Color Me Beautiful....

Many, many years ago I found out about a service called Color Me Beautiful. A "color consultant" worked with you to determine the colors best for you. I figured what the heck, might as well find out.

I must say it was a very enlightening experience. I learned that I was wearing colors that were all wrong for my skin tone and hair color. The whole concept of Color Me Beautiful is based on a book written by Carole Jackson and she uses the categories of spring, summer, fall (autumn) and winter to describe the colors.

I learned by reading the book before my appointment that your skin tone, hair & eye colors help to determine what colors look best on you. And, that these either have a blue or golden tone. The color palettes used are divided by "cool" or "warm" with the cool being the blue undertones and the warm based on the yellow. Cool are summer & winter. Warm are spring & autumn. I figured I had blue undertones and by looking at the colors I figured I was a summer.

I go for my appointment and being the smart-aleck 20-something I was at that time I figured I knew it all. With the consultant's first comment, I woke up and shut up!

First she determined that I had blue undertones (at least I was right on that!) and then draped me in swatches from all the groups. Right away I could tell that the spring and autumn colors were completely wrong. Then she did the summer swatches. I thought that I looked pretty good in some of those colors and she agreed but she wasn't done yet. She pulled out the winter swatches and started going thru them individually. WOW! Was I amazed at what some of those colors did for me! Some looked OK, others were pretty good and some were absolutely gorgeous.

In the 4 seasonal palettes, only 1 season has the colors of black & white. The other 3 palettes have less harsh versions of these colors such as ivory, soft white or oyster white and shades of gray. Winter has the black & white and amazingly, black is one of my best colors with white being pretty close. She told me that some winters cannot wear these as their main colors but only as accent colors but I could wear them both as a main color. Of course, she suggested to always have a "little black dress" in my closet because it would look terrific on me. They also pick one color out of the palette that would be the perfect color for a bathrobe. Amazingly, for me that was "icy aqua". They also tell you whether silver or gold jewelry looks better on you. Silver is my color! But when I asked her about all the gold jewelry I had, she said I could wear it but consider mixing gold and silver possibly by wearing a silver watch. To this day, I always buy silver watches or silver/gold watches. Even the ring I had made of my mother and grandmother's engagement rings is gold with silver and it looks very nice on my hand. I haven't entirely given up the gold jewelry because a lot of it was inherited but I always wear silver earrings and my silver watch.

Now there are some colors in the winter palette that don't look good on me and those are very good for accent pieces. That lemon yellow.... put it with navy blue or black or charcoal gray. Then I asked her about colors not in my palette, especially since I wore suits to work and I had several that weren't in the palette... namely that chocolate brown one. She said to go ahead and wear it but put one of my best colors with it... brown suit, blue-red blouse. Amazing look! Much better than the orange print blouse I usually wore. Know what I did with the orange blouse... I wore it with a black sweater every Halloween (and my black cat earrings).

They gave you a nice little color swatch book with notes as to which colors looked best as main or accessory colors and I carried that with me for years whenever I went shopping. She also went into what color shoes, handbags, hosiery, makeup, and hair color (if coloring) are best for a winter. To this day, I try to stick with those main colors in my wardrobe. Don't get me wrong, I will wear a color that isn't good for me, but it is usually a casual outfit that I only wear around the house. For work and dress-up occasions, I always wear a good color. That's one reason you see me in a lot of black :)

The colors of the winter palette rated 2-check excellent for me:

Light true gray, black, navy blue, emerald green, magenta, fuchsia, blue-red, icy aqua and icy pink.

My 1-check excellents are:

Pure white, medium true gray, charoal gray, true blue, royal blue, chinese blue, shocking pink, royal purple, true red and icy violet.

Good colors for me: True green, deep hot pink, bright burgundy, icy yellow and icy blue.

Colors that should only be used as accents or mixed with excellents or away from my face: Taupe, hot turquoise, lemon yellow, light true green, pine green and icy green.

Anyways, if you ever meet me, I'll be the one in black :)