Fashion 103: Your Fashion Fingerprint – Undertone
Undertone, aka ‘temperature’ or ‘hue’, lies on a spectrum of warm to cool. This colour wheel labels the warm vs cool colours [1].
But what are warm and cool undertones? They’re the subtle hue beneath the surface of a main colour. Warm undertones feature yellow, peach, or gold, giving colours a sun-kissed look, while cool undertones have hints of blue, or purple, creating a cooler appearance. Neutral undertones balance both warm and cool.
Each colour in the wheel is basic and either on the warm or cool side of the spectrum. However, bear with me: conventionally warm colours have their cool versions, and vice versa.
For example, basic green is cool, but though we call khaki a ‘green’, it has undertones of red and yellow, making it warm. There’s also different ‘khakis’ that are more warm than others. Similarly, although red is warm, burgundy is a type of ‘red’ that has blue undertones, making it cool.
Similarly, your skin’s undertone is not its generically perceived colour. Two people of the same ethnicity can have distinct undertones; one warm and the other cool. To create the skin colour of someone with a cool undertone using paint, you’d literally have to add blue!
Diagnosing Your Undertone
Do these tests in natural light:
- Check the veins on your forearms: green —> warm; blue —> cool.
<Insert visual examples of skin warm/cool, veins on forearms> - Silver and gold. Looking in the mirror, hold each up to your neck and compare. Which highlights your features? Gold —> warm; silver —> cool.
- Hold a blank white piece of paper next to your neck. If your face looks more yellowish, you’re warm. If reddish, you’re cool.
If it’s still unclear after these tests, then your undertone may be neutral [2].
Congratulations, you’ve found your temperature! From now on, shirts, jewellery, bandanas, hats, and anything else surrounding your face should have its undertone matching yours (or at least, not be the opposite).
If you’re neutral, you can rock balanced and muted colours, but experiment and try everything first. When you find something that enhances your features, figure out why.
Remember, colour matching anything to your skin is best done in natural light. All examples are 2D images, not necessarily in daylight, and may be edited. Use them to grasp the concept and apply it when you people watch.
Tupac Shakur, Warm
Matching Undertone
Not Matching Undertone
Beyoncé, Warm
Matching Undertone
Beyonce’s skin is so sun kissed, silver looks awful on her, and gold looks pristine.
Tip: balance your warm outfit with a touch of cool in accessory or shoes etc. Just not with stuff around your face, so not with necklace. Below, we can see a touch of cool in the middle to balance out Beyoncé’s dress.
Not Matching Undertone
Shah Rukh Khan, Neutral?
India’s rockstar seems to be a fashion enigma.
He mostly wears neutral. The only pic I found of him wearing warm, he looked great – though this could be editing:
Yet he mostly wears a cool palette:
When too cool, he looked sickly:
I think he rocks the neutral temperatures best:
Jesse Eisenberg, Cool
Matching Undertone
Not Matching Undertone
The only pic I found of Jesse in warm colours was from very early days. He’s been spot on since.
Owen Wilson, Cool
Matching Undertone
Every pic I found of Owen was him dressed in a cool palette… Except…?
This is one of the most important pics here. Cool undertoned Owen Wilson’s rocking red, which is conventionally warm. But this is a muted and cool red, and thus it matches! He remains really, really ridiculously good looking.
The same principle applies if you’re warm. You can rock either muted or warm versions of blue, green, purple.
Not Matching Undertone
Probably the only/worst pic I could find of him. Quite unfair, I’ll admit.
Kurt Cobain, Cool
In his iconic flannel, cool like himself:
Paul Walker, Cool
Cool colours + cool person = optimal.
Neil Patrick Harris, Cool
The green and light blue really bring out his eyes:
I didn’t cover all combinations of ethnicity and undertone here, so as a reminder, skin tone is not undertone. Each ethnicity has people of cool, neutral, or warm undertones.
Signing off,
Sav Dean
Read Men’s Fashion Part 4: Body Type
Elaborations & Sources:
- I am not an affiliate, but here’s the link to buy this coler wheel http://www.amzn.com/B000I1TFMK/
- Nothing to fret about. You can rock the more muted or lighter versions of all colours, though it’s best to discover what suits you empirically. Try on a variety of colours – always in natural light – and when you try a colour that makes your face look more vibrant, take notes and eventually you’ll figure out why.
