Let me explain.
Okay, so rewind to over a decade ago. I’m a teenager, reading about the seasonal color system for the first time on pinterest blogs. I have green veins instead of blue, tan in the sun instead of burn, and have dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes, so I quickly surmised that I was an autumn, the season for warm-skinned and darker people, or at least what I thought…
But, as a teenage girl, I was 100% in on anything that promised to make me look better with minimal effort, and so I took this new information to heart and limited myself to mostly warm and muted colors. I bought mustards and dusty pinks and burgundy clothing. I hardly wore silver (did I mention I’m Indian?), but I swore it off anyway.
When we sold all our belongings and moved to the Netherlands, I took the opportunity to build a cohesive capsule wardrobe… with apparently all the wrong colors! My new wardrobe primarily consisted of dusty pinks in various light shades and soft beiges. (Partly because I don’t want to color cast on clients.) My Pinterest board when we moved, for reference, looked like this:
When I won a giveaway for a My Best Colors Analysis session with Bekah, I thought for sure that she would confirm what I already knew, at least to a certain degree. After all, I work with color theory every day! I’m an artist who only makes color adjustments to images during daylight hours by the light of the sun, hand-paints her own canvas backdrops, and takes two weeks to pick the exact shade of white after multiple test runs. I know color. Boy, was I wrong about myself.
Bekah started with the neutral drapes, and I was shocked to see that I actually liked how I looked in the white drape better than the beige one. As a photographer, I know that white reflects the most light, and I was hoping that my face was just being illuminated from the extra light and that when she put the color drapes on, I would be proven correct in my assumed “warmness.”
That didn’t happen! Bekah quickly typed me as “cool,” which I had never even considered before because I have darker skin. I thought only white skin could be cool-toned.
None of these ended up being my season. Bekah classified me as a Bright (or Clear) Winter, with Bright (or Clear) Spring as a sister season! I could actually see the difference, my skin seemed more cohesive with the brighter colors and the circles under my eyes didn’t seem as noticeable.
The only problem… I hated these colors!
As you can probably see from my work, I love soft colors. Bold and saturated is absolutely not my personality. I am definitely the person that likes to melt into the background. (My mom used to force me to order pizza over the phone as punishment because I used to be so shy as a kid!)
So… now what? I absolutely hate this cobalt blue, and I don’t love the hot pink either! I was really disappointed that these were my “best colors.” But Bekah had sent a breakdown of my color palette with a list of celebrities that share the same palette. I found other Indian ladies on the list, which helped. It took a few days of legitimately mourning my pastels to get excited that there was a whole world of color out there that I had previously decided wasn’t for me.
I gave it a try with what I already had in my closet. I literally had two bright articles of clothing, this red sweatshirt and this blue hat. With minimal make up just under my eyes and around my mouth, I looked better than I had in a while! I immediately hit the thrift stores (because second hand is cool!) and came out with some more bright and cool clothes. (And some lavender corduroy pants that I’m really excited about!)
Here is my Pinterest board now! I’m actually really excited to add some bright pinks and greens to my closet! (Although when I take your photos, I will be wearing light neutrals so I don’t color cast onto you!) I’m starting to think that I self-censored myself from liking these bold and bright colors because all those years ago I thought they weren’t for me and were only for lighter skin!
Even though I’m not completely re-doing my wardrobe, getting my colors done showed me that I can pull off a wider range of colors than I initially thought AND if I don’t love how my skin looks in something, that it’s NOT me, it’s the clothes. Instead of being limited to one color palette, I’m excited to widen my closet to include cooler and brighter clothes, along with my pastels that I already own and love. And the next time I am in the market for an investment piece, like a winter coat or an Indian outfit, I will definitely be searching for something in my Bright Winter palette!
If you want to book a session with Bekah, you can book a session from her website here!
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