Discover your color palette and your style type.

Is Alicia Keys a Light Spring?

5/29/2018

Spend some time checking out books and websites on color analysis, and you'll see that most sources don't allow for the possibility that Black women can be Springs. Certainly not Light Springs.

Why not?

Well, we who make the websites and books have learned most of what we know from white authors.

And those authors didn't show women of color in their Spring examples. They told us Spring skin is fair or peachy.

But why should that be so?

Think about it.

The Spring palettes contain medium and dark browns. Why can't one of those colors be the tone of the skin?

Interestingly, Black color analysts have offered examples of Black Spring women for decades.

Jean Patton's 1991 book, Color to Color, has examples of Black women in every palette. The Light Spring woman featured in the book (not the woman on the cover) is undeniably Light Spring. It's worth buying the book for her picture alone - to permanently rid yourself of the mistaken belief that women of color are never Light Springs.

Color to Color: Guide for the Woman of Color to a Rainbow of Fashion & Beauty

(The seasonal palettes included in the book are of good color quality and are easily matched to the 12 season system, though they don't use the same names.)

In her 1999 book, "Women of Color", Darlene Mathis also has great, full-color examples of Black Spring women.

I believe Alicia Keys is an example of a Black woman who is a Light Spring.

So good.

I mean, look at her in this picture, above. To my eye, she looks so much like herself in these delicate and warm colors.

I could rule out almost half of the seasons (Bright Spring, Dark Autumn, and all three Winters) if I could determine that Keys can't wear black.

And, in fact, it really looks wrong for her. The only part of her face I see it connecting to is her eyeliner, and of course that doesn't count. In my opinion, she's unpleasantly pale here.

The lippie, though, is great. And notice it's very light, very pink, and warmish.

Wrong lippie. Too dark, too intense.

This Dark Winter - looking lip is all wrong. Too dark, too intense.

Overwhelmed by a yellow-orange that's too rich.

This could be an Autumn yellow-orange, above. It, and the brown-orange lippie, look dull, not vibrant.

Lip's too cool, but the lightness works. Erase the black eyeliner and her overall impression seems gentle, light and warm.

In the picture above, I think her lip is too cool (pinkish) for her face, but I like the overall lightness for her.

This very warm eye is wrong.

This warm brown eye, above, is very, very wrong.

This light, warmish makeup works. Except for the black mascara. No black mascara for Ms. Keys. She's a lighter season.

The makeup above is great for her, I think. And it's light and peachy. (Except for the black mascara - it's slightly disconcerting. But pretty much everyone wears black mascara, even when they should be wearing grey or brown instead...)

Below, I like her cheek and lip. I find the Autumn-y brownish-orange in the coat too much for her skin, though.

This almost works. The orange of the jacket's a little too warm. Everything's less saturated in pics than IRL, so I suspect that's a True Autumn orange.

The picture above is not the most reliable, because it's an editorial photo, but gosh, doesn't that look Light Spring to you?

What do you think? Are there other pics of Keys that you think reflect her coloring more accurately? Do you think these photos show a season other than Light Spring?

74 Comments

Lena

5/30/2018 05:20:27 am

Good post.

5/30/2018 10:32:33 am

Love Alicia Keys! Her recent no-makeup looks are so beautiful to see.

Is is possible that Queen Latifah is also a Light Spring? I love her sense of style, and noticed that while she often wears black (everyone in Hollywood seems to), she'll occasionally wear these really delicate colors that look lovely on her.

Examples: This soft Red: http://www.reelsistas.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/2014-Queen-Latifah.jpg

A lovely aqua-blue: https://media1.popsugar-assets.com/files/thumbor/xGijL6hi1kEQtaBISJ5iCWANTFc/fit-in/1024x1024/filters:format_auto-!!-:strip_icc-!!-/2016/03/14/891/n/1922729/0cb7885ea487be4b_queen/i/Queen-Latifah.jpg

A gold-beige that looks more spring to me than autumn: http://www.redcarpet-fashionawards.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Queen-Latifah-In-Badgley-Mischka-2014-Hollywood-Film-Awards.jpg

5/30/2018 05:36:13 pm

The Queen has always been the personification of Autumn to me! Her and Beyonce. You're rocking my world-view.

ruby

5/31/2018 02:16:58 am

I tend to think Beyonce looks better in spring colours, personally, I wonder if she could be bright spring?

Rosetta

5/31/2018 03:12:06 am

Yes, in the TiB FB group some have analyzed Beyonce as a Spring, not Autumn. I'm not sure either way...

5/31/2018 05:59:02 pm

Beyonce is tricky... She looks pale and washed out in cool bright colors but black doesn't necessarily look horrible it just looks too cool for her coloring. It looks foreign but looks ok next to the depth of her coloring. White is FAR from her best color. This rules out Bright Spring, who can wear B&W beautifully. To me Beyonce is a True Autumn or a True Spring. Those colors look best on her.

