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Glossary NEW
Here are the explanations of the italic words of this site.
Accessories: Items associated with clothes, that they complement: eyeglasses, jewelry, shoes, hosiery, briefcases, handbags, belts, scarves, gloves, hats, watches, wallets and even pens. Accessories allow you notably to express your whole personality, to coordinate garments that don't match, to dress up or down an outfit according to the occasion, to update older clothes inexpensively, and to focus attention where you want.
Color analysis: Process that allows to analyze a person's natural coloring in order to determine his/her color pattern and most enhancing shades. There are different methods of color analysis, among others the directional method and the seasonal method.
Color characteristics: The hue, value, temperature and intensity of colors.
Color consultant: A type of image consultant that provides clients with a swatch, the colors of which are chosen according to clients' natural coloring.
Color pattern: A person's color pattern is the particular combination of his/her color characteristics, that is the value, temperature and intensity of his/her natural coloring.
Fashion: The way of dressing that prevails or is considered the best at a given time in a given society. Fashion is also a reflection of what's happening in the world.
Figure analysis / bodyline analysis: It is a careful assessment of your body, from head to toe and from all around, in order to determine your own physical characteristics (your body's basic shape, your proportions, your scale, your assets and possible figure problems). Knowing them is necessary to give you advice on your best clothing shapes and designs.
Hue: The actual name of a color as it exists on the color wheel (yellow or blue-green for instance). Any hue has many variations.
Intensity / chroma / brightness: How bright or muted a color is. All colors are derived from the three primary colors (magenta, cyan, yellow) through mixing. The more pure a color is, the more vivid, intense, clear it is (apple green for instance). The more of its complementary color (its opposite color on the color wheel) or of gray (when two complementary colors are mixed, you get gray) is added to a color, the softer it gets (olive green for instance).
Look: Physical appearance (clothing style, hairstyle…). It may be intentionally calculated and characteristic of a trend.
Makeover: An overall beauty treatment involving a person's clothing, hairstyle, make-up and accessories intended to change or improve a person's appearance. Unfortunately, the aim of makeovers seen in the media is often to get a spectacular change rather than to enhance the person with respect for his/her own nature; this gives a distorted picture of image consultants.
Natural coloring: Your own natural coloring is made up of your skin tone, eye color and hair color. These are determined by the ratio between your pigments (hemoglobin, melanin, and carotene), which is genetically controlled. There are endless variations of skin, hair and eye color so that each person's total coloration is unique.
Personal image consultant: A professional who advises individuals, groups and/or corporations to improve their image, appearance, presentation.
Personal style / individual style / clothing personality / wardrobe personality: "Nuances" in clothing and accessories (shapes, colors, materials) that are a reflection of who you are and of how you relate to the world around you, that express your personality. The particular way of putting yourself together in which you feel the most authentic. Dressing with style is different from (but not incompatible with) dressing in fashion; your style doesn't change with fashion. Identifying your style allows you to understand why your are more comfortable in some outfits than in other ones and to work on your inclinations rather than to try to conform to trends that don't really correspond to you. You are then at ease with your appearance and project an image full of confidence.
Scale: Your relative dimensions. It is a function of your height, your weight and your bone structure and it should be taken into consideration when choosing construction details in your garments and accessories. Examples: small accessories will make an overweight person look even fuller; large accessories will emphasize the smallness and thinness of a petite.
Seasonal method: A very widely used color analysis method whose foundations were laid in 1928 by Johannes Itten, a Swiss color theorist from the Bauhaus School of Art, and which was devised by Suzanne Caygill in the 1960s and made famous by the best-selling book "Color Me Beautiful" by Carole Jackson in the 1980s. The seasonal method relates the natural coloring of people to the colors of the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter; a palette corresponds to each season. The seasonal method doesn't suit people whose color characteristics don't exactly match those of a season. Moreover, according to this method, somebody's clothing personality is partially determined by his/her season (dramatic for a winter, natural for an autumn, etc.), which is questionable unless one strongly emphasizes "partially". See also here.
Swatch / palette: A set of fabric samples in somebody's very best shades. All the colors someone can wear are not in his/her swatch (such a swatch would contain a huge amount of samples and would be hardly usable) but, correctly used, it allows to determine if any shade is right or not right for the person. To see the picture of a swatch, click here.
Temperature: The warmth or coolness of a color. There is psychological temperature and there is relative temperature. Psychological temperature divides the color wheel in half with the warm colors (reds, oranges, yellows) on one side and the cool colors (greens, blues, violets) on the other side. When we compare the temperature of different shades within the same family, we are talking about relative temperature (or undertone). A cool(-tone) shade has a blue undertone (raspberry red for instance) while a warm(-tone) shade has a yellow undertone (poppy red for example).
Value / depth: How light or deep a color is. The more white you add to a color, the more you lighten it (sky blue for example). The more black you add, the more you darken it (navy blue for instance). A black-and-white photograph allows you to see the relative value of each color.
Wardrobe capsule / closet capsule / wardrobe unit: A small set of clothes chosen so that they work together to make numerous different outfits. For an example of evening capsule, click here.
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