greens. They are much more in your face, I guess. These feel more like a yellower version of Strip 12.

And last is strip 14. There are similar colors on the TCI palette, but the PrismX11 are almost-blacks, and I had to hold them up to the light to see what they really were.

My Thoughts
The PrismX11 Dark Autumn palette has a certain sophistication. It’s darker all over, the colors are complex, and it has a much better range of neutrals. If I were going shopping for makeup, this is definitely the palette I’d take with me, no question. If I were putting together a Level Two wardrobe, I’d also probably take this palette.

As a lighter Dark Autumn, though, I find that the brighter colors that are missing are important to me, especially as a Flamboyant Gamine–I need to use color in fun and bold ways. I would miss that bright marigold yellow! I am really glad to have options for purple and green beyond orchid and pea, though.

So which should you get? I would consider how you like to use color, or really just which appeals to you more. I think darker DAs will likely prefer the PrismX11, because I have heard from some that they struggle with the bright colors, whereas DAs who appear more spring-like might like the TCI one better. I think that if you already have the TCI palette, the PrismX11 is a better buy than the TCI Corporate palette, since for DA, the difference between the two TCI palette versions seem minimal. The PrismX11 will give you a far greater range of neutrals.

Which do you like better? Have you compared the PrismX11 in your season to its TCI equivalent?

December 14, 2016

Color | 6 Comments

Prism X11 Dark Autumn Palette Review, Part 1

I recently purchased the Prism X11 Dark Autumn palette. This is a new alternative to the True Colour International/Invent Your Image/Indigo Tones palettes already on the market for people who have been draped in or have DIYed a Sci\ART color space. While the other brands’ palettes all look relatively similar–the TCI and IYI ones especially–these look radically different.

The other fans more or less match up with the original Sci\ART fans created by Kathryn Kalisz.

There might be a few colors added here or there, but even the order is pretty much the same. The new Prism X11 fans were not created from these palettes, although Nikki Bogardus, the creator, does have original Sci\ART drapes at her disposal and was trained by Kalisz. Instead, they were created in collaboration with a Munsell color scientist, using a Spectrophotometer to determine the exact level of hue, value, and chroma in a given color. Each palette contains 70 “core” colors for your season. I will be doing a color-by-color comparison of the TCI Dark Autumn palette and the Prism X11 palette in another post. Outside of their similarity to Kalisz’s palettes, I am not sure how the exact colors for the other palettes were determined.

For this post, I’d like to focus on the PrismX11 palette itself, and how it differs overall from the other palette I have. First, the packaging. It comes in a plastic case that is open on one side. I like this because I’m always misplacing the plastic sleeve my TCI palette came in. I take it out of the sleeve, set the sleeve down somewhere, and then start swatching, completely forgetting where I put the sleeve. The PrismX11 is held together with a fastener that unscrews, enabling you to add more color swatches as they become available, which is an interesting concept. I don’t think these extra colors are available yet, but the expandability is a nice bonus feature. It comes secured with a rubber band–the case is hard and there is extra space for the additional pages. Nikki sells some accessories for the palettes, like tassels in your colors and leather cases, but some kind of elastic band would also be maybe a nice thing to add as an option.

The palette itself is printed on thick glossy paper, rather than the canvas of the TCI palettes. The colors seem much more complex and rich than the canvas ones, but I’m not sure if it’s better for fabric swatching, due to the difference in material.

The palette also has more features than the TCI palettes. It even has an index. The extras include information on the season from Kathryn Kalisz (including some information on design lines!), which I really like having, plus the names of colors she mentioned for the season. It also has a visual representation of the season’s hue/value/chroma settings, which I’m assuming replicate the settings for the Spectrophotoometer.

The palette definitely has a darker and more muted feel than the other palette I have. Partially it’s because the darker colors are at the top of the fan. Some Dark season people prefer this, because they find their darkest colors to be the most important. I like to have it the other way around. The light colors are the hardest to get right, and the worst when they’re wrong–for me, anyway. It also just makes the palette seem darker and heavier than it actually is. I’ll go more in depth on this in my next post, but while it looks a lot darker than the other palette, a lot of the colors are very similar–it just doesn’t have the lightest and brightest of the TCI DA fan’s colors, nor does it have an icy strip.