6/2/2018 07:34:17 am

M, in fact the only season that can wear B&W beautifully is TW :) If it means both together; BSp does get black, but not white - theirs is cream / off-white.

Nancy

6/1/2018 03:07:40 am

I believe Alicia is a Spring, but I'm not sure it's a LSP. Could she be a True Spring? Maybe she is all warm and not primarily warm.

5/30/2018 01:39:09 pm

Thanks for demonstrating that black women can be light springs. The lighter warmer lip works for her!

On a similar note, I read this article, which is about how East Asians also can be of any season, even with their naturally dark hair: http://fonfabulous.blogspot.com/2015/01/guide-makeupfashion-color-theory-for.html

I've been thinking the singer Lee Hi is a possible light spring, because she looks nice in those colors, and light spring colors seem to be predominant in her music videos too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=judxOWZvi7I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iSlfF8TQ9k

What do you think?

Shawna

5/30/2018 11:39:35 pm

Great post and I am convinced. She looks like a LIght Spring to me. I have never imagined that women with dark skin or women of colour as the strange expression goes could not possibly be any of the seasons. I think it would only be the people who buy into the idea that hair and eyes and how light or dark the skin appears are all indicators of season. It's great to see non-white examples even if I am a white woman.

Miranda

5/31/2018 01:07:49 am

Thank you for bringing this up! Visiting my former in-laws, I noticed that even though my ex's grandmother is very dark - much, much darker than Alicia - she is most flattered by pale delicate Summer colors (I don't know whether they were True or Light Summer). I can't imagine her in her daughter's Autumn clothes or my ex's Dark Winter palette.

5/31/2018 02:40:53 am

Ruby, I agree. I think Beyonce could be a Spring. Maybe a Bright Spring or a Warm Spring.

6/4/2018 02:28:10 pm

She sounds like me, but I actually resonate best with the icy tones of a Bright Winter palette. If she is Lupita Nyong'o-dark skinned, maybe she's a BW as well?

5/31/2018 03:10:46 am

I'm a great believer in the 12blueprints adage "Any season can have any eye, hair or skin colour", so obviously I can totally believe her being a LSp. :) And of course, it goes both ways, too - I wish there would be an article about women with lighter colouring being a Dark season / Winters! :) As all too often people instantly discount this possibility.

Halisi

6/1/2018 03:50:33 pm

About 12Blueprints - that's supposed to be the best part of Sci/ART analysis, but I've never seen anyone but Rachel give advice that could apply specifically to darker-skinned people when the default doesn't work (for example, a lot of the highlight colors in Christine Scaman's "best makeup colors for ___" series would never work on most PoCs) or provide an example of a women of color who wasn't a Dark Autumn or a winter of some kind. And besides that, the language that Scaman uses to describe WoCs can be pretty off-putting.

6/3/2018 02:51:06 am

Actually, Christine Scaman did a post a while back on an East Asian client with brown eyes who turned out to be a Bright Spring, not a Winter or an Autumn. Unfortunately, I can't provide the link here because 12Blueprints is currently being restructured, but Rachel's mentioned the post a couple times on this blog.

Christine Scaman has admitted that her website suffers for lack of PoC examples, mostly because she lives in a very white area with not a lot of diversity. She's said she'd love to diversify if given the opportunity, though.

6/3/2018 03:14:11 am

All that being said, we're all very happy that Rachel is trying to fill in some of the gaps in color analysis for WoCs :). I'm especially pleased that she shared a color analysis resource for black women *by* a black woman. Whites tend to rely on hair and eye color to identify people (how many times do experienced color analysts have to emphasize that these are irrelevant and skin tone is the important factor?), but I learned in a psych class in undergrad that other ethnicities find other cues more salient--in fact, if I remember correctly, African-Americans tend to rely on differences in skin tone when identifying people. Clearly, it would be enormously beneficial to WoCs, and to the field of color analysis at large, if more PoCs could make their contributions to color analysis heard.

6/4/2018 03:46:48 am

Halisi, could you point to where Christine Scaman has used, as you say, "off-putting" language to describe WoCs? I've read all her articles and never seen an example anything like that!

6/17/2018 05:16:39 pm

KC, I did forget about the post with Audrey, thanks for reminding me. Rachel's discussion of that post was how I found 12 Blueprints in the first place. Audrey showed that race is an arbitrary way to divide the seasons, and I did like that Christine defended her position against a few commenters who thought that Audrey ought to be classified as a winter because she didn't have enough "light features."

