Fashion Tips - Colors

I want to share some of the fashion-related things I have learned, and picked up in all my years as a self-proclaimed fashion expert. While I find fashion websites and fashion magazines helpful in guiding you to better fashion-sense, there is no doubt that experience is the best teacher. And it is my experience that I would like to share with you in this article. In this article, I would like to share my thoughts on how to mix and match colors.

Same Colors doesn't always match
The first thing I will talk about is color in fashion. I cannot emphasize how important color is. But many fail to realize that color combination is trickier than it first appears when it comes to fashion. The first rule in matching color is that the colors should look good together. The tricky part is sometimes colors with slight variation don't always match up. For instance, not all greens are compatible with each other, although logically they should because, they are in fact green; in fashioning up, I think you would agree that this logic doesn't always apply to fashion. Imagine matching lime green with sage green - it wont look too good in a fashion sense. Another thing is that greens of different variations are often harder to pair up than, say, purples and violets of different tones or reds with different variations. I don't know whether this phenomenon is something subjective, or whether there is some science behind it, but based on my experience green to green matching is the hardest matches you could encounter in fashion specially when you are going for a mono-tone look.

Sometimes its not the color that is the problem
A good rule when matching colors, and this might surprise you, is that you don't always match colors! I have learned in that past that I had much greater success in what I would call "shade matching" than actual color matching. What do I mean when I say shade matching? Well its simple, match the shade instead of the colors! Although it makes good sense to match a certain color with another (say green with red) because a color chart says they match, in fashion reality we have so much shades and color tones for each of the basic colors that we are often left confused in the dressing room why things just don't go well together. Shade matching solves because you could practically match just about any color with another color as long as they are of the same shade. How is this so called fashion shade matching done? I will share a very simple technique.

Unless you have a good imagination, all you need to do is take photos of your wardrobe in black and white. Most cameras have a black and white feature so you probably don't need any photoshop skills here. But make sure that the lighting is the same for all photos tho.Once you have taken these black and white photos of some of your attire, all you need to do is see what cloths are similar in shade(they are all grays now so it will be easier to match) and there you have it.

Using this technique, you will discover why most pastel colors go well together even if the color chart they teach us in school says they shouldn't.

Don't stop there, you can have bright colors too
Another technique is mixing bright colored articles with the more subdued. This is one of the hardest things to do when mixing it up. A pale dress generally wont go with bright accessories too often. But there are ways to go around this as well as exceptions. One way that works very well is to have bright, strong colors strike a balance. That means you would probably not getaway with a belt with bright yellow trimmings on a plain dress but once you put those bright yellow necklace and bracelet on, things would balance out quite nicely. You need a lot of practice on this one as is is very easy to over-do things.