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CITY | PERSONAL STYLE
True colours
Which colours best suit you: rich, warm, earthy and vibrant colours, or clear, bright, vivid and icy ones? If the former, you are Autumm; if the latter you are Winter. Find out more as Emma Clegg visits Waller and Wood, meets colour consultant Annabel Czyba and gets some advice on the colours that suit her best
I
should not wear black, I discovered when I met Annabel Czyba at Waller and Wood in Abbey Green, because it drains the colour from my face. This is unfortunate given that black takes up a good 50% of my wardrobe. Textile artist Carole Waller had invited Annabel, colour consultant from House of Colour – an international company offering image consultants and personal stylists – to visit and to give short colour consultations to some of Carole’s clients. Intrigued, I put my name down, not realising that this could have serious repercussions. My experience started with some colour history. French chemist, Michel Chevreul (1786–1889) experimented with the effects of placing different colours alongside one another and examined the optical effect now used in colour printing and colour television. In the 20th century the Swiss artist Johannes Itten, who worked and taught at the Bauhaus School of Art in Germany, continued Chevreul’s analysis and established the rules of colour theory, including the 12-point colour wheel, still widely used today. Itten is also attributed with being the first person to associate colours with four types of people. The advent of colour in the film and television industry in the 1940s brought about an interest in the different effects of colour on people’s appearance. Artist Robert Dorr observed how an actress could look wonderful one day, yet tired and older another and recognised that this was the effect of the colour she was wearing on her skin. He then commissioned a medical team to establish that we are all born with a skin tone and if you know what colours represent you it helps you to look younger and Before the consultation
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healthier. You can see this effect at work in gangster films such as The Godfather, where typically actors who look good in winter colours such as white, black navy, grey and red are dressed in camel and brown, and the colours make them look distinctly shifty. Itten and others, through their involvement with colour, have established that each individual has a basic skin pigment which falls into one of four groupings which are defined by the unique combination of depth, hue and tone; in colour analysis these have become known as Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter because of the pattern of colours found in each group. Two of these groups reflect warm-based colours which complement Spring and Autumn; the other two reflect cool-based colours which enhance Summer and Winter. All House of Colour consultants use these theories as the basis of their work. So, armed with a square carousel swishing with precision-dyed nylon swatches (36 colours on each side, with each side representing a seasonal colour range), Annabel first created a blank canvas by draping me with a plain fabric. The next stage was to establish whether my skin tone suited warm or cool colours, so I was draped with Autumn colours (warm), and then Summer colours (cool). Autumn was the clear winner. Then we needed to evaluate the two warm seasons, to work out whether I needed bright clear colours (Spring) or soft colours (Autumn). “With Autumn and Summer it is as if the paint has been mixed with milk, so it’s opaque. Spring and Winter are clear and bright so it’s as if they have been mixed with water,” explained Annabel. This is where I became layered up with colours. I was
Starting with a blank palette
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Annabel Czyba, who suits the Winter spectrum of colours
surprised how clear the effect of the different shades was on my skin, which changed in character as one drape was taken away and was replaced by another. Some of the shifts were more subtle; others were dramatic. There was one deep ruby shade that I could see completely drained the colour from my face. I was now officially someone who suited the Autumn colour range. While this short consultation meant that I knew the colours that suited me (my Wow colours), a full colour consultation (in a small group) would have shown me specifically how to wear some colours, giving proportions of colours that were appropriate to wear, so a very suitable colour might have a 100 percentage. “My best colours are the deepest colours in winter, and not much brightness. In summer, with a tan, I wear quite a lot of white with a splash of colour,” says Annabel, who suits a Winter spectrum.
Wearing my Wow Autumn colours all at once
Wearing a Carole Waller ‘Autumn’ scarf