Color Styling for a Wardrobe and the Color Blocking Trend

This week a friend wrote to me to ask me some color advice. She had bought two blouses, one in pale dusty pink and another in a more bright one. She was said by the shop assistant she could combine it with dark blue and she was told about color blocking being trendy. And here came her adressing to me. My friend is a little bit younger than me and I offered to make her a wide colour palette so she could see that there are really many other options apart form color blocking. It is not that I don't like  this trend, but I think this is not for all styles. I took my friend's photo and with the help of Photoshop and my Color Wheel, this is what I sent her:

La Colorista

I tried two differendt grounds, one in light warm gray and another in a deeper gray, so she could see how color changes according to the one being next. From left to right  I displayed :

1- Complements and split complements, making a happy and casual combination.

2- Neutrals, for a more classic look.

3- Analogues for soft harmonies.

4- Triadic hues.

It would be easy to pick two different bold and bright hues from these to build a color blocking look if you want to. And this is how because a friend trusted my opinion, I found myself being a Color for Image Stylist for one day. I looked at the matter in the same way I would have done to pick colors for Interior or Architectural design and my goal was to offer a wide range of possible Color Combos to my friend. This color Consult was really a very exciting one for me to do and I admit I loved it. So now I have one more field for fun in the Color world. 

To end this post, I looked for something to illustrate the Color Blocking Trend and among what I found was this refreshing home video prepared by two young girls, that have a blog called Clothes Encounters. They explain very well what the trend consists of, act as models and explain in a few well chosen words why they love it. Have a look at it and enjoy!

To create a colour palette out from a beloved object

One way to begin a Colour Consult is to choose an art object we love and create a colour palette to enhance it. This object becomes inspirational because we love its colours, its texture, maybe the memory it awakens or the desired atmosphere we would  like to create around us. At the same time, we could attempt to design the proper scenario to show our treasure at its best. And we would need to choose the right colours for furniture, walls, floor and so on.

This is what I did with this Art-Déco candy box I bought some years ago. And I extracted this collection of beautiful muted rich hues:

La Colorista

I  added some colours of the surrounding furniture to those of the candy box . The palette plays with some complements from the yellow and violet family. There are some analogous as terracotta orange, and silvery and golden hues and  olive green make a great family. Maybe  I will have and accent wall painted in dark red violet and then I will pick the rest of hues...