That being said, I don't think that her living in a more homogeneous area necessarily justifies Christine's never providing options for darker-skinned women. While I do understand that it's her blog and that she's giving us information for free, her job is to give every woman advice about her coloring that is as accurate as possible. I remember her doing a handful of posts with celebrities (the one I remember best was a Soft Autumn post that featured Claire Danes), and there's no reason that one of the celebrities discussed couldn't have been dark-skinned. And apart from that, why not ask other analysts who've had a lot of PoCs as clients for advice or let them share their experiences on her blog? She's definitely done the latter before. I agree that WoCs should make more contributions to color analysis, but the fact that they're the most likely people to devote significant amounts of time to giving advice to dark-skinned people in particular (and other WoCs in general) shows that we're not a priority. That even though we're a significant percentage of the population, the Sci/ART community doesn't necessarily want or need to take the time and effort necessary to learn about our needs.

6/17/2018 06:21:06 pm

Rosetta, the posts are gone now but a lot of the phrases I found off-putting were centered around the exoticism of non-white women's skin. To give an example, I remember seeing her describe a non-white woman's skin as "Caucasian, but off." Although those kinds of remarks were pretty minor they, combined with what I said to KC above, put me off.

5/31/2018 03:56:47 am

As for pretty much everyone wearing black mascara, even if they should be wearing grey or brown instead - it's just so much more available than any other colour, in fact in many (most?) makeup lines, it's the *only* colour available! So it's no wonder black mascara is the default nowadays, and women can't really be blamed for that. And I must say I don't find it that distracting, like e.g. in this pic above with the mascara comment - as long as it's just black mascara, not eyeliner, I don't find it distracting at all... Unless it's super-black false eyelashes or something. ;) After all, the natural colour of most people's eyelashes is somewhere in the black-grey spectrum, not brown, so in fact brown would be distracting, in that case!

Gabriella

6/1/2018 02:48:20 am

A women with light colouring should not wear black mascara. Black doesn't relate to anything in her face.
But you are right about black mascara being much more available than any other colour. Unfortunately.

Alex

5/31/2018 09:09:56 pm

Great post!

Katja

6/1/2018 02:30:46 am

Rachel is right about the mascara. Makeup should always look natural on you. The makeup colours you wear have to relate to your own colouring. You should be in focus, not your makeup.

6/1/2018 02:36:27 am

A post on makeup for different style-IDs would be great.

6/1/2018 02:41:36 am

Leona Lewis is a Soft Summer and Mariah Carey is a Soft Autumn.

Silver Roxen

6/5/2018 06:59:48 pm

I agree! Once I found out that I'm a Soft Gamine, I can see why nude lip colors don't suit me, even when I tried a lip color for my skin tone.

6/1/2018 05:51:35 am

Well, like I said above, the natural colour of most people's eyelashes is (in my experience) actually somewhere in the black-grey spectrum, not brown (I don't think I've come across someone with brown lashes), so it would in fact be more natural on one's own colouring ;) Though yeah, I do see that on someone with a very light overall colouring, black mascara might seem a little bit harsh. But I'm medium-coloured myself, and yet I have found black mascara seems most natural on me. (Much more so than grey, which is in fact more or less invisible on me.) Not sure of my season, but I'm pretty sure it's one that gets black...

6/1/2018 05:53:14 am

My response above was to Katja, if that's not clear ;)

Beth

6/2/2018 02:16:54 am

Hi Rosetta,

I’ve been professionally analysed as a true spring, my natural hair colour is medium warm blonde, and my eyelashes are brown. Not dark brown/black, a chestnutty brown with blonde tips. My brows are that colour as well. I’m in the northern UK, and many of us here have Northern European/Viking ancestry, meaning there’s lots of warm skinned blondes and redheads, and most of them have blonde or mouse coloured eyelashes. My lashes are considered pretty dark for my colouring.

Brown mascara definitely looks better, but its difficult to find any that isn’t insipid looking. I have a ton of romantic in my style ID, so love glamour and my lashes to be huge. I really struggle to find a brown mascara that can give me that. I also like a waterproof formula, and they’re all black.

6/2/2018 07:30:40 am

Very true, Beth! Ok, I do believe there are people with natural brown lashes :) I just don't think I've ever come across one, not that I remember (I live in a Nordic country and natural redheads are exceedingly rare here; though I've also lived in the UK, but all those natural redheads were probably using black mascara, so one couldn't see their natural lash colour ;).)

6/3/2018 05:25:18 am

I'm SSu with reddish brown hair, and I'd describe my lashes the same as Beth's (though possibly cooler toned given our different seasons). Black mascara looks awful on me. I use brown - grey looks the best on me, but it's nearly impossible to find. I've started using castor oil infused with amla on my lashes so that I can be happy using just clear mascara after a lash curler, I am *that* frustrated looking for a decent mascara.

6/3/2018 05:53:28 am

It is a disgrace! There should always be brown and grey mascara for those who need that.
It is the same with black clothes. The stores are full of black clothes. It's difficult to find any other colour than black. People think that they can always wear black and that black makes them look slimmer, but that's not true. There are only Winters that are flattered by black. And possibly some Deep Autumns.

