From soft summer to warm spring, girls are being told everyday to find their “perfect” color season. The colors said to best suit their skin tone, hair color, and eye color are grouped into seasonal palettes, essentially creating a rulebook to follow. Color analysis tests can range from online evaluations that you can do from home, to expensive in-person consultations that have risen in popularity in the Korean beauty industry.
I won’t deny that finding your color season can be fun. It can be a way to discover color palettes that accentuate your natural features and experiment with your fashion sense. But color analysis has begun to be taken far too seriously as a fashion trend, and is negatively affecting our self-perception.
Your Color Season is Not Binding
Color analysis is meant to be a guideline of colors that complement your natural tones, so why are we making it a rulebook for what we can and cannot wear? I’ve heard girls say far too many times, “Oh, I can’t wear that, it’s not in my color season,” as if an online quiz can evaluate the limits of their outfits.
There are many instances of people getting a color analysis done, and consequently going home to declutter every item in their closet that does not align with their “perfect” colors. Color theory is often marketed as a way to “shop smarter” by keeping these palettes in mind. However, it can often convince girls that their closets are full of clothes that are not right for them, encouraging them to replace perfectly wearable pieces and, in turn, contributing to overconsumption. This intense adherence to color theory can inhibit style and encourage wastefulness when taken too seriously.
Conventional Beauty Standards
Color analysis is marketed as an individualized system that encourages people to find their personal style that adheres to their unique color makeup. Yet, somehow, it still perpetuates this idea that the “correct” version of yourself is the one that appeals visually to other people. Color theory is all about offering colors that “harmonize” with your tones in order to optimize the way our bodies are perceived. It suggests beauty means making your skin more even, your complexion brighter, your features defined, and that with the right colors, you can achieve this look.
Color theory creates an objective idea of what “flattering” looks like. It takes away the idea that someone might deliberately want to wear softer and stranger colors that create a more washed-out effect simply because they feel good in them or enjoy those tones. Color analysis creates this idea of “right” and “wrong” colors that can actually be harmful to one’s self-confidence and self-expression.
Color analysis doesn’t need to disappear. It reminds me of those style quizzes that we used to fill out in fashion magazines as kids, and, when taken lightly, it can be a fun way to experiment and discover your style. The problem begins when color theory becomes a strict rulebook for what you can and cannot wear, and “flattering” becomes synonymous with “better”. A color can clash with your undertones and still make you feel beautiful. Your look doesn’t have to appear harmonious in the eyes of other people to be right for you.
Fashion is meant to be a form of self-expression, not a test of color theory. The best colours to wear are ultimately the ones you enjoy wearing.