Autumn color season

Autumn is the season of coziness and comfort. I associate the literal season and the color season a lot with one of my favorite shows, Gilmore Girls. The show evokes Autumn vibes by being filled with sweaters, coffee, and cozy aesthetics, and by focusing on themes of change and transition.

Like Summer, Autumn is defined by muted tones, but Summer’s coolness transitions to warmth in Autumn, fitting the season’s cozy vibes.

Autumn Subtypes

Soft Autumn is Autumn influenced by Summer. Because both seasons are muted, Soft Autumn’s best colors appear relaxed and gentle, while still containing the depth common to all Autumns. With Summer’s influence, Soft Autumn colors are neutral-warm.

True Autumn is the purest, warmest Autumn subtype. True Autumn’s colors are very warm and rich.

Dark Autumn is Autumn influenced by Winter. These colors are the most intense of all the Autumns, as Winter injects even greater depth. With Winter’s influence, Dark Autumn colors are also neutral-cool.

Autumn Color Season Celebrities

Below are celebrities I’ve virtually draped as having the Soft, True, and Dark Autumn color seasons.

Soft Autumn Celebrities

Above are Soft Autumns Behati Prinsloo, Mandy Moore, and Cara Delevingne, who’s wearing a hat with saturated colors that don’t harmonize with her season. You can see how much more vibrant and clear the colors of the hat are compared to her soft, blended skin tone.

I think to the naked eye, Cara’s skin looks Autumn-y—warm, muted, and blended as opposed to cool or bright—but I was somewhat surprised when virtual draping revealed that she’s a Soft season.

With her famous low-set brows and sculpted bone structure, Cara has such bold, intense beauty. Based on virtual draping, her best colors are Soft Autumn, but I don’t think most people would see Cara as having the overall gentle Soft Autumn vibe.

And to be honest, I don’t see her as having a gentle vibe—to me her face conveys an overall edgy impression, despite her soft coloring.

This illustrates a general truth about color and style analysis: your style essences are typically (not always, but typically) more important in determining your vibe than your color season.

So Cara Delevingne is a Soft Autumn, but because she has a lot of Dramatic and Gamine (also Ethereal), and because of those famous bold brows, her vibe isn’t very soft or gentle.

This doesn’t mean that color season isn’t important—dressing by your color season absolutely is critical for looking your most harmonious.

But when it comes to the abstract moods and feelings that your beauty communicates—like whether your beauty feels more gentle vs. intense, or glamorous vs. laidback—you’re more likely to have the overall vibe of your style essences rather than of your color season.

This means that, paradoxically, Soft Autumns won’t necessarily have an overall soft vibe—especially not if they have bold style essences.

Another seeming paradox is that despite being a “soft” season, very light hair colors can often make Soft Autumns look washed out.

Soft Autumn is quite muted, and its colors are overall lighter than the other Autumns. But the catch is that all three Autumn seasons are defined by deep, rich colors. So Soft Autumn’s natural hair colors, and their best hair colors, won’t necessarily look soft to the naked eye.

And depth and darkness of color can sometimes be mistaken for brightness, which is part of why Autumns are so often mistaken for Springs and Winters.

True Autumn Celebrities

Above are True Autumns Shay Mitchell, Emma Watson, and Meghan Markle.

True Autumns are often confused with other seasons, especially because True Autumn colors and skin tones can have a richness that doesn’t read as obviously muted.

With her shiny dark locks, Shay Mitchell may be confused for a more saturated season, like a Winter. But you can see how the cool-toned sequins in the photo above really don’t connect with her skin.

True Autumns are also often confused with Springs, because both seasons are warm, and because True Autumn depth can mimic Spring brightness.

Some consider Emma Watson a Spring, but you can see below when comparing her in a True Spring vs. True Autumn drape that the True Autumn is so much better. The True Spring color (left) is jarringly vibrant compared to her skin (ignore the highlighted hair):

To virtually drape celebrities, you’ll want to try to find a photo of the celebrity in natural lighting and with no or only minimal skin makeup.

Here we see that a True Spring green (left) is kind of anxiety-inducing in its brightness against Emma’s Autumn complexion. In contrast, when I compare her face to True Autumn (right), I’m able to relax. This color matches Emma’s skin. Go back to the True Spring, and I experience more tension and discomfort.

The nature of Emma’s smile even seems to change depending on which color you compare to her face. When compared to the Spring green, the smile reads as “get me out of here.” When compared to the Autumn green, it reads as “this may still be a fake smile, but at least I look great in this color.”

To get the most accurate results with virtual draping, you can study a person’s photo next to a big block of color representative of one season and then immediately shift your focus to study their face next to big block of a color in a different season, as seen on Emma above. (For the best results, you can use their photo to cover the color you aren’t currently looking at, so that it doesn’t distract you.) You’ll also want to crop the photo so you can put the color right up against their skin.

Dark Autumn Celebrities

Above are Dark Autumns Kourtney and Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner.

The Dark Autumn palette has a boldness and drama that can easily lead to Dark Autumns passing as Winters.

So below I’ve draped Kim Kardashian in Dark Winter vs. Dark Autumn:

What I notice with the Dark Winter red (left) vs. the Dark Autumn orange (right) is that the Winter red is kind of bouncing off of Kim’s skin, whereas the Autumn orange has a connection to her skin. I can easily look at Kim’s skin and the orange drape together. Visually, the colors seem to naturally flow into one another. The red and Kim’s skin don’t want to connect. There’s a disjointedness. The orange and her skin naturally connect.

At its core, the process of virtual draping is asking, which of these color combinations do I prefer looking at? Which one is easier to look at? Which produces less discomfort in my body?

Kim Kardashian’s face has an intense, Romantic Dramatic vibe (plus surprising Ethereal—may make a separate post on why it’s a significant essence for he). It makes sense that many consider her a Winter. But when I just focus on the colors that harmonize with her skin, Dark Autumn is much better than any Winter shade.

Conclusion

The Autumn season is characterized by rich, deep colors that don’t always seem obviously muted. This makes it extremely easy to mistake Autumns for another season. Virtual draping is critical to really see how a person’s skin reacts to different colors.

This post’s Dark Autumn lineup is purely Kardashian/Jenner as a preliminary illustration of how, based on virtual draping, people’s color seasons seem to be inherited in predictable ways.

I wouldn’t ever type someone based purely on their parents’ color season. And I do think there’s always the possibility of exceptions, where a person seems to inherit a palette that wouldn’t be expected based on their parents’ seasons.

But based on the celebrities I’ve typed so far, there does seem to be an evident pattern, and I think that better understanding this pattern can facilitate more consistent and accurate typings. More on this in the next color season post.