What a horrible topic for me, Snugbugs… Here I am.. a redhead in my heyday. Now a washed out, ashen lady with oddly pinkish skin. For a redhead. I want hot pink to be my color, turns out. It’s not.

So these posts come up when plotting capsule wardrobes. I mean. If we’re going to coordinate 16 garments, they should all match. Not just each other. But our hair. And our eyes. And our pale, pale skin. Right? The last time I tried to figure out my colors was five years ago, on yet another capsule planning arch.

But this morning, I noticed a post on Facebook with an ingenious idea. Sampling our skin. In Photoshop. And then using the color tools to find coordinating shades.

WHY DID I NEVER THINK OF THAT??

Well, probably because my skin looks sickly when sampled. And my hair drab. And my eyes grey. I see myself with a peaches’n’cream complexion, red hair and deep blue eyes. In the real world… that brilliance requires a bit of digging.

Here’s the results of my illustrator experiment. For any of ya’ll Illustrator users, I did realize (for the first time) that you can set the sample size on the color selector – anywhere from 1×1 pixel to 144 x 144 pixels. That helped me get a more realistic sample of my skin – but still – REALLY?? I’m that color??

Perhaps not surprisingly, the results of my little experiment yielded the same odd results as before. As gloriously redheaded as I am, I appear to be a summer. Those soft mauves, lavenders and teals appear to be my thing.

Puke, right?

I have, grudgingly, accepted that purple is my color over the years. I don’t like purple. I like orange. But purple works for me. 

It was fun to compare my ‘best’ colors to my ‘actual’ colors. I ended up picking colors that for the most part fit in perfectly. There’s a yellow dress, which, admittedly, I don’t love. But it was thrifted. I’ll be testing a tea bath to see if it works to subdue the colors. 

So here it is, five years after the first round… not much has changed. I need to make my peace with mauve. And puce.