My overall thoughts, so far, are that I’m excited to have two options as far as Dark Autumn palettes go. I’m not sure if I would have picked this up if I didn’t want to review it and see if there were a decent option beyond the fan I already own, but now that I have it, I think it’s good to know that there is a scientific basis for these particular colors being on the palette. I will go more into the colors and how they compare to the other fan in my next post, but they are less overwhelmingly dark than it may seem from photographs or from your first impression, and I think a lot of DAs are going to find this a better option, especially if they struggle with certain aspects of the other DA palettes (i.e., the lighter and brighter colors are difficult for them to wear). I feel like our makeup options are represented better on this palette, too.

The fans can be ordered directly from the PrismX11 website and cost 54 USD. Shipping is $3.99 within the US. When I tried to order from the site, it said shipping to Europe was also $3.99, and since that didn’t make sense to me, I contacted Nikki, and she told me shipping was $13.50 and I placed my order with her personally via email. So if you’re in the US, it’s significantly cheaper than buying from TCI, whose fans are $60, but if you’re in Europe, it’s about the same.

Nikki also sells a book with the colors from all the palettes, which I think is a great tool for DIYers or for the merely color-obsessed.

Part 2 of my review, with color comparisons to the TCI palette, will be up Friday.

December 14, 2016

Color, Personal | 0 comment

On My Color Experience

I got the PrismX11 palette in the mail yesterday, and I’m really excited to be able to share this palette with everyone. Before I do, though, I thought it was necessary to clarify some things about my experience with and approach to color, in case some people haven’t been reading from the beginning.

I’m going to be reviewing the Dark Autumn palette, and comparing it to the True Colour International version. I think it’s important for people to know that I have never been draped as anything. I came to Deep Autumn completely on my using, using the Color DIY process I have outlined.

So I don’t make any judgments in my review as to how this palette works for me as a Dark Autumn. People who practice Caygill have told me that they see me as something between Spring and Autumn. I have heard between “light spring and soft autumn.” This means, I think, that I am a lighter person, on the warm side, but too muted for Light Spring. Soft Autumn is too muted. I think I ended up in Dark Autumn as a need for an autumn that is brighter than SA.

I don’t know if this is what a color analyst would see if I sat in the draping chair and under the lights. I find that the Dark Autumn colors feel right on me, the makeup works on my face, and I think they are right for my energy.

I do find, generally, that dark colors are easier for me to wear than light ones. The wrong light color reacts horribly with my complexion. A dark color that is too cool makes me look a little gray but nothing too noticeable; the wrong light color makes me look hungover.

TCI (left) and PrismX11 (right)

You can see that the very brightest DA colors (mainly the ones at the top of the TCI palette) are the ones that are missing from the new palette. These colors work well for me, as a lighter person, but I know that a lot of other DAs struggle to make these colors work and stick to the darker colors in the palette. If I were going by the color selection alone, as a lighter person, I’d probably go with TCI for myself, although I love the new purples and greens the PrismX11 has. I think most draped DAs, however, are darker than I am, and will find the absence of the colors I mentioned and overall increased dark impression of the PrismX11 palette to be a welcome change.

November 20, 2016

Color, Personal, Style Systems | 6 Comments

Instinct vs. Desire

As someone who has never had a professional analysis of any kind, I’ve relied entirely on my own experience and instincts. Naturally, I have doubts. What these doubts boil down to is this: Am I seeing what is there, or am I seeing what I want to see?

Carol Tuttle often mentions our “beauty sixth sense.” Sometimes I question whether I’m actually listening to that, or just going with what I like. For instance, I’ve always been attracted to what is shown as the stereotypical Flamboyant Gamine look. In high school, there were periods where I dressed mod. Audrey Hepburn and Edie Sedgwick were my fashion idols.

FG feels good; often, when I have doubts about something, I go into the FG section of the book and realize that what was giving me doubts is actually an FG “no”–wide, unconstructed dresses, for example. But I have small hands and feet, and my length is in my torso. So sometimes I question whether I’m actually an SG or an SN. When I tried SN, though, not only did I feel lumpy, but I felt tired without the structure of FG supporting me. So while I’m not sure whether it’s what David would give me, FG is how I feel my best.