Christy

6/3/2018 06:17:24 pm

This is tough for me, since I think seasonal analysis really helps to narrow the field for most of us, I had a truly peronal analysis done by Nancy Nix Rice that was really helpful for me. I was seasonally typed several times, most convincingly as a Deep Autumn. The problem for me was that some of the warmer shades were just a bit off, and some cooler shades seemed to really work. Her analysis started with my skintone, of course, which she determined to be “slightly warm.” This really narrowed the field for me, but all of her recommendations were really great. There was also a big focus on hair and eye color and their color wheel complements. Is it possible that others, including, perhaps especially, women of color, need something more specific?

Looking at Alicia Keys (who is gorgeous), the lighter warmer shades definitely look better as makeup on her face. I don’t dislike the olive trench with the leather accents as much as Rachel does, though that may be because the blush picks up that shade. And the blush is not terrible, to my eye. Could she be a soft autumn? There was no discussion of that, but she is definitely low contrast.

6/4/2018 05:11:50 am

Christy, I don't think Alicia is muted and SA is very muted.

6/4/2018 03:55:18 am

Just a small observation, btw - the Dark Winter -looking lippie looks wrong in about the same way on her as it does on me... Although I don't think I'm Light anything, and have even considered DW among my possible seasons, going by clothes colours that suit me. Interesting.

6/4/2018 05:08:34 am

Rosetta, do you think you are primarily warm or cool? What colour is your hair? Is your skin fair or dark? Warm or cool? What eye colour do you have? Are your colours muted or clear?

6/4/2018 11:34:11 am

I wish I knew the answer to all of those for sure, Lena ;) But I keep going back and forth with nearly all of them - sometimes this seems to suit me, sometimes the other. My natural hair is slightly ashy dark blonde / brown, my eyes are kind of translucent green with brown flecks in one eye only, and my skin is light-medium, fairly warm (about in NC30-35 MAC, probably). As for muted or clear, mostly I feel I need saturated colours, but not particularly clear or muted.
(I know, I need a professional PCA, and one day I maybe will, if and when I can afford it. ;))

6/4/2018 01:07:03 pm

Rosetta,

When I had my professional analysis, it was all about how colours affected my skin. I had on no makeup, and my hair was tied back as it is coloured (it’s coloured the right colours, but we hid it just in case). I went with my friend who is an autumn. I am obviously warm, very yellow skin and yellowy hazel eyes. My friend is much more neutral. Both of us however, looked awful in burgundy and cyclamen pink. Awful. Even on my neutral friend, it showed she was warm. I’d say if you wear NC in Mac your probably a spring or autumn, but see what burgundy does to you, it can make bings much clearer.

6/5/2018 02:57:27 am

Beth, see, I can wear both burgundy and cyclamen pink ;) And yeah, I know that's the way a PCA is done, and the skin is paramount :) I have done lots of DIY draping and observing the reactions, and so I have a pretty good idea what suits me and what not. The problem is, the colours that suit me don't neatly fall inside any one season ;) But something on the BSp - DA spectrum seems most likely.

6/4/2018 12:38:43 pm

Have you considered Summer?Soft Summer?

6/5/2018 03:01:23 am

Lena, not really, as I can instantly see how Summer colours wash me out - they're too light, too cool, or too grey (or all of those)! I know that most other systems (besides Sci/Art) would immediately shove me into Summer, going by my hair colour, but that's not how it works ;)

6/5/2018 10:00:35 am

I'm the same: I look like I should be a Summer, but Summer colors wash me out. The Dark Winter palette is the least bad on me, but even it's not perfect. Color Analysis seems to assume that everyone is extreme in one dimension (hue, chroma, or value). But what about those of us who are mediume-medium-medium? If you put all hues on a scale of 1-5 with 1 as the coolest and 5 as the warmest; if you put all chroma on a scale of 1-5 with 1 as the softest and 5 as the brightest; if you put all values on a scale of 1-5 with 1 as the lighest and 5 as the darkest - color analysis assumes everyone is a 1 or a 5 on something. I think I'm a 2-3-4 - slightly on a the cool side, right in the middle on soft/clear, and slightly on the dark side. The softer Dark Winter colors are great on me, but the brighter ones are overwhelming. But I'm definitely not a Soft - too much grey and I look completely washed out. Too warm and I look sick; too light and I look washed out; too soft and I looked washed out; too cool is harsh; too bright is harsh; dark is good, but the dark winter palette is too bright. My best colors are deep rich teal, deep rich plum, and deep rich midnight blue, and deep rich forest green.

