In the cosmetics and fashion industry,
color analysis, also called skin tone color matching, personal color or seasonal
color, is the process of finding colors of clothing and makeup to match a
person's skin complexion, eye color, and hair color. The goal is to determine
the colors that best suit an individual's natural coloring and the result is
often used as an aid to wardrobe planning and style consulting. Color analysis
was most popular in the early 1980s.
There are a wide variety of approaches to
analyzing personal coloring. The most well-known is "seasonal" color
analysis, which places individual coloring into four general categories:
Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. More complex systems subdivide the seasons
into 12 or 16 categories. Many different versions of seasonal analysis have
been developed and promoted by image and color consultants worldwide. Some color
analysis systems classify an individual's personal combination of hair color,
eye color and skin tone using labels that refer to a color's
"temperature" (cool blue vs. warm yellow) and the degree to which the
hair, skin and eye colors contrast. Cosmetic colors are often determined by
hair color alone. Color analysis demonstrates how colors are capable of being
flattering or, conversely, unflattering. Colors that are unsuitable for the
individual will often make a person appear pale, for instance, or draw attention
to such flaws as wrinkles or uneven skin tone.
One practical application for color
analysis is that by limiting wardrobe color choices a person will likely find
it easier to coordinate his or her clothing and accessories, thus possibly
saving time, space and money. However, color analysis can also be costly for
the individual, both in regard to the fees of professional and less than
professional analyses, and subsequent clothing and cosmetics purchases. One
problem is that there is no standard training or degree required to market
oneself as a color analyst. Color analysis has been controversial since its
beginnings.
Early history (1850s–early 1970s)
Chevreul
Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889) was a
French chemist and superintendent at the Gobelins Manufactory in Paris
Munsell
Albert Henry Munsell (1858–1918) was an
American painter, teacher of art, and the inventor of the Munsell color system.
He had visited the tapestry works of Chevreul and studied color in France Hue U.S.A.
Itten
Johannes Itten (1888–1967) published The
Art of Color in 1961. He was a Swiss-born artist and art educator who expounded
upon the principles of simultaneous contrast which Chevreul set forth in his
1839 treatise. Itten proposed the notion of "subjective color", which
he discovered while teaching a class assignment on color harmony in 1928. The
students chose colors, lines and orientation that showed themselves "as
they are". To Itten, subjective color is "the aura of the
person." For example, a high contrast brunette will choose dark colors and
high contrast, "suggesting a lively and concentrated personality and
intense feeling." On the other hand, for a fair woman of low contrast the
"fundamental contrast is hue". He links these subjective colors to
the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter and notes: "Every
woman should know what colors are becoming to her; they will always be her
subjective colors and their complements." Itten believed that
"subjective colors" were of a lower artistic value and significance
than what he deemed "objective colors," color harmonies of a higher
order.
Dorr
Robert C. Dorr (1905–1979) was an American
artist who observed, in 1928, the harmonious effects of paint colors when using
the same undertone of either blue or yellow. In 1934, in Chicago Orange California
Caygill
Suzanne Caygill (1911–1994) was an American
fashion designer and color theorist who developed the Caygill Method of Color
Analysis. A milliner, poet, dress designer and night club singer as a young
adult, Caygill turned her attention to color in 1945 and worked the rest of her
life creating individual style guides and color palettes for clients and
teaching design seminars. Caygill may have been influenced by her association
with Edith Head, wardrobe designer and consultant to Hollywood
studios and stars. She was likely influenced by Robert Dorr's Color Key
Program, already in popular usage when Caygill began focusing on color more
intently. Dorr and Caygill were also both working in interior design and color
psychology in the late 1940s and 50s. In the 1950s, Caygill starred in a
self-improvement television program on fashion and relationships, "Living
With Suzanne," which aired on CBS in Los Angeles, and began to teach
seminars in which she described her work on style, personality, line, and
color. Many devotees attended her classes, adapted and popularized her theories
of personality style and color analysis in the late 1970s and 80s. In 1980, she
published Color: the Essence of You and established the Academy of Color
Seasonal skin tone color matching for
clothing and cosmetics
Starting in the 1970s, the availability of
high-quality, accurate and inexpensive color printing made it possible for the
first time to produce books for the mass market in which skin tones and
clothing colors could be accurately reproduced. The result was the
near-simultaneous publication by a number of authors of books proposing systems
of color analysis designed to allow the reader to "discover which shades
of color in clothes complement your natural coloring to look healthier, sexier
and more powerful."
