Red

There is much excitement in the Perkins' household because we’re flying north to see if we can find the big man himself, you know, the one who wears the red suit.  Great debate has reigned as to whether the one at the school Advent fair was real or not – apparently if there is no sleigh, he’s not the real one – the one we saw the following day in the market square, celebrating the turning on of the Christmas lights, was real, proven by the presence of his sleigh (and a wonderful explanation for why the reindeer wasn’t real)! 

Debate rages in other circles regarding the red suit yet, debate aside, there is no doubt the imagery is so powerful, we would probably struggle to convince anyone that he was anything if not dressed in the familiar red suit with fur trim. Try green for example! 

Red is probably one of the most emotive colours, having many associations with danger and warnings (stop signs), fire/heat, violence, ripeness (fruit) and blood.  It is said to be the colour of energy and drive, with dark red implying success achieved.  When working with my son recently he was very clear that while yellow is a happy colour, red relates to anger – he must feel this at some instinctive level. 

In researching this blog the power of red is obvious, arguably, the most powerful.

·         Seeing Red - becoming angry, losing self-control

·         Red Rag to a Bull – deliberate provocation sure to bring an adverse reaction

·         Caught Red-Handed – caught in the act of a misdemeanour or crime with visible
     evidence

·         Red Herring – a distraction from the real issue

·         Red Tape - rules and regulations especially involving excessive or unnecessary
     paperwork

·         In the Red - in debt

·         Scarlet Woman 

      o   Prostitute or

      o   Symbol of Pagan Rome

And my favourite, because it reminds me of my childhood and the Cornish skylines:

·         Red Sky at Night – an indication of the weather.

It is a colour associated with passion and confidence so wear it with pride but equally be aware that some will see it as an angry colour. 

A conversation with a bank manager recently related to her early years’ training and a recommendation to avoid wearing red because it is an angry colour.  With ‘anger’ being the energy in Eastern philosophy which drives a snowdrop up through the frozen ground, I think passionate would interchange well here.  Maybe with the stiff upper lip synonymous with the British culture, we need to keep a lid on ‘passion’ as much as anger lest we can’t handle it!

Having spent 12 years demonstrating how amazing the right red lipstick for you looks in spite of fears and opinions, it was really refreshing to see two women at a recent function proudly and confidently wearing strong red lipstick.  It also reminded me of the L’Oreal campaign earlier this Autumn.

Reds in the House of Colour range are fabulous - use the table below to identify from your skin tone which are your best colours:

Ideal Reds
Spring (warm & clear)	Poppy / Geranium
Summer (cool & soft)	Cherry / Coral Red
Autumn (warm & soft)	Brick / Geranium
Winter (cool & clear)	Burgundy / Carmine / Scarlet

Great Reds for your Season	Soft	Clear
Warm	Autumn – L12, L606	Spring – L12, L55, L606
Cool	Summer  - L28, L50, L307	Winter – L27, L28, L50, L55, L302, L307, L499, L512, L673

As the colour at the centre of the colour wheel, the most adaptable of all colours and the first colour the eye sees, resulting in it being the colour of ‘sale’ signs to attract spending customers in a retail environment; in the words of Bill Blass, 'When in doubt, wear red.' 

Essential holiday make-up

As the holiday season approaches, so too comes the ‘holiday shopping’ and all too often unnecessary purchases, excess baggage allowance and frustration of ‘no liquids over 100ml’ through security for your hand luggage.

All is not lost!

Firstly, your make-up bag doesn’t have to be as large as you might think.  Unless you particularly think you need to carry your full selection to the other side of the world, a minimal kit will suffice and still have you enhancing every outfit you take with you, or indeed purchase while you’re away.

