Privilege Blog

Breaking The Palette, Or, Saturday Morning at 10:03am

These, my friends, are my clothes. Oh, I have other pieces of human-shaped cloth in my closets and drawers, but when I leave the house these are the ones I wear most often.

Jacket and scarves,

Scarves and jackets in Autumn colors

Pants and tops.

You can see how much I benefited from my session with Sue. Coherence, the Holy Grail of wardrobes, makes it so much easier to pack. I will still wear a navy blue dress on occasion, or black and white some days–I’m not a purist–but having a sense of a good color palette sure helps me choose which Vuori joggers I’ll buy when the old ones inevitably wear out.

However, I have been getting a bit bored. So I lay all these pieces on my bed and thought, “What?” And back to me came, “Off-pink and burnt tan. Oh, also a fleck of turquoise.” I like knowing my base palette, and then I really like breaking it in tiny ways.

This jacket had been following me around the internet.

But in the end it felt a little heavy. Off to the color masters at Block Shop for a scarf. Dusty pink just this side of lilac; mustard verging on ochre.

It’s my birthday Monday, and guess what I’ll be opening?

How about that fleck of turquoise, you say? Easily handled. T-shirts are my subversive color drug of choice. From Land’s End this time, in a range of colors and on sale for what approaches zero. Mine hasn’t arrived yet, but I’ll report back on quality.

 

And it’s a wrap for my fall shopping. What about you? Have a very wonderful weekend.

 

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27 Responses

  1. Happy birthday on Monday!! From another September baby. :) I hope you have a fantastic weekend and a fun birthday. I’m interested to know how you like your Land’s End t-shirts, too, since I’ll be in the market for some soon and had been considering them.

    1. Thank you! I hope you had/have a good birthday yourself:). I absolutely will report back on the Land’s End tee.

  2. My palette is nothing like yours, but I do like that pink jacket. I haven’t had much luck with Lands’ End in recent years (but my LE stadium squall parka is at least 15 years old and still holds up in a storm). I have many LL Bean pima cotton tees in assorted colors, and they wear well. Happy birthday!

    1. These heritage brands often suffer a lot when they try to move production overseas, or change their operations. If this doesn’t work out I’ll try LL Bean! And thank you:)

  3. I really feel attracted to your colors which are softly muted and rich.
    What season is this? Years ago, when I had my colors done I was told I was in the autumn spectrum.
    The colors were brighter and not to my liking, so I didn’t stick to the palette. Now, I would like to redo
    my colors. Was this done online or at an actual visit?
    I must have missed your posts on this topic.

    1. If I recall from my own color analysis eons ago, there are different levels of brightness and contrast within each season. My colors are in the autumn spectrum too, but bright oranges and the like look dreadful on me… I think my coloring must be like yours and Lisa’s as well. There are Deep Autumn (darker muted tones) and Soft Autumn (lighter muted tones) colorations in addition to Warm or Clear Autumn (I can’t remember if these are one and the same, but they include the brighter warm tones). I’m a Deep Autumn, and Lisa’s colors above look much like mine; but I’m not good at distinguishing Deep from Soft, so she might be a Soft Autumn instead. I have dark blue-green eyes, light yellow-toned skin and dark chestnut hair. If my hair were to go grey, I would need to veer more toward the Soft palette since there would be less contrast between my hair and skin. I hope this is helpful. Maybe Lisa or Sue can chime in and provide more clarity.

      … All that said, I still wear navy, black and white all the time. A little warmth near my face, like a dark green dress, brown sweater, ivory scarf or gold necklace, is enough to make a remarkable difference. You can start small and see how it works for you. ❤

    2. Joyce, it is Autumn. I didn’t get more definition from Sue than that–I was a beta client and it was early on. She does the full analysis now, and works in person down in LA. More than warm or cool per se, most of all I need muddy/muted colors as my main palette, which I knew. But to find I’m more warm than cool opened up a whole bunch of new options. I highly recommend taking at the very least reading through Sue’s blog on the subject.

  4. Love your palette. So informative to see what each of us chooses with our varying coloring. In color analysis, I’m a Deep Winter, which means a lot of contrast between my pale skin, dark hair and eyes, and pigmented lips. Now there’s a deep contrast the other way with my gray/platinum hair. When I got curious about color analysis in the last few years, I was delighted to find that my favorite colors are indeed right for me. I love white Oxford cloth shirts, and gray Cashmere sweaters, and now a more judicious use of black. I’m adding blue as my accent/contrast color. It used to be a common item in my wardrobe, but during difficult years the black in the wardrobe came to the fore to an extreme degree. Black, baggy clothing reflected my mood much more than I realized. I’m embracing white, and navy blue, and gray, and feeling lighter. I’m ordering a yearly planner for the first time since 2013, and I am going back and forth between tan, orange, and blue. I want to strike out into color territory, but it would be the brightest thing in my home, which is all very cream and brown and black. My emotional response to the idea of a Royal Blue or Orange Graphic Image daily planner surprises me and underscores the emotional import of color. Color has always affected me deeply. I love the color in a Matisse, but I don’t like color around me because I don’t find it soothing. A wonderful interior designer from Design Within Reach around the corner from where I live—fascinating person with an interior design degree from Tehran University who taught at the university until she and her sister left Iran—came over to help me with measurements and placements before I made a purchase. When I was next in, we were looking for a small chair or ottoman and she showed me a bright pink ottoman made from rug material. It reminded of the beautiful choices Bumble Ward makes in her home. I loved the piece, but knew it wouldn’t work in my home. My one beloved color is book spines. Happy Birthday. My older sister was born 9.24, my younger brother 10.2 (a year later!), my mom 8.15, my younger sister 8.25. My dad and I are the 12.9 and 1.4 wintry outliers. Have a wonderful day. Thank you, as always, for this gathering place. xo.

    1. Ack! The DWR interior designer who aided me has a degree in *Industrial Design*, which she also taught, not Interior Design. Industrial Design is a field I find fascinating, with people like Dieter Rams, with his Bauhaus background, and Jonathan Ive who long worked at Apple, representing some of the best aspects of it.

      1. So happy to see you here, and have you bring your family, in spirit. Your colors are the ones I thought I should wear, and they sound pure and beautiful to me.

  5. Notably absent: your leather moto jacket, last seen at wedding rehearsal dinner. Notably present: that scarf [in the middle] that [I think] your brother gave you the year your siblings held the Christmas pick-your-sibling-to-give-to year. Oh how I still love that scarf. Notable: HAPPY BIRTHDAY LISA!

    1. Hello! You remember so well! Yes, my brother gave me that scarf. One of the best presents I’ve ever gotten. The moto jacket, I need to wear that again. Believe it or not, I strained my bicep tendon putting it on, the January after the wedding, and have been leary of it since. Time to buck up! It’s a great jacket:). And thank you so much for the birthday wishes.

    1. Thank you! If you approve, I know it’s good;) Also, Block Shop should really sell your tulipières, now I think about it.

  6. Happy B-day Lisa.
    It is good to know what colors are most flattering. You’ve selected some lovely new pieces of clothing. Enjoy your day!

  7. Happy upcoming birthday! I like that these colors, the mustard and rose, are sophisticated shades; so many “color analyses” I’ve seen seem to put people in glaring primaries and jewel tones. Slightly dirty or dusty hues are so much better.

    1. Thank you:). Sue is sophisticated, always has been, so I guess I’m not surprised? But also I’ve always wondered, are fabrics in bright/primary colors cheaper to produce?

  8. I have tried other Lands End tees and contrary to what commenters elsewhere say, they were not thick cotton and the lighter colors were see through. But quality seems ok for paper thin tees.

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