Color is a bit trickier. I put myself in the Dark Autumn palette, which seems counter-intuitive on paper. But out of the 12 seasons of Sci\ART, it’s the one that seems to work the best. Spring is too bright; the Softs seem too muted. A brighter Autumn seems to be what works. But sometimes I wonder, is this really harmonizing with me? Am I fooling myself and these lipsticks are too dark and I’d look better in Soft Autumn or Soft Summer?

Today I ordered one of the new Prism X11 palettes. These palettes are created using a Spectrophotometer to measure the colors’ levels of hue. value, and chroma.

click to enlarge

As you can see, compared to the Invent Your Image palette, this new palette seems a little darker and maybe even a bit cooler. (I am VERY excited to get my hands on those purples, though!) I will see how it works for me. I will do a full review and compare it to the palette I already own.

But still, seeing the depth of this palette really makes me question whether the DA color space is where I belong. In the end, though, I think what actually matters is how I feel in these colors and whether I look healthy and awake in them. I just have to be careful and make sure it’s not just because I happen to like these colors.

November 17, 2016

Color, Style Systems | 9 Comments

When to Stop

This post uses affiliate links.

Some people picked up Kibbe’s Metamorphosis when it was still in print in the late 80s and are no closer to finding their Image Identity 30 years later. Others got draped by Color Me Beautiful around the same time and now are flummoxed by the innovations in the seasonal color world. Some people have started more recently, but seem to switch seasons or Image IDs on a weekly basis.

My advice to anyone who finds themselves in this predicament is short and to the point: Stop.

Give yourself time to adjust and understand how a season or Image ID feels. Carol Tuttle advises that when you think you’ve found your Energy Type, try living in that Energy Type for a full month. This is sound advice not only for people interested in Dressing Your Truth, but for people interested in any other style system. You can’t judge how something works for you until you’ve given it a real shot and paid attention to how you look and feel wearing it.

Now, sometimes we don’t need a full month. I realized that Light and Bright Spring were wrong for me much quicker than that. Light Spring made me completely red; Bright Spring was tiring. But if you find yourself switching seasons or Image IDs every other week, I think it would be wise to just stop and say, “OK, I’m going to take the data I have on myself, and try to give one season a fair shot.”

And if you don’t switch seasons or Image IDs, but you’re just having doubts… Consider where those doubts are coming from. Are they because you feel like something is off, you feel tired, or like you need to wear extra makeup? Or are they there because you feel like you’ve left something on the table, some stone unturned?

The truth is, I don’t know if there is some absolute truth with all this stuff. I think it’s enough if you look good and it makes you happy. The only seasons I’ve really tried are Light Spring, Bright Spring, and Dark Autumn. I’ve draped myself in the other seasons, but these are the only ones I’ve tried living in. Once I felt happy with the Dark Autumn result, I got off the carousel and moved on with my life. We could all search forever. But in the end, the point is a workable wardrobe that we look good in. You won’t ever get there if you never stop second-guessing yourself, or if you let the advice of other people on Facebook, who often don’t know anymore than you do, get to you. You’re the one who has to live with it.

What has been your experience with knowing when to say when?

October 13, 2016

Color, Personal | 6 Comments

Do We Sell Ourselves Short?

This post uses affiliate links.

As I’ve written about before, I have a lot of success finding the design elements I prefer in the athletic wear department: wilder patterns, more interesting details, etc.

I went to the Nike store the other day and picked up two things, One is a windbreaker that I won’t be able to wear for a few months, but that definitely fills the raincoat-sized hole in my wardrobe.

Nike Sportswear Bonded Women’s Parka

The color is a great fit for DA, falling between the medium and dark olive green on the 7 strip on the classic fan, for people keeping score at home. And the asymmetry and angles make it a good fit for FG.

I went to the Nike store specifically to pick up that parka, but I couldn’t help also getting something else, a sweatshirt. I loved the pattern, and it is really soft. The length and boxiness make it a great piece for winter layering.

Nike Sportswear Modern Women’s Crew

But of course, there is one glaring problem with it. It’s not a DA colorway at all. It definitely looks like some summer grays. I bought it cognizant of that fact. These colors don’t really do anything bad for my skin; they just don’t really do anything.

But we all know that color is really, really important, so I began to wonder, are we selling ourselves short by making exceptions for things that are okay in other ways, but just not our season? How bad is going outside of what you know is your best?

