Archive of ‘Color’ category

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?

Cheating on Your Palette

I wrote about this today, among other things in a similar vein, for the workbook Facebook group as a sort of “bonus chapter,” but I’ve decided to go ahead and share about this specific topic in more detail here on the blog. This topic is, of course, how to cheat on your palette.

Cheating on your palette isn’t ideal. The ideal is, of course, to have a wardrobe where everything harmonizes together because it’s in the same palette. But we’re limited by what’s in stores and what we can afford. If you add in the fact that we have also each have a specific set of lines to deal with, finding things that are both in your season AND your line type can feel like finding a unicorn.

Sometimes, we have to make compromises. There are situations where I’d never make compromises (i.e., a wedding dress), but for everyday casual wear, I feel okay about it. I would never compromise on my lines–it’s very important to me that clothes fit the Flamboyant Gamine guidelines. Most stuff that isn’t FG is N in some way, and that’s my personal worst. But as long as I avoid my horrible colors, which tend to be light and springy, I can get away with cheating on my color palette.

The two sweatshirts I mentioned buying in this post are both really clearer than Dark Autumn. It’s evident when they are paired with my blanket scarf, which perfectly replicates the strips of browns and reds on the DA fan, that they do not harmonize exactly. But DA stuff can be hard to find in FG lines, especially in casual wear.

What’s important to me in my casual wear, which is generally just jeans or leggings with some kind of tunic/sweatshirt/tshirt, is that there are FG lines, with the boxy layer on top of the narrow base layer. It is way easier to find this in Dark Winter than it is in Dark Autumn. Dark Winter shares the most important trait with Dark Autumn, which is of course darkness. There are some Dark Winter colors I’d never be able to wear–anything approaching white, basically–but a lot of it, while I see it’s not quite as good, is a pretty good substitute for the real thing.

dw_brights

dw_darks

(Source)

For the most part, these colors will look okay on me, and no one who is not super into this stuff would be able to detect a difference. Again, the real issue is disrupting the harmony of your wardrobe. But for everyday casual pieces that are going to go through a lot of wear and tear and mostly be paired with very neutral basics, I think it’s a decent compromise while I try to build up a lasting, quality wardrobe of Dark Autumn pieces.

For Levels 2 and 3, I don’t think I’d be as willing to compromise. These clothes are generally more expensive, and things I’d want to last for a long time. But for a sweatshirt, Dark Winter warm blue instead of Dark Autumn warm blue isn’t a huge seasonal sacrifice.

New Series: Color DIY

I’ve mentioned before that I was working on a workbook that will help people DIY their season and yin/yang balance. Once I finished the color portion, however, I felt that I didn’t want to sell it as an ebook. Unlike the workbook, which outlines my original system for defining your personal style and rebuilding your wardrobe, it felt like I was compiling things put out there by other people. I’m not an analyst; I don’t have nearly enough education to come up with my own system for analysis or anything like that.

I realized that I just really wanted what I’ve learned over the past two years to be out there for anyone who is interested in attempting to find their season on their own. So over the next week or so, I’ll be posting the sections from the ebook. They’ll be available under the “Color DIY” tab in the menu bar.

As this project is posted, I will definitely be welcoming feedback and questions. If you disagree with me on something, or need something clarified, I can always add it to the project. Which is definitely an advantage over the ebook route!

Post One: Color DIY
Post Two: Sci\ART: A Brief Introduction

Things I Love: Lipstick Queen Saint Lipsticks

This post uses affiliate links.

When I was first exploring Dark Autumn, the makeup options scared me a little. No matter how obvious it was in the mirror the colors of the palette were working for me, I was so used to thinking that only the lighter colors in a makeup shade range were appropriate for my coloring. Now it seemed like things were going to change completely, that I would be restricted to the darkest colors, and I wasn’t sure if I would pass the test and be able to pull it off.

I ended up going to Ulta armed with a mental shopping list from Cate Linden’s blog. I’m not pink-skinned, but I am light, so I figured that if these colors worked on a fair Dark Autumn without the super-dark hair you often see associated with the season, it’d probably be my best shot at finding things that work. I did end up picking up Smashbox Fig, which Cate mentions in her blog post, but my true discovery was Lipstick Queen’s “Saint” line of lipsticks.

