So, I haven't seen anyone else doing this and I wanted to open a discussion on it because I'm curious if anyone else has done this or what they think of it.
To give a bit of background, I've had a LOT of trouble typing myself in the past. I've tried Apps, draping, having other people type me, typing myself... and every time the outcome came out different, and none of them really fit. This got me putting my scientist brain to work. I thought... okay, let's disregard the mainstream "seasons" and categories and figure out what my personal best colors were. Because let's be honest, the whole system is made up, and while it makes some sense, it isn't individualized. The categories are catch-all's, a tool to help, but not a definitive answer.
So as someone who used to work as an artist and also in a science field... I went back to my roots. I took multiple photos of myself in diffuse natural lighting. I grabbed several eyedropper hex codes of my skin across multiple parts of my face/body, different ones from my eyes, my lips, and my hair. I sat down and wrote a really clear explanation of what each of those looked like to me, things I'd noticed about how my features reacted to outside color influence, sunlight... any bit of information I could drum up... and I fed it into a computer brain. I did not ask a computer brain to type me. I asked it to tell me about my colors in a biological context adding caveats for skin tone comparison - understanding that it was a skin tone and therefore some shade of pink/peach/orange/brown, and I asked what information it could give me on the color hue, what was warm leaning, what was cool leaning, what the value depth on an HSV scale was, what the saturation level was. This was not a simple "what season am I?" I wanted specific realistic facts about color based on correlated data across what was available online.
And... I got some interesting answers. Leaving seasons completely out of it... I learned why I didn't fit into a category to begin with. My hair is a dark brunette that leans ashy and cool toned in the dark. In the sunlight? It flashes warm copper and turns more walnut in value. According to data available online (and I did check these to make sure the conclusions were accurate) ... that's not usual. Most people's reflectivity matches their hair undertone. Mine doesn't. It's both warm and cool.
My eyes are usually termed "blue", but they're closer to gray. According to actual color swatches... my eyes are a very desaturated gray-teal. It's a rather rare eye color. Rarer than green. I don't have any yellow or brown in my eyes. I don't have blue. And my "blue" eyes are much darker than most. Okay, interesting right?
And then I got to my skin. I've always had issues with my skin tone because I know by looking at it where sunlight never hits, that I have a cool-ish undertone. I can see it. But in other places? It's straight up yellow. I don't get sunlight. I work from home. I go outside maybe ten minutes every few months. This isn't a tan. By analyzing skin from across my entire body, I learned that I have a neutral, slightly cool leaning skin with olive overtones. This is also... not common.
More importantly I learned something else... across the board, my hair, my eyes, my skin, even my lips... are extremely desaturated. We're talking 25-30% saturation at maximum. I'm essentially... GRAY. A little gray storm cloud of a person. So really cool tones? They're too cool. Really warm tones? They're too warm. My particular band of colors that harmonize with me is extremely narrow...
So, then I built my own palette. My darkest feature, my hair, is the most saturated color on my body. I made that my saturation limit. My least saturated part of my body is my skin. So that was the baseline. My Hair became the limit of my depth. My skin became the limit of my lightness. I could wear both warm and cool colors... but only if they were extremely desaturated. My most important trait... is I can't withstand chroma. Whether a color was light, dark, warm, or cool, if it was too saturated, I looked ill or overwhelmed. This also brought up something traditional color seasons don't account for.... a sliding gradient of chroma. In very deep, dark colors, I could withstand the most chroma... but the lighter a color became, the less chroma I could handle.
After trial, error and weeks of research using the internet, color theory, a computer brain and second-hand opinions, I had my own unique palette which I affectionately refer to as my Storm Palette. The closest color analysis season that matches it? Only matches it at 50%. It's made up of gray taupes, black, beige, deep desaturated espresso browns, blue-gray slates, vintage plums, deep teals, mauves, lavenders, desaturated clay oranges, wine reds, and sand yellows.
I learned that I can't wear shiny things or glossy finishes. I can't wear gold or silver. I can wear brushed metal bronze, gunmetal, black gold, hematite, gray and black pearls. I also learned that makeup brands... don't make my skin tone. There will never be a foundation that is the perfect match for me.... because if they tried, it'd look gray in the bottle. Gray doesn't sell well.
Ultimately though, I learned that color is both my enemy and my greatest weapon now that I understand it. I've learned how to use contrast and depth to anchor colors I normally would not be able to wear. I don't feel trapped in a box because I learned the rules of my own natural color biology, and now I know how to use those rules in a way that opens color to me that I otherwise would not have felt I had access to.
I've included the color swatches I ended up with so you can sort of see the way my palette turned out. The closest traditional color analysis season it came out to was something that sat between True winter and summer deep with a little bit of warmth thrown in on the horizon. I'm interested to see what others think on my methods, if anyone's got questions or has done something similar themselves, I'd love to discuss it. My nerd brain could talk about this topic forever.
Importantly. I did not allow a computer brain or an outside person to give me an answer - I don't think that's productive. I used it as a tool to give me facts not opinions, and then I fact checked those facts and tested them in real world to see what was accurate. I did not rely on arbitrary categories. I wasn't looking for a season. I was looking for knowledge on how my biological colors worked, and how I could manipulate them with other colors to look my best and most cohesive. I think that's a very important distinction.