The 5 essentials:

1. Foundation -  on holiday, I find it helps me look more awake than I might feel after a night out, always a good step towards feeling better!  A heavily tanned person may require a stronger shade than normal, although in my experience, this is rare.  Finding the right colour foundation to match your skin tone is better when done in natural light.  The colour needs to sit on your face (not your neck) and the colour needs to blend naturally with your neck colour, if you see a line and feel the need to blend it, your foundation is probably not the right colour.   Foundatoin provides an element of protection to your skin and there are different types to suit all lifestyles:  

Liquid foundation – provides a full and professional looking finish, a great look when you are going out for an evening. 

Dual-Foundation – wet and dry mineral foundation also comes in a handy compact; easily applied with a Kabuki brush it can be used to touch up after a long day (on holiday, at a wedding, on business) and used in combination with a liquid foundation or BB cream depending on your requirement.

BB-creams – a versatile product combining serum, moisturiser, primer and foundation in one.  Perfect for a natural look, providing skin protection and can be combined with translucent powder or dual-foundation for additional coverage.  Take advantage of our special offer on BB creams (June 2014) and get yourself set up for the summer.

 

2. Blusher – pick up and enhance the natural pink tones in your skin draws the attention out to your cheek bones and makes your face appear more defined and less pinched.  You’ll probably find you only need one colour to take you through the whole year because it’s your underlying natural pinks which are enhanced.

3. Lipstick – THE handbag essential!  Lipstick provides definition to the mouth and face and works it’s magic by making your eyes shine when you're wearing the right colour.  At HOC, we recommend 3 as a minimum, enabling you to have something to suit every possible outfit from your colour spectrum.  Of course, you are not limited to only three, but choosing 1 red, 1 pink, 1 plum, rust or coral, depending on your season, will provide maximum flexibility.

4. Eyeliner – using eyeliner (liquid or pencil) on the outside edge of your eyes makes them appear more defined and larger.  For holiday, you may choose a neutral eyeliner (black, grey, navy) or you may wish to include a bit more choice (green, plum, blue) – after all, eyeliners aren’t bulky!

5. Mascara – Mascara appears to lengthen the eyelashes, providing further definition for the eyes, a girl’s best friend!   While I have two colours (navy and brown) in my make-up kit, I find that most days I migrate to one colour – navy, as a summer, for my travel kit! 

And one for luck:

6. Eye-shadow - while not essential, limiting yourself to 1 or 2 highlighting shades for the eyelid and 2-3 accent colours (navy/grey/purple for cool or olive/brown for warm) can provide more elegance to your look when you go out to dinner in the evening and for the space of about 5 small eye shadows, you may prefer to invest in an eye shadow palette to provide everything you need for an easy time away.



For the activity holidaymakers, or the really light traveller, where there is less time or space for make-up, these 5(6) things can be limited to 3; Foundation, Blusher and Lipstick.  

....after all, you may well be wearing sunglasses most of the time!

Cool

Warm



Death and Public Speaking

 

 

It is often acknowledged that the two things people are most afraid of are death and public speaking. 

Most people can acknowledge that these are variations on Fear – of the unknown and being vulnerable.  Preston Ni has an interesting perspective, suggesting that these two fears are related by the fact that the fear of public speaking is the fear of emotional death!

 

 

Although it might not be so extreme, at House of Colour we’ve experienced people feeling intimidated by the thought of meeting an Image Consultant; they suddenly become self-conscious about their appearance, invest additional energy (compared to their normal levels) in thinking about what they’re wearing and apologise for various elements of their attire which they don’t have complete confidence in.  Otherwise confident people are reduced to varying degrees of nervousness. 

At the very least, this is something that needs to be acknowledged at the meeting introductions, and then put to one side, so that we can get on with the business of the meeting.  But what would it be like if you could remove most of the fear, releasing the energy for more productive use?

At our annual conference last year, we heard Mo Harford speaking about how our brains and thinking get in the way of our performance and producing great results.  In effect it is often only our beliefs which support (positive) or hinder (negative) us in our performance.

 

 

By focusing on getting your look ‘right’, i.e. one that you are comfortable in, comfortable with and that makes you look your best, you’re able to confidently step out and take care of the primary business at hand.  In the case of a ‘business’ person, this is getting on with their ‘business’!  

