Is Your Color Season in Your Genes?
I love patterns, so it fascinates me that our color seasons (and style types) seem to be inherited in predictable ways.
Here’s celebrity examples of this phenomenon, plus thoughts on how to create visual harmony between your season and style type.
True Spring Ethereal Natural Paris Hilton
A basic rule of color analysis: avoid assigning seasons based on stereotypes.
Meaning, avoid typing someone as True Spring just because they have bright blonde hair and glowy golden skin.
But in Paris Hilton’s case, she fits True Spring stereotypes, and when virtually draping her, she appears most harmonious in vibrant True Spring colors:
True Spring (also called Warm Spring) Paris Hilton.
Paris balances warm, bright yellows that would look like “too much” against many other skin tones.
Paris is also beyond stunning in this glowy and bronzey makeup, which flatters her Ethereal Natural style type.
As discussed previously, Spring’s lively vibe has a ton of conceptual overlap with the energetic vibe of Gamine.
But Gamine’s matte, punchy makeup definitely isn’t Paris’s best look:
Despite her vibrant color season, Paris’s best makeup isn’t high-energy or intense. Instead she favors calm, gentle makeup applications, fitting her Ethereal Natural style type.
Paris illustrates that people are most flattered by makeup that fits the vibe of their style type, rather than the vibe of their color season.
The way to tie your color season into your makeup is to choose makeup colors all within your seasonal palette. By doing this, your makeup will harmonize with your season in terms of its literal colors. But in terms of your makeup’s figurative vibe, you want it to match your style type.
Did Paris inherit her season and style type in a predictable way? Yes! Based on virtual draping, her mom Kathy Hilton is also a True Spring Ethereal Natural:
Kathy Hilton has a lot of facial similarity to Paris and is also flattered by gentle makeup. Heavily-lined eyes are too severe to be her best look, and the silvery eyeshadow and muted lip also feel too cool-toned for her warm, vibrant skin. She’s still beautiful, but this makeup “washes her out.”
Interestingly, Paris Hilton’s father Richard Hilton also appears to have a notably warm skin tone (plus naturally reddish hair in some older photos—though any color season can have any hair color!) At first glance, I thought he might be True Spring, too.
But when draping him, his best colors are more faded than bright—he actually appears to be True Autumn.
Richard Hilton has a warm, blended skin tone—the colors he’s wearing here are a mix of too cool and too bright.
To me it makes sense that Paris inherited the same season as her mom, rather than a blend of both her parents’ seasons.
Why? True Spring and True Autumn are the only two seasons, out of all 12, that are purely warm-toned.
So if Paris inherited any other season besides True Spring or True Autumn, then her skin tone would have a degree of cool influence that neither of her parents has.
Intuitively, it doesn’t make sense that this cool influence would seemingly come “out of nowhere.” It seems more logical that, like her parents, her season would lack coolness.
True Spring Ethereal Gamine Ingenue Sofia Richie
I may subconsciously really want it to be spring (and kind of consciously, now that I’m thinking about it), because True Spring is also the season of our next celebrity family—Sofia Richie and her father, Lionel Richie.
True Spring Sofia Richie
Skin with a “golden glow” is a hallmark of True Spring (though again, I always use virtual draping to determine celebrity’s seasons, rather than relying on stereotypes!)
Intriguingly, while Sofia Richie shares her color season and one of her style essences with Paris Hilton, their harmonious makeup is markedly different. That’s because Sofia has Gamine, and so unlike Paris, Sofia is flattered by bright punchy lips and darkly lined eyes:
Sofia Richie is flattered by makeup with high-energy (True Spring) colors and a high-energy (Gamine) vibe.
Here she also used a bright, very light color to tightline her lower lashline, which helps her eyes appear softer, tying in her Ethereal and Ingenue essences.
Sofia Richie and Paris Hilton illustrate how even when people share the same color season, and even if they have one or more style essences in common, their most flattering makeup might still be extremely different.
Another thing Sofia Richie illustrates is that you definitely don’t have to have the same literal skin tone as your parent to share their color season.
Sofia and her father Lionel Richie don’t have identical skin tones, but they share the same True Spring palette.
Lionel Richie in faded color—not nearly intense enough for him.
Cooler colors also fail to connect with his skin tone.
Lionel Richie is fantastic in extremely warm, bright color. To my eye, the orange jacket alone would be even better than the jacket and black T-shirt combo—he appears more flattered by the very warm and rather light colors of True Spring, as opposed to the the winter-influenced colors of Bright Spring.
Let’s (regrettably) leave Spring for a Winter reality check:
Romantic Ethereal Natural Bright Winter Liv Tyler
I’ve seen Liv Tyler typed as True Winter, which can be extremely hard to distinguish from Bright Winter.
So let’s compare her to both, using a photo where her foundation appears minimal (you can still see a freckle or two):
On the left, two bars of True Winter blue surround Liv Tyler’s face; on the right, two bars of Bright Winter blue surround her face.
The above comparison illustrates why True and Bright Winter are so often confused. Their palettes have a ton of similarity.
But if you see what I see, then you recognize that in the True Winter drape on the left, Liv Tyler’s beauty feels slightly suppressed. When you look at her on the right, it’s like a little bit of relief—she matches her (very bright) blue environment, rather than appearing trapped by it.
For a True Winter, the effect would be the opposite—they’d feel just right in the True drape, and oppressed by the intensity of the Bright drape.
I’ve gotten this same result in a photo where Liv Tyler appears completely makeup free, so to me, Liv is a Bright Winter.
