This is a new series of posts in which I will share real questions and answers from client interactions (anonymously, of course). Many people have the same questions and my hope is to create something of a database of answers.
Regarding the Sci/Art system* of Personal Color Analysis as I’ve read of it: the covering of hair during draping. Is that part of the method you use?
I’m curious how that will affect results. I’ve been experimenting with my own drapes, but never with my hair hidden. Recently, I dyed my hair a darker (but still warm) color, and found tonight that many of a darker season’s palette looked more balanced on me than before. While on one level I understand not wanting hair color to confuse the colors we see, I want the colors to look good on me as I typically look. Many of us don’t hide our hair in everyday clothes, so I haven’t reconciled that with hiding it during a draping.
I do cover hair in almost all my analyses, and 100% of the time if it isn’t natural. There is a fundamental misunderstanding when someone says that certain colors look good with their hair one way but not another. The misunderstanding is that the goal in choosing a color should be to make a superficial harmony based on your overtones. (i.e. “This goes with my hair”) This will be obviously wrong to the many cool or cool neutral people who have brown eyes and hair. Wearing most browns and colors with a warm, earthy undertone brings out blotchiness and flaws which are not present in the correct (cooler) colors. Other brown eyed brunettes, however, wear these colors with no detriment to their skintone. Why is that? They have apparently similar overtones and completely different undertones. Yet, because the concept of looking at your hair, skin, and eye colors to determine what colors work seems so simple, the idea persists. You can find more information on undertone vs overtone in my colleague Terry Wildfong’s article here: http://yournaturaldesign.com/what-is-under-my-overtone/
Modern color analysis involves observing the simultaneous contrast effects on the face caused by colors with different qualities and neutralizing them to reveal the most flawless, youthful and healthy skin appearance. To do so, we must eliminate color noise during the analysis, such as that from hair color, makeup, etc. Once we know the area of color space that produces the best skin appearance, we can then evaluate hair and cosmetic colors. After all, these too, are colors worn on and around the face, and should adhere to the guidelines set forth during the analysis. It should go without saying, but natural color, being cut from the same genetic cloth as the skin, is always perfect. That said, women have many valid reasons for dying their hair. This can be either an enhancing and beautiful thing to do or disastrous depending on the viability of the color chosen.
The secret to your natural coloring and most becoming appearance lies in your undertone. The only way I know of to discover your undertone with certainty is to drape you with specific, calculated drape colors in a neutral grey environment with controlled lighting, and a complete reduction of color noise, including that of the hair color.
*In the interest of being completely transparent, I would like to note that I am a 12 Blueprints Analyst, and in no way claim to be a Sci/Art Analyst. However, they are frequently referred to by the same name in online chat.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, for reasons you’re aware of. 🙂 It occurs to me that my very reflective, cool skin, that turns orange in orange clothes, and soaks up all the colour around it, can’t help but be influenced by my gold-red-blonde hair. Since my hair is entirely natural and I have no intention of dying it, my feeling is that it shouldn’t be hidden during analysis, because surely it moderates in some way the base level/colour of my skin? Whether it’s overtone or undertone, how my skin looks with my hair around it is how my skin looks 98% of the time.
I agree with Katie. Supposedly natural hair and eye color do not help determine someone’s PCA. If that is true, why not cover a person’s eyes as well as hair during an analysis? I think if hair color is natural, it should be left uncovered as it is a key component of a person’s overall coloring. To pretend otherwise makes no sense.
Again here, I think it’s important to take this back to the purpose of PCA. While this is by no means everyone’s idea of color analysis, my idea, and what I was taught, was that the primary objective of PCA is to discover the best possible skin and face appearance. It is, however true, that we do observe the eyes in a PCA very closely. But it’s not in efforts to “match” the color. Eyes, unlike hair, are alive and respond to drapes. You will seem them pick up energy or drop, become clear or hazy, dull or glassy. It is up to you or anyone else if colors that “match” your hair are more important to you than a healthy, beautiful skin appearance. It is my opinion that the most subconscious and deeply instinctual indicators of health, youth, and attractiveness are mostly tied into the latter. If you have experienced a PCA, you will have experienced the gut level responses that kick in when certain drapes come on, and often enough they are the ones the woman in the chair might have chosen if they were hanging on the rack.
So, right, we’ve established that skin appearance is the purpose. So why cover natural hair (and, I’m assuming here, that we’ve all agree that dyed hair, no matter how close you might think it is to natural, involves the introduction of a color of unknown quality to an exercise in simultaneous contrast, and would pretty much spoil the result) if it should not effect skin appearance? Basically, it’s distracting. It takes exceptional mental focus to conduct a PCA, constant scanning for markers in each comparison to put the pieces together. Typically, the public vastly underestimates how technical it is to drape someone properly. Since skin is the focus, and hair doesn’t react to drapes, it just serves as one more thing to add visual noise. As an analyst, I don’t ever want to make your hair look nice at the expense of your face. When the face is surrounded instead by neutral grey, I can narrow my range of focus to that which is by far most essential in obtaining the end goal I am seeking.