Colour within the Rules

I’ve been thinking a lot about limiting beliefs lately.

Those are the pre-conceived ideas about ourselves (or about others) which won’t allow us to move from where we are, or to break free from vicious cycles, or to fly towards who we would like to be. Real fuckers, they are.

Working with Personal Styling and particularly with Colour Analysis the first example that comes to mind is the good old: “I hope I can still wear black”. It sounds like an innocent and, quite frankly, reasonable thing to wish for, but i think it comes from such a troubled place.

It is deep-rooted in one of the many brainwashes most of us have been submitted to at a very young age. Since teenagers, we’ve been reading in magazines and watching in outdated TV Shows: black makes us look slimmer, black goes with everything, black is posh, black is powerful in the workplace, black is blah blah blah…

My generation is all about black and minimalism. Colour is something our mothers do. We are the children of the nineties, when beauty standards were anorexia and drugs. Heroin Chic, they called. There was no greater elegance than being skinny to our bones. No pattern that should go beyond stripes or grunge florals on a black background. Jeans and a t-shit for every occasion.

Without us even knowing,it has influenced our fashion and style choices, too.

However…

Do all of us aspire to be slimmer? Do we want a wardrobe filled with nothing but basics? Should we always aim for the alleged refinement of an untouched look? Who are we, if we are all to look the same?

The point I’m trying to make is not that one shouldn’t have an opinion or likes and dislikes about what to wear. Well done you, for being able to recognize them. My point is simply that you shouldn’t be limited by rules you’ve been told, even if they weren’t noticeable.

Style is personality. It is choice. It’s about wearing what makes sense to you and nobody else’s opinion or pre-fabricated metrics should be applied to it.

Colour analysis shouldn’t be another set of rules to limit us.

It annoys me beyond words to see posts on social media analysing how celebrity whoever shouldn’t have worn that blue dress and how her eyeliner makes her look tired and aged. Is that not the very same mould of “rights or wrongs” we are so desperately trying to banish from our minds?

Colour analysis is a tool of self knowledge, as I usually tell my clients. It should be liberating. It should steer you away from the socially imposed blacks and the industry chosen colours of the year. You’re not supposed to carry the little pallete in your bag. The idea is that you understand how those colours make sense to you and to the beauty you already are.

Maybe black is indeed slimming, but have you ever felt radiant wearing burgundy or lime green or pastel pink?

I smile everytime I see a rainbow in the sky. I bet you do too.

So why not bring more rainbowness into the way we dress?

Maybe that’s how we get the world to smile back at us.