Another reason it can be challenging to type Bright Winters is because so many stereotypes surround the season, especially the idea that Bright Winters have very dark hair.
But critically, any color season can have any hair (or eye) color.
Plus, Bright Winter has Spring influence, and Spring colors are bright and light. So this means that many, many Bright Winters actually don’t have notably dark hair.
Lighter-haired Bright Winters are especially susceptible to being mistaken for another season (often Summer, because they appear cool-toned but don’t have the stereotypical depth of color of Bright Winter.)
For an example of this, here’s Liv Tyler’s mom, Bebe Buell:
This honey-colored hair feels too warm for Bebe Buell’s coloring. Because she has quite fair, cool-appearing skin, I suspect many people would type her as True or Light Summer.
But out of all 12 palettes, Bebe Buell is actually most flattered by the same palette as her daughter—Bright Winter.
True Summer (far left) is too muted, while Light Summer (far right) lacks Bebe Buell’s depth of coloring. She’s awesome in Bright Winter (middle).
Despite her overall light coloring, Bebe Buell is a Bright Winter.
Makeup for Bright Winter Romantic Ethereal Natural Ingenue
Bebe’s style type—Romantic Ethereal Natural Ingenue—is overall flattered by a soft makeup application, including shine on the eyes, lips, and cheeks.
And since Bright Winter is defined by vivid, deep colors, the season can have a bold, intense vibe, but it can also have a glamorous vibe that’s flattered by glossy lips, frosted eyeshadow, and lots of highlight.
So in the above photo, Bebe’s makeup application is actually fantastic for both her style type and season. It’s just that the too-warm hair was so distracting, it’s hard to notice how great the makeup is until the hair is cropped out.
Here’s another unlikely Bright Winter celebrity:
Ethereal Natural Gamine Miley Cyrus
Winter is maybe the last of the four season categories I’d have predicted Miley Cyrus to have. My mental image of her typically includes either warm blonde (Spring) hair or a hair/skin tone combo that appears overall blended (like Autumn or Summer).
When I draped an allegedly makeup-free photo of Miley, I was surprised that out of all 12 seasons, I preferred her in Bright Winter. So I draped her using a different makeup-free photo and got the same result. That’s also the result I got for her mom, Tish Cyrus.
Interestingly, while neither Miley or her mom look like stereotypical Bright Winters, in photos of Miley where her hair appears more natural, and her skin appears less tan, she doesn’t seem too far from Bright Winter stereotypes:
The colors of Miley’s top, and of Nick Jonas’s suit and tie, appear too faded compared to Miley’s vibrant skin.
Again, you don’t want to type someone without carefully draping them, so the point isn’t that we can tell Miley’s a Bright Winter just because she has luminous skin.
The point is that, while my initial perception was that she’s extremely far from a stereotypical Bright Winter, she’s maybe not as far as I thought.
Other Celebrity Examples
I have a growing list of celebrities who also appear to have inherited their color seasons and style types in predictable ways. Some examples:
Beyoncé has been typed by others as True Autumn, and based on virtual draping I agree. Her sister Solange Knowles and mom Tina Knowles are also, based on virtual draping, True Autumns.
True Autumn Sylvester Stallone and Light Spring Jennifer Flavin have three biological daughters together: Sophia Rose Stallone (Light Spring), Sistine Rose Stallone (True Autumn) and Scarlet Rose Stallone (Light Spring).
Light Summer Mick Jagger and Light Spring Jerry Hall have a Light Summer daughter, Georgia May Jagger.
I definitely wouldn’t say I have proof that color seasons are always inherited in this way, where a child will have the exact same color season as one of their biological parents. In fact, I’d guess there are exceptions to this general trend.
But from what I’ve observed, this does seem to be the trend—so far I haven’t found any celebrity who defies this pattern. (Though I definitely need to type more!)
How to Make Color Analysis (and Style Analysis) More Objective and Accurate
One of the hardest parts of color and style analysis is that there’s no way to make them completely objective.
This seems especially evident for style analysis, because your style type is much less about the literal shapes of your facial features, and much more about the moods, emotions, and auras those features convey.
So when determining your essences, there’s no literal facial features you can look for that guarantee you have a given style type.
By organizing celebrities on Pinterest, I attempt to show that there are broad patterns in the types (though critically, people who share the exact same style type can look extremely different).
This, combined with spending years of training my eye, has made me confident in my ability to deliver consistently accurate style analysis.
And recognizing that people tend to inherit their essences in predictable ways is yet another way that we can make style analysis a little more systematic (rather than random) and a little closer to objective.
And now this also seems true of color analysis: so far, based on the celebrities I’ve analyzed, people seem to inherit their season in predictable ways.
So when I analyze celebrities, not only do I ensure that their essences and seasons make sense for them, and make sense in terms of revealing their best styling.
I can also determine, if they have famous family members, whether their pattern of style essence inheritance makes sense.
A major caveat is that I don’t think the patterns of style and color analysis inheritance I’ve observed so far are necessarily true for everyone. Human genetics is incredibly complicated, so it seems way too strong a claim that these patterns will be true for everyone.
Still, so far these patterns seem generally true, so they may be a good guide, even if it’s ultimately a guide that doesn’t work for everyone.
Critically, I’ll never assume that someone has a certain color season or style type just because their biological relative has it.
I’m always open to the possibility that someone will have a style type that defies the inheritance patterns I (so far) typically see.
Ultimately, the method I use to type people remains virtual draping—even if draping reveals that a person has a season or style type that we wouldn’t have predicted based on their biological parents’.
More on color analysis, style types, and how they interact in future posts.
