A friend of mine earlier this month alerted me to the Golden Globe awards and posted a link to an article containing all the red-carpet outfits. She asked me what I thought from a style and colour perspective and I couldn’t resist having a look. These undoubtedly beautiful women have access to the best designers in the business in addition to stylists and make-up artists. Despite this I often find myself thinking that the outfit they eventually decided upon could have suited them better.
I thought Rosie Huntington-Whiteley chose well. She is a woman who knows what colours suit her although I wonder if she’d gone for a soft silver instead of a soft gold whether that would have improved the look even more (perhaps, perhaps not). I imagine rose gold looks great on her. She’s almost certainly a Summer or Autumn who looks best in the softer shades. Notice that she’s a low-contrast woman in a low-contrast outfit, even her nails aren’t a distinct colour. This really works, she doesn’t look naked like some can when they are wearing a nude or nearly-nude shade. What do I mean by low-contrast? I mean that there isn’t a great variation (in terms of colour value) between the colour of her hair, eyes and skin. She has pale skin, light hair and pale green-blue eyes. An example of someone with high-contrast colouring would be Zoey Deschanel with her pale skin, dark hair and bright eyes.
I thought Jennifer Lawrence chose well too. I’d have swapped the silver jewellery for gold because she appears to be wearing a warm red (which suits her) but otherwise it works. The dress is quirky, like she is.
My favourite might just be Saoirse Ronan whose style I suspect isn’t a million miles from my own and who has an ethereal quality about her. What I like most about her outfit, apart from the harmony, is how different she looks to everyone else. She knows what suits her it would seem, and she’s sticking with it. I imagine there must be a fair bit of pressure on celebrities to wear the latest trends to seem current (remember that Stella McCartney bodycon dress Kate Winslet wore one year?). Saoirse did well to choose this dress.
Kate Winslet is an interesting one. The colour certainly seems right, it does nice things for her skin. I’ve always suspected she’s a Summer. I’m not completely sure about the style though, I’d like to see her in something with more movement in it.
I’m sure Amy Adams is a warm season. She carries that orange well. I’ve seen her look great in coral before now too. Excellent choice.
Jenna Dewan-Tatum looks great. A great dress for a high-contrast woman. What’s telling about this dress I think is that despite it’s size and pattern my eyes are still drawn to Jenna’s face which tells me that she’s getting it right. She’s probably a Winter with those striking eyes, pale skin and near-black hair, and the cool dress flatters her.
I’m not sure about Julianne Moore. I think the dress is too cool for her. Her head looks disconnected from her body and she looks a little washed out. Style-wise I like it for her, but the colour isn’t right.
Black on Lady Gaga is too severe. Black is hard to wear at the best of times for most of the population, the velvet only increases black’s harshness as it absorbs the light. With the bleached hair and black eyeliner I don’t feel as though I can see her at all.
Olivia Palermo is a stunning woman but sadly this outfit is not. My eye is so confused. The cool fuchsia lipstick clashes with the gold necklace and the colours in the dress. The black eyeliner is demanding in a way eyeliner shouldn’t be.
I love Lily James’s dress but for someone with such striking, contrasting features, it doesn’t work. Her head seems at odds with the rest of her.
Another example of someone struggling with black, the high neckline really isn’t helping. Emilia Clarke isn’t a Winter. She looks like I do in black.
I looked at Emmy Rossum for a long time and ended up Googling her before I could figure out what was going wrong. She looks like she could be a Winter but actually I think she’s a warm season, an Autumn who suits the deeper shades of the palette would be my guess. The silver jewellery and black eyeliner are jarring. I don’t like the straight hair or the straight lines of the dress. I nearly didn’t recognise her when I first stumbled on the photo.
Lola Kirke looks a lot like a cool season wearing Autumn’s mustard. Look at the shadows on her face. The lippy suits her but not the dress.
