If you were unfortunate enough to ask me about my sewing over late 2020, you would likely been subject to a rather long-winded and highly detailed explanation of colour palettes, colour seasons and different methods to analyse your wardrobe. Thankfully for the wider population, it was before I had a dedicated craft instagram and so most people were spared the impromptu TED talks.

I had been feeling a little uninspired by my wardrobe for a while but wasn’t exactly sure what to do about it. My clothes were functional, they just didn’t feel like me. When Jasika starting blogging about going through a process of curating her closet and finding her colour palette, I was very inspired to do the same. It felt like a lot of the problems and challenges she had identified in her wardrobe were very similar to things I was feeling. Finally, a solution!

I’d been sewing my own clothes for about seven years at that point; I started in high-school and continued throughout uni. The volume of sewing I did and the types of items I made varied but the common thread was that I made items that I couldn’t easily find in stores, in my size, for my price point.

Essentially, a lot of Looks™

Outside my Looks™, the majority of the rest of my wardrobe was thrifted. Basically, supplementing easy to find thrifted basics with elevated, funky me-mades.

Another important point to build this picture is my age. This wardrobe was put together between the ages of 18 and 24 – there were A LOT of different styles in that collection.

You getting the picture yet?

It was a tad chaotic.

As evidenced by the photos below (dredged from the archives to demonstrate my point).

I would like to note here that I don’t think any of this was bad! In all honesty, there is little from this time I look at with any distaste or embarrassment. I truly loved (and still love) some items I had during that time. It was fun, and exciting, and I nearly always had an item ready to go in my wardrobe for any themed party. But, this chaotic nature of making whatever I wanted it also meant I had a lot of wardrobe orphans – items that didn’t go with anything else in my wardrobe. I also had a lot of “just in case” items – things I bought or made or was keeping for that perfect occasion. In reality, as much as I loved every one of them, having multiple sequinned mini-dresses was really just creating clutter and confusion in my closet.

Another factor to my general wardrobe dissatisfaction was that I also started wearing a lot less makeup. I was finding that there were clothes and colours in my wardrobe that I loved, but that I only felt comfortable wearing with a full face of makeup. Not an ideal outcome for a grab-and-go wardrobe. This was late 2020 – it certainly wasn’t very Pandemic-Chic of me!

I had a lot of work cut out for me to transform my eclectic wardrobe full of orphans and contingency pieces (items that I could only wear when a variety of other conditions were met) into something stylish, streamlined and chic.

So I took to the internet to tackle the colour issue first. I poured over websites and blogs and downloaded a variety of apps that promised to tell me exactly what colours I should be wearing (fun fact: those don’t work if you don’t have your natural hair colour). I looked at photo after photo of myself, trying to identify why I liked some things and why I didn’t like others. I held up gold jewellery and silver jewellery and tried to determine which “made me glow”. I looked at the tones of my wrist veins and I held up pieces of white paper to see which colours my face “threw”.

It was very exhausting and I felt like I was going round in circles sometimes. I’ve never felt like I have clear warm or cool tones; I can pretty comfortably wear gold and silver jewellery equally, my wrist veins look blue (an indication that you are cool-toned) but my face “throws” yellow (an indication that you are warm toned). I also reliably alternate tones on my foundation/powder combo – if I end up with a yellow-toned foundation, I’ll use a pink-toned powder and vice versa (I find this stops me from looking too yellow or too pink).

Luckily, just when I thought all hope was lost, it turns out you can have a “neutral” tone, so I’m lumping myself in with that. Phew, crisis averted.

Once I’d done the hard yards of figuring out that I’m neutral cool, the rest of it came together surprisingly easily. I definitely have a dark element in my colouring and also high contrast; fairly dark natural hair and eyebrows, very dark eyes and light skin.

Slight disclaimer before we get into the weeds of colour seasons: I would like to note that the original book this idea came from is from the 80s and very racist and fatphobic, so be warned if you ever read the original text. However, since it’s original conception it has been refined and improved and now the general information you can find via google has a much better understanding on how these concepts apply to people with darker skin and also don’t exclusively assume that people want to dress to appear slimmer and smaller.

Now, back into the weeds…

After extensive research (I found The Concept Wardrobe particularly helpful), I decided that I was likely a Deep Winter; dark, high contrast and cool-toned (as the secondary attribute).