Part of the reason why this was on my mind is because lately, I’ve been watching a lot of the new Dressing Your Truth videos on Carol Tuttle’s Facebook page. DYT wasn’t a system I stuck with, but their new materials and palettes have intrigued me. They recently did a video series showing people in each type dressed in the wrong type, and the mention of how gray is strictly a Type 2 color in the Type 2 video got me thinking. DA would get a warm kind of gray, but gray is definitely a color that I tend to feel comfortable cheating with, even if it’s not DA gray exactly.

But this has made me wonder if I’m selling myself short. Black and gray aren’t terrible on me the way spring colors are, so I feel okay with cheating, or even dipping into the darker summer colors. But I know that they simply aren’t as good on me as a DA almost-black or one of my other neutrals. After spending several years in the color and style world, shouldn’t I be concentrating on having a wardrobe that only has Bests, no Just Okays? I should be in the mindset where every day, it is worth getting out of bed and putting on an outfit and doing my hair and makeup and accessorizing, and all of these things will be in harmony with me and present my best self. I haven’t gotten to that point yet. It’s not something I do even most days.

So while I will definitely wear this sweatshirt to death this fall and winter, because I still love it, I’m going to try to concentrate more on avoiding things that are the wrong color, and making an effort to find enough accessories so that my wardrobe is more complete. Going back to Dressing Your Truth, they suggest that people who are going through their course try doing full head-to-toe outfits in their type for 30 days, and I think I should probably try to do the same with my own amalgamation of style types and seasons. I identify with these types in theory, but I don’t always put forth the effort, in my closet or on my body, that I should–and that I deserve.

I did find on the Nike site that this particular sweatshirt also comes in that DA olive color, so I’ve ordered that too to put away for next year, when the one I have this season is worn out and I hopefully will have several months of dressing to my fullest under my belt.

Nike Sportwear Women’s Crew

Do you always dress in full head-to-toe outfits appropriate for your lines and your season? Or are you more like me, where you want to do that, but you fall short?

August 24, 2016

Color, Personal | 8 Comments

Dark Autumn Blonde: Favorite Everyday Lipsticks for Pale DAs

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Out of everything, being able to wear lipstick is the most important thing I’ve gained from color analysis. As a pale blonde, magazine article after magazine article pointed me towards light, clear colors. I would buy a lipstick, wear it once, and be greeted with comments like, “Oh, you’re wearing LIPSTICK.” The only lipsticks I can recall wearing with any regularity are Belle de Jour by NARS (picked up because Catherine Deneuve in that movie was my high school makeup inspiration) and Julianne’s Nude by L’oreal. On me, both of these take MLBB to WBWL–Why Bother Wearing Lipstick.

So when I realized that Dark Autumn was the season that suited me best, I finally had some direction in front of lipstick displays in stores. I first started with recommendations from Cate Linden’s post on the subject, but after over a year of living in DA, I have my own set of favorites.

My preferred texture for lipstick is cream–opaque but not matte, a little shiny but not glossy. I find this to be a compromise between DA’s matte recommendation and FG’s glossy recommendation. Also, these lipsticks tend to be the most moisturizing and comfortable, without being sticky like gloss. But during the day, I’ll also wear a lot of sheer/balm formulas, and most of the lipsticks in this post fall into this category.

Sometimes, it can seem like DA lipsticks are all a variation on reddish brown. While that’s definitely something you should have in your rotation, DAs can also wear coral or red violet or our version of pink. Here are the lipsticks I personally usually have on my person and reach for on a regular basis:

–Albeit Violette. Lately I’ve been into exploring the possibilities of violet for Dark Autumn lipsticks. ~~This is a nice sheer version for testing the look out.~~ Very comfortable and pretty. (September 6th, 2016: I’m wearing it today and I have no idea why I thought it was sheer! It’s definitely opaque.)

–MAC Brick O La. It may seem shocking for someone who has the amount of makeup that I do, but this is the first MAC lipstick I’ve ever owned, and I just picked it up last week. I had a very goopy MAC lip gloss once, and the sugar-cookie scent/taste was overwhelming to the point that I didn’t want to bother. Luckily, the scent isn’t as strong with the lipsticks. Anyway, the idea of owning this particular lipstick won me over. It’s DA’s pinky nude.

