Top 15 Color Analysis Myths Presented by PrettyYourWorld.com
Copyright (2016) Lora Alexander All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of the book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized printed or electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author s rights is appreciated.
What exactly is Color Analysis? Color Analysis is simply the act of looking at one s skin, eye and natural hair coloring to determine the best set of colors to wear to harmonize with that coloring. It was wildly popular in the 1980 s but it has never gone away. In fact, with so many websites and blogs talking about Color Analysis, it is experiencing an increase in popularity. I think this is a wonderful thing, as it is a powerful tool in helping both women and men look their absolute best. However, there is some conflicting and confusing information on the internet and Pretty Your World wants to break through some of the clutter of misinformation.
Myth #1- Color Analysis is old and outdated. Color Analysis may be old, but it s not outdated. The principles of harmonizing temperature, value and intensity have been used in many different fields (art, gardening, interior design, fashion, just to name a few) forever. Wearing colors that harmonize with a person s coloring is just as vital as ever. But it is not as widely popular to the average person as it was in the 1980 s. However, the ColorBreeze System at PrettyYourWorld.com hopes to make it widely popular again.
Myth #2 - Color Analysis puts someone in a box. I ve heard this argument more than a few times, mainly from the fashion world who are opposed to people who want to stick with a palette of flattering colors. These professions thrive on trends. Once a person knows their most flattering palette of colors, the effect is the opposite of being boxed in. They usually feel like many new choices have opened up to them! While, of course, anyone has the right to wear any color they want, those who are interested in looking their absolute best want to know the colors they wear will enhance their natural coloring, allowing them to look fresher, younger, and more confident. Here is a Deep Winter (above) wearing just 6 colors - black, deep purple, pure red, pine green, turquoise, royal blue- that look fabulous on her. There are over 55 in a ColorBreeze color swatch, but there are conceivably thousands of different colors and shades anyone can wear successfully. Bottom line: There are more colors that someone can wear than there are forbidden colors. Color Analysis opens up a new world of color for you! And it saves time and money, too. This is what Color Analysis is all about.
Myth #3 - I don t seem to fit into any season. Maybe color analysis isn t for me. Analyzing yourself can be tough. We definitely can analyze others easier than we can ourselves. So sometimes it seems you don t fit into any category. But the bottom line is that there will be one season that will be the best fit for each person. A good analyst will be able to determine your undertone (warm vs. cool), figure out your value (light vs. dark, or somewhere in between) and your chroma (clear vs. muted). Once these are determined, there will be a corresponding season or category you will fit into. I promise. *The Color Tree is a digram created by Pretty Your World, inspired by artist Albert Munsell s Color Tree. It is the basis for the entire ColorBreeze system. Each season, and therefore each person, will reside somewhere on that tree. See the tree at the end of this ebook.
Myth #4 - What if my favorite color is not in my palette? I won t be able to wear the colors I love! Color Analysis is about wearing the best colors that enhance your personal coloring. If a favorite color of yours is not in the palette, there are ways of wearing it and still look great. Use it as an accent color; wear it away from the face which is the vital area you want to showcase your best colors; wear it in small doses; make sure the rest of your colors you wear are in your palette. I ve had some people tell me they want to wear what they want to and if they can t wear [insert favorite color] they would just be devastated. My answer to them is: if something makes you deliriously happy and you would be devastated not to wear it, wear it. Life is too short!
Myth #5 - You find your undertone by looking at the veins in your wrist. This is a very pervasive myth. But it simply doesn t work. It s not the color of your veins you are looking for, but the skin on top of the veins! Myth #6 If you have cool skin, your hair will be warm (or vice versa) since nature wants to balance things. I read this idea somewhere. There is no validity to it.
Myth #6 - It s all about the skin, nothing else matters. Skin is vitally important in determining your season. But it s not the only thing, as some color systems believe. You must look at skin, hair and eyes before you can make a determination about your coloring. Look at celebrity Nicole Kidman. Her skin is quite pale, sometimes looking cool or white. Many pale-skinned red-heads have the same coloring. Her light skin and clear eyes suggest Spring. But her naturally reddish blonde hair tells us she has warm undertones. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bysa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons I would label her a Warm Spring. If one tried to determine her season just on her skin alone, the results would be way off.