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Among their other formulas, Lipstick Queen has “Saint” and “Sinner” lines of lipsticks, with the same colors, but differing opacities. Saint is sheer, with 10% color opacity, and Sinner is matte and full-coverage at 90%. I picked up Berry that daysite calls a “deep mocha with a delicious pinkish hue.” I happened to be shopping with my mom, and when I put it on, she expressed surprise that it didn’t look too dark or out of place on my face. My mom would totally be the first one to tell me that a lipstick wasn’t right, so I took it as a pretty sure sign that maybe I could handle this dark lipstick thing after all.

A couple of weeks later, my hair salon was having a Lipstick Queen clearance sale, so I picked up another Saint Berry, Berry in the Sinner formulation, and Saint Rust for $5 each. I didn’t end up loving the Berry Sinner–it was very drying–but Saint Rust I liked even more than Berry. It’s a muted red-brown shade, and was one of my go-to colors last summer, along with Clinique Mega Melon. The warmer and clearer Dark Autumn shades definitely feel more summery to me, for obvious reasons. The rest of the DA lipstick wardrobe I had at the time seemed to fall more in the berry family, with crossover DA/DW shades, and felt too heavy for the humidity and the heat. These two colors, I found, were basically at the limit of clarity that I can handle in makeup, plus they both have a similar balmy texture that feels great and moisturizing on.

lipstickqueen_swatch
I highly recommend the Saint lipstick formula for people who daunted by their new season’s makeup, and want an option that will be sheer, but still in the correct shade range. Plus it really feels more like a balm than a lipstick. Just looking at the options, I’m kicking myself for not having picked up Coral already.

What are your favorite “beginner’s lipsticks” for your season?

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Know your type in several systems but having trouble putting it all together? My workbook can help.

What Do We Get Out of Color and Style Analysis?: Color

The other day, a friend of mine commented that it was the second time in our eight-year friendship that she had seen me wear lipstick. It’s true that I never used to wear lipstick, or if I did, the shade was so nude you wouldn’t even notice it. I would buy the pinks and reds generally recommended for fair-skinned blondes, but I would never wear them out of the house. When I did, I would get comments like, “Oh, you’re wearing LIPSTICK.” I didn’t understand how to choose lipstick that I would actually wear out of the house and feel comfortable in.

Same with colors in clothes in general. Most of my wardrobe was–and still is, since replacing an entire wardrobe takes time and money–black and gray. When it came to adding color to my wardrobe, I didn’t even know where to begin. How could I be sure that something would flatter me?

There were a lot of missteps along the way, and for a good reason. Most of what I’ve heard all my life is in line with the advice for Light Summer and Light Spring: turquoise, pinks, lighter colors. Nothing too dark. When I started looking at color analysis, I assumed that this was my fate. I resigned myself to bright and light spring colors.

light_spring_colors
(Source)

But once I actually had a Light Spring fan in my hands, it was clear that it was bad. Really bad. It was a long process, but I found myself staring at Dark Autumn.

It didn’t seem to make much logical sense. How could my leading characteristic be darkness when I was so light to look at? But the colors worked, even notoriously difficult colors like yellow. Putting together Dark Autumn colors is easy and feels right. Dark Autumn lipsticks, even some that look very dark in the tube, look right on my face. I’ve gone from never wearing lipstick to having it often be the only makeup I’ll put on.

dark_autumn_dresses
(Source)

The colors in the Dark Autumn palette are so unexpected for my natural coloring that, although they are colors that I am drawn to and appeal to me, if I hadn’t come to Dark Autumn through color analysis, I never would have reached for them myself. It would never have occurred to me that this is the color family that suits me. You’ll never find a picture of someone with my coloring as a celebrity example of a Dark Autumn palette–although blonde hair with a lot of depth, eyes that are a deep mix of green/blue/gray with spots of yellow, and pale skin are fairly common among draped Dark Autumns in 12-season analysts’ portfolios.

What color analysis has enabled me to do is understand how to use color. I have a fairly strong background in art, so I know how to use color more generally, but I was at a loss at how to use it on myself. It freed me from literal my-lips-but-better colors and always selecting black or gray.

Seasonal analysis can seem quaint and old fashioned to those whose only reference is something like this video. But contemporary color analysis enables us to pinpoint exactly which colors flatter us and bring out our best selves. It enables us to select clothing and makeup with confidence, and more practically, it creates a wardrobe where everything coordinates perfectly.

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Know your type in several systems but having trouble putting it all together? My workbook can help.

Dark Autumn Blonde, Part Eight: Clearing Up Misconceptions

The names of the seasons can sometimes lead people in the wrong direction. The two seasons where I think this comes into play the most is the two “dark” seasons. It was difficult for me to claim Dark Autumn for myself without a lot of support from the online community–I felt kind of crazy, being as as light-to-look-at as I am and claiming this rich, dark season.

