I’ve done one of those colour analysis things where it tells you what “season” you are and what colours you should wear. I didn’t go through the whole fandango of paying someone professional for this. I did the 2024 equivalent: I used a TikTok filter.
This is, I am aware, probably one of the classic signs of the identity crisis of someone who is a mother of small children. Anyway, turns out I’m a soft summer. So I should be wearing exclusively cool-toned, muted colours (silver, dusty blue, pale mint green, grey-toned lilac) if I want to avoid things clashing with my very pale bluish-pink skin, mid-brown hair and grey-green eyes.
This is bad news for my wardrobe full of rich brown autumnal stuff.
Obviously everyone should wear whatever the hell they like and I’m not exactly taking this seriously, but I’ve been in a funk of wearing nothing except M&S’s loosest available clothing since having my second baby, and it’s starting to get depressing, so I need some new ideas for getting dressed.
The colours are a bit boring, sure. At the moment I own nothing lilac, a colour I associate with parma violets. I do have a lilac-grey eyeshadow that I fished out of an old makeup bag and tried on again this week. To be fair, I think it does make my eyes look a bit more interesting.
I’m not totally convinced. But I can see why this whole idea of personal colour analysis is so appealing: that we might somehow belong to a season. That there might be certain colours that are sure make us feel better, and into which we just fit.
And I do find it tempting to think there might be a formula, a safe zone, where as long as I dress in all the colours that have been assigned to me, securely within the limits of this palette, I won’t look weird or blotchy or harsh. I won’t look as if I don’t belong in the world any more, since having children, since working from home, since getting older. I get it. I want it to be the answer. Maybe an assigned colour palette is a bit like the fashion equivalent of a padded cell. I can’t hurt myself in there.
Other lushness from this week…
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