This is a Teen Style Tuesday post. The outfit pictured is what my sixteen year old wears to college around here. The neon mis-matched Chucks were hilarious on her last week when she was on stage, during an Improvisational Theatre event, walking in a very exaggerated Western style!
If you have soft or muted coloring, try one of these color combining techniques when you want to wear a brighter color:
- Instead of combining the bright with black alone, which would only serve to heighten the drama, try black AND gray, as pictured here. Or just gray. Or denim.
- Use a color harmony with less contrast, such as the analogous one here (red, magenta, purple) or even better (softer), use a blended print.
- Combine with a tint of the intense color.
This is not an exhaustive list, what would you add?
[lecturing self] no, I’m not going to reconsider taking back the citrus yellow flat knit sweater vest I love but not on me. 🙂
I’ve just been coming to terms with rejecting overpowering color. Have found some of the same things you cited as useful. I do much better without the powerful contrast with black and white in large amounts, for example. Wearing lots of midrange tones suits me better. And somehow that recent trend of adding brights to gray makes me queasy. Too Jetsons for me. I admire modern looks on others but it’s too costumey on me. Even that rule about restricting brights to small bits like belt and shoes doesn’t sit well with me. I’m just better with slightly toned down colors like a sliver of candy apple red patent belt.
Look at the two pictures on this website. After reading versions of this advice for years, I finally got it. The *blouse* looks better in the first picture, I can never remember what the top looks like in the second picture but you do notice her face. So I guess part of the equation is as far away from the face as possible.
http://www.style-makeover-hq.com/seasonal-color-analysis.html
“rejecting overpowering color” … that’s a great way to put it.
I wonder a little bit if the brights + gray trend will be long-lived or not. I can kinda sense what you mean about being very modern and almost strange feeling, but my mind tells me that it shouldn’t be any different from white or black plus bright, an almost universally acceptable formula.
Those pictures are very illustrative. The other thing I notice is that the neckline in the second is better-suited to her face shape. There’s also lots of other good stuff on that site!