This is what people think Dark Autumn looks like:

вф_судуиы
(Source)

But it can absolutely look like this.

I wouldn’t fit into the first image, and who knows if these women are even Dark Autumns at all. Out of the women and men I’ve seen who have gone to analysts and come back as Dark Autumns, you’ll find everyone from natural blondes to the darkest brunettes.

I do think that with the Light seasons, they do tend to look more like you imagine. The light-to-dark range in these palettes isn’t very dark, and you need to have a person who truly cannot handle a wide range of depth–this is especially true with Light Spring.

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(Source)

You can see how wide the range is for Dark Autumn and Dark Winter in comparison:

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(These palettes are the Invent Your Image palettes.)

I was reminded by this the other day, when Color Harmony posted a blog post breaking down the Dark Autumn palette into groups–groups of color and then light/soft/dark/bright. (Blog post is in Russian, but you can run it through Google Translate.) Many seem to think that the only way the Dark Autumn palette can look in clothes is like this image from Sabira’s blog post, representing the dark colors in DA:

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But this set is no less Dark Autumn than the one above:

light_da

What Dark Autumn colors seem to have in common to me, and what I can see in myself, despite my apparent lightness, is that it is like all of the colors just have a touch of Burnt Umber in them. The colors can be bright or even light, but there is always that touch of brown. When I got my prescription sunglasses with dark brown lenses this summer, my first thought was, “Whoa, the entire world is Dark Autumn when I look through these.”

The names of the seasons are just that, names, helpful ways to categorize the seasons. Sure, Dark Autumn and Dark Winter go deeper than other seasons. But that doesn’t mean that’s the only trick they have up their sleeves. (For a look at Dark Winter through new eyes, check out Rachel’s blog post on Dark Winter’s brightness.)

Dark Autumn Blonde, Part Seven: Revisiting My “Zyla” Colors

A while back, I created a DIY Zyla palette for myself using the instructions in his book. Instead of using paint chips, I used my Dark Autumn palette, since I was already using that to guide my wardrobe. I found it easy to find my literal body colors on the palette, and my result looks like this, approximately (since the colors don’t render properly on the screen):

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While I find that the top row is perfect as it is, the bottom row was giving me some trouble. I would never wear the Third Base. The Tranquil didn’t connect with me one way or the other. The Second Base is the only one I really liked.

I asked for feedback on my possible Archetype in the Zyla group. There was a general consensus that my most likely type was Gamine Autumn, with Mellow as the runner up. With the help of some very educated Zyla eyes, I realized that the ring around my iris connected more with dark gray, rather than the petrol blue I had assumed would work. I thought more about the colors in Dark Autumn I’ve been drawn to since I claimed it as my season.

Zyla palettes are rarely literal. Zyla is not looking for exact matches, per se, but evocative colors, I think. So he’ll give people a purple base, even though they don’t really have purple hair or eyes. With that in mind, I thought about how colors function on me, and came up with this.

zyla_palette_new

Essence: 1.1 FN (unchanged)
Romantic: 2.8 A, 2.7 A, 6.2 A
Dramatic: 4.9 A, 4.8 A, 4.7 A, 4.6 A
Energy: 3.9 A, 2.8 A, 3.7 A
Tranquil: 5.3 A, 5.2 A, 5.1 A
First Base: 3.3 FN, 3.2 FN, 3.1 FN
Second Base: 6.10 FN, 6.9 A, 6.7 A
Third Base: 7.8 A, 7.7 A, 7.6 A

(Numbers correspond to the True Colour International Dark Autumn Classic fan)

These are the DA colors that have resonated with me the most, and the ones that have made their way into my wardrobe already. My favorite casual outfit this year has been a cropped sweatshirt in my lightest/brightest tranquil over a tunic tank top in my darkest 1st base with some lighter 1st base shades thrown in with jeans in the middle Second Base color. Yellow and purple may sound a bit garish, but I don’t think it reads that way on me at all–a good case for deep purple being a neutral for me.

I did have to sacrifice the base color I liked, but it can still act as an alternate. In this new version, with the addition of yellow and purple, I can see myself. It feels more like me. If you are going with a limited palette for wardrobe planning, it has to speak to you. If you’re looking to do the same with your own 12-season palette, I recommend starting with what you already own and love, and see if these colors don’t somehow fit into a framework like Zyla’s.

