It’s a gloomy time of year for those of us in the northern hemisphere.  Many of us struggle with sunless days that lead to less-than-sunny moods. This makes it a great time of year to adopt color into your wardrobe, but how?

Now complicate it–there’s a color you LOVE, that MAKES YOU HAPPY but it doesn’t look great on you.  What do you do?

The Backstory

As many of you know, one of my dearest friends (my sister in law) passed unexpectedly this past fall.  Laura was a huge proponent of bold style and she adored bright colors.  Her very favorite color was orange, but she was often seen in purples, Pucci-level prints, and the world’s most difficult color–GOLD.

I would often comment how sunny and pretty shades of yellow were on her and lament that I just simply cannot wear the tone.  Her response was always emphatically “WHY NOT?” She deferred to me as the expert, but would push me to try.  I know from my career that generally muted colors are not good for me, that vibrant jewel tones ARE, and that yellow is a hard no.  I’m too pink.  Cool tones are where I need to live.

A pic from the football banquet, but this is the citrine floral I found.

When Laura passed, the family knew she would never want us all in black.  We asked that visitors wear bright colors to celebrate Laura’s incredible life and legacy.  We filled the funeral home  with flowers in pink, purple, orange and yellow, and everyone who paid respects honored her with color.  I, personally, decided it was the time to adopt that citrine shade Laura had always urged me to.

One of the reasons this particular dress works is the addition of port wine and navy colored flowers near each edge of the garment.  Wine and navy are definitely good colors for me, which puts the right frame near exposed skin, helping to balance the yellowness of the citrine. You’ll see these colors show up again in another look…

What’s funny about this is that although I was apprehensive about pulling this off, EVERYONE’S comment was “that is YOUR color!”  Personally, I believe the joy of rocking a favorite color of one of my favorite people shone through in my attitude when I wore it.

 

How to OWN the Colors you Wear

All of a sudden, I realized I sort of LOVED this color.  Honestly, I’m so happy when I’m wearing this color favorite of Laura’s, I decided to keep up the momentum.  It was autumn and any lick of summer glow was long gone.  BUT my kids’ school colors are black and gold, and now Conman is going to Pitt which means more gold!  A good time to turn wearing this shade into a system.

First, obviously, is attitude.  If a color MAKES YOU HAPPY, it will show when you wear it.  PROMISE!!!!  Put on your best smile and rock it out.

How could I NOT be happy cheering our Tigers?

Deeper blush shades and a deep lip bring some coolness into the color scheme.

 

 

 

The REAL secret is adjusting your cosmetics palette and accessories, pulling the colors that DO work into focus–so you aren’t lost.  Let’s start with the makeup…

Deepen your typical blush color, sweep some bronzer (light touch) across your forehead/nose/cheeks/chin, and pop on some deep burgundy lip color.  Several are linked in this photo and also HERE.

 

 

 

so many compliments on this outfit…

This citrine ring was Laura’s–wearing it brings peace.

The denim pulls the blue from the scarf&accessories are simple.

Finally, keep the rest of the outfit simple.  Pull the boldest brightest color with a great knit (I love this sweater so much I bought it in two colors), a coat, or your accessories if you are tentative.  And add the cool tones back in.  Like in the dress above, I’ve added a scarf around my neck in wine and navy–two of my go-to shades that are the perfect cooler balance to the yellow. The entire look is linked HERE as well as in each of the photos above.  

 

The most important message here is this:  if you LOVE a color, WEAR IT!!!  AND if you still aren’t sure how to pull it off, contact me for a consultation and we will get those colors back and functioning in your closet and bringing you JOY!!!

 

xoxo,

Sam