Which season are you? In this series, personal colour consultant Vivian Seo explains the four seasons, provides Asian celebrity inspiration and clears up misconceptions. We kick off with spring
If you spend any amount of time on social media, you may have encountered videos on colour analysis and people going to professionals to find out whether they are a spring, summer, autumn or winter. While using colour analysis to enhance our personal style is something that took off as a trend in recent years, the concept is nothing new. In this four-part series, Tatler takes a deep dive into colour analysis to help you understand the seasons, what you need to know about “your season”, and how their colour palettes can impact your appearance.
To do this, we speak to Vivian Seo, founder of personal colour consultation service Find Your Colour Hong Kong, who breaks down the basics for us, and explains how understanding the concepts of colour analysis can help you enhance your personal style. Here, we start with spring.
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The fundamentals
Much of today’s colour analysis has its roots in a traditional colour theory from the 19th century, which explains colour mixing, contrast and harmony. In 1980s, fashion designer and stylist Suzanne Caygill took this theory as a starting point and developed her own seasonal colour theory for dressing, which still serves as the basis for today’s colour identification system.
The categories of the colour system are therefore divided into spring, summer, autumn and winter, and with sub-categories within each season: light, soft, clear, deep and true.
“To put it simply, your season can determine the mood or vibe of your style,” says Seo, adding that it impacts not only your outfits, but also hairstyle and make-up.
But how do you identify your season? Broadly speaking, those with warm undertones in their skin are spring and autumn types, and those with cooler undertones are summer and winter types. The “season” can also be determined by other factors such as the contrast between your skin tone, hair colour and eye colour.
While all this may sound complex, there’s actually a super-easy way to understand what colours work best for you—hold different coloured fabrics next to your face to see how they affect your appearance. For example, bold shades might add warmth to one person’s complexion while completely washing out someone else’s, making them look tired. Alternatively, pastels might bring out one person’s features, and on another person’s it might look jarring against their’s.
The idea is to learn which colours are the most flattering and work with your personal complexion. It’s also not about ruling out what you shouldn’t wear, but how to choose and pair colours for the best effect—that is, to look seamless and harmonious with the colours you’re wearing, as opposed to looking overpowered by them.