Carefully Colour Coded

I’m in dire need of a major wardrobe overhaul, and since this will involve quite a bit of sewing, I want to make sure I get it right.

While good fit and the right style are essential for a stylish capsule wardrobe, colour also plays a crucial role.

My sisters and I had our "colours" done many moons ago when there were just four seasons to choose from. Now there are 12 with all the "sub-seasons", so we decided to revisit this style dimension.

There are quite a few people who specialize in this, but we worked with a lady called Francesca Cairns who performs all her analyses online and is therefore available to clients worldwide. She offers a variety of other styling services too, and her turnaround time is less than two days, which is remarkable.

In the case of a colour analysis only, you will receive a pdf file which will include your best colours for clothing (including your best neutrals), for jewellery (whether you favour gold, silver or rose gold), and your most flattering make-up colours.

An extract from the full report from Francesca, showing my best colours, along with the transparent colour swatch (top left, from LookBySeason) are proving to be very useful shopping companions.

At the same time, I came across a product which is pretty genius. It's a little credit card sized colour swatch from a lady called Kate at Look by Season, and there is one for each of the 12 seasons.

It's such a handy little thing to carry around with you, helping you to choose fabrics or clothing in your absolute best colours and shades. Take a look at her Instagram page to see how it works.

With an accurate assessment of my season, including the detailed PDF and the matching colour card, I was able to review my existing wardrobe and fabric stash to identify the gaps. I also discovered that I have far too much black, which apparently doesn’t suit me at all.

And yesterday I also took a little gander down Goldhawk Road in London to see what fabrics are currently available.

I looked at a random assortment of fabrics that probably would not normally catch my eye

After browsing for fabrics, I stopped by some shops to check out what was available in ready-to-wear in my colours. Once again, I found myself considering pieces I normally wouldn’t have looked at.

Dresses in the "Soft Summer" colour palette - Ghost London

I’m confident these new tools will save me a lot of time figuring out what deserves a spot in my closet, and which fabrics from my stash will work well - or not. Let’s see how it goes...

Until next time,

Caroline