–Lipstick Queen Saint Rust. I’ve blogged about this before, but this is a great brownish-red in a sheer formula. The color also comes in a matte, opaque formula, called Sinner, but unfortunately I find that formula drying and horrible. You can see how much I’ve carried this one around with me–the tube is pretty banged up.

–Clinique Mega Melon. A nice pinky coral option. This is one I’ll wear a lot when the weather gets warmer.

So these are my favorite lipsticks for day. Do you change up your lipstick from day to night? What are your favorites?

April 25, 2016

Color | 10 Comments

Sci\ART: Is the Bloom Off the Rose? Part Two

As a follow up to my last post, I’d like to discuss the following posts from Amelia Butler:

–Winter Is Coming… And Coming
–Subjective Timbre – Getting It Backwards
–The Blonde Winter

These posts are interesting because they say something that seems to not be popular among analysts who work with the 12 Sci\ART seasons. Amelia’s perspective is especially interesting to me because she was trained and mentored by Kathryn Kalisz herself.

After years of believing that your appearance alone gives no clues at all to your season… I’m starting to come around to the idea that visual harmony matters. It’s interesting that people are very open to seeing Winters of all stripes, but a Light Spring with dark hair and eyes would be much harder to believe.

I think the point that Amelia makes in her Blonde Winter post is important–the colors need to work on you without makeup. In your natural state, you need to need that much saturation as Winter seasons provide, and no one would tell a man that they need a lipstick to look good in the True Winter palette.

In her “Blonde” post, she is mainly talking about True Winter, so I’m curious to know if she thinks a Bright or Dark Winter could be a blonde. Perhaps it’s different when there is a spring or autumn influence affecting the colors, versus the purity of winter alone.

While I think there are still room for surprises in the draping process, I think that perhaps sometimes, it’s because the wrong colors are dulling your natural coloring and making you present differently than it is otherwise. I’m not sure if I believe anymore that you can see something really unusual, like a Light Spring with dark hair and eyes as I mentioned above.

Those of you who have read my blog before probably know I identify with the Dark Autumn season. As a natural blonde, if someone believes what Amelia is saying in these posts, then one might also come to the conclusion that a Dark Autumn coloring would unlikely. But I still find that I harmonize with the fan, when I look at it under my face. Unlike many others who are blonde into adulthood, I don’t find that mascara or filling in my brows makes any bigger of a difference on me than it does on brunettes. I will frequently just put on a DA lipstick, or wear no makeup at all. So there are still surprises, but maybe not just huge leaps…

What do you think of Amelia’s posts? Do you agree, or are you firmly in the “you know absolutely nothing until you’re under the lights and in the drapes” camp?

April 21, 2016

Color | 27 Comments

Sci\ART: Is the Bloom Off the Rose?

When I first discovered this style and color world, getting draped by a Sci\ART or 12 Blueprints analyst was seen a seen as the gold standard for seasonal analysis. There seemed to the perception that you will never been able to see your true beauty until it’s revealed by the drapes, which is still the position taken by said analysts.

Recently, however, I’ve noticed that there’s been some backlash. There are people who have had to be draped numerous times, despite the controlled and standardized process. Some people end up with “compromise” seasons, which usually seems to be Bright Winter for whatever reason. Some people get draped in Sci\ART, and then get custom palettes that are extremely different. I’ve seen who were draped Bright Winter get Soft Autumn-ish palettes from someone like Zyla, and then someone who wears Bright Winter colors beautifully in real life and gets a Bright Winter palette from Beauty Valued is draped Soft Summer.

Then there’s the issue of the lights. Full-spectrum lighting is supposed to replicate northern sunlight and be ideal for color-matching. Yet people have said that they felt like they were under stage lighting while being draped, and it had no relation to how they actually look in the lighting conditions that people live their lives in.

Another issue is that you’re paying to be put into a predetermined set of palettes. Some feel that they don’t fit well within one season at all. This last point came up recently when Christine Scaman’s prices were discussed. Right now, getting draped by her costs 734.50 CAD, or (as of today) 580.95 USD. Zyla’s price for the initial session, in comparison, costs $20 more, and you get a custom palette and style guidelines. Plus he has an Emmy and celebrity clients, and he goes on TV and hosts events–he’s definitely a man whose time in valuable.

