Archive of ‘Color’ category

Light Spring and Flamboyant Gamine

I’m back to thinking of myself as a Light Spring after realizing that Light Spring makeup colors and neutrals suit me best. One of the issues with the spring seasons in general for me is that when season and personality are conflated, I don’t really fit into spring at all–especially Light Spring, which tends to be thought of as the most ethereal of probably all the seasons.

The other side to this is what a spring is supposed to look like. Not coloring-wise–with my light golden blonde hair and very fair-yet-warm skin, I have that part down. But as a Flamboyant Gamine, the typical image of a Light Spring is definitely in conflict with the stereotype of my season. You can read Christine Scaman’s post on spring makeup here. Light Spring’s makeup is supposed to be light in application and texture, not just color. This completely contradicts Kibbe’s makeup recommendations for Light Spring:

Makeup is your finishing touch. It provides the elegance and sophistication your Image Identity requires to be completely coordinated, head-to-toe. A “smoky face,” which combines deep, sultry colors with a touch of vibrancy around your eyes, strong cheeks, and a deep lipcolor, is your best look. Don’t choose shades that are overly bright; just a hint of color is necessary to bring out your flamboyant spirit. Stick to matte colors for the day, with a simple addition of sheer sparkle most effective at night.

Avoid: Pastel colors (too matronly on you). Watercolor blended edges (too aging on you). Only neutrals (too stark on you). Overly ornate or glittery face (too unsophisticated on you).

This is just one example of what can happen when your season and your Kibbe type don’t really seem to work together. (Let’s not even get into how most Light Spring Polyvore sets and Pinterest boards are completely irrelevant to my life and style. Most Light Spring inspiration looks something like this.) The real question here is how much your season does or doesn’t affect the way you interpret your Kibbe.

My way of interpreting Flamboyant Gamine is to simply try to buy clothes in Light Spring colors, and then putting them together the exact same way a, say, Bright Winter FG would. The end result is something like this post on Light Spring Punk: take Light Spring “black” and Light Spring “white,” and do the same thing a winter season would. But some would argue that my delicate Light Spring coloring requires some more delicacy that corresponds to my coloring.

For me, though, I think it works best to keep the intensity of FG, and just do it in my own colors as much as possible. If I want to a dark lip, I will find the color that is as deep as my palette goes. I know that a deeper coral will look as bold on me as a stark blood red on someone with stronger coloring.

I’m still trying to figure this out. I know that my FG recs WORK, and I know that I feel that this allows me to cheat somewhat with colors, that I can do bolder looks than, say, a Light Spring Romantic. But I am cheating the beauty of my coloring by doing so?

What’s More Important: Style or Color?

In an ideal world, of course we’d only buy clothes that are in both our season and our Kibbe type. Unfortunately, fashion hasn’t yet aligned its manufacturing decisions along Kibbe and Sci\ART lines, and for many combinations, finding clothes in both your season AND type can feel like a quest for the Holy Grail. I’m planning on finally getting draped soon, and I fear that I’ll end up as a Soft Autumn, which is one of the seasons that is practically impossible to find FG clothes for.

So what do you do? You have to get dressed every day, after all. Obviously, if you’re looking for an investment piece, it’s wise to wait until you DO find things that are in both your season and your type. Otherwise, it just wouldn’t be a wise investment. But what do you do in the meantime? You still have to wear clothes seven days a week, and you have to change it up somewhat or people will start to look at you funny.

I think the answer as to what is more important, and where you’re willing to compromise, varies. For me, I can’t compromise on type. Or if I do compromise, I have to add something to bring the outfit more or less into FlamGam land, like throw a crop top with some geometrics over it or add a leather jacket. But even then, I feel like now that I know my Kibbe and am comfortable with its rules, I’m less inclined to fudge them a little, because I know it’s the FG things that I’m going to reach for every day.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t know my season yet, but I’m much more likely to break color rules. I’m pretty sure I’m not in a season that can wear black successfully, and yet trying to ban black from my wardrobe was a dismal failure. I feel like that the FG type is so strong, both in how it presents itself and its presence, that FGs are generally going to be less sensitive to the colors we wear, since we will overpower them. My instinct is that this is probably true for most types with some kind of D influence. Also, FG clothes at my price point are generally in the winter palettes, so sometimes that’s just all there is to choose from.