Myth #7 - It s all about haircolor, nothing else matters. See Myth #6. And then add to it that even if you decide someone is warm, for example, based on their (natural) hair color, this is just one component. You have to look at her eyes to determine her chroma. You can t determine one s chroma (clear and bright vs. soft and muted) on only haircolor. The eyes above are of warm seasons. If we determined she was predominantly warm from her hair, we need to look at her eyes next. The one on the left is generally clear (warm+clear = Spring); the one on the right is generally muted (warm + muted = Autumn). Eye color is usually the most telling of one s chroma, but again, it s just one piece of the puzzle.
Myth #8 - It s all about eye color, nothing else matters. See Myth #6 and then add to it that eye color can often be the defining trait when determining someone s chroma, and to a degree one s undertones, but alone it can t indicate a person s season. For example, there are blue eyes in every season, not just cool seasons. And you can find green eyes in every season, not just warm seasons. Look at this woman (left). She is a Warm Autumn. But you would never know it if you just looked at her eyes. They look quite cool, muted and even summery. Without taking into hair into consideration, we d never come to a Warm Autumn conclusion. And look at her skin. Another red-head with cooler looking skin!
Myth #9 - My skin looks warm, does that mean I m a warm season? (or vice versa)? This is similar to Myth #6. Keep in mind that there are undertones and overtones involved in looking at the skin. Overtones refer to the surface color of one s skin which may or may not be the same as one s overall undertone. For example, you get a tan, the surface changes and you may need to modify your makeup foundation for it to match, but your undertone is still the same. Many Winters, especially Deep and Soft Winters, often have what is considered olive skin and it looks warm on the surface like the woman on the right, but the undertone is cool. Another red head whose skin can look cool but has predominantly warm undertones (right). So if you ve ever been typed at a makeup counter when having custom-blended foundations made for you, do not interpret the surface skin tone as your overall undertone. It may match your predominant undertones, but it may not.
Myth #11 -Your season will indicate your personality or vice versa (i.e. summers are great listeners, winters are natural leaders, autumns are great decision makers, springs are animated and cheery). This is one topic where I break from the pack of most color consultants, even those whose knowledge I greatly admire on every other topic. The idea that personalities are linked to the seasons has been around forever and it has always bugged me for many reasons. First, where are the studies done on this? While certainly there are many people who will fit into this theory, there are just as many who do not. Surely, we know some blonde blue eyed Springs who are not always cheery and uplifting. While there are certainly bold, opinionated leader-type Winters, I know many quiet, subdued, introverted Winters as well. For me personally, some descriptions may fit me as a Autumn, like being down to earth and approachable, but the others couldn t be more wrong. I m not an extrovert. I do not make decisions quickly. Stubborn? Sure, but can t we all be at some time or another? The bottom line is that while it s fun to see how many of these traits, if any, we have, it is not a valid indicator of your season. If you don t fit into these traits, it doesn t mean you aren t a particular season. There is no logical connection to this idea, in my humble opinion. One final thought on this: there is definitely truth to the notion that we all have our unique personalities and that you will want to express your personality through what you wear. This is called your Style Personality and it s a huge part of developing your own style that expresses your authentic personality. But I believe that any style can be expressed while still utilizing your seasonal palette of colors. For exampke, even if you are a low contrast Soft Summer, you can use the colors within your palette to create a more dramatic look if that is what you want to project to the world.
Myth #12 - Body size, shape determines your best colors. Similar to Myth #11, there is a school of thought that your body shape and size will determine the colors you should wear. The thinking goes something like tall bodies with dramatic bone structure will need to wear dramatic clothes and colors or soft feminine bodies with rounded features will need soft feminine colors. I don t agree with this idea either. Again, your natural coloring on the outside will tell you what colors to wear that will harmonize your look. What is inside will dictate the type of look you want to project to the world. While having a tall body with dramatic features will help her to project a dramatic look, it doesn t limit that person to that look. Nor does it mean that if you have a dramatic personality but you are short and round that you cannot project a dramatic look. I was always told Autumns style personality was natural and casual. Winters were bold and dramatic. But I like to use my Ode to Mary Ann & Ginger of Gilligan s Island theory to disprove this. Any style personality can shine within any season.
