My Black-eyed Susans are all going to seed, which is always a little sad, though the goldfinches are delighted.
It's hot –– well, really not that hot, with a high of only 89F today, but very humid, and not a lot of coolness in the mornings and evenings. This is the time of year when I can't manage to delude myself that I live in the mountains. Still, it could be worse. Meanwhile, my little shade garden under the camellia tree is at least a visual oasis in the dog-day heat:
I'm dying for it to cool off some, so that I can start transplanting things and sketching out my new patio in the backyard, but there's no point even thinking about it right now. As hot and dry as it is, anything I moved would be bound to shrivel up and be no more.
Thought I'd take my dress selfies outside today, for a change of scenery. Here I am on the back walk, with the aforementioned Black-eyed Susan seedheads, plus a lot of autumn clematis and the garden hose I didn't put away two weeks ago.
I'm wearing Camellia just as she comes today, with my trusty thrifted Birk Floridas. Camellia is perfect for the heat, and I feel polished and dressed, even though I really made exactly zero effort. While I can certainly take unflattering photos of myself in this dress (see yesterday) overall I feel quite pretty and myself when I put her on. The shape is easy and flowy, which helps mitigate against any boxiness or bulkiness an A-line might create for a person who carries weight in her midsection and hips, while remaining very small on top. It's a very forgiving dress for weight fluctuation. And the color makes me feel like a million bucks, reliably.
I know I've mentioned the Australian stylist Nat Tucker, whose free Make It Look Easy course I did last fall, for funsies, because I like that kind of thing. As always, I have no affiliation with her or her programs and am not advertising for any self-interested reason –– I've just found her ideas helpful in clarifying my own style sense, which has never been that good. Sometimes her emails, which I continue to get, aren't all that revelatory (today's was about wearing your collar inside your sweater, but since I very rarely wear anything with a collar at all . . . eh, not that relevant for me), but sometimes they are.
She has a very expensive paid program which involves, among other things, having your color typed. I'm not going to do an expensive paid program, not in a million years –– not that I'm not worth it, but there are other things I can think of that I'd rather spend money on for myself –– and I have been sort of guessing, while following various members of her program on Instagram (like @bron_gets_dressed, whom I discovered while following the #styleover50 hashtag), what color type I am.
Now, in the past I've also hazarded guesses about things like seasonal color-typing. I think I'm actually pretty good at this. But what I like about Nat Tucker's system, to the extent that I understand it, is that rather than give you a big palette of colors that are the only colors you can wear well, she encourages you to look at yourself. In other words, her "typing" is less about type, per se, than about paying attention to your own colors: your skin, your eyes, your hair.
I had worked out, roughly, that there are two things going on in her system:
1. Your skin tone. Rather than "warm" or "cool," she sees you as blue, pink, peach, or orange.
2. Your level of contrast: low, medium, or high.
So you would fall into rather fluid categories based on those two things, plus your personality, which certainly counts. If you just like a color and feel good in it, you can figure out how to wear it. If you don't like a color, then you don't have to feel compelled to wear it, though if it works with your skin tone, you might try it and see how you feel.
I had kind of figured this out already. But I was surprised to receive an email not long ago that spells it all out more or less explicitly –– surprised, because I'd assumed that this was information you'd have to pay for. Anyway, it confirmed that I was pretty much correct in "typing" myself in her system.
Things that have been useful for me to know:
1. I have pink-toned skin, not peach or orange or blue. I'm cool but not icy, I guess, if we're talking "skin temperature," as the seasons do. But more helpful than the cool-warm dichotomy is the idea of what goes with pink. Obviously pink goes with pink, and I wear it well. But blues also go with pink, as complements on the color wheel, which explains why blue is so reliably flattering on me.
2. My eyes are a muted blue-green, with a lot of gray. You can see what color they are pretty well here:
In addition to my skin tone, eye color is important to pay attention to. Because my eyes are kind of muted, I do well in muted tones that either echo or harmonize with my eye color. I don't do super-bright cobalt blue as well as I do the slightly grayer blue of this dress. I don't do super-clear pastel baby-blue as well. In fact, this lapis blue is about as bright and clear as I go without being either overwhelmed by the color or kind of washed out, but it is pretty perfect. I can do bluish teals really well, again, because they echo my eye color. I can do very grayed greens. I can do bluish/periwinkle purples. Very pinky purples, oddly enough, are tricky for me. But that might be because the ones I've tried have been too pale, because . . .