Naturals and Classics, I think, don’t have this problem, since from my observations (and I could be wrong about this–C and N types let me know in the comments), clothes in these types tend to be much more easy to find, and come in a wider variety of colors. So I would say that for these types, it’s probably not worth buying clothes if they’re not in your season, because you could probably go to the store next door and find something that is. I also think that SCs could potentially be very sensitive to wearing the wrong colors, since they are so well-balanced and are more delicate than DCs, so I think a wrong color choice could very jarring to their otherwise symmetrical and delicate ways.

How do you deal with this issue? Are you perfectly coordinated to your palette, or does your wardrobe contain a mishmash of seasons that perfectly correspond to Kibbe’s recommendations?

Banning Black from My Wardrobe, Part Two

In July, I wrote a post called “Banning Black from My Wardrobe”. I am here to give an update on how it’s working out.

I am sad to say that it, well, hasn’t. There are several reasons for this. The first is that while I was certain I was Light Spring when I wrote the post, since then, I’ve had moments of thinking, and have been told by others online (although I realize that Internet advice is in no way a substitute for draping in person) that I am anything from a Bright Spring to a Soft Autumn. So even if I had stopped buying black things, I’m not sure what I can replace it with until I get draped.

The other major issue is that Flamboyant Gamine clothes, especially at my price point, come in winter colors, for the most part. So often is seems like I would have to choose to between something in a color that appears flattering or lines that are flattering.

I know that whatever season I am, it is not likely a season that should wear black in a big block near the face. Yet with these two major factors in play, I find myself not buying any less black than before. I did not buy the light brown leather jacket. I bought the black one. It’s a sickness, I know. But with things like leather jackets, well, can a brown one ever even touch the cool factor of a black leather jacket?
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Uncle Jesse knows what’s up.

So I think I will return to this experiment once I’ve actually been draped, and I’ll know what the most effective neutrals are for me to replace black with. I also have to get over my love of black, and realize that a similar, yet more flattering, neutral will most likely have the same effect, if I keep to my FG guidelines. Also, all FGs should campaign major retailers to make FG clothes in all the seasons. Until then, I’ll just concentrate on dressing according to FG guidelines, choosing colors that I think are flattering when possible.

Seasonal Color Analysis and the Minimalist Movement

So, nerd confession time: I like to play stupid games on my iPhone, and one of them is Archie: Riverdale Rescue, in which you play along with storylines featuring Archie and his friends. I was playing last night, and I had a new mission. Ginger, a character who moved to Riverdale after I stopped reading the comics, had recently gone to New York and gotten analyzed, and was now giving Betty her clothes in colors that weren’t in her season. They even used the correct terminology, like “draped.”

Of course, as someone who has been obsessed with color analysis as of late, this was very nerdily exciting to me. I even took some screenshots–although I didn’t get one about draping, sadly:
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Seasonal color analysis was most popular in the 80s, when Color Me Beautiful was popular. I don’t recall ever hearing much about it in the 90s or 2000s. But it seems to me the seasonal color analysis is ripe for a renaissance. There are already plenty of sites and communities dedicated to it, and there are tons of websites focused on things like capsules and wardrobe minimalism. Minimalism is a big trend in general, and who doesn’t love a tiny house?

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If you’re working with minimal posessions, capsule wardrobes, and less storage space, it makes total sense that you’d want to make sure that every piece of clothing you owned was ideal, and that it was the perfect color and cut for you. So things like color analysis and Kibbe, which go a long way to making sure you don’t end up buying things that don’t work for you and just sit in your closet, are a perfect fit for this whole movement.

Now, Archie has always seemed to me to be taking place in both the present and the past; they may be using the Internet and the storylines tend to reflect the mores of the time, but Archie still drives a jalopy that would look perfectly at home in 1939, the year the comics came out, and the comics in general look like they can be taking place at any time over the past 75 years. So this reference to color analysis, with a book title very similar to Color Me Beautiful, could just be a callback to the past. But I think in the context of 2014, color analysis is ripe for a revival, and it could very well be that the person who wrote this little mission is lurking on the same color forums we are, and is currently deciding between Bright Spring and Bright Winter.

Now, if seasonal color analysis shows up in a mission in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, then we’ll know that it’s returned to the zeitgeist.

Have you seen any mentions of color analysis in pop culture lately?

Spring or Autumn?