A lot of that came from looking at photos of myself during different “eras” and trying to pick out the common threads of a) what made for good photos and b) what I remembered about how easy it was to pick out outfits that would photograph well. Of course, this approach only works if you are a chronic self-photographer (like myself) but I was thankful for past me’s efforts during this time. I will spare you the long-winded spiel and sum it up in two photos:

In the left, I feel like my face and my eyes are what stands out – the rich blue and cool orange compliment my face in a way that’s harmonious, but not overpowering. In comparison, on the right, my eyes are drawn to my hair first (warm and desaturated). I feel like it’s wearing me, rather than me wearing it. Interestingly, I definitely remember this hair colour being one of the hardest colours for me to style – I constantly felt like I looked washed out and blotchy. In conclusion, the colours that make me shine are dark, cool and highly saturated.
In the left, I feel like my face and my eyes are what stands out – the rich blue and cool orange compliment my face in a way that’s harmonious, but not overpowering. In comparison, on the right, my eyes are drawn to my hair first (warm and desaturated). I feel like it’s wearing me, rather than me wearing it. Interestingly, I definitely remember this hair colour being one of the hardest colours for me to style – I constantly felt like I looked washed out and blotchy. In conclusion, the colours that make me shine are dark, cool and highly saturated.

I’ve been categorising myself as a Deep Winter for nearly three years and there are still times that I doubt that I’ve categorised myself correctly (my partner is very obviously a Winter of some type and sometimes when I look at photos of us next to each other I think I am positively glowing with yellow undertones) but for the most part, it feels like the box I want to put myself in.

Am I correct? Who knows? (Aside from the professionals I do not have the budget to consider). But it feels truthful and accurate enough to me to continue down this path.

Potentially I am biased towards called myself a Deep Winter because I love dark winter colours – the palette is heavy on blues and pinks, both of which I love to wear. It also features both black and white, which not all season’s palettes do, and there’s a part of me that was very relieved to know that true white and black were in there – I have never been a beige neutrals person and I have no desire to become one.

However, perhaps the reason I love wearing those colours is because they have always looked good on me. I always get compliments when I wear jewel tones and some of my most photogenic outfits have been royal blue or true red dresses. 

So perhaps there is space for both; I’ve always worn blues and pinks and reds because they look good on me, AND so when I was trying to figure out which season I was, I was drawn to investigating the palettes that contained colours I already liked to wear. Por que no los dos?

Either way, the Winter Palette from the original colour me beautiful book feel very much up my alley!

So how has this affected my life? Was it the solution to my unorganised and un-curated wardrobe? Not entirely, but it has resulted in some interesting, and useful revelations about my life.

The biggest impact that categorising myself as a Deep Winter has had on my life has been my hair colour. I’ve had dyed hair since I turned 18 (the designated time by which my mum had said I could dye my hair) and by this point, I’ve had nearly every colour under the sun.

Firstly, I’d like to state that I absolutely love pastel shades of hair – I think they are elegant and beautiful (although a pain to upkeep). However, pastel hair is not in the Deep Winter vibe. Especially warm pastels (which you always end up with because cool tones wash out after about two washes).

Discovering that I was a Deep Winter was a lightbulb moment for me and my hair. I love pastel shades but they were always the ones that I felt the weirdest about not wearing makeup with. I often felt that my skin looked washed-out, sallow and lacklustre without makeup when I had a pastel shade to my hair. Whereas I felt more comfortable and better-looking without makeup with a darker, richer hair colour. Ding ding! Deep winter colours.

This doesn’t mean I’ve completely sworn off ever having light hair again; there’s been times in the last few years where my hair has faded enough to almost be pastel and there’s absolutely no way I’d be giving up blonde hair for the rest of my life. But, it does mean that for a low-maintenance, wash-n-wear, goes-with-everything-and-doesn’t-make-me-feel-like-a-sickly-victorian-child when I first look in the mirror in the morning sort of vibe, darker and richer shades are where it’s at.

But beyond the effect on my hair, it’s definitely helped my wardrobe curation. Largely, it’s helped my indecision – narrowing my choices down to a curated palette makes things so much easier when shopping for fabric. It’s a really tangible and clear divider when you are staring down aisles of fabric available to you.

This doesn’t mean that I never buy colours outside of the Deep Winter palette but it does mean that if I do, I have to really really love it and know that I will get a lot of wear out of it. Often, having the prior knowledge that it does not matter how stunning the final garment is, I am going to have to work really hard to make it pop for me is enough for me to put the fabric back on the rack.

I’ve ended up with so many wardrobe orphans, I have no desire to create anymore. I want effortless style. I want to be that woman at the coffee shop at 9:30am on a Sunday morning looked casual yet refined (and I don’t want to have to spend 35mins curating that look before I leave the house).

I’m going to wrap up this collection of thoughts here and write a separate with some more thoughts about how all of this is working for me in practice now. It’s been almost three years since I did this deep dive and during that time I’ve moved to a completely new climate (I had to learn about layers!) and started a full-time corporate job, which means a different wardrobe requirement and, more money to invest in my wardrobe.