Sarah Hay’s choice is a very interesting one. First off, I strongly suspect the dress would have looked better in pale gold than silver (on her). In addition, I find the style of the dress jarring. It’s pretty, delicate. The cleavage looks inappropriate. I suspect it’s a dress that would best suit an Ethereal Ingénue but would need some adjustment so it wasn’t so revealing.
Eva Green. Such a striking woman, but not in this dress. She looks positively unwell. The warm lipstick isn’t working and in that nude dress she looks like a floating head. As Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale she was pure Winter perfection.
These truly are all beautiful women, they just haven’t necessarily made the best choices for themselves. Before I had my colours and style done I’d have days where I’d look ill and put on extra make-up to compensate. I had no idea that khaki / black / lime was the culprit, not my health.
If you’re interested in seeing more red-carpet outfits you can find them all here: http://www.popsugar.co.uk/fashion/Golden-Globes-Red-Carpet-Dresses-2016-39742645?stream_view=1#photo-39742589.
In Love With Colour 
Love Amy’s look in particular. Autumn or Spring do you think? I’d lean towards Spring I reckon.
I wondered about Spring too, and that’s entirely possible. The reason I didn’t commit entirely to it is that Autumn has a very bright orange, Kettlewell Colours call it ‘Orange Spice’ and I haven’t seen anything like it in any other palette: http://www.kettlewellcolours.co.uk/season/autumn/orange-spice. It looks a lot like the colour she’s wearing. I draped a red head some time back with very similar colouring to Amy. I was sure she was a Spring but she did in fact turn out to be an Autumn!
Interesting! Maybe Amy is an Autumn, then. I think I was just hoping she is a Spring, like me! Just goes to show, you never can tell until those real-life drapes reveal all.
Oh how I have missed this blog whilst I haven’t had access to the net! Also – style day booked for 6th February so will report back afterwards…am so excited! 🙂
So exciting! Do you feel drawn towards any of the clothing personality descriptions? Initially I thought I might be a Romantic – turns out I was very wrong about that!
Getting super excited about Saturday now. Have been pondering this question this morning and I think the following: (also having watched this, to try and learn a little bit more about styles, because I am impatient/over eager!! http://tta.tv/business/how-to-find-your-style/) I’d be extremely surprised if I turned out to be a Dramatic or Gamine however I do think the remaining four are more tricky. I have a feeling I’m going to find out I’m not a Classic, even though I admire the Classic look. When I tend to try on full on ‘Classic’ items in the shops, those accompanying me often say I look ‘too young’ or it’s ‘too old for me’ and thus the garment looks out of place. As I’m a year shy of 30, and not 13 years old, I sort of think by now I’m never going to grow into a Classic! Or perhaps I’m a Classic Ingénue? If that exists. Look at me, rambling on here when really I know very little right now. Have an inkling Ingénue is going to be in there but sort of think Natural and not so much Romantic, even though I’m very drawn to Romantic. But having been convinced I was a warm Spring who’d perhaps actually turn out to be an Autumn prior to colour analysis (did not think I had cool skintones at all. Feel like starting a blog of my own [with just the one post mind] to be able to fully demonstrate like you did with photos, that was so helpful! I used to have this sort of strawberry blonde/golden hair when I was little and my brother and sister were dark brown/black, just like my mother and father, so I’ve always grown up labelled as the ‘fair’ one, even though, since quite some time really, I have dark brown hair now too, very pale skin. [High contrast! I get it now..] But sometimes, labels sort of stick with you, if that makes any sense? I was talking this over with my [poor, afflicted!] partner and he was astounded that I’d be astounded that people refer to me as brunette, when I seem to think I’m blonde. For a fleeting moment he was wondering if I’d never looked in the mirror in all the time we’ve been together. I also now COMPLETELY understand that having blonde highlights in my hair did NOT seem to make things better the way I thought they were and why I look even more out of focus in photos with my hair that way. Went off on a massive tangent again, didn’t I? Oops…) I’m going to report back on Saturday eve/Sunday with the results. The amount of brown and beige I’d been living in, too, still getting over the whole black is my double star neutral colour. The thing I love about this whole journey (and I’ll be even more clued up come Sunday!) is that it helps make everything up til now make sense. I so understand you with the days you felt under the weather going into work etc. etc. – it also makes me a lot more compassionate toward myself now – all the photos where I felt something wasn’t right with ME: now it makes sense, I was not wearing the right things. This Golden Globes post further highlights this – I mean, Eva Green is goddess like in my opinion, absolutely gorgeous, but in that sort of nude/golden shade is completely lost.
