Eyes are an Important Color Index

Part 2 of a 1927 magazine article on choosing fashion colors to suit your hair color and personality

THERE is nothing as expressive as the eyes. Nothing so portrays a person’s mentality, a person’s soul, a person’s aliveness. The very plainest woman in the world cannot be plain if she has expressive eyes; but expressive eyes are alive eyes, regardless of their size or shape or color, and the most beautiful eyes fail to appear so if they are dull and lifeless.

And since it is your eyes that are the main indication of your personality, it is always very wise to play up to your eyes with the colors that flatter them. One must also be extremely careful of the shades that flatter the eyes, because a certain shade may make them lustrous and sparkling, while another shade of that same color will dim them entirely.

The beauty of a person depends more upon the combination of skin, eyes and hair than upon facial contours. However perfect and regular your features may be, if your eyes and hair are dull and lifeless, your complexion muddy and sallow, you cannot be attractive. Whereas if your features are indefinite or irregular, but your eyes are bright and your complexion lovely, you may often be considered beautiful. Of second consideration in choosing becoming colors is your complexion. This applies especially to any type with gray or white hair. A complexion need not be fair to be lovely, but it must be fresh, glowing and alive, not sluggish and sallow. Some of the most attractive women have very dark skin, but this darkness is alive and pleasing. Certain shades of certain colors are very unflattering to any other than an extremely white complexion, and therefore should be avoided by most people.

As a person grows older the skin tends to take on sallowness, and one must be especially careful of shades. There are shades in all colors that are trying, as well as shades in all colors that are not. The day is past when a woman can say “I guess my new outfit will be red,” and then select a red at random, to wonder what is the matter with it. Today, with the textile makers exerting every effort to give us beautiful and flattering shades, there is no excuse for the wearing of other than those of extreme becomingness and smartness.

Your hair is not so much an important factor in your ensemble as it is a color note. Drab, lifeless hair is never beautiful. I assume that every woman realizes that with the proper care her hair, no matter what color it may be, will never be drab or unattractive. Clean hair is lovely hair. Lovely hair is alive. In the selection of becoming colors you will have to give particular attention to your shades because of your hair. A color may be extremely becoming to your eyes, flattering to your complexion, but if it dims the beauty of your hair it is not a desirable color. Shades in your becoming color will either dim your hair or make it seem rich and lovely. All brunettes and the dark auburn blondes and brunettes can wear any color that is otherwise becoming without considering the hair. Likewise a woman who has very gray or very white hair. But all blond and Titian hair must be given special consideration in the selection of clothes.

Part 1 of a 1927 magazine article on choosing fashion colors to suit your hair color and personality

COLOR is at your disposal. The correct use of it can have an inestimable value in your life. If you do not pay any attention to its possibilities you are overlooking one of the means for acquiring and keeping beauty and an attractive personality.

A knowledge of your own type is based upon the coloring of your hair, eyes and skin. The same physiological reasons that give a person a certain coloring generally give that person a certain personality. You have seldom seen a Madonna brunette—the type with dark eyes and hair and colorless olive skin—who was extremely vivacious. Were she so, it is probable that her very vivacity would deepen the color in her cheeks and lips and make her the vivid brunette type. The way to benefit from these color charts that are being offered to you in three installments is to find the one that comes the closest to your own combination of coloring, then allow for any deviation in yourself from the true type in selecting your colors. These deviations usually come in the way of complexion changes. Remember that there are shades in types as well as in colors, and that a certain combination of hair, eyes and skin just as certainly makes you a certain type as does a darker and more vivid combination of the same coloring make another person the same type. There is simply a difference in the shades of the same colors that should be worn by these two persons; that is all.

The most desirable colors are those that enhance, deepen and bring out the beauty of the eyes, flatter the complexion and are pleasing with the hair. When a color can do all these things, and you can select a shade in that color that is becoming to your personality, you are using color to its utmost advantage in your life. Next in desirability are the colors that do only one or two of these things for you; and of no special desirability are the neutral colors that do not do anything in particular for you one way or the other. Neutral colors have their decided place in a smart woman’s street costume, of course; but they should be neutral colors, not unflattering ones. Shades and colors to be avoided are those that are actively discordant with either your hair, eyes or skin. A too-vivid shade, even in your becoming color, is not desirable for this reason.