Your Image: Don’t Dress Like A Garden Salad!

Your Image: Don’t Dress Like a Garden Salad!
Article by Expert Image Consultant, Sandy Dumont

Every spring, designers satisfy our yearning for sunshine and warmth by presenting us with fashions and home furnishings in a seasonal array of effervescent spring and summer colors. Overnight, it is as if the planet is populated with walking garden salads in shades of zingy spring green, vibrant tomato red, zesty lemon yellow, sunshine orange, and myriad shades of sweet and chili peppers. There are also fruit salads galore in frothy shades of yellow, melon orange and green.

The problem is that many of the colors of spring are a bit brassy and flashy. Food colors are classified by color psychologists as less classy than jewel tones or floral hues, for example. Picture a sweet yellow pepper and a juicy ripe tomato. It makes you hungry for food of any kind, and you might even feel a bit restless if you stared at these colors for any length of time. Of course: red symbolizes physical energy, and yellow is mental energy, so the combination puts you on overload. Jewel tones, on the other hand, may conjure up visions of palaces in Versailles and regal music.

With thirty years experience in the arena of color and color psychology, I have concluded that the majority of humans look less attractive in yellow-toned colors, particularly grunge or “acid” shades. In other words, colors such as camel, spring green, lime green, orange, warm blues, and most browns and yellows. Most people simply look better in cool colors such as navy or royal blue, black, emerald or racing green, fuchsia and cherry red. Alas, most of us choose colors from the “heart and soul” and not from the results in the mirror.

This summer, resist the urge to look like a garden salad! Instead, take your inspiration from the blue skies, the lush summer foliage, the purple sunsets or a tantalizing swimming pool in shades of peacock or Chinese blue. Wear pure white, a color as sparkling as a diamond - or black and white together.

Sandy Dumont is an image consultant residing in Norfolk. She is the author of four e-books on the subject of image. Contact her at 757/627-6669 for information about a free demonstration. For a gratis copy of her latest e-book, “TATTLE TALE LOOKS, What Your Image Reveals About You,” go to her website: www.theImageArchitect.com.