How The Supermodels Taught Me Colour Analysis

When I trained to be a colour analyst, in addition to learning the theory and the science behind it, I also had to practice on ‘real’ people – a lot of people. Friends, family, friends of family, the family of friends, they all became my trial models while I learned the ropes.

I also spent a lot of time looking at people on the tube, in supermarket queues and in my gym class, trying to work out if they were light and bright, dark and cool or warm and muted.

However that got a bit weird after a while, so I decided that the static, remote images of celebrities, were probably a safer bet, while I learned my craft.

Due to the proliferation of social media, most of us have a slightly parasocial relationship with celebrities and I am no exception. I’ve also worked in celebrity and influencer marketing for many years, so I guess I’ve met more than my fair share of famous and (semi famous) faces.

The celebrities who I chose as my homework however were The Supermodels. I came of age at a time when they were everywhere and the women we looked to as true style icons. The pool of celebrities in the late eighties/early nineties was infinitely smaller than it is now, so famous people were properly famous, and ‘The Supers’ were properly famous.

The trend in Hollywood at that time was for its female stars to dress down and eschew fashion and glamour. But much like weeding pavement, when you remove one patch of insanely glamorous women, another will appear in its place, and so it was that The Supers grew up to take their place in the sun. By the time that George Michael cast Cindy, Naomi, Linda et al in his famous Freedom video, the writing was very clearly on the wall.

So me and my friends went from having a favourite popstar to suddenly having a favourite supermodel (I think mine was probably the Dutch model Karen Mulder) and apropos of nothing, the notice board in our sixth form common room became a homage to these utter glamazons.

The supers were my north star for glamour and beauty, but what I loved most, was that they were also all incredibly unique and looked completely different to each other. Each had a very individual look and as I found out, they were all very different seasons and colourings.

You can never really know someone’s colour season for sure until you undertake the diagnostic process in-person (which is why I don’t offer remote sessions). However, a good colour analyst should be able to make an educated guess. Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, I think I managed to work them out with a rationale for why.  Linda Evangelista took a bit longer, due to her ever changing hair colour and status as the ultimate fashion chameleon, but I think I got there in the end.

However there was one that I really struggled with – Helena Christensen. For me there was an argument for her fitting into all four seasons. I went down a Reddit rabbit hole with colour analysts arguing over which season she falls into, so I could see I wasn’t alone in my confusion.

I’m still not completely convinced, I think I would only ever know for sure if I did the analysis in person. In some images she looks the epitome of cool and muted, in others very warm and bright.

I think one of the reasons that I find her so difficult to place is because her particular colouring is so very unusual. Clear, turquoise eyes are rarely accompanied with very dark hair, rosy cheeks don’t tend to make an appearance on olive skin and surely it is impossible to appear both dark and muted and light and bright simultaneously, but somehow she manages it.

It's also very difficult to distinguish between someone’s natural colouring and what is the result of styling. Models are the ultimate ‘blank canvas’ for hair and makeup artists to work their magic. Perhaps her rosy cheeks came from a blusher brush, maybe the colour of her eyes had been subtly enhanced by really clever makeup hacks, we may never know. This is why when my clients come for a colour analysis, I insist on no fake tan, no makeup, no artificial eyelashes and I need to know if the eyebrows are natural or have had some help along the way. I can’t begin to know if you are a ‘Soft Summer’ if your hair and makeup is saying ‘True Winter’.

The issue with Helena, is that I don’t have a template for her. I have never met her particular colouring before, which I guess is one of the reasons why she was a supermodel, because she was and is so incredibly unique.

I think her ethnic heritage also played a part here – her father was Danish and her mother Peruvian. I don’t know the percentage of people in the world with that particular DNA, but I’m guessing it’s fairly low and perhaps why it’s created such a conundrum for us as colour analysts.