 

Special events can typically take a lot of our energy and attention when looking for the right outfit - often costing a lot of money - but it doesn’t have to.  For women, the problem often stems from a lack of confidence in coordinating items, so the safe option is to invest in a complete outfit which is clearly designed to coordinate and look good.  The problem with this approach is that you may have invested over £500 (clothing, accessories, shoes and in some cases underwear) and ended up with 1 outfit, rather than spending £500 on several items that can be used and adapted to create many more outfits in combination with clothing in your existing wardrobe.   Return on investment is about your cost-per-wear, shifting the focus to cost-per-outfit, an item of clothing or an accessory reveals itself as a good investment or not.

We need to know we look right, we have phrases such as ‘I need to put my face on’, ‘I’m having a bad hair day’, ‘I can’t go out without my lipstick/perfume/necklace (delete as appropriate)’.  All these statements point towards our need to ensure we ‘look the part’.  I particularly enjoyed reading this article on clothing related expressions!

 

Why are they fears? Because we all have a fundamental concern about what people think of us. This blog by Michael Hyatt gets succinctly to the point – take the focus off yourself!  Ironically, by focusing on yourself and your image, this is exactly what we are aiming for - get your physical presentation to such a level that you are able to take the attention off yourself and focus on the job in hand.

Maybe a business friend of mine who is considering a career transition from Business Consultant and Professional Speaker to Undertaker has the ideal solution to help you through your fears!

Personal Branding in a domestic world

‘Brand’, a term used to distinguish a product, service or concept in terms of a ‘personality’, is assumed to refer to business, so what place does this have for me if I’m a homemaker? I can hear it now….

 

‘I clean the house, manage schedules, play ‘taxi’ driver, make sure the ‘machine’ of ‘home’ works to support everyone’  but too often people lose their sense of self in serving others in this way. 
 

Enter stage left the ‘young person’ who honestly believes and declares that 'it doesn’t matter what you wear these days, people don’t judge you on  appearance.  It begs the question, do you dress for yourself or dress for others?  Maybe in the past we dressed more for others but the younger people of today dress more for themselves. 

 

 

The heightened focus on the Duchess of Cambridge’s attire, in her many roles, tells us that it’s still important to dress for your audience but more leeway’s given to dressing for comfort and style.  Ultimately, when you dress to flatter yourself, people notice YOU, the person. 

 

 

We need labels and categories to help us make sense of the world but, as individuals, we frequently resist labels (boxes, categories, structure) in favour of the ‘freedom of self expression’ -  it’s the conflict between belonging and needing to express our uniqueness.

  

Early in my career, I distinguished 2 main motivators for people searching out my services:

- Emotional: recognising the connection between how we look and how we feel enables us to take control of the ‘looking’ element to empower and strengthen the ‘feeling’ element, thereby enabling us to improve and enhance our feelings, increasing inner confidence  and self-belief, leading to a sense of inner peace and frequently, greater success in work, social and business life.

 

- Practical/Financial: the dawn of realisation in this group of clients was making the connection between how they look and money.  Whether it was sales attracted through being self-employed or in a sales role, promotions, pay rises or additional sales and, in the case of the self-employed or management, an increase in confidence.  As a result of ‘looking the part’, business increases.

 

Often client gender could predict the motivator but not always.  As a graduate, it was important to make the most of my limited budget so that clothes I bought for work were going to work hard and earn their keep in my wardrobe.   A very practical reason which led to me experiencing an increase in confidence and self-belief.  Within a year I’d experienced a pay rise, new job role, improved training opportunities - one thing led to another in a positive way.

 

 

 

A trigger at the ‘emotional’ stage, caused by a life change, relationship, job, status, moving from full- time employee to full-time mother is a culture shock for many and with plenty to keep yourself occupied, appearance is often the last thing on people’s minds!  Reverse that shift, as the children grow older, and try to return to the workplace with a different figure, body shape, lifestyle, budget and time constraints plus a need to reclaim your sense of identity, the offer of a consultation with House of Colour appears at the right time.

