WHICH COLOURS LOOK BEST ON YOU?
THESE TECH TOOLS CLAIM TO BE ABLE TO TELLND YOU — JUST DON’T EXPECT THEM ALL TO AGREE
WE ALL LOOK DIFFERENT. WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT FEATURES WE’RE HIGHLIGHTING. AND ONCE WE KNOW WHAT THOSE ARE, WE CAN SAY, ‘ACTUALLY, I LOOK MY BEST IN THAT.’ I WANT PEOPLE TO ADVOCATE FOR THEMSELVES WITH CONFIDENCE.
— JADA FOOTE, STYLE COACH
Are you a “true spring” or a “bright winter”? Buckle up, because identifying your most flattering colours might take time, patience and a crash course in style history. You may even get drawn into a fight on Tiktok about whether Zooey Deschanel should wear hot or powder pink.
Now, tech tools such as Tiktok effects, stand-alone apps and CHATGPT are bringing the process to us.
But colour analysis has historically excluded people with darker skin, and AI is especially liable to regurgitate those biases and misconceptions.
“If a colour looks great on you and you feel great in the colour, that’s one of your colours,” said Chicago-based image consultant Yvonne Henderson Decker, noting many people have a mix of warm and cool, bright and muted, and light and dark colours in their complexions.
WHAT’S HAPPENING ON TIKTOK?
Why is it so difficult to assess whether your skin is “warm,” with yellow or peach undertones, or “cool,” with pink or grey? Why do different analysts get different results? And does this system work well for people of all races?
Jada Foote, a style coach in Atlanta, cites exclusionary myths — that all Black women have warm skin tones or all darker-skinned people fall into the winter palette.
Foote uses the four seasons as a starting point. Many people don’t fit neatly inside seasonal colour palettes.
“We all look different. We all have different features we’re highlighting. And once we know what those are, we can say, ‘Actually, I look my best in that,’” Foote said. “I want people to advocate for themselves with confidence and create their own individual style ... Your wardrobe becomes a snowflake.”
WHERE DO I START?
Start with a broad question, like “Is my skin colour warm or cool?”
Adobe colour’s “extract theme” tool will make a palette based on the colours in your face. Upload a photo of yourself standing in front of a window with no shadows and your hair pinned up. Then move those little circles around so they’re sampling the colours from different spots in your photo — I put them on my eyes, hair, lips and neck.
Screenshot or save the resulting palette and examine whether the shades are warm or cool. Do they have a yellow undertone, like Kelly green, or a blue cast, like emerald?
Some people on Tiktok asked CHATGPT for help. On an iphone, take a selfie or download your Adobe palette, then tap “edit.” Go to “markup” in the top right corner, then open the colour menu. Tap the eyedropper tool and select a colour. Change the view to “sliders” and write down the colour’s hexadecimal code, which will look like #000000.
Repeat this process for your hair and eye colours. Open CHATGPT and type in what you found. Here’s the prompt I used: “My skin colour is #000000, my eyes are #000000 and my hair is #000000. Are these shades warm or cool?”
The bot spat out a guess at my temperatures — warm across the board — and gave suggestions for my best colours. Be aware: Foote said CHATGPT struggled with darker skin tones, indiscriminately labelling them as warm.
CAN TIKTOK HELP?
Tiktok effects like Armocromia involve holding your face next to different colour palettes so you can compare. Select “use this effect,” hold down the record button and tap the screen to cycle through the seasons. Observe how your face looks next to different tones, advised colour analyst Karen Brunger. Does the spring palette make your eyes and teeth look brighter? Does summer make you look tired? Flattering colours will draw attention toward your face rather than away from it, Brunger said.
WHY DO DIFFERENT TOOLS GIVE ME DIFFERENT RESULTS?
I thought new tech tools might make the colour analysis process easy. They did not.
First, CHATGPT labelled me an autumn. Then some time on Tiktok convinced me I’m a winter. Looking for some higher authority, I paid $150 for colour analyst and beloved Tiktoker Carol Brailey to review my photos over email: “true spring.” Then I called San Francisco personal stylist Lili Henry, who came to my office for an in-person analysis. Light summer, she decreed.
Unlike your blood type, your colour season can’t be empirically confirmed. If you want more data points, try a colour analysis app such as Dressika or consider booking time with an analyst in person or over video call. Your colours might change over time, Decker said, so think of it like a lifelong exploration of self, rather than a one-and-done label.
The goal of colour analysis should be to feel comfy and gorgeous in your own skin, Henry said. If the colours you settle on make you feel joyful, bold, vivacious, intimidating, gorgeous, scary or in any way more alive — consider this a successful exercise.