Soft Summer Harmony
What is harmony? Is it beauty? Is it balance?
I was researching hashtags on Instagram, when I came across a photograph that completely hypnotised me - a true beauty, a true harmony! An alluring young woman, Lou, wearing a Soft Summer green top that is just so flattering on her. She is a Soft Summer* (Colour Type) and a Soft Dramatic (Body Type). Lou is not my client but I have her permission to use the photograph on the blog.
Image by Lou via @lostincaptivation (Instagram profile).
Style Identity has a permission to use the photograph on the blog.
Look at her eyes, lips, skin, hair and her top. Her eyes sparkle, her complexion appears make-up free and flawless - fresh, youthful and smooth. Her hair colour looks elegant and sophisticated. Why? Because her exquisite aesthetic is further enhanced by her Soft Summer green blouse. It looks awfully good on her! The colour flatters her beauty and the whole image is beyond this world! This is what I call beauty, this is what I call harmony. A green-eyed Soft Summer wearing her best shade of green. An effortless elegance. What more would you wish for?
Soft Summers eyes come in a range of colours: blue, green, brown or grey. Lou’s eyes are predominantly green, but if you look closer, there are many more colours. Her limbal ring is grey-blue-green and flows into green that flows into yellow that flows into brown. Soft Summer eyes often have multicoloured irises where the soft colours flow into each other.
Soft Summer hair looks mousy and uninteresting next to any other colour but a Soft Summer colour. This is a fact that applies to other Seasons as well. In my country of origin Soft Summers are quite frequent and the women often complain about their hair colour (neutral cool, soft, blended, medium in value). They complain about it because they don’t know what to wear to make it stand out. Often they (unfortunately) decide to dye their hair in a rather radical fashion - e.g. black (deep and cool) or platinum (cool and bright) or warm blond (too warm) or red (too warm and deep) or light cool blond (too cool and light for a Soft Summer). The result is disharmony at best. The truth is, their natural hair colour is perfect. If the hair looks lifeless and the face lacks energy, it is the clothes and makeup that are out of place. Lou’s hair looks full of life and pigment next to her colour palette. It looks regal and elegant. It reminds me somewhat of the Duchess of Cambridge (Catherine Middleton), who might also be a Soft Summer. Catherine’s hair colourist is doing a marvellous job by the way, he is a master at recreating Kate’s pre-grey natural hair colour again and again.
In the right colours, Soft Summer skin looks uplifted, fresh and youthful. Lou’s skin glows, it has a healthy colour (it is neither greyed nor yellowed nor red nor unhealthy pale). Lou’s lips are the perfect shade of Soft Summer rose petals. Given that green (her top) is complementary to red, her lips truly stand out. She wears no lipstick. If she wore a top that doesn’t respect her colouring, her lips could appear unhealthy or frozen or might lack definition (the lip contour would melt into the skin).
Soft Summers are muted in chroma, medium cool in hue and medium in value. Soft Summer Light is slightly lighter in value than the traditional Soft Summer and Soft Summer Deep is slightly deeper in value than the traditional Soft Summer. Still, all Soft Summers are muted in chroma and medium-cool (aka cool-neutral).
What is a Soft Summer Harmony? It is Lou surrounded by colours that are an extension of her natural pigments. (Have a look at the Soft Summer Mood Board No.1 and Soft Summer Mood Board No.2 for more inspiration.)
The Soft Summer colour palette is muted, the colours are soft, powdery and perhaps slightly dusty. Usually, you can detect the grey that has been added to the colour. On a Soft Summer, soft pastels look as vibrant as pure pigmented colours on a Bright (Clear) Season. What matters is the context, the natural pigments of the person wearing the colour. Swop the palettes and suddenly the Soft Summer disappears and resembles a tacky shell of a person and the Bright Spring (or Winter) looks washed out and mousy (and a bit feverish too).
Because Soft Summers are medium-cool (or cool-neutral), they are not absolutely cool, i.e. they are predominantly cool but warmer than their Cool / True Summer sisters. Both the coolness as well as the warmth can be found in their faces. Look at the photograph. Lou is cool-neutral and while she is overall more cool than warm in hue, she isn’t only cool and there is a degree of warmth to her natural pigments as well. Try the following experiment. Decide to look for the cool pigments in her face and hair, and you will see them. Then decide to look for the warm pigments in her face and hair and you will see them as well. The following analogy might be a little stretch but it certainly works for me: think of an asian sweet & sour dish - is it more sweet or sour? Or think of a caramel fleur de sel macaron - it is predominantly sweet, but you can clearly taste the salt too. :-) Sometimes it is hard to tell whether a very muted Colour Type is slightly cool or slightly warm without the help of the professional drapes. And that is why lots of “Soft” Seasons are confused about whether they are rather cool or rather warm.
“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie —
True Poems flee — ”
Harmony and beauty from a colour point of view is to wear colours that are you in hue, value and chroma. Colours that mimic your natural pigments are:
neither warmer nor cooler than you are,
neither brighter nor more muted than you are,
neither deeper nor lighter in value than you are,
in line with your hue and value contrast levels.
Lou chooses a colour that is perfect for her. And she further perfects it by wearing a colour that enhances her natural eye & lip colour, i.e. the green from her palette (complementary - lips, repetition - eyes).
The beauty of personal colour analysis is to measure the colour properties of your face and then show you the colours that share the same characteristics as your face. As a colour analyst, I like to say that I decode your natural pigments. I don’t choose your most flattering colours. I simply discover the properties of the pigments you were born with. The colour palette comes second, it comes naturally after we have analysed your face. I simply have no preference regarding the properties of your face - whether you are cool or warm or bright or muted. All I care about is to be as precise in the analysis as possible. All I care about is the truth.
Lou is a Soft Summer and she has been colour analysed with preciseness and care. Lou has no doubt about her Colour and Body Type and is able to build her wardrobe strategically from a young age. Follow her style and colour journey on Instagram @stylishsoulsarah. Lou shares insights and tips about how to dress as a Soft Summer Soft Dramatic using her real-life wardrobe. Sometimes she finds the perfect top, other times she shows us how to creatively adjust less suitable garments and make them work. If you are a Soft Summer and/or Soft Dramatic, don’t hesitate to check her posts!
*Note from 30.06.2022
Lou no longer believes she is a Soft Summer. She believes she is an Autumn (Warm or Dark). She hasn’t been professionally colour analysed yet and I have never seen her in person. However, when I saw her photograph on a Soft Summer Instagram page, I genuinely believed she is a Soft Summer (and so did Lou then). The photo seemed so right and I assumed she has been professionally analysed. And for some reason, I longed to write an article about a Soft Summer then, as it was one of the few Colour Types I haven’t had in my studio yet at that time (this has changed since). Lou allowed me to keep the article on the blog and I want to keep it too as there was a time & place when it felt so true.
The key takeaway from this is that we can never truly be sure about our Colour Type from photographs. Photographs distort colour. We can only be sure about Colour Types in daylight after a careful & professional draping process. To see a verified Soft Summer, please visit the Gallery on this website.
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