Have you ever walked into a closet full of clothes and walked out feeling like you have nothing to wear? Victoria Proscia knows that feeling. As a stylist with House of Colour, Proscia is a pro at finding the right colors and clothing cuts to enhance inner beauty. No more blindly shopping trends that just don’t feel quite right, instead Proscia guides clients to clothing staples they can mix and match, and to colors that make their eyes pop, skin gleam, and budget breathe a sigh of relief.
434: What is color and style analysis?
Proscia: It’s a process that’s very clarifying to home in on your best wardrobe. There are always trends in the fashion industry, sometimes that can be cuts of clothing and sometimes that can be color. What’s really, really important for budget purposes is to know what colors actually look good on, not only from a confidence standpoint, but also a financial standpoint. There can be a lot of trends that are a bit more expensive and trends that simply just won’t work for you, so it’s nice to know where you live in terms of trends—what looks best on your body, but also what colors make you go bright and clear and approachable.
So what happens in a consult?
What happens typically during a person’s first color analysis appointment is they’ll walk in draped in both warm and cool colors. So we go over the color wheel and I give an overview of yellow-based colors and warm colors, and blue-based colors and cool colors. We drape [fabric swatches] of these warm and cool colors on you, and we go back and forth, seeing and rating the changes in your skin. From there, we get you to a season and a subseason. We have two warm seasons, autumn and spring, and we have two cool seasons, winter and summer. It really depends on if someone’s skin looks best in soft, blended colors or clear, bright colors.
And then in style analysis, we talk about everything and find your two clothing personality archetypes—dramatic, classic, natural, gamine, ingénue, or romantic.
What can the right colors do for a person?
Have you ever been told that you look tired? A lot of times you’re in a color that makes you actually go really tired or unhealthy. Sometimes it’ll bring out more of that yellow pigment in your skin or it will make you have too much pigment in your skin where you look really chilly. Does a color make you go crisp and clear and bright, or does it make you go kind of shadowed and you look like you didn’t get the full eight hours last night.
Does that mean you should throw out all the clothing in your closet?
One of the reasons people are afraid to get their colors done is they think I’m gonna tell them that certain colors don’t work and look bad, and that’s actually not the case at all. Most of us can’t leave our appointments and go home and restart [our closets]; our budgets are just not equipped for that. So during your color appointment we talk about how, if black is not in your palate, how do we make black work with your makeup or your best metal color? Black lives in one particular season, so if you don’t get that season, maybe we just encourage you to move black below the waist. I’m just here to introduce colors to you that look better than, maybe, what’s already in your closet, and I teach you how to organize your closet so that over time we can exchange some pieces for better-than colors.
What’s your own color and style personality?
I am a Jewel Winter, and a Natural Dramatic. I need texture, large-scale accessories, angular necklines, straight lapels. I can do some distressing in denim.