6/5/2018 11:25:46 am

Alex,

I think the key is that even someone who is medium - medium - medium will fall slightly one way or the other when draped. Many would argue that the only seasons that require extremes of each variable are those that are true seasons. As a warm/true spring, I am incredibly warm, and incredibly clear (I’m not however high contrast, I’m all one colour without makeup) it’s good to remember that clear does not always equal high contrast. The extremes in my colouring are what causes me to be a true season. My friend who is an autumn however isn’t extreme in anyway. She’s neutral leaning to ever so slightly warm, she has medium chroma (for a long time we thought she could be a spring, because she isn’t that muted) and she’s medium to light hue with red hair, fair skin and blue eyes. But she draped as an autumn, and her best colours are kingfisher blue, forest green, dark brown. You’d never put her in those just by looking at her, because you would think that her mediumness wouldn’t cope with the richness,but they bring her skin to life.

It’s also good to remember that you won’t look as amazing in every colour in your palette as you do in your best ones. I’m not amazing in springs blues, they fight with my overbearing yellowness, but they’re a hundred times better on me than summers blues or autumns. If you look amazing in a group of colours from a palette, don’t discredit it because some of the other colours are not as good.

6/6/2018 05:23:11 am

Alex, very interesting! I've also found that Dark Winter is my best palette, or one of the best - but I just can't do the DW lipsticks... :( They look goth on me. Not sure if one should rule out a season via lipsticks, but I guess I *should* be able to wear them, if I was a DW. I can do some, but not any of the darker ones though. And the same goes for DA - lovely palette, mostly, but the lippies, no! (Revlon Rum Raisin is so bad on me...)

6/6/2018 05:27:23 am

Lipstick-wise, I've come to the conclusion that BW and BSp ones suit me best, but the colours are otherwise too bright for me, at least in Rachel's draping cards... So it's very intriguing - palettes otherwise point to Darks, and yet makeup to Brights...

Bea

6/4/2018 02:48:07 pm

Looking at this, i was thinking that Gugu Mbatha-Raw may also be a Light Spring. She and Alicia have the same coloring.

6/4/2018 03:03:59 pm

Some links:

She looks good in this monochromatic look, the specialty of the lights: https://pin.it/lygaphwzsbzpgg

Black is unrelated to her coloring: https://pin.it/4vh2f7ewjjwopr

This bright red is only connecting to her lipstick rather than her skin: https://pin.it/2jrwowuzpazu3c

The turquoise is the right saturation for her skin, and I think she would look even lovelier with a coral lip: https://pin.it/5mu4loyrjcdbdt

The lip is a bit cooler than it has to be, but she can pull off the black because the rest of the colors are nice and light: https://pin.it/ryx3a3nhrceiin

6/5/2018 04:55:27 am

I don't think Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a LSP. Her colouring is deeper and darker. And she looks somewhat muted to me. So autumn. Maybe SA deep? I also considered SS, but I think she is primarily warm so I would guess Autumn for her.

6/4/2018 02:55:29 pm

Is Dark Autumn off the table? This picture shows a pretty orange red lip on her..

http://www.puretrend.com/media/alicia-keys-lisse-a-l-extreme-son_m799617

6/4/2018 03:20:45 pm

I would add that it is hard to do an accurate color analysis, as I know that I look VERY different in different lighting. We see very controlled images of celebrities, including the blown out red carpet lighting in the picture I shared. And nearly everything looks terrible in fluorescent light, which is my whole work life.

6/5/2018 03:03:18 am

IMO, that bright orange lip looks very bad on her...! About the same level of bad as the DW lip in the article. I really think LSp is the most likely.

Anne

6/5/2018 04:22:26 am

Rosetta, if, as you Say, you suit cyclamen, you are a summer. Definitely not a winter or autumn.

6/5/2018 05:07:00 am

Rosetta, I know you don't like Lora Alexanders colour breeze system, but give it a chance! This could be your season: https://www.prettyyourworld.com/the-toasted-soft-summer.html
Or this: https://www.prettyyourworld.com/the-dusty-soft-autumn.html

Anne Harrison

6/5/2018 04:59:44 am

Or rather a spring or an autumn. You cannot be a warm season and suit cyclamen.

6/5/2018 05:12:04 am

Rosetta,is your value deep or light? If it's not light you cannot be a Spring. All springs have light value.

6/5/2018 05:29:22 am

And cyclamen is light, cool And grey!

6/6/2018 03:41:26 am

Not really - cyclamen is about the same as hot pink, right?
Not grey or light. Or did you mean something else with "cyclamen pink"? (This is the problem with using colour terms instead of images - everyone interprets them their own way...)

And Lena, I have looked at the Color Breeze "system" and it makes no sense to me, sorry ;) Just a bunch of added seasons that aren't really necessary...

Gabriella, I do not believe in the "value system", i.e. the so-called "dominant trait system" (where you must first identify a dominant trait, i.e. light, Clear, Soft etc, and then the subseason - that just leads astray), and to my knowledge this site doesn't adhere to it, either, as doesn't Sci/Art.

