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THE FOUR SEASON COLOR ANALYSIS

Seasonal Color Analysis

What do the four seasons have to do with color analysis and with color in general? Well, the seasonal color analysis is not a new concept; it was derived from the method that was used by the impressionist painters in the 19th-century to understand the colors of the seasons. In order, to accurately depict the colors of the landscape, the impressionists needed to understand the colors that were reflected in each one. As the seasons changed, from spring to summer and from autumn to winter, they noticed that the colors of the landscapes looked vastly different from one to another but there was still harmony within the color palette of each season.
Now, I would like you to imagine yourself standing on a flowery field during spring, can you see the fresh and vibrant colors of the flowers? If you go back to the same field a few months later, those bright colors that you had seen earlier will have changed to lighter and more gentle tones of the summer. That same landscape will look different during autumn as it will be made up of earthy and warm tones depicting fall. Lastly, during the winter season the same landscape will be composed of icy and darker hues. This change of colors occurs because of how light reflects on the natural world. Each time the sun changes position, it paints the world in a new light.

As humans are also made up of color, it makes sense to apply these notions to ourselves too. However, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that the four-season methodology was applied to fashion color choices. It gained instant popularity largely due to Carole Jackson’s book “Color me beautiful” where she focused on two characteristics of colors to determine one’s coloring.

These characteristics were:

  1. Hue (Warm or cool undertone)

  2. Value (Dark or Light)

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According to Jackson’s book, one’s seasonal type was determined by the undertone of one’s skin, hair, and eye (either warm/golden or cool/ ashy) and how light or dark one’s coloring overall is.

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Based on this early methodology of the four seasonal color analyses, which was derived in 1980, there were four possible variations based on the two variables listed above. If your natural coloring is dark you could either be classified as Autumn or a Winter. If you have lighter characteristics you could either be Spring or Summer. 
However, this methodology has some setbacks because not everyone can fall neatly into one of these four seasons. For instance, my personal coloring is composed of light brown hair with hazel eyes and my undertone of my skin is warm/gold.The colors in the autumn palette are too dark for me and the colors of the spring palette are too vibrant. So, where do I fall?  
As the four season color analysis model had many limitations, it was refined and developed into a more accurate twelve seasons color analysis.

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