by Florentina Mossou (The Netherlands)
As an analyst, many people ask me how my own colour journey turned out.
Well, my colour journey was long.
Very long.
Long to the point of ridiculousness.
For ease of reading, I’ve broken up the story in seven short chapters.
Here’s the first part about how I discovered personal colour analysis, on a warm summer’s evening five years ago.
Part One
Do you know the ‘Suddenly I See’ written by KT Tunstall?
I know of nothing that better encapsulates that particular feeling you get sometimes, when you feel the sudden conviction that life could be just marvellous, smoother, more spotless. If only…
I get it when confronted with a particularly beautiful editorial spread in a fashion magazine, with a beautiful photograph. It’s the feeling of being seduced by the possibility of glamour, realistic or not.
Five years ago, I was sub-renting a student room for the summer. I was working on my thesis, and it was hard going. At the time, my chronic fatigue was wreaking havoc on my study progress. I could barely work a couple of hours. But the evenings were my (worry-)free time.
I would cook dinner at quarter past four and made sure the dishes were done at five. After that, I would have no less than six hours to spend with nothing but my own mind and a laptop.
Bliss.
One evening, that ‘particular feeling’ engulfed me and I felt the need to do something.
Anything.
To discover something that would make my life just that bit easier. More effortless.
Call it divine inspiration, if you will.
And being a girl of my age, you know I turned to the Internet. And being a girl in the first place, I started looking for ways that would make me look more beautiful.
And having an inquisitive, scientific mind, I started looking for ways that would make me look more beautiful in a consistent, reproducible way.
Because despite being a pretty girl, I still struggled with what I looked like. Part of it is the ‘I am not good enough’ message we’re all fed – something I would rage over nowadays. But I had acne, and puffiness in my face, and it made me feel insecure.
And so I found this ‘fashion 101’ website, I can’t actually remember what it was called. Nestled in the list of steps that would help me get started was, you guessed it, finding your colour palette.
Suddenly I could see… that here, finally, was something practical and feasible that could help me. All I needed to know was which palette I belonged to.
I felt elated.
My attempt at D-I-Y
At first I tried to D-I-Y it.
I searched the Internet high and low. I looked at a lot of celebrity collages, did all the questionnaires I could find and spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at coloured squares on my screen.
12 Seasons was a lot to get my head around, but it was interesting stuff.
I gathered 12 stereotypes worth of information, and the results were as follows:
I have medium blonde hair, meaning natural golden highlight on an ash base; blue-grey-green eyes (they appear to change colour depending on what I wear).
That means:
I don’t have warm brown hair, so I couldn’t be True Autumn;
Or dark hair, so I couldn’t be a Dark Season or a Winter;
I did not have true golden/coppery hair, so True Spring was not it either;
And did I have clear eyes? I thought not. So no ‘Clear’ Season as well;
The yellow in my hair precluded True Summer;
And my eyes were too dark to make me a Light Season.
That left the Soft Seasons, which was right because my blonde hair with my skin – which is ever-so-slightly olive toned – makes for a very low-contrast look.
And since the veins on the inside of my wrists were on the greener side…
I must be a Soft Autumn.
You can laugh.
You already know what I didn’t… that trying to guess your Season from these stereotypes is pointless.
