Do you wing it with a few tests, or do you fork out for a stylist?
By
Teresa Wojcik
Published on
August 20, 2024
Seasonal Colour Analysis is a complex system of specific palettes that suit particular eye, skin, and hair combinations. Generally, SCA is left to the professional stylists, whose clientele include celebs, TV personnel, politicians, and rich people, let's be honest. For most regular people, spending extra money (upwards of a few hundred dollars, typically) is not something most have in their back pocket to just drop on something abstract like "knowing" what their "colours" "are".
If you are new to colour theory, there is a lot of information to wrap your head around. It can be quite confusing. Have a look at my previous post for a quick overview.
The big test is not whether or not YOU like the colours (I was wedded to black and warm neutrals, which were very hard to let go of!!), but whether or not the colours like YOU. Colours in the right palette will make you look healthy, vibrant and confident, whereas colours in the wrong palette will make you look tired.
Actually, it's almost easier to work out which colours NOT to wear. The wrong colours will wash you out, bring out redness in your face, highlight bags under your eyes (rude!), and generally make you seem unfocused. BUT it does take time to train your eye to recognise the 'right' colours.
Do I have to pay?? Aren't there plenty of free tests? Why, yes, there are. And here are some of my favourites (DISCLAIMER: by favourite, I mean tests which were straightforward, and of course got my colours right. Individual results may vary, though!):
• Proprofs
• Colorwise: Do this one on a computer with a high-quality image of yourself!
All of the above tests have correctly recognised me as a cool, muted (soft) Summer. But honestly, I spent YEARS doing these tests and coming up with all sorts of results. Maybe I am better able to answer the questions now that I know what I am looking for - or, better able to know when the tests are wrong??
So! Do you wing it with a few tests, or do you get a stylist to tell you definitively? It's completely over to you, your budget and how serious you are about wanting to commit. If you go the route of online free tests, I recommend trying a few and seeing if they all agree. Then maybe start with some basic, non-expensive items to experiment. After years of humming and harring, I took the plunge and invested in a stylist. It was scary because it was a LOT of money, but the amount it has saved me over the past year in avoiding the wrong colours, and being able to put together a coherent wardrobe almost from scratch has more than made up for it. It also gave me confidence that I was getting it right at the start, until I could recognise my good colours by sight. It did take time.
The one thing having my colours done didn't save me though, was time! I have spent hundreds of hours scanning sites and scouring stores (I admit, I am obsessed!! It was a serious hobby for a few months there), trying to find the right colours in items that I actually liked. Which is why I decided to create Your Season, so there would be a place where all the colours were already organised for you!
Head on over to the catalogues and check it out for yourself!
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