The Color(s) of (Your) Style
At Amy’s suggestion, I have been reading The Color of Style: A Fashion Expert Helps You Find Colors that Attract Love, Enhance Your Power, Restore Your Energy, Make a Lasting Impression, and Show the World Who You Really Are. In it, designer David Zyla takes the idea of a personal color palette to a whole ‘nother level, adding some useful concepts that I have not heard from anyone else. You can find his plan for your 8 basic colors on his website.
He then goes on to make connections between coloring and personality, defining 24 archetypes. It’s entertaining. IMHO, his “must-haves” and “must avoids” are hit and miss. Throughout the book there are “take it” and “leave it” recommendations, but overall I recommend the book. It will make my collection.
My favorite “take it”: the color of the ring around your iris = your own personal “black”.
Mine is actually one of my all-time favorite colors: deep pewter gray. The hero’s is a lighter, bluer gray. What color is yours?
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Reverse Dying Black with Bleach
As you may or may not know, I am not a huge fan of wearing black. I am, however, a huge fan of really cheap, natural-fiber clothing that fits fabulously.
Enter Contemporary Dyecraft: Over 50 Tie-dye Projects for Scarves, Dresses, T-shirts and MoreDye Craft Books). This book explains simply how to use bleach to transform black clothing into a warmer and lighter neutral shade, similar to tie-dye. Pictured here: my first attempt. (The shirt was 99 cents at Value Village; 55% cotton/ 45% tencel, it was faded-out solid black and features black stitching and a side zipper.)
This concept has tremendous potential! For those on a budget, black clothing is abundantly available at thrift; for bleaching, who cares if it’s faded-out? If the look were perfect for one’s idiom and lifestyle, indeed, an entire wardrobe could be built around this one look.
Have you ever purposely used bleach to transform a garment?
dye craft books)
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The Triumph of Individual Style
If you were to own only one “what (not) to wear” book, this is the one to buy! It is a college art text. Formerly no less than $68, Amazon now has sells it for quite a bit less. Here is their book review:
Book Description
This text aims to teach the reader how to assess her body type and then choose clothing that looks good on her. The process involves what the authors call an individual’s “design pattern.” This pattern is made up of lines, shapes, proportions, body particulars, scale, colors, and textures. How they fit together in harmony and how an individual infuses them with her innate creativity is what authors call “style.”Text Features:1.Principles of art as they apply to understanding and enhancing the female body
2.Art reproductions from museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Musee du Louvre, illustrating women’s body forms and surface features
3.Hundreds of line drawings suggest contemporary wardrobe strategies
4.Two color wheels and pages of charts for skin, eye, and hair color.
5. Provides color swatches to create a color wheel
Personally, after studying this book, I have found that there is a way to figure out any “what-to-wear” problem “from scratch”, providing freedom from the legalism of following somebody else’s list of “shoulds” and “how-tos”.
If you’ve been considering taking the plunge, now could be the time! (My copy was a birthday gift from my hero.)