The authors of these books all present
roughly similar ideas. Most agree, for example, on the following basic points:
Most rely upon a color system in which the
colors are divided into four groups of harmonious colors which are said to
match with the four seasons of the year. The seasons are, to some degree,
arbitrary, and it sometimes happens that someone will be on the cusp of two
seasons. But, as Carole Jackson insists, "with testing, one palette will
prove to be better [more harmonious] than the other." Jackson
An individual's basic color category, or
season, remains the same over his or her lifetime, and is not affected by
tanning, because "e still have the same color skin, but in a darker
hue."
Skin color, rather than hair or eye color,
determines a person's season. Bernice Kentner warns, "Remember, do not
rely on hair coloring to find your Season!"
A person's color season has nothing to do
with the season of his or her birth or favorite season of the year.
Prominent systems of seasonal color
analysis since the mid-1970s
Deborah Chase, The Medically Based No
Nonsense Beauty Book (1975)
Chase explored the impact of skin pigments
on coloration. She noted that there are three primary pigments that give the
skin its color: "Melanin, which gives the skin its brown tones; carotene,
which imparts the yellow skin tones; and hemoglobin, the red pigment in the
blood, which gives the skin its pink and red hues....The three
pigments--melanin, carotene, and hemoglobin join one another to produce our
flesh tones."
Bernice Kentner, Color Me a Season (1978)
Bernice Kentner, who had worked as a
licensed cosmetologist since 1950, began holding lectures on color analysis in
the early 1970s, and in 1978 published Color Me a Season, which went through
several printings in the early 1980s.
Like Chevreul and Suzanne Caygill, Kentner
drew her ideas from the art of interior decorating. She wrote, "It is
possible to color coordinate your home so it is pleasing to the eye....So it is
with the human body. The body itself is the background for all color that will
be placed upon it. It remains our task then to find what color scheme our
bodies fall into. As with the walls of a room we must determine what color our
skin is." Kentner also drew on the ideas of Johannes Itten who linked the
subjective colors of an individual to one of the four seasons.
Kentner emphasizes that it is skin color
rather than hair or eye color that serves as the base from which a color
analysis must start. The color of a person's skin determines whether that
individual should be classified as a Summer, a Winter, a Spring, or an Autumn.
This can cause confusion, because the color of the hair may be the first thing
that strikes the observer's eye (particularly if the hair color is dramatic).
Thus, "even though [one palette of] colors work best for [a particular
person's] complexion, the individual may look like another Season because of
haircoloring....I call this their secondary Season." The color of the hair
and eyes serve to heighten the appeal of certain color choices for clothing and
makeup, and to rule out certain other choices, but all such choices must be
made from within the palette that is compatible with the shade of the skin.
To illustrate this point, Kentner offers
the example of a woman whose dramatic hair color suggested that she ought to be
an Autumn, but whose skin color made her a Winter. When the woman was
"color draped" in swatches from the Winter palette, "she came to
life", and looked considerably more attractive than she had been when
wearing Autumn colors. However, one of the colors in the palette was incompatible
with her hair, and was determined to be inappropriate for her wardrobe.
Winter
Dominant skin characteristics (an
individual's skin may include more than one): "cool with rose
undertones"; "may appear almost white, yet the skin will be a bit
darker than the very pale-skinned 'Summer'"; "not the translucent
look that a 'Summer' person has"; "Rosy cheeks will not appear
naturally on a 'Winter' person"; "Dark-skinned 'Winters' are usually
olive-skinned with a blue undertone."
