yes, I have thought that!

When I started experimenting with more colours I thought a lot of the deeper and brighter summer colours suited me but just needed a bit more oomph than the classic summer palette. And I really can’t do sugar-pink!

I am still experimenting! As I have some warm elements in my colouring it can detract from really ’seeing’ what a colour does for my skin tone. I must admit that I do look like a classic ‘deep’, but I know that the deepest and darkest colours of the ‘deep’ palettes make me look washed out or accentuate the dark circles under my eyes.

Thank you for your advice!

Kate

I ‘had my colours done’ several years ago and was told I was an Autumn, leaning towards the deeper end of the scale. However, my interest in colour theory has led me to the same conclusion as you – that without draping someone, and seeing them in different colours, you really cannot tell (unless you have a really excellent eye for colour) what season they are, regardless of their hair or eye colour. My aunt has deep Mediterranean skintone, bright blue-grey eyes and very dark hair, yet she is a clear (bright) spring, not a winter. Another woman I know has bright red hair, emerald green eyes and olive skin, and she is a clear (bright) winter, no question. A good friend of mine would appear to be a classic winter, with pale skin, dark ash hair and brown eyes, yet the palette which suits her best is cool summer. Winter colours simply overpower her delicate complexion rather than enhance it. Lucky for her she has an amazing eye for colour and has always known what suits her best!

My mother, two sisters and I are all winters, with variations in our colouring. My mother has salt and pepper hair (which was once deep auburn-brown), grey eyes and pale skin which has got a little sallow as she’s got older. She can wear the cool winter colours and really looks stunning in the true winter colours like emerald green, real scarlet and hot pink. My one sister has very dark hair with no red tones (but she was blonde as a child and still had golden tones in her teens, only going very dark in her twenties), pale golden-olive skin and bright hazel eyes, and she is definitely a deep winter – she can carry off the deep brown, rust and deep green of a deep autumn, as well as her ‘uniform’ of black and white, almost all shades of red but especially brilliant scarlet, royal purple, hot pink and charcoal grey. My other sister has milk-white skin (with freckles), green hazel eyes and medium brown hair which gets a reddish tinge in the sun (which she hates). She just misses being a clear (bright) spring: the clear winter colours are just that bit better, especially the icy greys, white, black, icy aqua, icy pink, lemon yellow and the bright and true shades of green and blue, including emerald.

As for me, despite being analysed as a deep autumn, I don’t think I’m even ‘deep’. My skintone is very pale true olive – that sort of tone which looks colourless or grey-green without a tan, and I’m very pale. People always think I’m dark-skinned because of the tone, but I need a very pale rose-beige foundation (Clinique Soft Bisque is what I wear at the moment and that is the best match I’ve found). My hair is naturally very dark brown with an auburn cast – it often looks almost black in photographs though. My eyes are really odd as they are deep olive with a navy-grey rim around the iris, and have very blue-white whites. Most people assume my eyes are brown because they are so dark but look closely and they’re a solid true olive colour. I began experimenting with different colours a few months ago, taking photographs of myself on my phone as I find it easier to ’see’ what a colour does to my skin in a photograph than in a mirror. I was amazed by what I saw, as in the deep autumn colours I’d worn for years the contrast between my skin, hair and eyes appeared low, and I had to admit that I looked a bit – bland. In winter colours however, the contrast in my colouring really shows, the yellow-green tinge to my skin disappears and my eyes look very clear and bright. After much research, I realised that any colour which is too dark or murky drains me, so deep winter is out. Dark brown especially makes me look very sallow, whereas my deep winter sister looks great in dark chocolate brown. My best colours appear to be the clearest winter colours, but SLIGHTLY softened. I can’t wear pillar-box red as my mother and deep winter sister can, but a slightly softer true red or blue-red is fine. I can’t wear very intense emerald green or royal blue but take the shade down a notch in intensity and it’s fine. I can wear hot pinks, rose pinks, magenta and fuschia, icy pink, and icy greys. I can wear reds from watermelon to berry red, but any darker or bluer and I look washed out – burgundy is not for me. I can wear emerald-turquoise but not true hot turquoise, and I can wear true blue and denim blue shades but not the brightest royal blue. Navy is best when it’s slightly soft and greyed or bright and clear, not too dark. Greens must be clear and blue-green and not too dark – teal is about as dark as I can go, but it must be cool, not a warm teal. My best green is a bright blue-green, or apple-green. Purple is hard to wear if you have olive or sallow skin as it tends to bring out the yellow and green tones. My deep winter sister looks great in royal purple, but I don’t. Elderberry and plum are okay although a bit dark – fuschia purple and magenta are really good though. It’s really hard to explain because some colours look fine, and then other colours just make me pop. I can wear the darker winter colours but they just don’t look as good as the brights. My eyes lose their sparkle, my skin looks muddier, I look fuzzier and less sharp around the edges somehow. I would say that despite my apparent ‘deep’ colouring, I need clarity rather than depth in my colours. I am not certain whether I’m a clear winter or even a cool winter. I find it hard to tell the difference to be honest! A deep winter is easy as there’s more warmth and depth to many of the colours, but the difference between cool and clear winter colours is less clear to me. I get the impression from what you have written that the cool winter palette is the closest to the original (or true) winter palette – so I guess I am correct in saying that my mum is a cool winter, able to wear the brightest true scarlet and emerald green as well as the truly cool colours of the winter palette. In which case, I am not a cool winter, so I must be a clear winter! I seem to remember in another post you wrote about clear colours, and wrote that there is a fine line between the two clear seasons, one leaning slightly towards a warmer palette, the other to a cooler palette, which again would suggest that my palette is clear winter.

