Colors

Back in 1987 or 1988, my mother showed me a book she’d just bought called Color Me Beautiful. I seem to remember that my mother was an “autumn,” whereas I believe I was either a “spring” or “summer” (whichever looks best in cool pastels … needless to say, I don’t have the book in front of me, my mother’s copy having disappeared somewhere after she died). At the time, it seemed to make sense that some colors would suit a person better than others … and it explained why I was instinctively drawn to certain colors which turned out to be part of my “palette.” Certainly, the concept seemed to ring true after my mother’s death, when almost all of her beautiful clothes in shades of olive and rust and shades of brown … colors which suited her olive-toned skin, dark (thanks to Miss Clairol) hair, and hazel eyes, looked quite wretched with my blonde hair, bluish-grey eyes, and fair complexion.

However, even at the time, I felt there were problems with this whole color thing. First off, going to the store with a swath of swatches in your color palette and expecting to find clothes in those colors is a fantasy. As we all know, clothing designers decide long in advance what colors are going to be “in” for a particular season, and if olive green isn’t one of those colors, you’re going to have to hunt long and hard for any olive green clothes. Furthermore, who wants to be stuck season after season, year after year, wearing the same old shades? Do we really want to be stuck in such a rut?

All of which is prefatory to saying that I bought a T-shirt last Sunday in J. Crew which I’m absolutely sure is NOT “my color.” The photo below really doesn’t do justice to this shirt. It is not just an anemic pale-shrimp color. Think fluorescent orange highlighter pen … and you’re closer to the mark. But my eyes were drawn to it like a fish to a bright, shiny lure (an analogy which would be dear to my husband’s heart). Perhaps I am loving it not wisely, but too well.