Color analysis: The benefits and limits of finding your "season"

Driving the news: Search interest in "color analysis" and "season color palette" reached a record high this year in March, and "what colors look good on me" was a breakout search over the past month in the U.S., according to Google Trends' Jenny Lee.

How it works: If you've seen the TikTok videos, you know the drill.

• You sit in front of a mirror while a color professional holds fabric swatches up to your face.
• According to Angie "Goose" Chen, consultant at Adored Color, there's plenty to assess: hair color, eye color, complexion, overtones, undertones (a major factor) and facial features.
• After a humbling experience where the consultant might show how your skin looks "aged" next to certain colors — but "even" alongside others — you walk away knowing a palette or "season" that's best for you.

Zoom in: Color analysis is traditionally done in Asia, but Adored Color is one of several new color analysis companies in the U.S. that determine where clients fall within 12 seasons: winter, spring, summer, autumn; and three subgroups within each.

• Color analysis prices range from $150 to $500 in the U.S., owner Ari Louie tells Axios.
• Her shop is Korean-style (divides colors into seasons) and also pulls from Japanese color influence (so she pays attention to color lightness and saturation). Bookings there start at $200.

If you don't want to pay for a pro, emerging AI apps might help with color analysis, but are "never the most accurate" because they ignore facial features, according to Louie.

• However, "I think ChatGPT does a decent job picking out color," she says.
• There are also Instagram filters that people use to help assign themselves a season.

Flashback: An American book from the '80s helped create the foundation of color analysis.

• Although the idea made its way internationally, color analysis has been called out for using white people as the color default — though it seems the system is getting more inclusive.
• "A common problem has been that Western analysts don't know where to put Asian people correctly, and vice versa," Louie says.

Between the lines: Only considering how color complements your skin tone ignores the fact that different hues send distinct sartorial messages.

• "Clothing is costume. You dress for your audience," says Steven Bleicher, a professor of visual arts working on a book about color psychology.

• For example, wearing navy blue subtly projects truth and authority (thanks to historical depictions of the Virgin Mary in navy blue robes), and brown can encourage others to open up (it's associated with comforting bread, chocolate and coffee), Bleicher says
• Meaning can depend on your environment, though. Take red, which signifies good luck in Asia, but is connected with promiscuity in the U.S.

What they're saying: "If you know what color looks good on you, you'll feel a lot more confident," and good about investing in clothing that you know doesn't overpower you, Chen says.

• Bleicher's take: Being comfortable in what you're wearing is more important than being fashionable — because if you're uncomfortable it shows. He admits that he doesn't wear light gray because it brings out the gray in his beard.

💭 Carly's thought bubble: I got a kick out of getting an abbreviated color analysis done during a Schwarzkopf color event at The Grove in Los Angeles, where a very candid Chen told me I'm a muted autumn who "can't handle bright colors." Indeed, those emphasize my fine lines, sun spots and undereye circles, as she pointed out.

• Instead, she said, I look best in low-saturated, low-chrome shades. Burgundy, olive green, beige and pale blue are on my good list.
• Not a coincidence: Those are the colors I've long gravitated to in my closet, and I just invested in a pale blue dress that's my new favorite wardrobe staple.
• Yes, but: I'm a little bitter Barbie pink is — in Chen's words — "a no."