Personal Brand may not appear to sit in this ‘domestic’ world in the same way, but our need to have a clear sense of identity, who we are, our values, strengths and weaknesses, balanced against the need to be unique and that of fitting in, enables us to confidently negotiate the path between dressing how we are ‘supposed’ to look and dressing for ‘ourselves’. 

Spring/Summer 2014 Fashion Update

Elie Tahari

The House of Colour Fashion Update for Spring/Summer 2014 has just been launched and it is one of my highlights of the year. After completing my Colour and Personal Style classes, I feel confident on how to use this information, however I want to keep my look current, so the fashion update is a great way of adding contemporary trends to my wardrobe to update my style.

I don’t bother with fashion magazines anymore as they all tell you that everyone can wear all the trends, but if I try an asymmetric biker jacket with lots of zips and buckles, it wouldn’t suit my Romantic Classic style (not enough sparkles!)

That’s why I love the Fashion Update. It shows the on trend looks that will work for my Clothing Personality so eliminates the risk of buying into a trend that won’t work for me. I love looking through the fashion images and looks, and drawing inspiration from the different sections in the fashion update. I love the mood board page that includes visual images and key words for each look and the key details and accessories which provide great ideas to refresh my wardrobe. 

Skirt by Oasis

Tanya Taylor

Of course this doesn’t always mean going out shopping for a new look each time. When I get my copy, the first thing I do is a mini wardrobe review to see what I already have. One of the looks I can do this season is Carnival which is all about colourful prints and patterns and gorgeous fitted silhouettes to create a Rio vibe. Currently in my wardrobe I have this pencil skirt from Oasis that I purchased last year. The tropical print of this skirt will work perfectly for this trend and this season I will update it by teaming it with a bright Raspberry or Magenta top to add a bright colour, and an on trend statement necklace (sparkly of course) for my interpretation of the Carnival look.

When you get your copy of the fashion update, now available from your consultant, try looking through your wardrobe first before you hit the shops. If you have been following your colour and style advice, you may be surprised to find pieces you already own that will work with the new trends for this season to give you an instant style update.

A Colour Revelation

I’ve been working directly with colour for many years and love being surrounded by beautiful things.  Beauty for me is in the delicate and subtle, the harmonious and blending, the segue through the seasons and the balance between natural and manmade. 

 

Spring is on the way, the birds are singing, the daffodils are peaking through, the snowdrops are making an appearance, hellebores are showing up for their long lasting display and I’m planning a trip to the Winter Garden at Anglesey Abbey.

 

Seeing and experiencing something deliberately designed to lift and provide pleasure in what is considered a fallow season is inspiring.

I adopted many of their ideas for my front garden and in those brief moments of arriving or leaving the house, I’m greeted with sights and smells that lift my spirits and gently remind me that I’m alive, all is well and there is life in the winter!

 

Colour has a profound impact on us and yet we’re not always conscious of it nor any better informed on how to use it powerfully.  Colours affect your mood as much as your mood can affect the colour choices you make.  Wearing your right colours will make you appear healthy; clients observing and participating in a colour analysis frequently acknowledge that someone looks more confident!  Younger!  Slimmer! In their right colours.  I know I feel happier when surrounded by my colours, wearing them or viewing them and find it far more appealing to view people also wearing their best colours, regardless of whether I personally like them or not.  And it’s all a trick of the light!  So set about employing these tricks gainfully to support you in pursuit of your goals.   If you apply for our free Colour Guide, researched and compiled from the world of fashion, you'll find this season’s colour trends laid out in the context of your season. Next week Harpreet will be introducing the new trend looks for Spring/Summer 2014.

My first foray into this world of influencing those around me with the colours I wore was totally innocent and over 15 years ago; I wasn’t feeling great but had some important work to do.  I deliberately choose a great colour (on me) with the intention of keeping my head down and avoiding conscientious concerned comments; ‘are you ok [you don’t look it!]?’ what I experienced and hadn’t expected, were positive comments, such as ‘you look well’ resulting in my feeling empowered – a revelation! 

