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I am excited to be joining the How We Wore It crew this month again! You can sign up by going to Deidre’s blog and be sure to check out how the other people styled the outfit from Chic Street Style at the bottom of the post; we’re showcasing how to wear brights during the spring and I am sharing a little bit of my struggle with brights; which is why I am showing myself wearing brights as a soft winter.
I have been told my hair dressers that I am warm toned. Some hair dressers have told me I am cool toned. Some people say I have porcelain skin and others say I have a light olive. What in the world? Because of this, I became obsessed with seasonal color analysis systems in college to help me figure out what colors are best on me. Confession: when I get bored and I am struggling to stay awake, sometimes I begin color coding people to decide what seasons they are.
UPDATE // I self-categorized myself as having soft winter color palette before being diagnosed with autoimmune issues; it temporarily impacted my coloring. I am no longer considering a soft winter color analysis for myself. Through a lot of trial and error, I realized I am actually a autumn seasonal color analysis- huge change! You can see how I analyzed myself with different palettes here.
Traditionally the seasonal analysis system only accommodated to 12 profiles, but I also knew enough about my coloring to know that none of them fit me. Now there are seasonal color systems that have 16-22+ color profiles. The old system said as a winter I should be able to wear super bright reds, but those colors washed me out a lot. To make a long story short, the new color systems fit my coloring better; I am actually classified as a soft winter color palette.
By seeing the new color profiles in the updated system, I was able to explain why as a winter I looked really bad in vibrant winter colors. Instead, I tend to go for neutrals and softer and subdued hues. Although there is already a lot of contrast between my face and skin, I have a lot of ashy tones in my hair now that I have gotten older. Being a soft winter color palette means I am a winter that flows toward summer; meaning, items with a gray undertone look best on me! I can fake people out and wear black and stark white like a normal winter, but antique whites look best on my skin tone just like yellow gold is needed to warm up my skin a little bit.
Because of this, when I do wear bright colors, it tends to be in accessories like this beautiful purse and necklace I found in the markets in Mexico. I have some bright clothing items in my closet, but when I wear them they aren’t usually next to my face. See the red purse in these photos? You can tell it would wash me out if I was wearing it next to my face.
I have found my preferred dark neutral color is actually charcoal gray (opposed to the traditional winter black) which makes sense because the outer ring of my eye is that color. Some seasonal color systems work on figuring out your best color undertones based on the color rings in your eyes!! To me, it is all very interesting and I plan on reading or referencing through some color analysis books this summer.