Yet as someone who does a lot of freelance work myself, I think I have a little different take on this on most, as the consensus was pretty much outrage. As a freelancer, you charge what you think your time and services are worth, and what the market will support. Christine spends most of her time training new analysts and working on products like the makeup line and the luxury drapes. In fact, on her site, she says she only drapes clients immediately before and after a training course, so she doesn’t have many slots available. So I’d say she is fine with cutting her potential client base down to those who really want to be draped by her in particular and are willing to pay for it. Other analysts who pretty much exclusively drape clients can’t do that, because they need to have a full roster of clients to support themselves. So in and of itself, especially since most analysts seem to be sticking to the standard $350 range, this doesn’t really bother me.

But does that mean that I personally would pay $580.90 to be draped or, let’s be honest, even $350? Sometimes it surprises even me that I have never gone for any kind of analysis when I’ve spent so much time on all of this color and style stuff. Part of it is due to financial and logistical reasons, but the other part is that I’m so stubborn and have such a clear vision of myself that I no longer really want someone to tell me who or what I am. I’ve talked about it some in a prior post, but I have a feeling that the clearer the image of yourself is, and the happier you are with that image, the more likely you are to walk away unsatisfied.

I’m happy with Dark Autumn and the way I use that palette. I get positive feedback on the colors in clothing and on the makeup. My friends even tell me that it’s made them realize why this color nonsense I babble on about matters. I firmly believe that you can DIY your way to a palette that you’re satisfied with.

Will I ever have the “WOW” moment in front of the mirror and under the lights? At this point in time, it’s looking unlikely. I may one day invest in a Beauty Valued palette, but for now, I’m making use of what Kathryn Kalisz began in my own way, in a way that feels right to me.

February 4, 2016

Color, David Zyla, Dressing Your Truth | 9 Comments

Can You Choose Your Season?

Getting your style type to work with your season is an important part of the workbook. A winter dressing one Kibbe type is going to be different from a summer dressing the same Kibbe type. I like to add more texture and tend to do less high contrast than a Bright or True Winter FG, for instance.

There was a discussion on the Kibbe group I co-admin recently, however, that got me thinking about this in a different way. Can our lines themselves affect what season works for us? Do our tastes and personality affect it, as in what feels authentic to us?

Some suggested that while one color may be flattering in the heavier fabric analysts use to drape, but if you’re a type with lighter-weight fabrics, other colors may work better when in the right fabric.

Then there are all the women who were draped one season and then received a vastly different palette from David Zyla or Beauty Valued. While some people receive pretty much the same palette from all the analysts they visit, some seem more like chameleons, with the ability to somehow wear both Bright Winter and something that would probably harmonize best with Soft Autumn–and look great in both.

So what do you do if you get wildly varying palettes? I think you could go with what feels authentic to you. If you like what Zyla (for example) gave you and you feel good in it, I think it’s fine to center your wardrobe around that.

Or you could use different seasons for different occasions. Use your darker/cooler/brighter season for Level Three looks for higher contrast and more drama. Plus, you’re not liable to mix these clothes in with your lower levels, so your wardrobe will still coordinate nicely.

The idea of choosing your palette brings to mind Dressing Your Truth. In this case, the vibe you want to give off, which is supposed to match your dominant energy, will be expressed by line and color. I know I look terrible in white and the colors that would be given to a Type 1. Do I look terrible in them because they’re just the wrong colors for me–or because they conflict with my energy?

I think I would be a 3/4 in DYT, and the palette I chose for myself, coincidentally, is Dark Autumn. I chose Dark Autumn, however, because I felt like it looked the best on me. But perhaps that’s so because it feels the most like me. If I were draped, however, and the analyst said that another palette looked better on me and I agreed, I would switch out my wardrobe.

In the end, I think we do have to make a conscious choice to whether we are going to dress in the palette and/or style we receive from an analyst. We have to decide whether this is the appearance that we want to project. So while I don’t think anyone gets free reign to just choose whichever palette they want–you still have to consider how you actually look in it–most people seem to have a bit of wiggle room and can consider which version of themselves communicates their style the best.

What has your experience been? Have you received wildly different palettes from different analysts?

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