Determining Warm or Cool Coloring
So what color did you think melanin is? I always thought it was brown. Now comes this page at the Science of Dress claiming, in hair at least, melanin is blue. While I have not been able to verify the scientific basis for the idea (in other words, google turned up nothing to support it), bear with me while I show you how useful the idea is. Suddenly I am able to see an additional layer in a person’s coloring!
From Hair Color Test:
Your hair is the “shortcut” way of testing for your colors and will give you a quick idea of nature’s plans for your color scheme. And it is easy to see……except:
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Except when your hair is an in-between color; these hair colors are marked with an asterisk because they are balanced and can be coaxed into appearing more warm or more cool by the Law of Attraction
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Or when the hair has been sun-bleached
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Or has become lightened because of permanents
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Or is very fine, therefore loosing color easily
Under these circumstances the hair should be more carefully examined for new hair close to the scalp. When color is removed from hair (for whatever reason), the hair pigment colors — blue melanin, red hemoglobin, and yellow carotenoid — lift out in exactly that order:
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the darkest color, blue, lifts out first which leaves the hair “redder” looking
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the next color to lift is red which leaves a “brassy” yellow
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then yellow lifts out leaving platinum as the very least and last “no color”
Okay, so how I am using this information? I’m just looking for visible blue in people’s hair color.
What I have found: it is much easier to spot primary colors visually than to spot variations in brown. I am also seeing blues in the hair color of little blonde kids.
I ran the color wheel post just before this because it makes sense to me that the pigments which make up a person’s coloring would be the same colors as the pigments which make up any other colors. In watercolor, I found the clearest, most precise colors were made from combining the three primaries: cyan, magenta, and yellow.
I also have to confess to you that I am a little out of my league here, both artistically and scientifically; as always, I’m open to input.
One final surprise, again from the hair color test:
This test is simple and direct. Hair colors are easier to see than skintone colors, so we begin determining where your hair color falls on the oval hair chart. Your hair color is the biggest clue because we know it is the exact opposite undertone color from your skintone color. Identifying where your hair color falls on the hair chart gives you a visible primary basic color upon which to build your wardrobe.
I have believed for a long time that most people’s coloring is a combination of warm and cool, mine certainly is. My hair raced right past the red stage, from dark brown to near white, and still has alot of black in it. My skin is palest orange. Blue and orange are opposites.
So here’s my question to you: is your hair the opposite undertone to your skin?
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My Mental Color Wheel
In preparation for a related topic I wish to address, and because it is Tuesday and I expect the concept explained in this post to be of interest to readers of the TeenStyle Tuesday series, I am re-running this post from the early days of the blog.
Remember kindergarten? No doubt you learned that there were three primary colors: red, blue, and yellow. And that any other color could be made by mixing these. Then when you got older you learned that black (or was it white?) was really not a color, but the absence of color. It seemed so simple.
A few years ago I took a painting class. I didn’t know the first thing about art, so I was pumped when I thought about making any color I wanted. But it really wasn’t that simple.
Now we are all aware that the color cartridge for your printer contains three primary colors: magenta, cyan, and yellow. Close to those kindergarten primary colors, but a little different. It was in exploring this concept, and trying to set up my watercolor palette, that I developed a working model of simple color theory.
I use a (mental) color wheel with twelve hues: a “cool” and a “warm” version of each primary and each secondary color. In other words, with each color I encounter (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, or purple) I decide if it is closer to the color on one side of it, or the other. (Of course, there are all manner of tints and shades as well.) Consequently, a blue will be either a green-blue (cyan) or a purple-blue (periwinkle). Here’s an image that’s pretty close to my mental one.
This works for me. And I realize now, in writing this post, that I have finally moved beyond the trauma of realizing that they taught me lies in kindergarten.
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Acknowledging God In What We Wear
Are you a lark or an owl? In all honesty, I get excited when I wake up around 5 or 6 am, and I start thinking about bed anytime after 7 pm. On the one hand, acknowledging this publicly brands me forever as “uncool”, right? Oh well. I’ll just have to settle for the self-righteousness that comes along assumption that early risers are more virtuous. 
At any rate, yesterday I was pleased to get up with my hero, just after dd1 left for work and before dd2 got up for school, that is between 5:45 and 6:15. I showered and dressed, then puttered around and kept him company while he got himself ready for work. When left to myself a little after 7, I sat down to spend time getting to know God, as is my habit; after reading for an hour or so I decided to just lean my head back on the couch for a few minutes … to think about it. You see where this is going, don’t you?
Anyway, when I woke up - at 10! - Proverbs 3:6 was stuck in my thoughts:
6In all your ways (C)acknowledge Him,
And He will (D)make your paths straight.
Honestly, for us very concrete thinkers, passages like this can be really easy to gloss over. “All your ways” is so big it might as well be “none of your ways”. But, since I wasn’t in a hurry to get moving, I began asking myself questions, starting with “isn’t resting when needed acknowledging God?”, through “how do we acknowledge Him in what we eat?”,and ending predictably with “how do we acknowledge God with what we choose to wear?”
Some ways:
- We acknowledge Him as Creator of beauty by harmonizing our clothes with our appearance.
