I know we've all heard of 'personal colour' and 'Kibbe Body type' floating around, and have attempted to type ourselves at some point because we love labels - but it's recently dawned on me that these colours that 'suit' you might not necessarily suit you at ALL.
Just to preface, I've seen videos of people flying to South Korea to get their personal colour analysis, other people on reddit buying drapes and asking other people to type them - it all seems pretty fun and cool.
With all trends though, like MBTI it's hard not to put yourself into a box - and with this personal colour stuff it's making it EVEN harder to find your own personal style. I almost threw out half my clothes when I realised that your STYLE is truly your own and you don't need to confirm to a line of 'best fit'.
To know what I mean, you'll need to define what a personal style is. A personal style is a style that you feel like reflects YOU. It doesn't have to be a style that you necessarily feel comfortable wearing right NOW, but it's a style that you want to wear and have always wanted to wear. Whether you think the style reflects your personality or not, it does reflect your inner thoughts.
Just as an example, a person wearing office wear daily could just be wearing this because they maybe haven't really set foot in the fashion world yet and aren't sure what else to wear - as opposed to a person who might wear the same thing, but exude confidence because they've CHOSEN what they want to wear. The phrase 'They don't let the clothes wear THEM' is super fitting.
Back to personal colour, let's choose me as an example! I've typed myself to be a dark winter, and back when I was really obsessed, I used to type ALL my friends as the resident expert.
After a while and looking at various skin tones paired with different colours, I've realised all the colours that I personally think suit someone else are a bit different from what the majority thinks.
So if you pick colours that 'suit' you, how's that bad?
The issue here is that a lot of styles are relegated to certain colourings, so Lolita Fashion consists of pastels and then you have Dopamine fashion which is ONLY bright colours. Then you have earthy tones in gorpcore which might technically only suit a range of people, and you have black and white techwear outfits that SHOULD suit you more if you're a 'dark winter'.
You might be like ýeah, but the only people who wear these styles don't care about personal colour at all and just wear what they want' - which is PROBABLY correct, BUT I'm sure that this is limiting some people who wanna wear these styles and think that it might not suit their skin tone.
What I DO think is MORE important than skin tone though, is the colour of your makeup/hair - which thankfully is something you CAN change and something you can always change depending on how you feel!
An example is me (again LOL) - that would've typed myself with black hair as Dark winter. Now that my hair's dyed a orangeish-red, I suit more autumnal colours despite my skin tone being cooler toned - and I actually match orange toned lipsticks when I NEVER would've picked them out of my drawer.
I've also seen numerous people thinking that something isn't their colour because their makeup clashes, or because their hair isn't the right shade despite their actual skin tone which is actually misleading because you can rock a WHOLE variety of styles with whatever tones you want!
Basically if you're reading this, the whole point of this piece I've just written is to ask you to step back! You don't have to re-evaluate your whole wardrobe and throw out the colours you think might wash you out a bit. It might be a good excuse to clear your wardrobe, but you could be using these pieces for so much more! Just try a different makeup style and see what happens.
Certain looks TURN because the whole vibe matches, not just because they're the right colours - and if you LOVE LOVE LOVE that one piece that doesn't match your skin tone, match your makeup to it! It'll work, trust me.
