About Me

I'm a writing teacher, a graduate student and a mom. I study and write about personal color analysis for no other reason than I love it.

I'm a self-taugh analyst. I share what I know because I like to help people, and I like seeing people look beautiful and real. Hence the title of the site.

My grandma introduced me to seasonal color analysis in the early 1980s. Back then, most people still used the four-season system. I didn’t fully understand what made each season what it was, but I kept the color samples Grandma gave me for years. I used to sit for long periods contemplating them, slowly turning the color cards round the rings they hung on, noticing how each color made me feel, wondering what deeper meanings they contained.  I could see that each set was different from the others, and I could see that all the colors in a set seemed to belong together, but I didn’t know to call this color harmony, nor did I know about hue, value, or saturation.

My interest in color analysis was re-ignited sometime in early 2008. I was sitting in my dressing area, contemplating several tops of different colors hanging in a row. I knew some looked better on me than others.  I asked myself a very simple question: 

“What do the colors that are best for me have in common?"
 
I recalled Grandma and the color cards she’d given me years before. Some quick Googling revealed that seasonal color analysis was alive and well, and had become considerably more specific and scientific than it was when I was a little girl.

Since that day, I’ve devoted most of my free time to my goal of becoming an expert on personal color analysis. I’ve spent literally thousands of hours (yeah, I'm obsessed) reading, writing, researching, studying photos, measuring and analyzing colors, and creating charts and diagrams. I’ve accumulated boxes of color samples, dozens of seasonal palettes representing several systems, databases with exact specs for hundreds of colors, hundreds of celebrity photos, long lists of makeup recommendations and big boxes of makeup samples sorted by season, shelves of books, full-spectrum lights, Sci/Art drapes, and even a spectrophotometer, if you can believe it.

I drape almost anyone who will sit still for me. I've gotten more and more accurate through continued practice.  Ultimately, judging color harmony is an art, not a science.

Take a look at my references page to see some of my sources. 

 
 
 

A word about the advertising you see on this site: I'm a working mom with small
children, so the potential for a small bit of extra income is valuable to me. I
hope your joy in visiting this site is not diminished.