It's interesting that many here feel they can know my season even though you've never seen me, and I cannot tell it myself even after extensive draping ;) I know it will take a professional (Sci/Art) draping, anything else is just a guess (though with extensive DIY draping & testing, one can certainly achieve the closest possible guess).

6/6/2018 03:59:44 am

Hi Rosetta,

I see this is where the confusion has come in, cyclamen pink is soft, cool pastel pink that leans slightly lilac. Very similar to this, http://www.cyclamen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Plants-cyclamen-variety-400x300.jpg.

It’s really good at showing up warm undertones in neutral leaning skin. I look really ill in it. I’m not trying to tell you your season, but you said you were unsure of whether you were warm or cool, so I suggested these colours, as they can make it very obvious.

I agree with you that the value method is not the most accurate way of finding season, and that the colour breeze system is unnecessarily complicated. Home draping is so much fun, and I actually did work out my own season accurately, it was then confirmed by an analyst. However, we have spent years being convinced my friend is a light spring, covinced. But she draped as a dark autumn. Which was kind of fun too, because we saw where we’d been going wrong with our home analysis, plus we get to see the transformation that happens when someone suddenly starts dress in their right season.

6/6/2018 04:10:43 am

Beth, ah, thanks, now I see what you meant! :) Because I even googled cyclamen pink and images of hot pink came up (or what I'd call hot pink), not sure what was up with that ;) But yes, that light cool pink is certainly not good on me.

Also agree that home draping is a lot of fun ;) Even if the results are not always conclusive. And very intriguing that you got it spot on, whereas your friend you though LSp was actually DA! That's such a huge difference. (In FB colour groups there was also one person who thought she was DA but was draped LSp, so the exact opposite is possible too ;))

6/6/2018 03:57:43 am

And it's not that I wouldn't appreciate people trying to help, please don't get me wrong, but as I have already tried & tested all the things suggested myself, and/or the advice refers to a system I don't believe in, then it's of course better that I say so (I feel) :)

6/6/2018 05:31:36 am

And just to add, as for the different systems, I think we just have to find one that makes sense to ourselves & we can believe in, and then stick to it; for me it's Sci/Art 12 seasons, I find others make much less sense, but if you find that they work for you (generic "you"), then of course you should stick to them!

6/5/2018 11:17:25 am

A lot of the "I don't fit the specific season" posts are what led me to Nancy Nix Rice. While I am still closest to being a Dark Autumn, my best colors don't include black or charcoal grey, there are no golds, and she suggested a nude pink shade range that matches my skin exactly, but is nowhere in the Dark Autumn universe. What was really telling to me was the metallics: silver gold combo, rose gold and dark brown bronze. Now that I have seen those colors on me, I really can't go back.

I think the style analysis Rachel does works the same way. How much of our reactions to Alicia Keys' pictures have to do with the style of her makeup rather than the shades exactly? She looks better in a lighter lip, but is that more attractive because it is a good style choice for her, rather than her being a lighter season? Let's face it: all seasons have lighter and darker lip choices.

Rachel typed me as EDC (mostly Dramatic). Per Nancy Nix Rice, the lip colors that bring out my eye color the most are bright to slightly dark orange reds. Rachel had suggested using lighter MLBB types of shades to work with my style identity. I am struggling to resolve this conflicting information, and keep wanting to go back to those nude pinks that "shouldn't" work.

My point is that the seasonal concept may not paint a complete picture for everyone, and maybe factoring in the style identity matters.

6/6/2018 04:02:07 am

I totally agree that both one's season *and* style ID affect what's suitable / flattering!

Just as an example, (most) Autumns & Winters are normally recommended matte, heavy & opaque makeup finishes, but if you have a significant proportion of Ethereal or Ingenue, those will probably look & feel off...

6/10/2018 11:40:56 pm

Rosetta you are so right. I am REI with the E and I being dominant but also a True Autumn and I struggle with that a little. At least I did until I knew I was a REI then it made sense. I only wear the lighter colours of my palette and the makeup rec's don't usually work for me as they are too heavy. Also I am not good in burgundy which is Rachel's suggested deal breaker colour for True Autumn. I am definitely very warm but Spring is too bright. I don't fit any palette well but the best is tweaking True Autumn. Also, I look terrible in black mascara and even brown-black reads as too dark. My lashes are probably light grey. My son has brown lashes with strawberry blonde hair btw. :-) Seeing Alicia Keys I want to be a Light Spring!

6/16/2018 01:15:16 am

Update: I no longer think I am REI. I am going with ENC 50% E and this still means I tweak my Autumn palette to soften it.

6/20/2018 07:32:59 pm

A black female celebrity that I would love to see typed is Solange. I've admired her since 2010, she inspired me to wear my natural hair. Also, I love the way she dresses. She typically wears bold prints/patterns and bright colors. I've become so well versed on my type (Soft Gamine), that I find it harder to type anyone else. Though, I think she's some sort of Natural judging by her jawline and face shape.

