Oh yes. Millions of brown-eyed Winters look bad in brown. Part of the explanation is that our actual eye color is rarely what we call it. If you take a picture of yourself and use a color picker (like in MS Paint) to pick out your eye color, you'll discover this. (For example, most people would say my eyes are green. But when I use a color picker, the color I get is always some variant of grey. My eyes just read as green in the context of my skin and my Soft Autumn colors.) The other part of the explanation is that eyes aren't the key factor that determines our beauty; the key factor is the apparent health of our skin. There's no use in wearing a color that makes your eyes pop if those eyes are "popping" out of an otherwise unlovely look. Case in point: here, too-dark hair and black jacket make True Spring Cameron Diaz's eyes stand out, but at the expense of her overall impression. The rest of her seems a little lost. Don't match your eyes; match your skin. The right colors for your skin will always make your eyes look amazing -- and might reveal in them colors you never saw before. :-)
Try at-home draping!
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"Soft Natural" seems to be almost a catch-all category for women with some Natural and some feminine influence. That's because it's a style type that collapses features of several types into just one. This creates confusion for a lot of women.
"Soft Natural" is essentially Natural with Romantic. Romantic is sexy, womanly femininity. Now, that kind of feminine beauty isn't the only kind. But some systems believe it is. In a system that only has one feminine essence, all manifestations of feminine beauty end up getting assigned to Romantic. So women whose feminine beauty is of the Ingenue or Ethereal variety end up getting categorized as Soft Natural, and the recs don't all work. For example, Soft Naturals supposedly get light, floaty fabrics. Those don't work well on women with a lot of Romantic, but they're great on women with a lot of Ethereal. If you're an unsatisfied Soft Natural who looks great in light-as-air fabrics and the most mystical aspect of Soft Natural, you might be Ethereal Natural instead. Soft Naturals also supposedly get puff sleeves. Puff sleeves are girly, even princessy -- in other words, they're Ingenue. If you're an unsatisfied Soft Natural who's great in puff sleeves and other girly aspects of Soft Natural, you might actually be a Natural Ingenue. Still lost? Consider a virtual analysis. Gamine and Ingenue are the two style essences that embody youthful beauty. If you are often taken for much younger than you are, you likely have a strong dose of one of these essences. But which one?
Clockwise from top left: Winona Ryder, Natalie Portman, Milla Jovovich, and (of course!) Maisie Williams all sell it as boys. Google these women, and you'll see they're flattered by Gamine styles. Keira Knightley and Angelina Jolie, by contrast, couldn't really pass as boys: (Although in each of their cases, I think it's both the lack of Gamine and the presence of Romantic that makes them fail this test. I don't think either one has much, if any, Ingenue either. That's mature beauty, there.)
I hope this helps those of you with youthful beauty sort yourselves out! :-) Have you tried the Style Identity Calculator? Typically, your best colors make your features look clear and defined, right? And colors that are too saturated can make features look a little blurry, right? As they age, women sometimes gravitate to brighter colors precisely because of that effect -- the blurring of the features. It's a bit like one of those soft filters sometimes used in filming older actresses -- like the one used on Sybil Shepherd on Moonlighting. (Here, "old" is relative! She was younger than I am now, I'm sure. But in Hollywood, it seems like "old" for women means "over 25.") I don't necessarily recommend using brighter colors to create the Moonlighting effect. My aesthetic values authenticity above all
But when we know the effects of different color dimensions on our skin, we can use that knowledge to our advantage, if we like. Knowledge is power. So if you do want to wash yourself out, for whatever reason, highly saturated colors are the way to go. |
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