- We acknowledge His sovereignty by accepting how we are made, both physically and in our personality.
- We acknowledge Him as Provider by limiting our wardrobe to what we can reasonably wear.
- We acknowledge His holiness by refusing to dress in a way that would cause another to sin.
- We acknowledge that He came to set us free by not allowing ourselves to be pressed into a mold.
Expressing these things is really the purpose behind the blog. The subsidiary purpose is social. Let the chit-chat begin!
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An Outfit a Month
Okay, show of hands - and let’s be honest here! - who thinks piano recitals are really boring? Sadly, even the best of them (like the one we went to last night) leave plenty of time for the mind to wander. That is, if one can stay awake.
Now, I don’t know where you go when your mind wanders, but I’ll tell you what I came up with during last night’s recital: a month by month plan of outfits to purchase. Not that I’ll necessarily hold myself to this structure, but it was an interesting diversion. The “thought train” went something like this:
what if my budget were large enough to buy a new outfit every month?
I still wouldn’t be able to buy just anything I wanted.
It makes The Budget Fashionista’s $200 per month look right reasonable!
And then I went on to try to create a month by month shopping plan to reflect my lifestyle pie chart. Here’s what I came up with:
- January:
- February: Spring leisure outfit
- March: a daytime dress (BTW, March is the perfect time to buy a dress. At no other time in the year will the selection be better.)
- April: Spring/Summer smart casual ensemble
- May: Summer leisure outfit
- June:
- July: stock up on basics (unmentionables)
- August: Fall leisure outfit
- September: suit (business)
- October: Fall/Winter smart casual ensemble
- November: holiday social
- December:
Then, for the duration of the recital, I sat there and tried to figure out what the gaping holes in this plan were. And whether I could buy a whole outfit on my budget of $45/ month (probably not). And whether I should put “extra sweaters and warm gear” in January, or coats or underwear, and how often I realistically need a new swimsuit, and how it’s probably better, if this were a realistic plan, to just leave December empty.
Speaking of a realistic plan, here’s an idea for transforming a stressful recital evening into family fun:
after the performance, since we were all kinda dressed up anyway, we took the ladies for dessert at a restaurant which is far too expensive for a family dinner. We had the vanilla burnt cream along with a gorgeous view of the river.
So even if the month by month shopping plan is a miss, the dessert was a hit!
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Thrift Score: February 4th, 2008
Yesterday I was blessed with the opportunity to go thrifting with my older daughter. Have I ever mentioned that we drive by an outstanding coffee “hut” (I don’t know about where you live, but here they are on about every corner), one that offers $1 mochas every Monday?
What I bought:
- three-quarter sleeve coral cardigan. A summer staple. ($1)
- plain, dark, bootcut 100% cotton (The Limited) jeans. Still not the perfect jeans I’ve been looking for but for $1 I’m confident I’ll get my money’s worth.
- (Brand new with tags) Outback Trading Company shirt-shaped microsuede jacket. Definitely not my idiom. Wondering why I bought it? My hero loves his fleece that color, I thought he’d be honored if I bought it to wear on Saturdays when I’m running around with him. ($14.99) Besides that, it looks good on.
Grand total: $18.43.
I still need to get downtown this week, to the good stores. Have you made any significant scores recently?
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Friday Fashion Lab: V-neck Cashmere Sweater
Intending to try out some of the outfit suggestions for my new “boring” sweater, but not having a photographer available, I rigged up a wreath holder on the inside of my closet door. He hee. If you like how it works, maybe I’ll be more inclined to take pictures. Even without having to get changed in and out of the outfits, this project took me a long time.
Anyway, on to the pictures. This first one is with my one and only scarf, which lately I have been thinking about using to fill in a v-neck sweater (scarf as blouse is an old scarf-tying era trick). Anyway, this I like, and will probably wear to church.
Next I turned my attention to creating outfits for spring. 
Here’s where the technique of showing the clothes hanging like this rather than on the body breaks down. Anyway, how do you like my $5 white quilted leather belt? About the pants: I bought them recently (for $1) when I realized I didn’t have anything between lined wool trousers and my short sleeved pants. These are light weight cotton, denim-y blue with neutral stripes, and while they are not wardrobe staples, I didn’t pay much.
And speaking of not paying much, here’s my new summer leisure/casual dress that I go t for $2.49 at KMart. Most of you know that v-neck is less my thing than other necklines, but I’m comfortable in it worn over a collared shirt. 
(Parenthetically here, I took a picture of the sweater with my chocolate brown button-up shirt under, but lost it. Worn like that, though, it basically goes with all my winter stuff: jeans tucked into boots, wool patterned trousers, wool skirts and boots … .)
Anyway, I love how this summery dress makes a transitional outfit - sure to be a favorite next fall! - when combined with the sweater and wintery accessories.
Now, on to my jackets. Most are nothing special when combined with this sweater.
(The safari-style jacket color goes fine with the sweater, and the sweater even fits under it, but I confess I am squeamish about the very lightweight fabric combined with a cable-knit sweater.)
Now I’m off to shopping with a bunch of teenagers. These are the times when I really love my life!
