Wall Art and Fabric Craft - Seasonal Colours and Capsule Wardrobes

Part 2c

I had just about finished writing this weeks offering when by chance I discovered a website which said everything that I had just written, complete with even more than I could write in a month, about seasonal colours and your style personality. So instead of putting up the questionaire that I have written, I will point you to her website http://www.thechicfashionista.com and I recommend that you visit. She has a quiz that will help you to discover your clothing or style personality, plus pages on the four seasons and the 3 sub-seasons within each of the four groups. She, like me, uses the Color Me Beautiful theory (http://www.colormebeautiful.com) and has some marvellous diagrams to back up

Seasonal Colours and Capsule Wardrobes Part 2a

Illustrations mainly courtesy of Pinterest

First of all seasonal colours. I am fairly certain that most of you will have heard of seasonal colourings, if only to do with make-up which is often sorted into cool and warm. At the very least I hope that most of you will have heard of people being sorted into the four seasons, spring, autumn (warm) and summer, winter (cool). This was made popular by the Color Me Beautiful team and the book they published back in the 1970s/1980s was freely available and extremely helpful (as mentioned in last weeks post). 

This was later multiplied up and you were divided into not just a season but also the depth of colour within the season, bringing the number of possibilities up to twelve. My daughter and I were both treated to a consultation with a Color Me Beautiful consultant here in Dublin, Republic of Ireland (www.cmbireland.com or www.colormebeautiful.com - the official site for all) and we discovered that while I was a deep autumn my daughter is a soft summer. (There is also a system out there to help men, my husband being a summer). As part of the consultation we received a folder with all our colours in it, small pieces of fabric on a cardboard backing with the colours named and whether they were neutrals, contrasts, only to be worn as part of a pattern or sparingly etc.

Make-up examples for the four seasons:

 There are many other consultants out there and I have had a consultation with another group (part of a 'party' at someone's house, sort of like tupperware or Ann Summers but with colours instead). Again I was grouped as an autumn but they only used the basic four. Nowadays they have a lot of different groupings, the seasons have been forgotten and trying to work out for yourself what your best colours would be is, at best, problematic. I know mine but as deep autumn no longer exists I decided to try and work out what I am now. I filled in the different questionaires (not just Color Me Beautiful but a couple of other ones as well) and must confess that I have no idea of what I should be. It could be deep and warm, or it could be warm and deep (both have different colour charts) or it could be deep and soft (nothing there suits me with regard to colour). As I was originally told that I would gently fade from a deep autumn into a warm autumn as my head slowly gained more and more grey/white hairs I am now thoroughly confused. Therefore if you are seriously interested in wearing your best colours I cannot recommend strongly enough that you visit a colour consultant and ask their opinion.

 They usually have a number of different options ranging from just telling you your colour group through to adding in samples of your colours through to helping you work out your body shape, preferred style of dressing and even what items you should keep in your closet and what items should go to the local charity/goodwill shop and what you should replace them with. The choice is yours and is between you and your bank account. I would only say that my recommendation is that you visit in person instead of doing it over the internet. There are no shortage of consultants offering to give you a consultation using only a photograph, all I can say is look at your passport or driving licence photo and ask how realistic is it when it comes to your every day look. My daughter's passport photo makes her look as though she is just coming round after a heavy session involving alcoholic drink or drugs the previous night, in reality the printer just did a lousy job, plus she was wearing colours that don't suit her (black). If this photo had gone into a consultant I dread to think what the answer would have been but I very much doubt it would bear much relation to reality. Many groups have trained consultants, certainly in the big cities. I know that even Dublin has three different groups all with trained consultants who can give colour consultations. It is certainly worth it if you want to look your best, and besides it's the greatest excuse for throwing out half your clothes and having to go on a shopping spree to replace them. If your bank balance won't stand that they will help you to decide what is the most pressing purchases that you should make and which will truly make you look great. Just visit your local library and take out some books on the subject, read them and see if you can work it out for yourself. I would recommend one of the books published at least 10-15 years ago as it was a much simpler task back then. At least you will have a basic idea of your season, which is a great way to start off slowly changing your colours over.

Next week - what is your style of dress

Seasonal Colouring and Capsule Wardrobes

ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF PINTEREST

Seasonal Colouring and Capsule Wardrobes 

This weeks blog is, in a way, a continuation of last weeks when I mentioned your season/best colours and also the idea of a capsule wardrobe. Both seem to have been in the fore at Pinterest recently, no doubt because of the onset of the holiday season. However, what the many articles don't seem to explain is just how the concept works on a daily basis.

I have found a marvellous example on Pinterest which covers just about everything you could need including underwear, nightwear etc., but even this one doesn't explain whether or not it is just for a single season or whether it is a year long venture. (Incidentally, the earliest capsule wardrobe idea I have found comes from a book written in the 1960s by the then fashion editor of a national UK newspaper. Her name was Jean Rook and the basic wardrobe she suggested will actually take the user through the entire year. Even better, she has suggestions for capsule wardrobe collections that are based on income so will appeal to both the student/basic hourly wage up to the wealthy/well paid at the top of the earning tree. Many of the items mentioned would need to be updated given that both colours and fashions have changed over the years but these are still far and away the best suggestions that I have ever found, and cover both work and play.

