The Anti-Color Analysis Thread

[FrugalFashionista]

This is a safe space for anyone who
(tick any that apply)

• wants to burn her scarves
• will scream if someone goes semantic on 'Oyster'
• does not want to be made to wear lipstick
• is not looking forward to the next Kettlewell catalogue
• does not identify with any particular season
• will never ever do a style day
• has self-diagnosed Stockholm syndrome
• is tired of the tireless marketing drum of color analysis on S&B

I realize I may be endorsing an unpopular view but this thread here is for anyone who does not want to discuss color.

C'mon, am I the only one?
Raise your hand...

PS I will send a crappy lipstick personally chosen for me by a color analyst to the first taker. It's a shimmery peachy tone that has no staying power and streaks your teeth. But don't worry, it will make you look a million times better.

You do though Hopefully

I could probably fix my own car if I read up on the subject. There again I might fuck it up entirely and end up spending 5x the amount I would have if I'd sought professional advice from the outset.

Or are mechanics disingenuous too?

I'm a person who likes a system generally but I'm suspicious when they are rigidly applied - it's hard to put human beings and nature in a box. There are a lot more things you can do with colour than seasons and there will be overlaps and misfits. It's a classification system that's for guidance - you will always find some spoons in the fork drawer (as my geology lecturer said).

The HOC thing is a fairly idiot proof system and it's helpful to people like me who want to look well presented but are clueless as to how to get there. I've done it, I found the day helpful. I don't think I'll burn all my non-palette clothes, but it's a short cut for me. I have a co-ordinated wardrobe and a bit more confidence about it, I didn't have that before.

There is lots of gush and jargon (like Weight watchers) but it's essentially a workable system. If you don't need the help or don't care, lucky you. Right, I'll get off your thread

Hardly analogous there Amber

We will just have to agree to differ....

I think what Amber meant is that a lot of people are happy to pay someone to do what they don't think they have the skills or the time to do themselves.

If you think you have the skills and time to analyse your own colours, then great. Others don't.

And as QueenC pointed out above, this thread is called the anti-colour analysis thread. mil you are just anti-HoC so I'm not sure this is the right thread for you?

I think Amber's analogy is quite a good one. I have about as much sense of direction as the average lemming and can barely tell left from right. For me, the sat nav is one of the best inventions ever. My husband, on the other hand, never uses it but at least he doesn't go round telling me I should be able to work it out for myself.

The car analogy doesn't work because a car is a machine, and there is a right way of fixing it. The mechanic knows the right way (and has the tools, etc) so you pay them to do it for you. You could try to read up and do it yourself, but generally that would be very inefficient (and not something many people are interested in).

The thing about which colours 'suit' you is that there is no right way. It's entirely subjective and ideas about what looks good change. What people are being very negative about and calling 'washed out' or whatever may not always be undesirable. The effect you get from wearing particular colours now may not be the effect you actually want next year. That isn't because your colours have changed or something; it's because your entirely subjective taste (which is always influenced by stuff in the world around you) will and does change.

Of course, the colour consultancy industry will attempt to persuade you that it is because of an objective change in you, but that's because their business model is based on the idea that what colours suit people is entirely objective.

The point I'm making is that actually we could all learn how to do anything if we went to the effort and/or expense of studying it. However, for varied reasons, people tend to choose professionals.

I would no more hand my car over to a stranger off the internet who had read a few articles on stripping an engine than I would get a colour diagnosis when they hadn't even seen me.

The thing about which colours 'suit' you is that there is no right way. It's entirely subjective and ideas about what looks good change. What people are being very negative about and calling 'washed out' or whatever may not always be undesirable. The effect you get from wearing particular colours now may not be the effect you actually want next year. That isn't because your colours have changed or something; it's because your entirely subjective taste (which is always influenced by stuff in the world around you) will and does change.

Totally disagree and so will anyone else who has had their colours done properly.

As for the analogy, what about going to a hairdresser then? Most people wouldn't do that themselves, it's just as subject to fashions as colours are and, like colour analysis, it's about how you look. Why is colour analysis so different?

And my understanding is that HoC consultants go on a two week residential training course. Not two days.

Hairstyle fashions change. Look back at the many haircuts you've had in your life. How many of them did you think really suited you at the time? Do you still agree?

I got to the hairdresser because they have a technical skill in cutting hair. A hair cut can still be technically well done, even if I consider it awful.

The whole 'one true way' thing when applied to something a subjective as taste and fashion is just nonsensical. I'm glad people are (currently) happy with the colours they've had done. But I don't for a second believe that those colours are objectively the only colours that suit that person. Because what suits or what works depends entirely on the end you're trying to achieve.

You say that because fashions change, it's not ok to pay a colour consultant to tell you which colours look best.

But you also say that although fashions change, it is ok to pay a hairdresser to give you whichever hairstyle looks best.