My brother, who has dark ash-brown hair now peppered with silver and very dark brown eyes, and a very similar skintone to mine (olive in tone but even more deathly pale and delicate), I’ve found impossible to colour analyse. He doesn’t have the contrast or brightness in his colouring to be a winter, but is way too cool to be an autumn. He seems to be a summer! I’m guessing he would be a soft summer as that’s closest to autumn. His best colours are cool but muted, and he can wear cool brown very well, as well as burgundy and plum shades, navy, grey and powder blues, but he also suits a neutral khaki-green colour. He does not suit the bright winter colours at all, they make him disappear. It’s interesting as our father was DEFINITELY a deep autumn, with black hair, deep olive skin and deep brown eyes, and mum is a cool winter, so we all have the genes for deep, warm or cool colouring, yet we all have different colouring and suit different colours best. My brother has the mutedness of autumn mixed with a very cool complexion.

Anyway…..I have rambled on and on! I just find it so fascinating, and I think that there is a lot of incorrect information out there which confuses people, and even colour analysts can get it wrong. A friend had her colours done years ago and was told she was a summer – she isn’t. She’s a soft autumn, no question. I know soft summer and soft autumn are very similar, but having seen how great she looked in a soft lime coloured cardi as opposed to a pale sugar-pink sweater, she’s autumn, no way a summer.

Kate X

Andrea

When you say that Deep Winter can pull off bright, bold makeup colors (I’m thinking lipstick, here) is this mainly due to issues like contrast/depth of their coloring?

What about women who claim to “need” bold colors, due to being extremely pale complexioned or to possessing a low contrast between their hair and skin color?

I guess I’m wondering, more specifically, if this category of women–perhaps summers of some kind–are incorrect in assuming that the best solution to this tendency of looking “washed out” is always a deep, bright, rich colored lip?

Thanks for your thoughts!!

Best,
Andrea

“There is no True Winter that has to just stick to dark colours, IMO. The icy lights are incredibly clearing to that skin. “Jewel tones” could be any Winter, but mostly True and Bright.”
OK. I should probably start looking for some icy colored shirts.

She has soft dark ash brown hair, ice-rose skin, so fair you can see the veins (blue veins), and very dark but bright amber eyes.

Thanks,
Rebecca

Ah, OK then.

“My feeling about wearing green only extends to face makeup, ay? I’m sure you knew that, but I thought I’d be sure. If the green isn’t perceived as green by the viewer, then it can be great – as a way to get the intensity of black but soften it a bit, like Clinique’s Egyptian eyeliner on a True Winter.”

Yeah, I noticed after posting that my intended meaning probably wasn’t clear enough; I meant that you weren’t fond of it in makeup. Sorry about that.

(I’ll address the rest later)

http://karlasugar.blogspot.com/2009/01/nars-blush-recap.html

and look at Estee Lauder DoubleWear lipstick in Plumberry.

We’re getting too nitty gritty now. There are shades upon shades or rust and pine green. As hard as it is to believe that skin could react so strongly to such slight degrees of change, there is no doubt when you see it happening. I KNOW you would see it instantly because you’re so finely tuned to this already.
My feeling about wearing green only extends to face makeup, ay? I’m sure you knew that, but I thought I’d be sure. If the green isn’t perceived as green by the viewer, then it can be great – as a way to get the intensity of black but soften it a bit, like Clinique’s Egyptian eyeliner on a True Winter.
I get a more cool feeling from your appearance, but I learned long ago that guessing is one big booby-trap.
There is no True Winter that has to just stick to dark colours, IMO. The icy lights are incredibly clearing to that skin. “Jewel tones” could be any Winter, but mostly True and Bright.

As a continuation of my last post, I think jewel tones in general balance me out the best; they’re dark enough to balance out my coloring but also offer color of their own, which I consider to be much-needed on my part (I think this could be part of why they look better on me than straight black). So…what is left for me is to determine whether I am a True Winter who just needs to stick with dark colors or actually a Dark Winter. Guess I need to go find some dark, warm shades to try.

“So, in clothes or makeup, it’s not so much warm colours in general, as how warm? All the colours for this group are warmed to a slight degree and muted to a slight degree, but the colours remain more cool than warm. Which shades were you thinking of?”
Augh, I never answered this. >.> I have warm shades left over from when I thought I was a warm season; rich neutral brown, pine green, and a rusty color are a few of them. I think the green comes closest to wearable, and the rust *might* work, but the rich brown, lovely as it is, doesn’t cut it on me. I know how you feel about wearing green in general; that aside, am I trying to go too warm with those shades?

Oh, boy. It will be February before I find time. Deep Winter is Sci\ART’s Dark Winter. Primarily Silver, so much of True Winter’s will work (article on True Winter Jewelry at 12B). Antique can be good too, not unlike Dark Autumn (article at 12B) but a little more simple.

The eye pattern can be HIGHLY suggestive of season. The eye colour is roughly suggestive. Some examples might be
- the yellow sun around the pupil suggest Spring – a colour thing
- random brown smudges and flecks suggest Autumn, moving towards Winter as the brown becomes less random and more tightly organized around the pupil – a colour pattern
- spokes from edge to edge of the iris suggest Winter – a line geometry

Within each category, there are many examples for each season. The main colour itself is probably the least relevant feature. The clues are in the details.

So to what degree can eyecolor suggest season? I’ve noticed that you have mentioned possible Spring-leaning for a couple of people based on yellow in the eye. Also, do you adhere to the idea that patterns in the eye can indicate one’s season?