Your Instant Style Formula: Repeat Your Hair Color

image source: http://www.ireneeonline.com/com1_hair.htm

So currently this is how I feel about my wardrobe!

Too much color! @_@~~

And Irenee Riter, the author of website calls this phenomenon the "Scrambled Ladies." And I think this is the #1 cause I feel dissatisfied with my current wardrobe... 

See how put together everyone looks!!

As Brenda Kinsel and David Zyla both mentioned in their books, repeating your hair, eye, skin color can really help you save $$$ and look stylish! Like your INSTANT STYLE FORMULA! But they didn't have these awesome genius pictures in their books... lol~

So following Riter's advice, I think my next step in wardrobe refinement is to make sure that I have decent quality...

• pants
• shoes
• belts
• sweaters
• purses

in my hair color.

I really think her information is top notch... She really understands color and its relational values. She goes way beyond the basic "You are an autumn so wear autumn colors" approach which is so rampant in the fashion and image consulting business these days. She explains how color behaves in really easy to understand terms, and in my humble opinion, takes the properties of color to the Einsteinian Level that it deserves to be!!!

In this picture, she explains how the same burgundy color acts differently with your hair color. This also finally demystified how so many of my dark colored clothing items were nearly always my fall backs, without making me look overpowered; the wines, the browns, navy's, and dark grays!

And here's another image from her site on how to wear your contrast levels for specific colors. So as a general rule, people with higher contrast levels in their hair VS skintone look better with higher contrast in what they wear, people with lower contrast levels do better with less contrast in what they wear. 

This image shows how great she looks just by repeating her hair and eye colors!

And this shows how picture frames also look better when they repeat your hair colors.

Both women wear busy ribbon-patterned tops, but you can see how the lady in the right looks much more put together as the pattern repeats the colors in her hair.

 Now, below are some photos of women who look GREAT wearing White + Hair color. I think this is fundamentally where Carol Tuttle and her Dressing Your Truth program go WRONG in their approach to color guide for women. She tells women that unless you're a Type 4 woman you should avoid both White and Black. Irenee Riter in her website says unless you're a Winter person, you CAN wear white or black, BUT NOT BOTH at the same time. I think the images below more than prove how women of all season and type CAN wear white successfully when they combine it with their hair color!

I think that telling people to wear only the colors that you see on your season's palette is grossly misleading. Because colors vibrate differently when they come into contact with each other, you need to calculate the end result that you want. It is easy in my opinion to end up looking dowdy or boring if you tried to ONLY wear your own body colors OR ONLY wear the colors in your season's palette. 

What a lot of fashion, color, and image consultants forget to take into account is the environment you live in and the role that you play in your life as well. And the following are how I feel after trying to follow their advice:

a) The problem of only wearing colors located in your body will restrict you too much and make your shopping experience really hard. If I were to try and follow that rule, I would probably have to tailor all my clothes and custom design all my bags and shoes!

b) Depending on the region you live in, a lot of the style preferences and fashion do's and don'ts won't work for you. If you live in a cosmopolitan area some of the approaches and style strategies that are suggested to you won't work. Urban taste runs different to more rural taste, etc. Also the regional culture you inhabit dictate certain rules that are worth following; I happen to come from an Asian culture, and a Confucianist family at that, where blending in and harmonizing with your community at large is much more important than it would be in any Western country!

c) Certain jobs or important life roles will also dictate what style strategy you will employ. Fashion IS communication after all. But dressing for your job may be just something you have to work with; if you are in a teaching job for instance it comes with the territory that you curb a little on your bling bling and skin-revealing tendencies etc. Also if you are a mother or you are caring for your aging parents, or you have a boyfriend, all those factors will ALSO determine what clothes you wear and how you wear them. 

d) The climate you live in, how much travelling you do, and how you commute is something you can't ignore. How much your body can tolerate in terms of heat, light, moisture, air pressure ALL play into how you want to go about choosing your garments.

e) How you like to do your laundry as well as how you like to organize your wardrobe, how much professional help you get with your hair and nail care are other things that play into how you manage your style strategy!

Anyhow, I digress a little. I just wanted to share how amazing the Irenee Riter website is! Although some of the pictures do seem way outdated! Aesthetic preferences change over time, and also within regions, and personal preferences... but I thought compared to a lot of the other materials I've seen, it is very well thought-out and for the most part a very very smart and sensible approach to clothes!

I particularly enjoyed how she actually included different strategies for different seasons! As you can see in the picture below, the same Winter woman "usually" will wear more darker colors for Winter, and wear more lighter colors for Summer!

OK. So well, to summarize... and if you ARE convinced of Irenee Riter's strategy... you can find out your hair color and eye color, as well as skintone... and get started on creating your INSTANT STYLE FORMULA!!!

Know Your INSTANT STYLE FORMULA

Step 1: Determine your hair color. Repeat your hair color for all your basic wardrobe items:  tops, bottoms, bag, shoes, belts.

Step 2: Find your eye color. This can be your secondary color for your wardrobe.

Step 3: Know your skintone. Your skintone can be the connecting color in your patterns or parts of your clothing/accessory items.

Thanks for reading!
Have a great time strategically streamlining your wardrobe!


Wishing you health, beauty, ease, and great style~~

Love,

Jessica




PS. My basic message for this post mostly comes from this page:
http://www.ireneeonline.com/com1_hair.htm

If you want to know more, go to Irenee Riter's website here:
http://www.ireneeonline.com/index.htm
and explore the vast wealth of resources!