I don't agree with the first statement because I think it's about colours next to your face (which doesn't change) more than it's about colours next to each other. I just don't see how you can think "colours = fashion = no" and "hair = fashion = yes".

Strangely enough i thought to myself yesterday after reading through the current s&b threads on colour analysis...who says what colours you can and cant wear? I think its a bit of a marketing nonsense really. Even if you dont suit a colour, you can still wear it but not next to your face.

green that's completely true, and I wouldn't argue with you. The idea with moving some/most/all of your wardrobe over to being in one palette isn't just that it flatters your face, but that it also all mixes and matches without any effort and the whole effect is more expensive/harmonious/together/whatever word you choose to describe a cohesive wardrobe. But I know plenty of my clients only use the information they get from a colour analysis to choose tops and scarves, and continue to wear black trousers or whatever on their bottom halves - these are, on the whole, clients who can afford to have a bigger wardrobe of clothes, so they get the mix and match effect plus having some extras. I also know there are some combinations that work that don't stay within one season, and I would never tell anyone they couldn't ever do those combinations again (black and camel springs to mind as an example).

BTW, I try to avoid telling my clients what season they are - the aim is that they see it for themselves, as it makes the whole thing much more useful for them, and they are far more likely to be able to use the knowledge in the future - it also gets rid of any arguing at the season they come out as, as they have seen it themselves rather than me talking them into it, iykwim. Obviously some clients do really struggle to see it, but even then it's often as much the other people in the class (who don't have a vested interest in the answer) who they listen to regarding which colours look good and bad as me. A large part of my fee, if you like, is for owning 144 different coloured drapes and knowing which order to hold them up in, owning a space in which to do it which is neutral and has good natural light, and being able to advise on how to use the colours afterwards (a crucial bit of the whole thing IMO). And owning a million different scary 80s lipsticks, obv .

The difference with hairdressers is that I can't cut my own hair. Even if I learned the skills of hairdressing, I wouldn't be able to perform it properly on the back of my own head. I don't go to the hairdresser for help choosing a hairstyle; I go so they can execute it.

Colours next to your face, and even which colours 'go' together is not absolute. 'flattering' is a construct that necessarily shifts with fashion. (See all that prior advice about bootcut jeans and body shapes; ideas about what flatters a body change because our ideas about what kind of look is desirable changes).

So I absolutely don't believe that I would consider the same colour 'flattering' to my skin tone in 10 years that I would now because my taste would have shifted. Taste I always a construct, and 'flattering' is a judgement caught up with taste.

I don't think I agree that 'flattering' shifts in same the way that fashions do. Skinny jeans may be in fashion right now but I still don't think a lot of us (myself included) look good in them. That's one thing Trinny and Susannah got right, in my opinoin.

For the record, I don't actually have any problem with people paying someone to help them find colours that they think look nice on them. what I take issue with is the claims to objective truth, rather than a judgement of taste.

People may well feel they don't know what suits them, what goes together, and want someone to help with that. Doing so may make them feel much more confident in choosing clothes and happier about themselves. That's all great. It's like going to a personal shopping service or something.

It's just a problem if you want to claim that judgements about what colour flatters a particular skin tone, or what colours look nice together are anything more than a matter of taste. Or that taste is somehow unchanging. Colours that we now think of as hideous together, have been considered a wonderful combination in the past (and may well be again). And the combinations we think of as tasteful now will be thought of as hideous in the future.

Just as in the 1980s fluffy perms were considered desirable and flattering and wonderful. A hairdresser may execute a fluffy perm brilliantly on my head tomorrow, but no one is going to consider it flattering because attitudes to what kind of hair looks good on people have changed.

No. Fluffy perms were fashionable and fun for a while but even then we didn't think they were flattering. We weren't that daft

People did think they were flattering and thought they looked wonderful. We look back and think we were deluded, but people in the 70s thought they looks brilliant in giant collars and brown cord flares. we just like to think of the movement of time as progress, and that we now 'know better' but that's just hubris.

The stuff being claimed to be objectively flattering right now, will be the stuff subsequent generations laugh about how deluded we were over.

I'm not being entirely serious and I do agree with some of what you're saying but I still don't think the concept of what's flattering changes as rapidly as fashion does. I think we often know that some things don't look good look but we wear them anyway because everyone else is doing it or just because it's nice to have a change or because it's fun.

I did know you weren't entirely serious. And I agree that flattering doesn't change as rapidly as fashion does. Fashion changes weekly these days! Nonetheless, it does change. It is still a subjective judgement caught up with wider ideas about taste.

Yes, I agree with that.

I'm with Raising Steam. Not the be all and end all but I found it helpful, especially in getting a palette that works together, despite being very varied. And my consultant was, I think, successful in choosing the best season of colours for me.