Myth #13 - If I am naturally drawn to a color or colors, this means it is a color I can wear. This is a very pervasive belief. It states that if you are drawn to a particular color or colors, this inherently means you can wear those color(s) successfully. This idea can be attributed to Swiss artist Johannes Itten who believed that people will be attracted to colors that are already present in their coloring. For example, light blonde blue eyed Springs will gravitate toward those light bright colors. Winters with the deep cool coloring will naturally be attractive to those types of colors. Apparently he developed this idea when he let his art students choose the colors they liked best for their next art assignment. He noted the preferences differed based on their coloring. From this, some color analysts developed their beliefs and it became prevalent in many color systems. Once again, I disagree with this idea, for many of the same reasons I mentioned previously. For example, this does not fit with me and my preferences at all. I love cool pastels. I m a Warm Autumn. I can t wear cool pastels without them looking artificial and boring. They certainly do not harmonize or enhance my coloring. Believe me I tried to make them work. So, am I the lone exception to this rule? I don t think so, because I hear this from so many others who love certain colors but they are simply not colors that flatter them. There is just no logic to this idea. Are we drawn to our favorite colors? Absolutely. Does this mean those colors will harmonize with our coloring? They may or may not, but it has nothing to do with any inherent connection to our coloring and our preferences.
Myth# 14. Any person can be any season (ex: you can have red hair and green eyes and golden skin and still be a winter). I have to be honest. This kind of thinking is what prompted me to start my Online Color Analysis Training. There is a lot of information about color analysis on the internet. Some I agree with. Some I don t. And some drive me crazy, such as this one. While I am not militant about my beliefs (there are exceptions to almost everything), I also am not so open to things that I would agree that anyone can be any season and that it s just a matter of how you drape out in a color analysis draping. There are clearly visible differences between the seasons. These parameters distinguish one category from another. If there were no parameters, how would you ever distinguish one season from another, much less pinpoint one specific season out of 12, 16 or more? When an analyst doesn t understand these parameters and can t identify them, she is left to just looking at particular test colors (drapes) under a client s face and arbitrarily deciding that one looks good, one doesn t, and not knowing why. I was lectured about this many times from several people from another color system. I was told, for example, that Kim Kardashian, (whom I clearly see as a Deep Winter), might not actually be that season and there would be no way to know this unless she was draped. Kim could actually be a Light Spring, I was told, you just never know unless you are draped. Well, I do know she would never be a Light Spring, and most skilled Color Analysts know this too.
Take a look at the woman below as an example. She doesn t need to be draped for us to know she could never be a Winter of any kind. Normally this erroneous thinking shouldn t bother me since I try not to get involved with other systems to see what they are teaching. However, I get numerous questions from readers and clients when they hear this Myth. They spend lots of money on color sessions with these color analysts and they come out with the most inaccurate results I ve ever seen. Dark eyed brunettes who are labeled Clear Spring; or women with cool skin and eyes who are the epitome of Cool Winter being draped a Warm Autumn. It mainly happens with one system in particular; the one who believes anyone can be anything. It does a great disservice to the field of color analysis when thoughts like these are put out there to further confuse people.
Myth# 15 - If I get draped as a season, I will always be that season and I will never change. There could be instances in which you would change seasons. Some could be the results of illness, chemotherapy and so on. But most of the time it is a result of aging. As we age, coloring can become less intense and can cool down. This is not a big deal for most Winters and Summers who are already cool. It s most problematic for warm Springs and Autumns. They have the potential from going from one extreme to the other, such as when a warm red headed Spring hair goes completely grey and her coloring softens. She could fade into a Light Spring or if the cool down was dramatic, a Light Summer. It s a good idea to get re-analyzed if your coloring has changed significantly.
Last but not least, one can visibly change to another season if she colors her hair and/or changes her eye color with colored contact lenses. While you may not actually change seasons, it will certainly look that way to others and as a result you should dress to harmonize your look. One pair of clear blue colored contacts can change a Deep Winter to a Clear Winter in seconds! (below) I hope this ebook will help correct some thinking about Color Analysis because it is a fascinating field, a powerful image tool and it has the potential to change one s life. It already has for millions of women, including me. Lora Alexander, Certified Color Analyst & owner of PrettyYourWorld.com
About the Author Lora Alexander is a Certified Color Analyst, licensed Esthetician, Make-Up Artist, and Illustrator. She owns www.prettyyourworld.com, the online resource for all things related to the Advanced Seasonal Color Theory. Lora does Virtual Color Analysis via her website, as well as 1x1 Color Analysis in the Northern Illinois area. For a professional color analysis, or to learn more about becoming a certified ColorBreeze Color Consultant, contact her at Lora@PrettyYourWorld.com