After two hours with a color analyst, 73,000 swatches and a hand mirror, I found that orange, brown and certain shades of turquoise had appointed themselves my new best friends. Earth tones and striking hues were suddenly winking and asking me to parties.
My approach to clothes shopping can now be stitched into a simple maxim: Bring a woman.
Let your girlfriend dress you. Buy Mom lunch. Apologize to Sis for shaving Barbie’s head when you were 8. Ask an attractive stranger if that sweater makes you glow with vitality or jaundice.
Self-reliance in choosing colors, I’m starting to think, can be achieved only through the Zen of letting go. Certainly we can master the hues that flatter us, but it may take an image consultant like Debra Lindquist to reveal the right ones.
Experts say about one in 10 of us has some type of color blindness, a condition that affects far fewer women. And since the full application of color, from interior to fashion design, tends to be a gal thing, many of those other nine guys probably lack the tools to make educated clothing choices.
Lindquist, who started Color Profiles in 1974, quickly erased my fashion identity and sketched one filled with wonder and anxiety.
Turns out I have been underserved by white, black, charcoal gray, various greens and “true” yellows, reds and blues. Yet my new, expanded palette is overwhelming, especially given my tendency to confuse green with shades of virtually every other color.
Lindquist’s phrasing is almost as colorful as her swatches: “You don’t look good in what I call a bland and a bland.” “Those dark eyebrows will always give you drama.” “You’re a peacock-exotic kind of person.”
“Peacock-exotic” seems to mean Antonio Banderas and I would fight over the same shirts at the Gap. Not the kind of label you want to reveal in a locker room, it’s still probably better than being a “winter.” That’s how a book once diagnosed me based on a now widely attacked theory that people’s skin, hair and eyes consign them to one of four “seasons.”
Contrast and bright hues work, “but you are not a winter,” said Lindquist. She might as well have added that Santa and the Easter Bunny can’t wear magenta because they don’t exist.
By the outmoded season scale, Lindquist seemed to be an autumn with red hair and ruddy skin in the prefab light outside Neiman Marcus at Cherry Creek. Can’t know for sure. I was too busy holding a mirror to my face while straining to distinguish among brown, orange and blue swatches offered like hors d’oeuvres no one could possibly finish.
Because each guy has his own palette, it’s hard to apply blanket rules in choosing colors. But Lindquist offered some general tips and observations:
“Often the best wardrobes are built around neutrals,” she said, including navy, khaki and gray. However, try to avoid obvious combinations of these colors that amount to a “safety net” – in blazers and pants, for example.
Find a celebrity who looks like you and study what he’s wearing.
Since most salespeople lack the background of professional clothiers, heed their advice accordingly. Be wary of those who tout clothes they like without regard to your needs. Conversely, if you find a well-dressed salesman who shares your features, emulate him.
In choosing colors, “repeat something you already have going” in your features. Start with hair: light or dark blond, brown or black-brown, “transitional” (dark turned gray), and so on. “Intensity of hair color can carry brighter colors,” Lindquist said. Next consider skin, then eyes.
Lindquist dismisses the season concept as Caucasian-centric, a poor gauge for other ethnic groups. “There’s more to color analysis than a simple designation,” she told me later.
Good colors mitigate bad ones. If a shade of yellow clashes with your features, it might accent colors that flatter you – say as a stripe in a gray or navy shirt.
As we flipped through fashion magazines, Lindquist continued her rapid observations about which colors flatter or suppress, depending on the guy.
The contrasts of a dark-blue suit, white shirt and yellow pocket square overwhelmed a gray-haired man who could have pulled it off in his darker-follicled youth. In another photo, a cream-beige suit enhanced a model’s blond hair and pale skin but would have made me look sickly.
Lindquist likes framing and interior-design metaphors. “My goal is always to bring the person into the picture,” she said, adding that color consultants are “matte-rs – we’re going to put a matte around him.”
After Lindquist said a white shirt and khakis lacked the contrast to enhance my features, I asked whether pants were as important, since the shirt would seem to “matte” a person’s face. Her response: From the floor on up, every detail of a composition counts.
“You’re almost a sofa, and we’re putting throw pillows with you,” she said.
Lindquist, whose $200 fee includes a shopping trip, evaluating her client’s clothing and tailoring a color chart, took me to stores to find well-matched apparel. Lots of shirts worked (long-sleeved black with dramatic gold stripes; rusty-orange suede; a turquoise polo), and many didn’t (stripes of pale blue and beige; khaki; peach).
While I didn’t always get her color explanations, Lindquist’s authority and female insight were reassuring. Of course, I’ll need a woman’s help again once my eyes have forgotten much of the good, the bad and the ugly.
If conjuring a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western seems weird, think of it as a plea for frontier self-reliance. On a movie screen or at Neiman Marcus, it’s a myth a guy’s gotta feed.
Staff writer Vic Vogler can be reached at 303-820-1749 or vvogler@denverpost.com.
