How you inherit your color season
Do people tend to inherit the exact same color season as one of their parents?
A family example:
Gigi Hadid and her mother Yolanda Hadid are both Light Spring.
Bella Hadid and her father Mohamed Hadid are both True Summer. (Some say Bella’s a Soft Summer, but see how much better she is in True.)
Gigi and Bella’s brother Anwar Hadid is also True Summer.
Based on the Hadids, color season inheritance seems surprisingly simple—Gigi, Bella, and Anwar each inherited the exact same season as one of their parents.
But one family isn’t exactly sufficient evidence that this pattern is true of all humans, so let’s look at other celebrity cases.
Light Spring
In addition to Yolanda and Gigi Hadid, several other famous mother-daughter pairs are also Light Spring. These mother-daughter pairs include:
Goldie Hawn and her daughter Kate Hudson
Blythe Danner and her daughter Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow and her daughter Apple Martin
Double-dipping on Gwyneth Paltrow illustrates how color seasons can be passed down through generations: Apple Martin has the same exact color season as both her mom (Gwyneth) and her grandmother (Blythe).
Light Spring and Light Summer are often confused. Here (top to bottom) Goldie Hawn and her daughter Kate Hudson, and Blythe Danner and her daughter Gwyneth Paltrow, are more flattered by the warmer, brighter Light Spring drape on the left, vs. the cooler, more muted Light Summer drape on the right. It’s subtle, but Light Summer drags them down a little, being more muted than they are (whereas a real Light Summer would be gorgeous in the Light Summer drape, and overwhelmed by the Spring drape).
What’s also interesting is that Gigi Hadid, Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Apple Martin all inherited the exact same color season—Light Spring—as their mothers, and that none of their fathers are Light Spring:
Mohamed Hadid (Gigi Hadid’s father) is True Summer.
Bill Hudson (Kate Hudson’s father) is Dark Autumn.
Bruce Paltrow (Gwyneth Paltrow’s father) is Soft Summer.
Chris Martin (Apple Martin’s father) is True Spring.
So based on these examples, it doesn’t seem like people are inheriting a blend of their parents’ seasons.
Instead, it seems like people are inheriting the exact same season as just one of their parents.
(Coincidentally, the four celebrity examples above all inherited their mother’s color palette, but I don’t think a daughter is more likely to inherit her mother versus father’s season. As noted, Bella Hadid inherited her father’s color season, and below we’ll show more examples of father-daughter inheritance.)
Is this all a coincidence?? Let’s look at other celebrity examples.
True Spring
Heidi Klum is often recognized as True Spring, and based on virtual draping, this is her palette—and it’s also her daughter Lene Klum’s season.
Lene’s father Flavio Briatore, based on virtual draping, is Soft Summer.
(Also interesting is that Heidi Klum and Lene Klum share only one common style essence—Heidi is Dramatic Natural Classic, Lene is Ingenue Dramatic Gamine. I haven’t yet typed the essences of Lene’s father Flavio Briatore, but he appears to overall have small, compact facial features, potentially both Gamine and Ingenue.)
True Autumn
An example of father-daughter inheritance—Johnny Depp and daughter Lily Rose Depp both have very warm True Autumn coloring.
Lily’s mother, Vanessa Paradis, is a Soft Summer.
(Top to bottom) Johnny Depp and Lily Rose Depp are flattered by the True Autumn drape on the left, whereas Vanessa Paradis is flattered by the Soft Summer drape on the right (ignoring the highlighted hair!)
Dark Autumn
I’ve already mentioned them elsewhere, but they are one of the world’s most famous families—based on virtual draping, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, and Kris Jenner are all Dark Autumn (see how much better Kim is in a Dark Autumn versus Dark Winter drape).
And I still have to confirm her season, but initial draping suggests that Khloe Kardashian is Dark Autumn, too.
The catch with the Kardashian’s is that, while I need to verify his season, preliminary draping suggests that the Kardashians’ father, Robert Kardashian, Sr., was also a Dark Autumn.
So the Kardashians actually might end up being a somewhat less interesting example of color season inheritance, because it doesn’t seem too shocking that two parents with the same season would have children with that season.
But the Kardashians still seem to support the idea that our color season is inherited in predictable ways.
Light Summer
Jada Pinkett Smith and daughter Willow Smith, based on virtual draping, are both Light Summer.
Whereas Willow’s father Will Smith is a Dark Winter.
(Top to bottom) Jada Pinkett Smith and Willow Smith are flattered by the Light Summer drape on the left, while Will is flattered by the Dark Winter Drape on the right.
It’s a huge myth that women of color can’t have Light color seasons. The truth is that people of any skin, hair, or eye color can have any season.
Ultimately, what determines your season is how your skin reacts to different colors. So even if your skin, hair, or eyes don’t appear stereotypically “Light,” you can still be flattered by a Light color palette.
Bright Spring and more coming soon
I’m still working to verify other celebrity examples, and future posts will provide examples for all the other seasons. For now, a final mother-daughter pair—Lisa Bonet and daughter Zoe Kravitz are both Bright Spring, with the ability to pull off very vivid colors in their makeup.
In contrast, Zoe’s father Lenny Kravitz has a more blended True Autumn palette.
Does color season inheritance make sense?
