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How important do people generally think this is or how much influence does it have on what you wear?
I know for me I'm fair skinned (relatively pale) and blonde hair/blue eyes. From what I understand then, I should generally wear cool or neutral colors (blues, greens, blacks, whites, etc.). How true does this hold, or how would one develop a better understanding of what works well for one-personally?
Your coloring does impact how certain colors look on you.
I've found that I naturally gravitate to the colors that look best on me. (A dark brunette/bluish eyes/fair skin. I would never pick a pastel color. They look awful on me generally. I look better in brighter jewel tones.
There are literally 1000's of websites that explain your color and what colors look best on you. You should also be looking at the undertone of your skin. The easiest way to determine this is to look at the veins in your wrist. Start googling and start reading or watching one of the 100's of videos available.
Another suggestion: go to a store that carries t-shirts in lots of colors. Grab a stack in a variety of colors and start trying them on. You should start to notice some of them look better on you than others--even in the poor dressing room lighting. Take a friend with you and ask her/his opinion.
The undertones of your skin and hair make the biggest difference - is your coloring "cool" or "warm?" "Cool" might mean that foundations and other skin products might have names like "alabaster" or "pearl" or "pink ice" and your blonde hair would be "ash" or something like that. "Warm" might carry names such as "peach" or "warm glow" or "cinnamon" or those sorts of names and your blonde hair would be more honey toned or have warm reds in it.
Warm tones tend to look better in tomato reds and cool tones tend to look better in blue reds, for example. Warm browns, earth tones, peachy colors, richer pastels or deeper warm colors look best with warm undertones. Cool, bright colors such as fuschias, purples (not brownish ones), white (not warm cream), and shebert type pastels, as well as cool khakis (as opposed to warm browns) tend to look better on people with cooler undertones.
Once you know what to look for you can immediately tell the difference between, say, a "warm" gray and a "cool" gray, or a "warm" pink or "cool" pink, warm reds vs cool reds, etc. So determine whether your skin tone is warm or cool first.
Not to further confuse you but get this - when you are older, say in your fifties or beyond, your undertone can actually change somewhat and get cooler. But don't worry about this right now! LOL I actually found out when I let my hair go it's natural color, which turned out to be gray and white and blonde, that I can finally wear the pinks and cooler colors that I always liked but couldn't wear well. But oddly, I can no longer wear many greens or grays - they wash me out. Also, black isn't as good on me as it used to be. But hey, I can wear navy now and it looks good! (Never could wear that color before.)
Anyway, I guess our underlying skin tone and hair tones can shift some when we're older.
It seems like there is more a level of subjectivity involved in this than I would have imagined-not that there aren't some general rules. It makes sense that people who know you or just in general would have more of an idea of "what works", per se. It seems like you both have a more in depth understanding of the types of things that work-honestly, my understanding of colors is probably more limited than that haha. Thankfully, my wife is an art teacher-I would hope that as things go in, she has some idea of what things work better or don't.
I did a lot of research on this when I was younger and trying to get my life/look together. I learned I am warm tone and I got lot of warm color outfits. Loved my brown and orange hues. But I also stuck out like sore thumb in this world of mostly neutral outfits. Everyone had black/white outfits while I entered with my orange self. It didn't go very well. Now I have learned to tone things down to neutral mostly. But I know I look better in navy blue instead of black & in cream instead of white. Minor difference. Now I am confused
As I am typing I look down at my finger & I have white gold ring on my left hand and yellow gold ring on my right hand. Both look acceptable. Maybe I am not as warm as I thought I was.
How important do people generally think this is or how much influence does it have on what you wear?
I know for me I'm fair skinned (relatively pale) and blonde hair/blue eyes. From what I understand then, I should generally wear cool or neutral colors (blues, greens, blacks, whites, etc.). How true does this hold, or how would one develop a better understanding of what works well for one-personally?
I think learning about color seasons helps you understand what looks good on you.
I have reddish blonde hair, now going white, pale freckled skin and blue eyes. I am a “spring” and I really do look better in certain brighter pastels. My skin has a warm undertone.
But I wear what I can find really. I do stay away from harsh constrasting colors, black around my face and a true red.
I think if the color makes you look rested and happy, then you’ve got a winner.
Before I knew about the color seasons, I wasted a lot of money buying beautiful clothes in colors that looked great on the hanger in the store, but horrible on me. Warm colors look bad on me. Some pastels are okay, but generally boring. It is the winter colors that really pop for me. The winter palette looks great on me, like pure white, red, black, navy, burgundy, magenta, and other jewel tones. Bold colors offset my light skin and very black hair and eyebrows.
Until I figured out which colors suited me, shopping was always a hit or miss thing. I'd buy some gorgeous, chic outfit once and then never wear it again because for some unfathomable reason it "did" nothing for me. However, once I discovered that I should focus on winter colors, my shopping choices became focused, and my clothing choices looked fantastic on me--at least colorwise.
I'm sure some think about the colors they wear based on skin tone, but others don't either. I know about that kind of thing, but I like the colors I like. I tend to like black, grey, and darker colors. Not only do I like them better, but they're more slimming too.
Colors I personally never really wear are: Brown, tan, beige, cream/ivory, or pastels. I DO want to wear a bit more yellow & white though.
So for me personally, it's about what colors I love & look slimmer in as opposed to what colors go w/ my skin tone.
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