Improvability Blog

Colour Analysis in a Box

Offer ends finally on Monday 19th December

You can still save up to GBP 350 on my fabulously easy self-study training course, Colour Analysis in a Box .

• Choose from 4 affordable options
• Payment plans available

Start 2012 in style (if you’ll pardon the pun!)

After Monday, the price goes back up to the full amount.

Today I received an email from a lady who had bought a colour swatch wallet from us at retail. I can only conclude that she’s either been given duff advice by the consultant who did her colours or she’s never had her colours done.

What do you think?

“I received my Autumn colour cards today, thank you I am delighted with them. I have one question.

There is one card which I didn’t think were Autumn colours, it is grey, purple/pink & dark blue. There is nothing on the back of it.

Am hoping they are Autumn colours because I love dark blue but the grey is throwing me? Thanks.” Petronella

Dear Petronella,

The three colours on that card are Autumn Grey, Muted Violet and Marine Navy. 

These are all accepted as Autumn colours by most image professionals but, in my opinion (from 31 years’ experience), most Autumns shouldn’t be caught dead in grey!

For instance, I’ve just seen Mary Portas on TV today meeting with David Cameron and she’s wearing charcoal grey.  Awful.  I nearly spat my sandwich out at how dull, dour and dank she looked.

Sandwiched between bright satsuma-coloured hair and the collar of her dull grey jacket, her skin took on a ghastly (or should that be ‘ghostly’?) paleness which, in turn, made her coral lipstick look cheap and tacky.

The poor darling looked like she’d just come off the factory floor and I half expected Miriam Karlin to leap out from behind the PM and shout ‘Everybody out!”  **

She probably thought that as she was meeting the Prime Minister she should look a bit more serious and wear a ‘business’ colour.

From the 3 acceptable business colours in the UK – black, grey and navy – why on earth didn’t she choose navy?  Ah yes, of course! Because for someone of her personality type, navy would have been soooo boring.  Sorry, Mary!

She could have considered aubergine or mulberry, something with a distinct warmth to it…

But if she was so determined on grey, why didn’t she brighten it up with a colourful necklace, or a scarf, or a…?

But as usual, I digress.

If you don’t like it, then don’t wear it

So, Petronella, if you hate grey, then ignore the swatch in the Autumn wallet and don’t wear grey. And if it still offends you, then cover it over or rip the ruddy thing out!

And that goes for any of the colours in the fan.  The fan or wallet is not meant to be a definitive list of the only colours that every Autumn on the planet can wear.

In my own Winter fan of 30 swatches, there are 3 colours that I wear all the time, with perhaps 4 or 5 others that I have one or two items of clothing in.

And there are 12 colours in there that I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole – because they make me look and feel hideous.

Any attempt to drop 6.5 billion people on the planet into 4 seasonal boxes… Any expectation that one quarter of the world’s population will be able to wear the exact same 30 colours is utterly nonsensical, ridiculous and reprehensible.

And the perpetrators of such lunatic thinking should be taken out and flogged.

If you’re a glutton for punishment and want to read even more about my very strong opinions on this subject, then take a gander at my blog article ‘Putting clients into boxes should be a hanging offence’

Find out what suits you, only you, and no-one else but you

I strongly recommend, Petronella, that you consult an image professional who puts the client first, who can work with you to find out which of these 30 colours are the best ones for you, only you, and no-one else but you, and also which ones you should avoid like the plague.

An excellent image consultant should then also show you how to use the dratted wallet – this is usually the bit that so many consultants miss out.

They’ll drape you to within an inch of your life, ramble on about what they think, shove a wallet in your hand and kick you out of the door, leaving you – you poor, trusting, innocent lamb – to assume that this tiny little book somehow magically contains all the colours you personally will ever need.

Aaaargh! It’s a big fat lie.

This moronic treatment of clients is exactly why I get on my soapbox like this, and why I spend ages making sure that any poor soul who decides to train with me ‘gets’ this deep down in the muscle, where it hurts.

So, from someone who actually cares whether you like the colours in your swatch palette and who won’t rest until YOU feel fabulous in the very best of them, here are the exact tips I give to my own clients.

How to use your colour swatch wallet

The brain cannot retain shades, tones, tints or hues of colour so having the swatches with you as a reminder will make shopping so much easier.

The idea is not to match exactly the item you are considering purchasing with the swatches. You will never do this absolutely, so please don’t waste your time.

The aim of the exercise is to see if the colour of the garment you’re considering parting with money for looks good alongside the colours in the wallet. Hold the fabric across the complete range of colours to assess this properly:

• Does it look as though it belongs with the colours in the wallet? Then go and try it on!
• Or does it look completely out of place? Then put it back on the rail and save your hard-earned money

You can also use this exact same concept to find the right shade of lipstick, jewellery, make-up and hair colour (compare it with the hair colour samples that your hairdresser will show you!)

Before you go shopping with your new wallet, practise at home on what you already have in your wardrobe – both good and not-so-good. This will give you total confidence in your swatches.

Does that help, Petronella?

Let me know.

** Everybody out!

The Rag Trade was a British television sitcom from the early Sixties which centred around a small clothing workshop in London. The cast included Barbara Windsor and Sheila Hancock, and Miriam Karlin played the militant shop steward Paddy Fleming who was always ready to call her workers out on strike; her catchphrase was “Everybody out!”

Before you start regaling me because of how old you’re assuming I am, I first saw this series via the re-runs in the late Seventies!