At first, I was super surprised to find that many people have the exact same color season as one of their parents.
I was surprised because this didn’t seem to fit with the obvious truth that parents and their biological children often don’t have identical skin tones.
But of course, you don’t need to have an identical skin tone as someone to share their color season. In fact, many people with the exact same color season have very different skin tones.
So just because you don’t have the exact skin (or hair or eye) color as either of your parents definitely doesn’t mean that you don’t have the exact same color season as one of them.
Doesn’t it make more sense that you’d be a blend of your parents’ seasons?
The idea that people inherit the exact same season as one of their parents also initially didn’t seem to fit with what I’ve observed with style type, which is that your style type will typically be some combination of your parents’ essences. (Meaning, a Romantic Gamine and an Ethereal Natural are likely to have a child with a combination of those four essences—Ethereal Gamine, Romantic Ethereal Gamine, Romantic Ethereal Natural, or Ethereal Natural Gamine, etc.)
I was expecting color season to be more like that, like if you have a Soft Autumn mother and a Light Summer father, maybe your season would be Soft Summer.
To be clear, I think it’s completely possible that some people, maybe many people, do inherit a blended season.
I’ve only typed a relatively small amount of biologically-related people so far. So it’s possible I’ve simply missed cases where people inherit a blended type—I’m definitely not ruling it out yet.
But I’ve also realized that the pattern we see so far for color season actually is arguably similar to what we see for style type.
How style essence and color season inheritance are similar
The way style essences are inherited isn’t through blending two essences into a new essence. For example, based on observation, it’s not true that if a child inherits Romantic from one parent and Dramatic from the other parent, the child will have Ethereal. (Ethereal is very debatably a blend of Romantic and Dramatic, in that it has some curve like Romantic but elongation like Dramatic.)
Again, that’s not what happens—what actually happens is that if your mother has a ton of Romantic and your father has a ton of Dramatic, you’re likely to inherit both those essences.
Based on what I’ve observed of many celebrities, it’s unlikely that the Romantic and Dramatic would combine in your face to form a different essence, like somehow becoming Ethereal.
So from this perspective, the inheritance pattern I’ve observed with style essences actually seems pretty similar to the one I’m observing with color seasons.
Just as your parents’ style essences are unlikely to blend together to result in you getting style essences that your parents don’t have, it seems (so far) that it’s also unlikely for your parents’ color seasons to blend together and result in you getting a color season that neither parent has.
Theoretical support for color palette inheritance
I also think there’s some color season combinations where a blended type doesn’t really make sense.
For example, if you have a True Winter mother and a True Summer father, your parents both have purely cool-toned seasons. So it seems unlikely that you’d inherit any other type besides True Winter or True Summer, because any other type is introducing some degree of warm influence (e.g., Bright Winter has warm influence from Spring; Light Summer also has warm influence from Spring).
The idea that combining True Winter and True Summer would somehow result in any other season (especially a warm-toned season, so any of the Springs or Autumns) doesn’t make much theoretical sense.
You can make this argument for other season combinations, too. Like what if Bright Spring and True Autumn have a child? How do we blend those two seasons? Both are warm seasons, so it doesn’t make theoretical sense that these parents would have a child with a cool (Winter or Summer) skin tone. Soft Autumn doesn’t really make sense, because why would a Bright season influence True Autumn to make it less Bright?
True Spring and Light Spring could be contenders, but these seasons are making Bright Spring colors even lighter, so it’s not a super compelling argument that Autumn, a deep season, would have a lightening influence on Bright Spring.
Maybe we think Dark Autumn makes the most sense, because Bright Spring has Winter influence, so Dark Autumn is arguably adding that Winter influence to True Autumn.
But again that doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, because while Bright Spring does have Winter influence, Bright Spring is characterized by warm-neutral colors. So if the Bright Spring parent was going to influence the child’s color season, why would it be most plausible to expect a Winter influence?
Ultimately, the most parsimonious, simplest, and best theory seems to be the one that I didn’t initially think was true but that is supported by all my current evidence: you’re likely (though there definitely may be exceptions) to inherit the exact same color season as one of your parents.
Counterargument
But it’s also true that for certain season combinations, it’s very easy to see how they could theoretically blend to create a new season.
For example, if a True Winter and a Bright Spring have a child, it seems pretty logical to think that they might have a Bright Winter child—Bright Winter has a lot in common with both seasons, and is (arguably) a logical “blend” of both seasons.
I haven’t typed that many families’ color seasons yet. So while the evidence I have so far suggests that color seasons are extremely heritable, and that you may be likely to inherit the exact same season as one of your parents—I don’t yet hold these ideas as definitely true. I still think it’s absolutely possible that some, maybe many, people inherit a season that blends their parents’ seasons.
Conclusion
The available evidence suggests that most people will see some connection between their own color season and their biological parents’.
And for everyone I’ve analyzed so far, their color season actually reflects the same exact season as one of their parents (rather than a blend of their parents’ seasons).
But right now my sample size is way too small to draw definite conclusions about exactly how seasons are inherited.
So I’m going to continue to type famous families (never before have I had such a deep appreciation for Hollywood nepotism) to see whether people ever inherit a blended palette.
More on celebrities’ color seasons soon!
