Friday Fashion Lab: A Question of Sleeve Lengths
Many thanks to Chrs for the question and the pictures for this sleeve-length fashion lab! A previous sleeve-length fashion lab tested the affect wearing a 3/4 length (or pushed up) sleeve has on visual length of the legs; the question before us now is:
what affect, if any, does sleeve length have on the apparent length of the top? Do any of these tops look shorter or longer than they really are because of the length of the sleeves?
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Semi-Casual And The Personal Color Palette
I skipped posting for Teen-style Tuesday in order to spend time with my parents, who were in town to attend the annual Semi-Casual banquet (my older daughter was one of the special honorees this year). Mom took this picture.
About my outfit:
- Mom bought me the safari style jacket for Christmas.
- Same pants I wore last year.
- Same shoes I wore the year before.
At the last minute, in order to more accurately repeat the contrast in my own coloring, thereby creating a more flattering ensemble, I selected the brown gingham check camp shirt.
It’s also the humor in this outfit. What’s so funny, you ask? When I was small, back in the day when brown was the “in” color, my sister and I had gingham dresses. Mine was brown. Trouble was, I always thought that brown dress meant I was boring; which faulty thinking became known as the “brown dress syndrome”. As an adult, though, I realized that my mom always liked brown, therefore choosing to dress me in it could not be bad.
Wearing brown checks reminds me that I am way over the ”brown dress syndrome”, the whole thing was childish thinking in the first place. What about you? Have you uncovered any remnants of childish thinking in your own wardrobe choices?
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Should You Wear Colors Close to Your Skin Tone?
Becky writes:
Rebecca, several of your posts on dressing in colors that are present in your personal coloring have puzzled me. For example, I have very fair that is somewhat yellowish (also dark blonde/light brown hair) and I look horrible in colors that contain too much yellow. It seems to me that I look best in cool colors that balance out the yellow of my skin.
Nobody looks good in yellow outside of Texas, do they? 
But seriously, Becky, you bring up a good question. Your experience corresponds with the advice to Choose the Opposite Color that I blogged about awhile back. (I also notice that most of the commenters said the same thing you did, “horrible in yellow”.)
Here’s how eternalvoyageur answered:
Hmmm… I think that we have to pick what we want to highlight in our colouring (either by using these colours or contrasts) and what we prefer to conceal or balance out. read the rest of her answer …
I agree. Don’t emphasize anything you don’t want noticed (undereye circles, acne, birthmarks, etc) by matching it in color.
In one of my very first posts, on selecting jacket colors, I gave the following advice on wearing a color similar to your skin tone next to the face:
- Separate the garment from your face with a swath of contrasting fabric.
- Choose as an accent color: your eye color, white, black, or your lipstick color.
There is, of course, the danger of being washed out by not using enough contrast in your color scheme. To combat that possibility:
- use a darker or lighter version of the eye or hemoglobin color
- use the complementary color
- add a small amount of white, black, or a shiny metallic
Finally, finding flattering colors to wear next to the face can be as simple as identifying your hemoglobin and melanin colors, by-passing the overall skin tint. Hemoglobin is the oranges, reds, and purples present in, for example, the tips of your fingers. By melanin I mean the color of your freckles, that is, the browns in your skin.
In the end, I decided against the monochromatic “safari suit” for this evening’s semi-casual banquet, opting instead for a variation with greater contrast.
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Linking Lab: Pink Lips
Raging Rouge has done two “fashion labs”, trying on dozens of pink lipsticks and glosses and photographing them to share with us.
- Her favorites: The New Pink IS Pink!
- More sophisticated options: Pink, All Grown Up
With such a great layout, why should I do a fashion lab this week?
But I know I really want to get back to doing them, so leave a comment if you have an idea.
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Coffee with Cream, part 2
Yay! I don’t have to really write this post - an explanation of the color terms white, off-white, cream and beige - which I had planned as a follow-up to my previous attack on the question, because Angie has written one which is very clear and easy to understand. As I understand her explanation: there are extreme whites, (palest gray) off-white, light yellows (creams), and beiges or tints of brown.
A bit of practical, Rebecca-style advice concerning that final category:
Selecting one family of browns to use in your wardrobe will make color-coordinating much easier. Simply put, choose any brown that is present in your coloring and then use all its tints and shades (white added or black added).
Recently, when thrifting with a friend, we got to experience how this works. She had a number of brown-range items in the cart: dark brown shoes, khaki pants, cream pants, tan purse, and mid-brown purse. When laid next to each other, everything blended except the tan purse, which looked green next to the other items. That made it easy to choose what to put back!