3. The other thing I can recognize about myself is that my coloring has a medium level of contrast. Not high contrast. Yes, there's some contrast between my hair, which is sort of medium-dark, and my brows, which are fairly darkish, and my skin, which is sort of medium-fair. But I'm not Snow White. My contrasts are not stark. I'm also not a fair-skinned blonde with blonde eyebrows and golden lashes: low-contrast, in other words. I'm right in the middle. I have fairly low-key bone structure, too, not angular or what we think of as "striking." Oval face, moderate cheekbones, smallish eyes, nothing really dramatic. I can handle a moderate amount of contrast in my clothing, but I'm not going to be wearing a black-and-white houndstooth check, for example. I have ordered some mustard-yellow Snag tights to wear with my Camellia once the weather cools down, because I think that will be cheerful and fun (and yellow is a complement for blue on the color wheel) –– that's pretty out there for me and contrast, but I'm looking forward to the combo. I don't wear yellow next to my face, because yellow and pink aren't so great together, but on my legs, yes, I can go there.
I wear this turquoise-heather-ish jacket a lot, because my mother gave it to me for Christmas one year, and it's easy to reach for. I'm not sure I'd have bought it for myself, but I seem to look good in it, and it seems to go well with Camellia, so it shows up a lot. I guess it's a color I can wear, since I do consistently wear it and like how I look in it.
That is the thing that I find freeing about this color system, as opposed to things like seasons or the Dressing Your Truth typing system –– even though I did find the latter quite helpful in many ways. There's nothing that's really off-limits to you in terms of color, except what you personally dislike or feel not-yourself in. Knowing your skin tone and level of contrast can help you identify why some colors wash you out or overwhelm you, and why some prints or combinations grate on your nerves. Meanwhile, knowing what colors can potentially go together –– I have found Brilliant Colour Combinations to be worth the money I spent on it, because I use it almost daily, and anytime I'm shopping –– is massively empowering. Knowing how colors can work together means that any color that looks good on you can be as versatile as what we too often think of as The Versatile Neutrals. There's no color that's not potentially versatile. And there's no color that you couldn't wear if you wanted to –– you might not wear it next to your face, but if it goes with something else you're wearing, and it makes you feel good, then it works.
I've said it before, but I'll say it again: until I did this mini-course, I hadn't thought about keeping a photographic style diary, but it's the single most helpful thing I have done to clarify my sense of what looks good on me. I take pictures before I leave the house, so that I'm not caught out later in the realization that what I was wearing didn't work. Yesterday, of course, I chose to wear what I wore, knowing that at certain angles it wasn't great . . . and eh, you know, sometimes you just wear the thing anyway. The main thing is that you've made a conscious choice, and you don't come as an unnerving surprise to yourself. I find that just getting used to what I look like, day in and day out, in my clothes, at various angles, helps me to accept and love myself as I am. It's a good spiritual exercise as well as a good pragmatic one.
Meanwhile . . . I'm in Day Four of the rest of my empty-nest life. So far, so good. I haven't done much. My daughter called from school last night and asked what was up, and I said, "Uhhhhh . . . I've done some housecleaning?" My phone conversation this week is bound to be créme de la boring. Other than my husband, I haven't seen anyone. Other than the grocery store, I haven't gone anywhere. Yet I'm fairly content. It's only when I think about having to tell other people what I've been up to that I get anxious and think, "I must find something to do." In reality, I have plenty to do. I Self-Controlled myself out of social media for the day to push myself to do it: write at least 500 words, write this blog, keep house, eat right, think and pray. You can get a very full, satisfying day out of those things, though I've been putting off calling my mother, because she is the kind of person who has to be Doing Something With Other People virtually all the time, and to her my satisfyingly quiet life is bound to sound lame.
But one thing I want to do while things are satisfyingly quiet –– maybe before I leap into painting the woodwork or reconfiguring the backyard, both of which are on my agenda for the fall –– is put together more outfits with Camellia and photograph them. I mean: pull stuff out of my closet and try it on my body, with this dress, one outfit after another. That would make for kind of a good blog series, maybe. Maybe if I planned to try just two or three outfits at a time, I'd actually do this instead of being overwhelmed by the thought of what seems like a fun idea, but a lot . . .
Stay tuned.