The Controversial History of Color Season Analysis

Comments · 1.1K

• TI

  @TI3RU · 2 years ago

  honestly the "$10,000 for color matching supplies" set off major alarm bells for a certain illegal style of marketing 😂

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• JA

  @jasper3706 · 2 years ago

  When I was in a high school fashion class, we got one of those "seasons" charts, and all of the categories were describing white skin while one of them listed "Most people with darker skin are in this season." I was honestly kind of shocked they were allowed to use that in school, this wasn't that long ago.

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• JU

  @juls_krsslr7908 · 2 years ago

  I always assumed this came from color theory. I&apos;m glad to know I was right! Incidentally, I had my colors done by David Kibbe himself when I was a teenager in the early 90s. I am what he called at the time a &quot;vivid autumn&quot; which was horrifying to me because I typically dressed entirely in black and dyed my hair black, too. At the same time, I was taking an &quot;Intro to Design&quot; class in which we were studying color theory and doing experiments with color, so it did make a certain amount of sense to me. And I could see a difference when Kibbe did the draping. I&apos;ve come to realize, the thing about color analysis is, it depends on what look you want to achieve. Now, I like wearing &quot;autumn&quot; colors because I want to look warm and welcoming to people, but when I was 18, I wanted to look kind of pale and sickly, so wearing a &quot;wrong&quot; color, like black, was not necessarily a bad thing.<br><br>That color analysis was also the first time I realized that I had green eyes. Up to then, I thought I had brown eyes because they&apos;re dark, but Kibbe pointed out that they&apos;re actually dark green, not dark brown, and when he draped me in certain colors, you could actually see that they&apos;re green. That was kind of cool to discover. I don&apos;t know why no one noticed this until then.

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• UM

  @umutishope · 2 years ago

  My mom forces herself to wear colors she hates 30+ years after reading Color Me Beautiful. She self-diagnosed as an autumn and cried, but still took the rules like gospel. <br>She encouraged me to read it, then resented that my season contained colors I like and already wore.

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• CA

  @calihhan4706 · 2 years ago

  Another thing to consider: sometimes people want to achieve a look that is &quot;wrong&quot; for them. For example, my best friend as a teenager was very into gothic style. She has almost golden hair and pretty warm features, but by wearing the &quot;wrong&quot; colors, she got that paler, fairy look she wanted. And she looked stunning, because she felt herself and was happy.

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• ME

  @merrygrammarian1591 · 2 years ago

  My Grandmother gifted me a Color1 analysis for my birthday when I was in college, and it made SO much more sense than the seasons. The theory is more about finding colors that are already present in your body, even the yellow flecks in one&apos;s eyes. The woman who did my analysis had been trained in California, where they were required to match people of all skin colors. It was one of the most encouraging and body positive experiences I&apos;ve ever had. She would say, &quot;if you are looking to wear black, this kind of black will highlight your natural colors best&quot; But Color1 fell out of popularity and the weird seasons thing is all people know about.

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• KI

  @kittycatcitycat · 2 years ago

  We&apos;re really dealing with this history of things starting out presenting themselves as style and art advise and slowly trying to present themselves as scientific, whether or not they actually incorporate real colour science. &nbsp;I love the thought of rich 1800s women heading to their favorite painter to be like &quot;I like your understanding of colour. &nbsp;Could you suggest what colours look good on my and paint me a little pallet sampler?&quot;

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• AM

  @amberdulay7238 · 2 years ago (edited)

  There was a moment in the book Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. She speaks of Pa bringing home calico for Ma to make the girls new dresses, and laments that her calico is red, because her hair was brown. Mary, on the other hand, got a lovely blue, due to her being a blonde. I remember as a child wondering why the heck it mattered, but now I’m sort of impressed that, if this passage is true, even Pa had some sort of understanding of the “color theory” that may have been prominent at the time.

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• NO

  @NordicQueen65 · 2 years ago

  My one-time stepmother worked for Color Me Beautiful in the late 80’s - early 90’s. She would tell people their “seasons” much like fortune tellers tell your fortune. People hung on every word. This company would also sell you clothing in your “season.” You could buy separates in your colors and build a wardrobe.

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• WA

  @wanderingspark · 2 years ago

  My elementary school guidance counselor in the 1990s believed that your color season was linked to your personality type. I remember her trying to sort my classmates into a simplified version of Myers-Briggs by looking at color season palettes. Even as a 6 year old, I was skeptical about the claim that your skin tone correlated to your personality.

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• LO

  @LoLo-yp1ez · 2 years ago

  “Magenta should be suppressed “ was the motto of my teenage years

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• LI

  @lizzygreenhood9631 · 2 years ago

  I analyzed my own colors in high school in the 80s in a 4-H sewing and fashion club, and it actually gave me &quot;permission&quot; to wear the rich earth tones that were no where near as trendy as electric blue and neons were at the time.

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