And How Researching Colour Science Led Me To Create SPHERE Palettes Instead
Intro
I thought I had the colour analysis part of my style business all figured out. I was a certified personal colour analyst, trained in the Sci/Art method, after all. Sci/Art works with 12 colour ‘Seasons’, which are colour palettes loosely inspired by the times of the year, to be used for clothing, makeup and accessories. ‘Your’ Season is the one that supposedly has all the colours that look the best on you. It was the best system I could find.
Yet there were times where my best efforts fell short.
Not every client’s final Season reveal was all that glowing. For the longest time, I was baffled. Why did some people look radiantly beautiful in their final Season’s drapes, while someone else looked only okay – not all that different from the way they came in? What did I do wrong?
Over the years, more questions came up. Why did that drape work only on a portion of my Bright Spring clients? Why did I drape so many Bright Winters? Why did that lipstick work only for some of the Dark Winters? Were there really people between Seasons? Why did none of the Bright Winter makeup work on myself?
Gradually, the questions stacked up into one very pointed question: how did colour harmony work? What made some colours go together beautifully, while others clashed?
Three years ago, that question didn’t want to remain quiet any longer.
I am a researcher by training. The gears in my mind started whirring again. It was time to hold up a yardstick to colour science, and see if any of it measured up.
I knew I needed to start from scratch. Trying to improve the seasonal system would only lead me to regurgitate another version of the same thing. There are enough Seasonal colour palettes that riff on the same ideas, not to mention shameless copies. If I wanted to figure out colour harmony, I had to dig deeper. More importantly, by starting from scratch, I prevented myself from getting stuck in other people’s thought patterns and potential mistakes. If the Seasons were truly harmonious, they would re-emerge.
So my entire stash of colour palettes got locked away in a box. I mentally prepared myself to question everything I thought I knew about colour. I bought some paint fans from the hardware store, cut them up into chips, and started studying.
Trigger warning: If you feel the Seasonal system is perfect and you don’t want to hear about what could be different or improved, then this is not the article for you. It’s fine to stop reading. I’m not here to convince you to stop engaging in something you love.
But for those of you that are wondering, who have perhaps had analyses that didn’t work as well as you hoped? For you, I have answers.
In this article series, I’m sharing everything that I found about how colour harmony really works – how the Seasonal system fell short, over and over again. And how I built a new system that fixed it all, called Sphere.
Pablo Picasso once said: “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction”. Well, that proved to be true.