I have been thinking alot recently about what in my mind I call “resonance”. Oddly enough, the concept is explained very clearly – although the word is not used – on Inside Out Style Blog today.
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An alternative to the “neutral + color” formula of creating outfits: use any colors with similar resonance. Preferably the resonance which is most flattering to your skintone.
I am afraid I have not figured out what that is for me, which may account for why I have some things that go together, but not everything does.
Yeah, I saw that comparison, too. I always wind up staring at charts like that because I can’t seem to discern the difference very well. Triumph of Original Style may also have the category of “toasted”, which might be brown added. I imagine with your painting experience you naturally perceive all this better.
I find that I often do want to throw in a warm color with cool and vice versa but that’s about as far as I can go. What I have been experimenting with is a pronounced liking I have felt recently for using colors of near the same depth. I’ve always been uncomfortable about how separates look from the back. Not anything to do with shape but while you can create a nice frame for the front view, often the back view – jacket or sweater and skirt or pants – looks choppy in terms of the break between colors. If I use similar colors in terms of depth (value?) then it doesn’t bother me because it flows together better.
Also, Imogen had a video a long time ago where she addressed the issue of finding high contrast difficult to wear. Her solution was a great one: add a third color of medium contrast to the other two. I tend to like a strong statement in the colors I use but at the same time I like lower to medium contrast, reflecting my own coloring. So this addition of the third midway color is helpful to me at times.
Yes, I go back and forth about the “toasted” category. While I can see how it can be useful in practice, it is hard for me to grasp in theory. In mixing paints it makes sense, because in painting we are limited by the actual pigments available; but if brown is just a shade of orange, then toasting is more of a variation of other shading or muting (depending on the hue) IMO.
TToIS also uses the category “washed” – a lightening of the original hue accomplished in painting by adding water, not white – and “muted” (adding the complement) instead of “tone” (adding grey), although I don’t see any difference between the last pair.
Part of what has me thinking about this is the differences in color preference between me and my older daughter. We both have warm coloring and very light skin and like color, but her peach is like a cameo and mine is like a very light tangerine; her purple is muted grape, from light to dark, and mine is more like radiant orchid. Perhaps it is an age-related color change in me, but I held up a muted orange under my face in the fitting room recently and it was really bad – turned the lower half of my face green!
I am with you about combining warm and cool colors within an outfit. I always feel somehow “wrong”, dated?, flat? if I don’t. Even if it is just using the opposite metal for my jewelry.
Thanks for the link Rebecca. Another word I use instead of resonance is harmony – always looking for the harmony! I do use toasted, but not on the blog, as it tends to confuse. I think about toasting as taking some colours – like a spring palette, and popping them in the toaster – they are softened with a little brown rather than greyed down which looks more smoky.
Thanks for the link Rebecca. Another word I use instead of resonance is harmony – always looking for the harmony! I do use toasted, but not on the blog, as it tends to confuse. I think about toasting as taking some colours – like a spring palette, and popping them in the toaster – they are softened with a little brown rather than greyed down which looks more smoky.
That does make sense, especially in the practical. I think I know a few people whose personal coloring reminds me of that description. 🙂
Thanks!