How To Match Clothes To Colours of your complexion, eyes and lipstick

 



 I went to a colours session in Singapore. The company might have been Color Me Beautiful. 

After paying the booking fee, probably through the American women's association attached to the American Club, or the British Club, or the Australian Club, I recall a group of ladies sitting around a table with the trainer. I now understand that a company from the Americas trained trainers who had a franchise. She got us to hold up scarves of our own and hers, against our faces, and asked everybody to say which colours suited which person.

We also held the colours against our hands, the backs of our hands, our forearms and our inside wrists. I suited bright colours, summer colours. Royal blue, Fuschia, emerald green, magenta, bright, shiny. I think that the spring colours were gentle pastels, pale pink, baby blue, lavendar. The autumn colours were heavily dark but matt and muted, muddy, earthy, russet rusty brown, olive green, beige. The winter colours were pale and palid, or dark, black, navy, chocolate, charcoal grey.

At the end of the session we could buy a set of cards showing all the colours in our set. 

It was no great surprise to me that the colour which suited me best was a vibrant royal blue. I had always been dressed in this colour as a child by my mother. I was so fed up with it that, as a teenager and adult, for years I never wore it. (The same antipathy applied to my school uniform's dark green.)

Redheads

At the University College of London I shared a bedroom with a redhead. She wore pink lipstick. I was really surprised that she did not opt for orange or orangey-red to match her hair. She told me that redheads don't always wear the same colours. She wore pink to go with her blue eyes. She said that redheads with green eyes wore orange. Those with grey eyes wore pale orange.



I loved red hair. But when I tried on red wigs, red hair did not suit my complexion.

At that time I had mousy brown hair. Then came the fashion for white or blonde streaks. I made a mistake. I did not get the sausages around the streaks tight enough and instead of brown with blonde streaks I ended up a messy mottled colour so I used the rest of the bottle to go completely blonde to try that before possibly going back to brown with a brown hair dye. That required another shopping trip. Besides, you were not supposed to redye hair within a month. So meanwhile I went all blonde.

As a brunette I had worn purple a lot, and brown. However, as a blonde, red was wonderfully vibrant. Purple just made my hair look a brassy yellow. 

I could have walked around shopping malls and clothes shops with a colour chart. But it was easier just to hold my hand against the fabric of two adjeacent items hanging up and see which one looked best. Or which one made me smile when I put it on.

If a garment does not suit your colours, the addition of contrasting accessories can make all the difference.

I am now buying hats in assorted colours to finish my outfits.


Red[edit]

Main articles: Red and Shades of red

Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light, consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 625–750 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colors.

Rose[edit]

Main articles: Rose (color) and Shades of rose

Spring Green[edit]

Main articles: Spring green and Shades of spring green

White[edit]

Main articles: White and Shades of white

White is a balanced combination of all the colors of the visible light spectrum, or of a pair of complementary colors, or of three or more colors, such as additive primary colors. It is a neutral or achromatic (without color) color, like black and gray.

Yellow[edit]

Main articles: Yellow and Shades of yellow

Yellow is the color of light with wavelengths predominately in the range of roughly 570–580 nm. In the HSV color space, it has a hue of around 60°. It is considered one of the subtractive primary colors.

See also[edit]

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_analysis_(art)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors_by_shade

About the Author

Angela Lansbury is a travel writer, photographer and speaker.

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