Dark Autumn Blonde, Part Six: Looking at Soft Autumn

In response to a fairly recent post, I got a comment telling me check out seasons called Deep Autumn Soft and Soft Autumn Deep, which I believe are part of the 16-season system, a system used by Lora Alexander at Pretty Your World.

This system, despite having similar-sounding names, is an entirely different animal from the Sci\ART-based systems. For one, draping is not required. Season can be discerned through the harmony of body colors–eye color and hair color are definitely considered. This is the issue I’ve had with people annoying me by insisting that I’m summer that I wrote about in my last post in this series.

So anyway, I knew that I would not be either of these seasons anyway, because I would be far too light to qualify. But it did plant a little seed of doubt about Soft Autumn in my mind. Could I be Soft Autumn? It would seem more logical, sure. Right as I was pondering this, a Russian-language blog on color and style did a post breaking down the different colors in Soft Autumn. (You don’t need to know Russian or even use Google Translate to understand what I’m talking about in regard to this post, since the visuals accompanying the text make it pretty clear). The lights, neutrals, darks, and brights of Soft Autumn have been separated. This gives me a very different impression of what Soft Autumn looks like than what I normally think of it looking like, which is this:

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(Source)

Compared to other palettes, it has always seemed a bit dull to me. All of the colors seem watered down and a sort of murky green or coral. But it’s true that in order to appreciate a palette, you have to see the colors. You have to see them in a context other than square boxes of color lined up to represent a seasonal palette. You need to see the clothes. And in Color Harmony’s interpretations, the dark and the bright Soft Autumn colors look pretty good to me. They look like things I could wear easily.

But the neutrals and the lights… This is where it falls apart. My winter jacket, for instance, is a Soft Autumn olive green. Does it have awful effects on my skin? No. But does it do anything special for me? No again. Out of curiosity, I decided to how I’d do in a lighter Soft Autumn color. I have a coral towel that seems to be SA’s coral. So I draped myself with it, and immediately noticed redness around my nose. I do have some, but when I put on a Dark Autumn color, it’s not noticeable. In fact, in Dark Autumn, I usually just put on lipstick and don’t bother with anything else. I also saw some reflection around the sides of my face that I didn’t like. While seeing the Soft Autumn colors together like they are in the blog made it seem more logical as an option for me, somehow, real life showed me otherwise.

Sometimes you need doubt to really confirm something for yourself. And while I might see what happens if I swipe a few of SA’s brightest and darkest colors, I have again come to conclusion that DA is where I belong.

Dark Autumn Blonde, Part Five: Dealing with Naysayers

One thing I try never to do is question someone else’s season or type designation unless it appears that something is really off, or they think they’re testing a certain type but it’s really another. Almost everyone in our little style and color community abides by this rule. This journey is a personal one, and even if people are in the wrong type or season, they usually discover it on their own eventually, and the information they get by discovering this themselves is usually very valuable.

But there is a certain clique that seems hell bent on questioning everyone’s seasonal designations and telling other people how wrong they are. Even if someone has been draped and has been living in a season successfully and happily, still they will consistently bring up their own point of view on someone’s season, a point of view they arrived at solely from snapshots and from arbitrary rules from a non-Sci\ART system. The trained analyst in another system was totally wrong, and the only true way is their own.

I had an experience with this over the weekend, and it really stuck in my craw. I dared to post a quick, taken-during-a-thunderstorm-on-my-iPhone snapshot of me in this lipstick for comparison purposes. On me, this lipstick does not look like a “warm, rusty brown” at all. It turns into a medium-deep red with some rose tones to it. It is my favorite red. Actual reds look clownish on me. Another person had posted a picture of themselves in this same lipstick, and on them it looked straight-up dark brown, so I just thought it was interesting that the same lipstick could look so different on different people.

But since the other person was a member of this clique, it brought out of the woodwork what can only be described as trolls. And all of these trolls felt the need to tell me that, although I was not seeking feedback on my season, that the fact that I turn dark lipsticks with brown in them less brown and lighter that I must be a summer.

I am sure that any actual summer who is reading this clicked on the link above and imagined themselves wearing that lipstick and shuddered.

Anyway, what we struck me is the sheer rudeness of it all. It takes a lot of nerve and a lot of, well, jerkiness to think that you can definitively contradict a stranger’s seasonal designation from a hastily snapped iPhone shot in poor lighting, and that arbitrary rules like “Dark Autumn lipsticks should be applied with at least three passes of the bullet” are real things that should apply to everyone in a season.