Somehow, I feel like every time I write something about where I am on this journey to discover my natural colors, lines, and style personality, I soon figure out that I’m not what I thought it was at all. If you read my Banning Black post, you’ll know that I considered myself a Light Spring. I don’t think that anyone looking at me would think otherwise, except to perhaps suggest Light Summer. But as I also wrote about in that post, I have been having a hard time connecting to the Light Spring palette. So I decided to do some drapes using actual fabrics, not just photoshopping colors onto myself.

What I discovered is that my skin is EXTREMELY reactive to colors. In the span of five minutes, with photographs taken in the same spot, I went from looking on the sallow side to like I had a sunburn, all depending on what color I was wearing. (I have also learned that just because you have natural light golden blonde hair does NOT mean you can wear Barbie pink.)

So all of my previous drapings, opinions, etc. meant nothing. I can only understand how colors look on me when they were reacting to my face in real time. I also realized that the only way I can confirm this is to be analyzed professionally.

What I am pretty certain of is that I am probably not a Spring. What was suggested for me is True Autumn. True Autumn was a palette I never considered because I look nothing like the stereotypical True Autumn woman. Their colors tend to be deeper. They have brown or auburn hair. But your skin doesn’t lie (although the camera does, so like I said, I’m going to do an in-person color consultation eventually).

One thing I also realized is that I was only connecting to Light Spring’s neutrals. True Autumn’s neutrals are quite similar:

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The grays are warmer, there’s more yellow, but a lot of the colors I like–the warm grays, the corally peaches, the olives–are still there.

I’d also always thought of Autumn palettes as containing a lot of orange and brown. While there’s some of that, looking at True Autumn palettes, there were a ton of colors–actual colors!–I connected with, and can’t wait to try on:

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I find myself loving those deep, rich colors.

I think it’s important, for both color analysis and Kibbe, to let go of preconceived notions of what a certain type should look like and how they should dress. Each Kibbe and each palette has a very wide spectrum of how it can be used and applied, and there is no one way for a person of this Type or Season to look. When it works, it works. Anything that tries to use a flowchart to determine something as variable as natural color, just click the “x” at the top of the screen. It can’t tell you how your skin will react.

I’m not sure if I’ve found my seasonal home yet. It may take a long time, and maybe even multiple professional analyses. But I do feel like I have learned a lot so far. I also think you have to listen to your inner voice. I spent all spring wandering around stores, looking at Light Spring colors and not wanting to try on any of it. Autumn clothes start trickling into stores, and I’m in a store for five minutes before I’m standing in line to pay for a dress. Fall has always been my favorite season to shop–perhaps this is why.

(Also I’m a Type 3, and True Autumn colors=Type 3 colors, so this is getting spooky.)

Are you settled in your season or are you still looking? Were you surprised by what you found out?

Banning Black from My Wardrobe

If there’s one look I love, it’s a dramatic, non-romantic, modernized post-punk goth style. I think the person who best exemplifies this look is Wes Eisold of Cold Cave:

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This picture has been the cover of my personal Pinterest fashion board forever:

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(The Pinterest source says it was on a tumblr blog, but I can’t find it anywhere but Pinterest)

I would love to dress like this. But the chances of me actually looking good in this outfit are about the same as me owning a Birkin: it’s not gonna happen. I don’t have the ultra-skinny and dramatic body type, and my Light Spring coloring makes me pretty much the opposite of someone who looks good in black. So I’m going to figure out how to incorporate the spirit of this look using accessories, and in the meantime, I have two major things I have to do:

1) Stop buying clothes in this style. It just doesn’t flatter me, and it makes me sad. I’ve been dressing as Soft Natural as my wardrobe can get for the past couple of days, and I can immediately feel a difference. I feel much better about myself, which is the point of Kibbe–he is all about working with and emphasizing what you have, and not trying to be someone else.

2) No buying black for fall. I am going to stick to my Light Spring neutrals:

lightspring-neutrals

(original Light Spring Sci/Art palette found here)

Light Spring non-neutrals will be for my accessories. I can’t bring in too much color into my wardrobe at once, or it will be too big a shock to my system.

I may find that I don’t feel like myself without black, and that’s okay. I can always go back to buying black. But maybe I’ll find that, like with Soft Natural, I’ll just feel better and like my true self in my Light Spring neutrals.

Do you, too, have a Problem with black? Or are you a Winter that hates black and you’re jealous of my Light Spring palette?

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