The Invisible Woman
This was me.
At least, it reflects how I felt in my 30s and 40s, and I think there are many other people in our image-saturated world who feel invisible…
Unknown.
The mom struggling to have time to have a shower who feels haggard and old before her time.
The business woman who wonders if she is too old to wear red lipstick.
Anyone who thinks their best days might be in the past.
Whilst it is ONLY our physical appearance, and therefore might seem a superficial concern, I think we all want to feel that our appearance is reflecting authenticity.
Reflecting something of who we are inside.
For me, Personal Colour Analysis wasn’t a magic bullet.
However, it was part of a process of discovering who I am, and not trying to be something I am not.
Four Seasons
I have always loved clothes and fashion and spent hours as a kid “designing” clothes and dressing my dolls. As I got older, it didn’t really occur to me that this interest was something that could be explored in a career and so I went to University mainly because that’s what was expected.
In my late teens, my Aunt trained as a Colour Analyst with a well-known company and she analyzed me, my sister, and my Mom as a gift.
I was intrigued and thought it made sense of why certain clothes suited my sister but not me.
Yet I found certain aspects of my season (at the time True Winter) didn’t seem to work for me.
I carried on buying vaguely cool colours – a lot of blue – but probably had as many bad purchases as good and still felt my choices were a bit chaotic.
I wasn’t sure why.
Then followed the wilderness years when I struggled with depression and life was a battle.
My hair silvered in my 20s and I mourned the change in my appearance.
I felt like I had disappeared.
Because the depression was so chronic, for the longest time I didn’t care much about colour and clothing.
Twelve Seasons
But more recently a time finally came when I felt ready to re enter the work force and I knew I wanted a job that involved creativity in some way.
I started to think about Personal Colour Analysis again.
As I explored training options I came across Christine Scaman of 12Blueprints and felt this could be the route in for me.
After chatting to Christine she suggested that I come for a Personal Colour Analysis with her in her studio to give me a feel for what it would involve.
I’ve got to admit I was excited, and the more I read about how colour analysis has evolved over the decades, the more I wondered if I were one of the ‘new’ neutral seasons.
When I was first analysed, there were 4 seasons; Spring and Autumn being the warm ones and Summer and Winter the Cool. Unless you fit being categorised as either truly warm or truly cool, you wouldn’t find your fit in that system.
It is estimated 2/3 people are a blend of warm and cool in differing amounts and Christine’s method of Analysis accommodates that in a 12-season system.
Bright Winter
It was fascinating to learn that I was really a Bright Winter, which made sense of all my fashion faux-pas over the years.
I learnt that as a Bright Winter, I need 3 elements to be present to provide the most harmony between my clothes and the colours that are present in my skin, hair and eyes.
My best colours are ones that are cool with a little bit of Spring’s yellow added.
This gives me a range of colours that are highly pigmented (not dusty or muted). I also wear contrast (light to dark) well.
Bright Winter includes luscious jewel tones like emerald, violet and magenta as well as neutrals like charcoal, navy and white.
It’s hard to articulate the emotions I had when I saw myself in the Bright Winter Luxury drapes for the first time. I sparkled… and I am not a sparkly person!!
I was present and not absent.
My features were defined, with no one feature dominating.
My hair colour, which had been a painful change to come to terms with, was like silvery jewellery, instead of just aging me.
At the end of the day, clothes are just another form of self-expression. I realise they aren’t the ‘be all and end all’ of life, but finding colours that reflect who I really am makes me happy.
Sharing the Gift of Personal Colour Analysis
So many women are dissatisfied with aspects of their appearance, many of which they can’t change.
Instead of seeing the problem as being within the clothing industry or the colour, we tend to blame ourselves.
Fashion becomes another area in which we aren’t enough and don’t match up to an impossible standard of beauty.
The fact is all people are beautiful, in all their amazing diversity.
What I love about Colour Analysis is that it says ‘these are the colours of the beauty and design that are already in you.
Wear clothes that reflect that and you will look your best with no drastic measures required!’ Who wouldn’t want that?
So I leaned into my new season and trained as a Personal Colour Analyst with Christine in Fall 2018.
It was a wonderful experience and I am incredibly grateful to be part of an amazing group of colleagues, all doing something we feel passionate about.
I am so excited to be able to encourage women that they are beautiful in their own skin and their clothing can be an expression of who they are inside.
For the purpose of the analysis, I use specially calibrated test drapes to look at the reactions to colour in your skin, hair and eyes. Once we have established which seasonal group you are in, I show you the wealth of colour combinations opening up for you with the beautiful Luxury Drapes. These will give you the fullest picture of what colour can do in beautiful harmony with your natural colouring.
My studio is based in my home in the beautiful city of Fredericton, which is in New Brunswick, Canada.
With Fredericton’s location being only 50 miles from the Maine border, I am excited to welcome clients from the U.S, as well.