I have downloaded a number of other suggestions from Pinterest for simple capsule wardrobes, and while many of them would apply for a holiday or even for a specific event (example taking a 3/6 week break over summer or Christmas because it's the school holidays) but very few, if any, would cover the user for the entire year round.

As a result I have been going through my seasonal colours (I am a deep autumn) and have decided that the best way to make the capsule wardrobe theory work all year round is to have 4 basic capsules, which will overlap with each other to a certain degree. The names of the four capsules are rather obvious, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, and a couple of items or so from each capsule will cross the divide into the next one. Each season will also rely heavily on those colours from my seasonal bests that correspond as closely as possible with the season in which the clothes will be worn. For example, Autumn will be browns, oranges and deep yellows, while Spring would be greens and yellows.

Over the next four weeks or so I will concentrate on one of the seasons and quickly go over the colours I have decided to use and the wardrobe items I am making for that capsule of my wardrobe. I hasten to add that the items I have chosen would not appeal to everybody, I prefer to wear a dress (known as a 'smock top' when I was growing up in the 1970s) over trousers or a maxi dress or skirt with a top. I freely admit that I still prefer an updated version of that style of dress, only now I ensure that the sleeves are at least ¾ length instead of short. 

New Year, Nearly New Season

 Last week I was talking about capsule wardrobes and colour matching. Many of you will probably have heard about seasons and warm or cool colours, you see this in many of the make-up ranges now. I first discovered this about 36 years ago when I was in my local department store and picked up a book called "Color Me Beautiful". This explained all about the seasons and how to tell whether you are warm or cool. I must say that from the outset I did discover that the hair colourings given for the different seasons weren't very accurate. My mother was a perfect autumn, yet she has (or had at the time) coal black hair and grey eyes. Equally my colouring was textbook winter, but it turns out that I am also autumn. Just as an aside, I purchased a dress that was the perfect autumn dress, ivory with leaves in shades of brown. When I brought it home mum looked at me as though I was mad, but she did agree to put the dress on, and it was a revelation. Mum looked fabulous in it, and the dress which had looked so-so on the hanger suddenly became alive.

From that moment on we were both converts. In my case it wasn't until I visited a Color Me Beautiful consultant - after I had moved to Dublin - that I discovered that by then the colour industry had advanced to 3 different groups within each season and that I was suddenly not winter but a deep autumn.

 This was a great excuse for throwing out all my old clothes and making new ones. As the years have gone my taste in clothing has changed, circumstances have changed (as things do over a thirty year period) and I have recently decided that it is time to start a new wardrobe all over again.

This time it is caused by reading about the phenomenon #2018makenine, which applied to crafts in general but is particularly prevalent among the sewing brigade. The idea is to make one new item a month and showcase it on Instagram.

 I understand that many work by finding an item of clothing from a fashion magazine or similar that they like and then copy/hack it to suit themselves, both in sizing, fabrics and changes in design to get rid of/add things they dislike/like.

 I have changed it slightly to suit me so it is now #2018maketwelve, which really is one item a month and guarantees that I will have one new item of clothing every month. Please note that in many cases this will include both top and trousers.

Luckily I already had much of the fabric I wanted as I am an avid purchaser of fabrics from the clearance section at Vibes and Scribes, where fabrics are as little as Euro5 per metre. As the majority of the fabrics are Rose and Hubble which are not just a good brand but usually have great colours and patterns I will probably be making much more than one a month.

In fact I have already finished one, have another 11 planned, with the fabrics already purchased in many cases, and of those 11 I have 2 cut out and partially sewn. I am sticking in general to the style of the outfit although the colours are different.

I have decided to stick with a limited palette so that the clothing will mix and match and I can be fairly certain that I can pull out a top and a pair of trousers and they will go together without having to look first.

The colours I have chose are: neutrals - navy, ivory, burgundy (dark red), brown
                                                 contrast - green, yellow, orange, teal, pink (mainly floral),
These colours are straight out of the autumn palette, especially the deep autumn and I am really pleased to have found them. I like the designs as well, being fond of flowery designs in general, especially as they remind me of summers past.

It helped that my daughter was able to get me 2 lengths (6m each) of cotton lace from Africa, one length in navy and the other in burgundy/deep red. They have a slight stretch (horizontal) and both have a different design. They will be used over other fabrics, either layered over a dress to create a whole new outfit or lined to make an outfit on their own.

The twelve pictures above are the ones I am copying, in one way or another, for my new wardrobe. I am sticking to the designs if not the colours and I must admit that I have a folder of at least twice as many still waiting to be made. Somehow I feel that I will be making much more than just 12 outfits, especially as it is just the beginning of February and already I have all the fabrics, one outfit finished, another 2 nearly finished and all the trousers cut out and waiting to be sewn as well. Next week I am hoping to have photos of the first 3 outfits (camera on loan to a friend on a weekend visit to the other side of the country), maybe even more. Who knows.
(ps: most of my daughter's holiday wardrobe already sewn as well, will try to include photos of that as well.)