P.s. And I do really appreciate your always replying, without trying to appear melodramatic this has been such a revelation to me the whole colour and style process that I love being able to discuss it with someone who’s been on her own colour/style journey too and really knows here stuff! 🙂 So thank you!
*her stuff. Excuse all the over-excited typos!
I would be delighted to do a wedding post! Excellent. I’ll have a ponder and hopefully get one out within the week. Burgundy / navy winter wedding sounds absolutely divine I must say! And you’re right to think about the photos – my colour choices really worked in the photos (I thought) and I also felt they represented my style too. When are you getting married?
Classic Ingénue definitely exists – I have two friends who are Classic Ingénues. One looks stunning in very vintage, delicate styles (she’s a Summer) and the other reminds me a bit of Gwyneth Paltrow (she’s a Spring and very on trend). When I read your comment about your own colour journey I had an idea about a potential joint blog post – would it be okay if I contacted you directly via email about it?
I really hear you RE the life-changing-ness of it all! I felt just the same. I felt a changed person after both my colour and my style days. Have an amazing time Saturday – I look forward to hearing the result! 😀
Oh please do, I’d be delighted! Is there a way of going about this without listing my e-mail publicly? Or maybe you already have my e-mail from my comments here, in that case, I need not worry about spam at all?
And p.s. by accidentally clicking on your name headlining one of your comments I ended up on your bride blog! I am engaged (to a Deep Summer as you may recall as he so kindly let me drag him along to the colour class last time) and love how you incorporated your colour & style knowledge into the day. I am thinking of doing the same! Partner gave me a funny look though when I said with all seriousness what a ‘blessing’ it was that we hadn’t married before my HoC experience/transformation. A tad obsessed, me!
I felt just the same! Having colour and style knowledge really helped me. I could write a post about that actually, I have plenty of photos from dress trying on sessions as well as from the day itself. Initially I was going to have olive green bridesmaids but my House of Colour consultant persuaded me to go for a more neutral Summer colour and looking back at the photos now I’m so glad I listened!
Thank you for your lovely comments, they made my day! 🙂
Ooh I forgot to turn the notifications to new comments on and have not seen this until now! I would love, love, love a wedding related post! At the end of reading all of your wedding blog (I felt ever so slightly stalker-ish that evening!) I was like ‘yay, she’s found THE dress!’ And then, being a little slow, was like ‘But where IS the dress?!’. It took me some time to realise that blogging about your wedding PRE wedding naturally means you’re not going to post the dress for all and sundry (/groom!) to see!
Bombarding you with replies now but back to the topic of weddings, I have my winter burgundy and my partner has his summer burgundy as double *s so my consultant was suggesting perhaps burgundy as connecting colour/theme for our wedding, which I have to say I rather like, and I feel burgundy tie with navy suit (which is also wonderful on partner) is quite nice for the man too – it’s not like I’m asking him to have shocking pink or something really girly, so works well, I feel, plus it is very likely we’ll be having a winter wedding so feel burgundy suits this too. I was actually thinking of coral prior to this…I was just about to laugh at the sheer madness of coral at our wedding but now realise I have may taken this whole colour thing a bit too far…
(however, marrying with the intention of never marrying again, those photos do stay with you for the rest of your life…now I see the difference it makes in normal photos wearing the right colours and jewellery (and I’m sure style will help me too get the dress that suits ME, not the dress that’s in fashion/other people like hence tell you it’s divine), it does make me think, if I’ve got the knowledge, I might as well use it!