Hi everyone.
It’s Justine.
When you hear people saying “I am a deep winter”
or “I’m a soft summer”,
they’re referring to something called the seasonal colour analysis. It’s a tool meant to help you find out which type you are, which season.
And for each season there is a pretty fine set of colours that will,
in theory, suit you well. So you can take that set of colours
and build your entire wardrobe around it.
That tool is in fact meant to simplify your life.
In a nutshell. So here is how it works
and what limitations I see to that system.
The “4 seasons” method.
At the beginning the method is super simple.
You first look at your undertone.
I’ve done a video on how to find out what your undertone is.
So if you missed it, I’ll link it below and here in the corner.
Basically, very quickly,
you’re cool if your veins here are blue
and if silver suits you better than gold.
And the other way around, you’re warm
if your veins here look rather green, greenish,
and if gold suits you better than silver.
Very quickly.
Let’s assume for now that you’re not neutral, you’re either
really cool or really warm.
Once you know your undertone, the next step
is to look at your features here.
So the natural colour of your hair
and the color of your eyes. You take that as a whole
and overall
you’ll be somewhere between very light,
blonde with blue eyes and very dark or
deep, as this method calls it. Light-deep.
Deep would be black hair
black eyes. Okay?
We have four parameters right now. We have cool, warm
and we have light, deep. Matching those parameters gives us four seasons.
On two axes we have:
summer and winter on the cool side,
spring and autumn on the warm side.
Why are summer and winter on the cool side?
Think about in terms of colour palette. In winter
everything looks pale because of the weaker sunlight.
In summer the sun is so strong
that the colours seem bleached out.
So winter and summer are cool seasons in terms of colours.
On the warm side, in spring the warm sun
is coming back.
And in fall the leaves look gold and firehead.
So spring and fall are the warm seasons.
And then the difference is whether it’s the light
or a deep version. And that gives you the difference between summer and winter
and between spring and autumn. If you clearly fit
into one of those four seasons, your case is very simple.
Let’s say you’re a spring that’s light and warm.
Any colour that’s light
and has a warm undertone in it,
that’s a bit of yellow, a bit of orange, a bit of dark brown
will suit you fantastically. If you’re a winter
then a deep colour that has a cool undertone in it,
so, adding blue, will suit you well.
Very simple. The problems start when
you’re not clearly one of those four types. What if
for instance, your hair is ash blonde
really really light, almost white, very blonde.
But your eyes are dark brown and not light blue.
So that would make you a mix of summer and fall.
And that’s impossible, in theory.
Moving on from 4 to 12 seasons.
The initial method with four seasons
was missing one extremely important thing and that’s
the chroma.So we have the undertones
from cool to warm, that’s actually a matter of colour,
because in cool we add blue,
in warm we add yellow and red.
The next parameter we already had, that’s the value.
From light to deep.
Which is actually called dark in colour theory but in this method is called deep, for some reason. We’re adding
one more line which is the chroma,
and that moves between bright
and muted which this method calls
clear to soft. So the chroma is the level of brightness, of intensity of the colour.
The pure blue, for instance, is very bright, very clear.
If you add orange to it,
its complementary colour, you will look more muted,
like if you were turning off the brightness of the colour. The value, on the other side, is playing with white and black.
The value is lighter if you add white and it gets darker, deeper if you add black.
So in the more recent methods of colour analysis
we still look at your undertone,
we still look at your value, but now we also look at your chroma. And so instead of having
4 simplified seasons now we have 12.
Here is how it works. Out of the six words
that you see here, choose
which one is
dominant on you when you look at yourself
in a mirror.
I think it’s not easy
if you don’t work with colours on a daily basis but that’s
your first
characteristic. What strikes most
when looking at yourself, or have somebody to do it for you.
And then you choose a secondary characteristic
so it’s called, out of those six words.
If your first word was not
cool or warm, then the second characteristic
has to be either cool or warm, because we need the undertone to be somewhere in there. And whether your undertone is placed first or second on your little list
matters too. Your season, according to this method,
can then be seen here. That’s the official table.
And I also link the sources in the description below the video.
To making it confusing, they’re using the words muted
and soft, but you can just assume that they’re synonyms.
This list of 12 seasons is less
intuitive than the only 4 seasons, clearly.
But it’s more precise.
For each of those 12 seasons now there is a set of
colour chips that you can purchase.
It’s a colour palette of things that will suit
your specific type and you can build your entire wardrobe around
the colours that your type gives you.
For whom this method does not work?
In my opinion there’re still quite a few cases that are not
covered by this template, by this table. The
first case is: what if your undertone is
is not cool or warm but neutral?
You have many colour options for your wardrobe
they’re not represented in there. Then if your hair is grey,
which happens to everyone.
Sooner or later. Then you will be
automatically a winter, according
to that template. But you can still have a warm undertone.
So I don’t agree. Another limitation, pretty important one,
is if your skin is not
somewhere between caucasian and light brown
but it’s darker than that or olive, brown
black, somewhere like that,
this template is not gonna be helpful for you either.
Let’s say you have black hair, black eyes
you automatically will be a winter
according to that table. Winter is cool. I can tell you,
quite a few people who’ve very very dark skin
black hair, black eyes,
but their undertone is still warm.
So this whole theory of seasons
is clearly not perfect, right?
It can help some people find out which colour suit them.
Well, it will help some of you but not everyone.
Does not work for everyone and that's a simplified model.
So it can’t work for everyone.
I would recommend that you go and see for yourself.
Look at your undertone, warm or cool, always, that’s super important.
All methods agree.
I agree, that’s really really important for you to know.
And then play on the second parameter on my chart
which was the value, does a lighter or a deeper colour
work better on you or somewhere in between?
Play with that. And then play with the next parameter
on the chart which was the chroma.
Does a brighter or a more muted colour work on you?
Or something in between? When you see one colour
that you like: “Oh! I’m great in that one!”
Try to find out why
And likewise and go from there.
Not everyone fits in a table and that is okay.
Thumbs up if you enjoyed this video. Thank you
very much.
Subscribe to this channel for more fashion videos.
And I see you as every week
on Sunday and Wednesday again. Take care.
Bye-bye!