A Sense of Proportion

Many of you will have seen this picture before, but not all.  What do you see when you look at it?  A Young woman or an old Hag?  They’re both there, suggesting that it's your perspective that gives the perception of reality.

In some ways, ‘looking good’ is just an optical illusion – the trick is knowing what to draw the eye towards or away from and how.  Knowing what we've got to work with and then dressing it with a little magic and a dose of common sense.  

We all have things that we think are ‘wrong’ with us, but maybe it’s just our perspective which is ‘wrong’ – try these:

• "My bottom is too big!" – or are you enviously curvaceous?
• "I’m short-waisted!" – or is your shorter torso balanced with long legs?
• "I’ve got no hips/bust!" – if you ‘haven’t’ got it, then you can add more detail to balance the other part of you… unless you have that straight androgynous body shape that looks really stylish in something simple, straight and boxy.

Understanding your body shape and proportions is a vital part of the Style Class.  You learn how to ‘redress’ your balance to create interest in a deliberate or intentional way - using emphasis to reinforce a statement about yourself that could be any number of adjectives such as ‘creative, reliable, knowledgeable, sporty, rebellious, relaxed’ and many more.

And for you non-believers?  There’s hope!  The Gestalt Principle “...maintains that the human eye sees objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts”.  In Michael Tuck’s detailed article about using the principles of design, it’s refreshing to read that good design can be intuitive, a natural ability.

“Gestalt Principles aren't artificial constructs that people have concocted to apply to design; they are attempts to describe and verbalize how we naturally perceive things....… in at least some sense, "design talent" is an ability to naturally — and perhaps even unconsciously — understand how human perception works, and how to create designs for websites, paintings, or wedding dresses that are artistically beautiful and functionally efficient by appealing to it.” 

A relief to know!

“Some of the best designers in the world know nothing of Gestalt Principles. They use them intuitively; when designs look and feel right, usually they incorporate these principles whether the designer recognises the terminology or not.” 

So, back to you; what of those features which can't take clothing e.g. 

• "I’ve got a big nose!"  Let’s be honest, these 'family features’ be it nose, chin, eyebrows even skin are not usually declared in a positive light. 

Wearing clothing and accessories that suit you in a way that compliments you, we call being ‘In Focus’; your look is balanced and attractive.  When you’re not wearing things that compliment you, you’re ‘out of focus’, out of balance and appear less attractive.  The feature you’d rather diminish often becomes more prominent.

Therefore, if you have a 'distinguishing feature', it’s amazing to watch it blend and harmonise when your whole look is ‘In Focus’.  We all have fabulous parts of our bodies, unfortunately we’re hard-wired to notice the negatives rather than highlighting the positives.  

One lovely client, a size 20+, arrived wearing palazzo pants and a long over shirt, complaining that when she was younger she had a waist!  I pointed out that she still had a waist, maybe bigger than it used to be, but still a waist that needed defining to show off her figure – demonstrating how to do this in a way appropriate to her current size and shape meant she immediately looked slimmer and gave her a massive boost of confidence. 

And then there was the male client who thought his legs were ‘long’ because he had difficulty finding trousers long enough.   I gently pointed out that at 6’4”, a 34” leg length while long, wasn’t disproportionately long, if anything it was a little on the short side for his height!  This left him able to focus attention on his clothes by getting the emphasis right on his torso, redressing the balance.  

There are few universally applicable rules.  In order to emphasise your uniqueness, we need to work with each of you individually.  Lisa Wade wonders “what it would be like to live in a world where the fashion industry encouraged us to “emphasise” our differences from one another, instead of trying to make us all look the same?”  You're all unique individuals; we focus on your uniqueness. 

You may have heard this from me before– it’s not what you’ve got but what you do with it that makes the difference!  

Getting a sense of proportion allows you to make the most of yourselves - you deserve it!