Summer
Dominant skin characteristics (an
individual's skin may include more than one): "very pale"; "It
is the Summer person's lot in life to never have a suntan";
"transparent"; "fine-textured"; "light with a rosy-red
or lilac undertone that does not come to the surface"; "not prone to
blushing"; "The overall look of a 'Summer' is colorless".
Spring
Dominant skin characteristics (an
individual's skin may include more than one): "Light amber with gold
tones"; "darker suntanned look with a yellow undercast";
"There is a tendency to blush easily"; "often very rosy";
"there is a lively appearance to skin-tone"; "The overall
appearance of 'Spring' is 'Radiance'".
Autumn
Dominant skin characteristics (an
individual's skin may include more than one): "gold or yellow undertone";
"more gold or orange-toned than a 'Spring'"; "Bronze".
The Suzanne Caygill Method
An analyst trained in this system relies on
an in-person interview which reveals a range of clues. The most important
indicators are the color, light, texture and pattern found in the skin, hair
and eyes. Texture, color contrast levels, movement patterns, and facial and
body characteristics are secondary indicators that help to determine basic
seasonal type and subgroup within the season. Experienced practitioners also
often observe predictable personality types and preferences that correspond to
a person's seasonal group.
Winter
The palette includes colors that are pure
pigments, or pigments with added black, or with so much white added as to
create an icy, frosted pastel.
Spring
Palette colors are usually clear washes or
tints, pigments that have white or water added.
Summer
These complex palettes may have a blend of
black, white, grey or brown added to their pure pigments, creating a wide range
of subtle differences.
Autumn
The palette is dominated by undertones of
natural brown pigment, which may range from ochre, umber, or burnt sienna to
browns darkened with black.
With this system, almost any color can be
found within each season, and many palettes include a combination of both warm
and cool tones. The result is nuanced, individualized and unique to each
person. The outcome of the analysis is a palette of fabric samples which
complement each other and reflect the client. They can then be used as a guide
to simplify selection of clothing and accessories and may also be used in
choosing home and office interior colors, fabrics and designs.
Carole Jackson, Color Me Beautiful (1980)
The most successful book on seasonal color
analysis was Carole Jackson's Color Me Beautiful (1980). The book was a 1980s
pop-culture phenomenon and spawned a number of related sequels, including Jackson Jackson
Winter
Dominant skin tones (an individual's skin
may include more than one): "Very white", "White with delicate
pink tone", "Beige (no cheek color, may be sallow)",
"Gray-beige or brown", "Rosy beige", "Olive",
"Black" (blue undertone)", "Black (sallow)".
Summer
Dominant skin tones (an individual's skin
may include more than one): "Pale beige with delicate pink cheeks",
"Pale beige with no cheek color (even sallow)", "Rosy
beige", "Very pink", "Gray-brown", "Rosy
brown".
Spring
Dominant skin tones (an individual's skin
may include more than one): "Creamy ivory", "Ivory with pale
golden freckles", "Peach", "Peach/pink (may have
pink/purple knuckles)", "Golden beige", "Rosy cheeks (may
blush easily)", "Golden brown."
Autumn
Dominant skin tones (an individual's skin
may include more than one): "Ivory", "Ivory with freckles
(usually redhead)", "Peach", "Peach with freckles (usually
golden blonde, brown)", "Golden beige (no cheek color, needs
blush)", "dark beige, coppery", "Golden brown."
Mary Spillane and Christine Sherlock, Color
Me Beautiful's Looking Your Best
Spillane and Sherlock introduced an
expanded classification system, in which the four "seasonal" palettes
were expanded to twelve.
Veronique Henderson and Pat Henshaw
Henderson and Henshaw combine the seasonal analysis method with a
classification system based on contrasts in an individual's coloring, returning
to the previous color study from Doris Pooser in the early 1990s.
Systems of contrast analysis
In an attempt to move away from the
complexities involved in seasonal color systems, some authors have suggested
that it is possible to achieve attractive results by focusing instead on the
level of contrast between a person's skin tone and his or her hair and eye
colors.