Nicole

7/18/2018 08:39:21 pm

Hi Rachel! I think you hit the nail on the head about Alicia Keys being a Light Spring (or even True Spring). I'm a W.O.C Light Spring myself, and for the longest Alicia Keys was my HOLY GRAIL color analysis twin! She was the ONLY W.O.C like me who's skintone who was sensitive & reacted the same way to colors; if it wasn't for her I would've LITERALLY gone crazy trying to figure out my color group!

Now- Alicia is a true Light Spring, meanwhile I'm a bit more saturated and I'm a Soft Light Spring ( https://www.idealiststyle.com/blog/light-warm-the-rules-of-wearing-colors ). But like me, Alicia had deepish almost blackish hair & relatively deep brown eyes that would initially suggest "deep autumn", yet ultimately she best suits only fresh Springy colors.

I was recently draped and me & my analyst agreed that I was between Soft Spring and Soft Light Spring (ie, Leslie Mann). I was either a Soft Spring flowing into Soft Light Spring or a Soft Light Spring flowing into Soft Spring. I look great in both, but after weeks of indepth comparison, I've settled on the latter. For the longest (before I learned of the Soft Light Spring category) I had to accept that I was genuinely the ONLY one who knew what I suited, how these specific colors "looked", and how to select them in stores for clothing and makeup. Truth is Beauty and Idealist Style have the best approaches to color analysis IMO. I know not everyone will accept this "new" Soft Light Spring category from Idealist Style (which I linked above), but in my experience this system is very accurate, not "new" categories. It fills in some of the missing gaps! I've struggled with my coloring all my life. Similarly to other Soft Light Springs (which I will list below), my coloring was extremely difficult to type, basically nonexistent in the color analysis world, and on top of that I was W.O.C "fully spring" woman. Meaning I don't flow into Autumn, Winter, or Summer. I either suit Soft Clear Warm colors (soft spring) or Soft Light Warm colors (soft light spring). If it isn't Spring, it literally won't do anything for my skintone- despite my medium borderline medium-deep brown skintone. It took me a long time to accept this, and I wasted SO much money & time trying to fit into autumn. Furthermore, my coloring was even more confusing because the only other color group that can be "fully spring" are light-to-true springs.

I may be W.O.C, but Light Spring colors bring out my skintone in the same way we see here with Alicia Keys. Furthermore, this type of Light Spring (with the deepish hair and eye color combo) is often automatically assumed to be Deep Autumn. It's crazy because I see commenters posting links of Alicia in Dark Autumn trying to prove she's a Deep or Autumn..... when she clearly looks bad in those colors! And I see some of the other comments about her coloring are the same types of comments I get in person. Once, a few of my friends actually got into an argument about what I "was"! I had never even mentioned color analysis to them before, but they knew about the general 4 seasons and apparently my colouring had been a longrunning discussion. They kept saying I was warm & tan like autumn but I looked too dang good in warm pink and blue (yet bad in deep colors & most browns), but then the blue made them consider winter, yet they knew winter was way too cool toned. But, similar to Alicia Keys, they believed blue eyes or blonde hair was required for Spring so they didn't know what to do with me haha. The only thing they agreed unanimously was that they liked me in lighter colours, and fresh medium colors at the most. It actually got to the point that my they would unexpectedly "gift" me specific jewelry so I would wear it during our outings (unbeknownst to me) and they could see if the color "worked" on me or not! LOL!

Needless to say, Rachel, I was THRILLED to see your recent Light Spring/True Spring article on Alicia Keys! To be honest, growing up I used to feel extremely homogenized in terms of my coloring, so I really appreciate you representing delicate, warmer W.O.C. Springs in your article! I hope my comment sheds just a little more light of insight into our wonderful, diverse, surprising, colorful world! :)

P.S., for other potential SOFT Light Springs: Christina Hendricks is also Soft Light Spring (via the Idealist Style website I linked above). So is Amy Adams, Deborah Ann Woll, and a W.O.C example is Jasmine Sanders. I notice this type gets mistaken for True Spring alot, even more than actual True Springs like Cameron Diaz. For this Soft Light Spring coloring, Soft Spring (and True Spring) is a little too warm, saturated, and high contrast. But the super lightness, sharpness, and temperature of traditional Light Spring falls a bit flat on this type, and Summer is simply too dusty & cool. (Also, I believe Rose Bertram is a W.O.C Light Spring Neutral- the type of Light Spring that flows into Light Summer instead of True Spring. Perhaps another stereo

7/18/2018 08:40:11 pm

Cont'd....... Perhaps another stereotype-busting article about W.O.C Light Springs in the making Rachel? :)

I hope my comment sheds just a little more light of insight into our wonderful, diverse, surprising, colorful world! :)

10/25/2018 03:20:21 pm

I don't think she's a Light Spring. I think she looks best in autumn colors, but yes, she's not a dark season - I believe she's most probably Warm Autumn. She can also handle some spring colors, but not too much.

