What is your process for morphing your style rules change – such as body shape, colouring or lifestyle changes that happen to us all over time? Change happens to us all and how we deal with it is something can be tricky for many of us. In this video with Jill Chivers of Shop Your…
Have you thought about the colours you prefer to wear? Whether or not you’ve had a personal colour analysis and have a palette of colours or not, you are likely to find that you are drawn more to some colours than others, even within your palette if you know which is the one that flatters…
Why is it so hard to find a flattering lipstick colour? There are a couple of reasons why which I discuss in this video. How to Choose a Flattering Lipstick Colour Test it on your lips – testing it on your hand will never tell you if it’s right – your lip chemistry may…
Jill Chivers of Shop Your Wardrobe and I were asked a question about how we chose our outfits – what our processes are – and the first one that came up for us was about basing an outfit around a colour. In this video we share our thought processes – and they are quite different…
The 7 Words to Listen For That Tell You To Definitely Not Buy a Garment Beware, next time you’re in the store changing room, trying on some clothes and want to know if the colour is right or wrong … How often have you been trying on something in a store and the ever ‘helpful’…
What are the colours you can expect to start popping up this year in fashion? According to Pantone’s Spring 2018 colour forecast, they include some colours we’ve been seeing for a while that will hang around, and a bunch of new colours may start to also filter through (though honestly, I don’t always think that…
I’ve shared the most popular and most commented on posts this year here, and now I thought I’d share the posts that I like the best and ones that can make a significant difference to your style. I’ve discovered that many of my favourite posts of the years are chats I had with Jill Chivers…
2017 is at a close so I thought I’d look back over the past year and see which blog posts were the most read and most commented upon and share them again – just in case you missed them. Most Read Blog Posts of 2017 How Many Clothes Do You Really Need in Your Wardrobe?…
We live in a coloured world. We wear colour, we choose colours to live with in our houses, we are surrounded by colour. It plays a vital role in our lives. It determines colour palettes for fashions, interior design, moods and emotional states. We can use colour to create illusion and as a symbol for…
The Personality of Patterns in Scarves This is the topic of the video Jill Chivers of Shop Your Wardrobe and I discuss, though the personality of prints and the discussion on fabric choices extends into other clothing elements outside of the scarf! So how do you express personality through your patterns? Patterns Classic – stripes…
Accessories can be a great way of adding contrast in your outfit. You can add interest with pops of colour in accessories and create focal points for which to draw attention and encourage the eye to linger. You can raise your colour contrast. You can raise or lower your value contrast. This is why accessories…
I love colour (as regular readers will be aware) and I don’t have a naturally high colour contrast (ideally I’m physically more in the neutral plus 1 colour camp). But I like to wear more than one colour in patterns as they are often more versatile than a colour plus neutral print, and have found…
So you’re a bit scared of colour and you tend to wear black and grey and then combinations of black and grey as you’re just not sure how to add colour and you really don’t want to look like a clown. Now neutral outfits in black, white and grey abound on our city streets and…
Have you ever thought about how colours communicate? What is their mood and how does your mood influence the colours you choose? How about the energy of colours and what that expresses to the world? This is the topic of this video discussion with Jill Chivers of Shop Your Wardrobe. The Energy of Colour The…
Orange, a secondary colour that sits between red and yellow on the colour wheel has both a warm overtone and a warm undertone. No matter which you way you alter it, adding black to shade just makes a deeper orange, white tints it lighter, grey softens it, yellow makes a yellow-orange and red makes a…
Violet (technical name for purple) is a colour like teal that can be worn by both warm and cool undertone colouring. The difference is that cool undertones can wear all violets, and warm undertones can only successfully wear the warmer end of the violet spectrum. So which is which? Consider the Colour Wheel As violet…
How do you manage moving your wardrobe from one colour palette to another? Why Your Colour Palette May Change Directions (or Seasons) You are growing older year by year and your colouring has softened with age (yes it happens to all of us) and Jill and I have discussed where you may go here. You…
How does the contrast of your clothes communicate? Did you know that wearing different contrast levels (both value contrast and colour contrast) communicate in different ways? In this video Jill Chivers of Shop Your Wardrobe and I talk about the psychology of contrast and how it communicates so you can use this knowledge to your…
Browns can have a warmer or cooler undertone as with most colours. So how to choose the warm from the cool? Warm Undertone Browns These have a yellow base (and as you know, yellow warms up the temperature of a colour). Cool Undertone Browns There are a couple of ways to cool down a…
All colours (apart from the orange spectrum) have a warm and cool undertone version so a colour that we may call “red”, “burgundy” or “maroon” could be either warm or cool. Red is a colour that has many permutations, from baby pink to coral, magenta and burgundy. Unlike blue or green, that when we add…
Recently whilst dropping my daughter and her friend to dancing class, her friend said “you really like blue don’t you, as you’re always wearing it?“. I answered in the affirmative as I do love blue as I have blue eyes and blue is a signature colour for me as it is an eye enhancer. Blue…