I understand that in systems in which Dark Autumn=dark person, I wouldn’t be a DA. I am a Dark Autumn in the way I understand the season, which is that the colors and makeup just seem to work for me and work better than all the other seasons I’ve tried. And it’s faintly ridiculous to tell someone who can wear a dark lipstick like Emotional and not look like they just walked out of a Hot Topic that they must be a summer because this dark lipstick looks too LIGHT on them. Yes, that’s just what I need, lighter makeup so it can look chalky or clownish on me.

Anyway, I fully believe that this journey is a deeply personal one, and that’s why this is the one behavior I can’t tolerate. Even though I understand that the leaps these people were making were not only in a different system, but illogical, it still planted that little seed of doubt in my mind. And that’s just annoying.

So yeah, this is one of those behaviors that will cause me to ban someone from a group or get into fights in the comments or ban someone from commenting on this blog. Unless someone asks for help, let them get there on their own.

Dark Autumn Blonde, Part Four: DIYing a Zyla Palette

My views on color analysis have changed drastically over the past few months. I used to believe strongly that Sci\ART and Sci\ART-based systems were the absolute Truth when it comes to color analysis. Stuff based on energy or body colors, or even the 16-season system, rang false to me. I believed that the absolute best results possible could only be found in the accomplished hands of a trained Sci\ART analyst. I believed that anyone who did not go this route was doing themselves a disservice, that they would never unlock their true beauty.

But after spending a lot of time in the online color and style community, I’ve learned that Sci\ART is just one way of looking at it. Some people don’t like the look that the Sci\ART result gives. Some strongly prefer their Zyla or Beauty Valued or 16-color result, and their Sci\ART palette sits and gathers dust. Some get a draping result they don’t like or don’t agree with, and spend hundreds more dollars getting redraped or getting custom palettes in other systems.

As someone who hasn’t been draped, I’ve come to a place where I feel like getting draped isn’t something I need. I was reading a blog post by Light Marigold Spring today. This blogger has been draped in Sci\ART/12 Blueprints twice, has a Beauty Valued fan, had a Zyla consult, and has some other fans. Anyway, she made the point that it comes down to personal preference, and in the end, you just choose which approach and which result you like best. No one way of looking at coloring is more right than the other. No system is “more correct” than all the others.

My approach to my own colors has been haphazard at best, and would probably make a professional color analyst shudder. I’ve simply deduced, from trial and error, that some colors are really, really bad for me. Too light and bright I turn red. White makes me puffy and gives me a fuzzy beard. I need some darkness. These factors have led me to Dark Autumn.

Would I be draped Dark Autumn? Maybe, maybe not. But the very worst thing that happens to my skin in Dark Autumn is that the line between my chin and my neck fades a little, and if that’s the worst thing that happens to you in a season, you’re not doing too badly. I can look at my fan and pick out my body colors. It connects with me energetically–maybe Dressing Your Truth is on to something with colors and energy, rather than draping. I love the colors and feel like myself in them.

Another advantage to using a palette like this is that the colors all work together. So I can create a wardrobe where everything matches, and I don’t have to think about it. That was what kept me in black for the past ten years or so: I found color selection intimidating. Now I just look for the slightly burnt, rich, and slightly warm colors of Dark Autumn, and everything looks good together.

In the interest of minimalism, I got to thinking about capsule wardrobes and color. Zyla is a system where you get a series of colors to use in certain ways in order to achieve different aesthetic goals. I decided to take my Dark Autumn palette and use it to create a Zyla palette. As I mentioned, my body colors are found on the Dark Autumn palette, so pulling the correct colors was pretty easy. Of course, Zyla could potentially give me something totally different if I ever do see him. But I think this is a pretty good approximation. (I didn’t do metals or pastels because I don’t know how to choose them, and I feel like pastels are something I wouldn’t be able to use much anyway.)

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The colors are not true to fan, obviously, but here is the list of what I used from the Classic True Colour International fan:
Essence: 1.1 FN
Romantic: 6.2 A
Dramatic: 4.9 A
Energy: 3.8 A
Tranquil: 2.5 A
1st Base: 5.10 FN
2nd Base: 3.5 FN
3rd Base: 2.3 A

Some of these colors, like my Energy color, are ones that I know are special on me. My Romantic is a great lipstick/blush color on me. I love the 2nd Base. And I managed to get these colors by following Zyla’s instructions, no cheating to get my favorites on there. (Although I think in my Dramatic “extension” I’ll give myself one of the purples!)

To me, my Dark Autumn palette is simply a way to make my life easier. I’m not seeking my absolute true beauty. Simply put, they seem to work and I like them, and that’s good enough for me.

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