12/14/2018 03:12:00 pm

M.,

That’s a part of why I think she’s a Light Spring. Light Springs (even the darker skinned or tanned ivory skinned ones) STILL have lightness in their coloring, are neutral-warm, and have relatively LOW contrast... This is the reason Alicia Keys can’t handle too many Spring Colors at once. I don’t understand why the majority of people defaultly dump all warm skinned REMOTELY ethnic women into Autumn... I’ve seen many “stereotypical looking” Bright Springs look only adequate in their proper Bright Spring colors- when there wasn’t enough CONTRAST present. They must have on more than one Bright Spring color to look their best. Only upon wearing 2 or more colors from their Bright Spring palette could you see how significantly better they look in Spring than non-Spring colors.

Similarly, literally all of the “stereotypical” Light Spring women look bad when there’s too many L.S. colors around them (or worse, on them) at once. (Additionally: a deeper LS color may look bold/colorful on a very light skinned LS, but more natural on a darker LS. And vice versa: a natural-everyday lipstick for lighter LS may be a better for natural-nude lip for a darker LS.)

I’ve seen many dark and light skinned ethnic Warm Autumns (ones who appear much lighter/paler than Alicia in passing) and their skin still has that veil of muted quality that Alicia’s skin does not have whatsoever. It’s funny because this article seems to be “groundbreaking” news to many here, but alot of African Americans are very aware of the wide range and variations in ethnic colorings in all 4 seasons...

I’ve always known Sonia Rolland, Beyoncé, Jasmine Sanders, Alicia Keys etc were Springs.... like as soon as I saw them it didn’t take long. If anything, these women are the really easy, obvious, “stereotypical” examples of ethnic Springs.

Soapbox moment: Honestly I don’t know why it’s so hard for people grasp the concept (or accept) that an ethnic person may be a Spring. I knew I was Spring when I first learned about the Color Analysis and saw the color palettes but as soon I read the whitewashed descriptions (with absolutely NO examples/pictures of ethnic women) I got very thrown off and doubted myself about it for years. Moreover... Isn’t the whole enviable quality of Springs the “warm tan skin” , tropical, and “ethnically ambiguous” factor? So naturally, many tropical islanders and multiracial people will fall into Spring category. Cameron Diaz and Blake Lively are known as obvious True Spring poster-girls yet they both boast very multiethnic backgrounds... It’s one thing for it to be rarer and therefore people are less versed in doing a proper color analysis of ethnic people. But the world HAS BEEN and is rapidly becoming increasingly diverse. Now it’s becoming just plain ignorance and/or straight up racism. That’s unacceptable in my book, and I’ve always loved Rachel’s blog because she doesn’t stand for that either- she exemplifies how Truth is Beauty!

Anyways- I’ve known for a while that Alicia was either a LS flowing into True Spring or a True Spring flowing into LS. The fact that you picked up on her delicacy is another indicator that she is indeed a Light Spring.

Melina

11/18/2018 07:17:19 am

This is so intriguing, as I'm currently reading a fairly recent edition of Colour Me Beautiful book (by Henderson & Henshaw), and even though it's a 12 seasons system, it has such a depressing way of classifying people - for example, one HAS to have light hair & eye colour to be a Light... (And Softs are the "leftover" category, when you don't neatly fit into any other!) Yes, it adheres to the "dominant trait" theory of seasonal colour, which I don't believe in, but I like to educate myself even in other systems, and frankly that's about the only seasonal colour system one can find books on in public libraries here, sadly nothing whatsoever on Sci/Art! (Someone should remedy that, IMO!)

But yes, I can fully believe Alicia Keys being a Light Spring. And related to that, but only the other way round - I'd love an article on a light-looking Dark season! :)

Lisa

2/7/2019 02:13:53 am

I’m glad I found this site. I ordered your draping kit a while ago and determined I was a true winter. A lot of sites say that I MUST be a dark season because of my coloring (I am a Caucasian woman with dark hair and eyes). Having brown eyes seems to automatically knock you out of any light, clear or cool season. I tried dark autumn colors and they were awful. Even dark winter seemed too heavy on me, especially the makeup. I always had an inkling I was actually a true or bright winter. My eye color is brown, but a clear yellow brown, almost hazel. My skin appears “olive” but is also somewhat transparent and porcelain looking at the same time. You really can’t put people into boxes.

Tara

5/9/2024 10:58:10 am

I love your blog so much!! What do you think about Zendaya? She might be another light season like Alicia Keys. Looking at her Met Gala looks in particular, she looks so radiant in her Cinderella-inspired costume which is mostly very light.

Truth is Beauty

Is Alicia Keys a Light Spring?

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