Donna Cognac, Essential Colors
The principles of repeating one's contrast
level as well as the color temperatures and intensities that compliment their
personal coloring are combined in a system developed by Donna Cognac. It
relates 16 different color harmonies to the energy of nature's five elements:
Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal. Palettes are various combinations of these
5 elemental energies. For example, any palette with a very bright appearance or
a very warm overall color temperature is a Fire palette to one degree or
another and is consistent with the essence of the wearer.
Joanne Nicholson and Judy Lewis-Crum, Color
Wonderful (1986)
Another method of analysis was developed by
color consultants Joanne Nicholson and Judy Lewis-Crum, whose 1986 book Color
Wonderful explains their classification
system, which is based on the amount of contrast in an individual's coloring.
Alan Flusser, Dressing the Man (2002)
Flusser lays out two relatively simple
rules:
The degree of contrast between the wearer's
skin and his / her hair and eyes should be reflected in the degree of contrast
between the colors in his / her clothes. "[The] great variety of shadings
... can be scaled down into two basic formats: contrast or muted. If your hair
is dark and your skin light, you have a contrast format. If your hair and skin
tone are similar, your complexion would be considered muted or tonal." A
high-contrast individual should dress in clothes with highly contrasting colors.
The result will be that the "high-contrast format [of the clothing]
actually invites the eye to look at [the wearer's] face because of its
compatibility with his [dark] hair and light skin." By contrast,
"Encasing a low-intensity complexion within a higher-contrast setting
dilutes the face's natural pigmentation in addition to distracting the viewer's
eye."
One or more of the tones in the skin and
hair should be repeated in an article of clothing near the face. One option is
to repeat the color of the hair in a jacket, tie or scarf, in order to
"frame" the face: "The obvious choice of suit shade would be
that which repeated his hair color, thereby drawing the observer's attention to
what was bracketed in between--in other words, his face." Flusser uses a
series of photos of models to demonstrate that it is possible to achieve
attractive results by repeating the eye color or the skin tones in clothing
articles that are close to the face, and that it is even more desirable to use
several colors in the clothes to match some combination of skin / hair / eye
colors.
Color psychology
Color psychology, an extension of color
analysis, is a valuable tool that is used in conjunction with the analysis of
colors. In reality, the psychological connotation of a color has nothing to do
with its effect upon the color of one's face or the results in the mirror. It
is necessary to consider both the physical impact color has upon your
appearance, and the impact a color has upon the unique persona that one projects
to the world.
Color seasons
Spring
Spring colors are clear and bright, just
like the colors of a spring day. The sun is low on the horizon, so everything
is imbued with the golden hues of the sun. The trees and grass have not yet
matured, so they are tinged with yellow undertones and are a bright spring
green color. Distinct yellow undertones impart a vibrant, electric appearance
to everything. The colors of this season are truly like a spring bouquet of
flowers enveloped in bright spring green leafy foliage: red-orange and coral
tulips, bright yellow jonquils and daffodils.
Summer
The colors of this season are muted with
blue undertones (think of looking at the scenery through a dusky summer haze).
Late summer blossoms, a frothy ocean and white beaches are seen everywhere.
Baby blue, slate blue, periwinkle, powder pink, seafoam green and slate grey
are typical Summer colors.
Autumn
Autumn colors are virtually
indistinguishable from the rich, earthy colors of the season for which they
were named. They are as golden-hued as a fall day, and it is impossible to
mistake them for any other season. Typical colors from the palette include pumpkin,
mustard yellow, burnt orange, brown, camel, beige, avocado green, rust and
teal. Autumn colors are perennially popular, because they bring a feeling of
warmth and security. The painting by Millais personifies the color of autumn.
Winter
The colors from this season are clear and
icy, like a winter's day; always with subtle blue undertones. To name a few:
hollyberry red, emerald and evergreen, royal blue, magenta and violet. Winter
inspires pictures of winter berries, pine green conifers and black and white
huskies racing through snow.
Source From Wikipedia
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