Skip to main content

Men's Fashion (Choosing the right color coordination)

Image
By

 “Never underestimate the power of what you wear. After all, there is just a small bit of you sticking out at the neck and the cuff. The rest of what the world sees is what is draped on your frame”, Oscar Schoeffler (Esquire Magazine’s legendary fashion editor). Hence your attire should be chosen in such a way that it brings liveliness to the visible parts of your body.


Color is most often the neglected part of the attire even though it plays a major role in deciding the aesthetics. Color influences first impressions more than any other aspect of your attire. Women very well know the importance that colors play in deciding the vibe, but men do not have the same kind of access to cosmetics as women and they do not have different shades to play with. Hence their attire’s color should be planned in such a way that it brings out the best of your appearance. Colors not only affect the way you look but some colors are even known to influence the rate of respiration and heartbeat. But I am not going to dive into the health benefits of color in this blog, I would only talk about the ways to choose your color according to your complexion.

Complexions types:

Alan Fusser, a legendary American designer in his book “Dressing the Man” divided the complexion of men into three basic types:

1.    High contrast complexion: if your skin is light and your hair is dark.

2.    Muted/ tonal complexion: If your skin tone and hair color are light and similar.

3.    Muted contrast complexion: Men with this contrast have a difference in the skin tone and hair color but it is not as defined as in the case of High contrast complexion.

Your attire should be designed in such a way that it attracts attention to your face. Clothes are like a frame that contains your face. While the frame should be attractive, but its primary focus is to highlight the thing that it contains (in this case your face). This could be done by learning a few color-coordination rules of clothing.  The attire of man should exhibit the same level of contrast as his complexion. High contrast clothes include a combination of clothes that have a stark difference between their color and brightness (Black and white, Dark Navy blue and light sky blue, etc) while low contrast clothes contain a combination of colors of clothes that do not vary much in color and brightness (Black and Navy Blue, Golden and Yellow, etc).

 

High contrast Complexion:

This category consists of people who have light skin tone and dark hair color. Typical men with black colored hair and white skin tone fit this category. The best color coordination for this complexion to try is the high contrast color coordination. The hair with a combination of contrast clothes act as a frame here, this is turn highlights your face (which is light in color) and make it look livelier, this, in turn, will attract more attention towards your face. Whereas if you wear low contrast clothes (for example a combination of golden and yellow), your skin tone will blend in with the color of your outfit and will dampen your high contrast features.


 

For example, look at how Henry Cavill’s face is highlighted in the right image. We can clearly see how the combination of black and white (high contrast) complements his complexion even more.  Whereas in the right case low contrast clothes dampen his complexion and his face blends in with the color of clothes and look dull.

I am attaching one more pic (Ben Affleck this time) for your reference.


 

 

Low contrast complexion:

This category consists of people whose hair color and skin tone are similar. Typical males with blonde hair, redheads, etc who have light skin tone comprise this category. Since people with low contrast complexion do not have different hair colors than their faces to act as a frame, they should avoid outfits with high noise (high contrast), otherwise, the resulting color coordination of the outfit might cause too much distraction. This in turn will shift the focus of attraction to your clothes and away from your face. Wearing high contrast could even make your face look dull and pale if you belong to this category of men.


 

Medium contrast complexion:

People whose skin tone is different from their hair color but not as defined as in the case of High contrast complexion belong to this category. (Typical men white skin tone and salt and pepper colored hair, brown men with black hair, etc.). The people in this category enjoy the benefits of both complexion types and outfits might be chosen according to your moods and personality. There is no hard and fast way to dress if you belong to this category. Since the options available to the people of this category is large, the scope of error here also increases. So, people of this category could only learn through the method of trial and error.

 

Black people:


It is natural from the above discussion to think that black people with black hair belong to the muted complexion category since their skin tone and hair color are similar. But the case is the opposite since wearing a white shirt would create a significant contrast with the black skin tone and this in turn would highlight their faces. Black people could actually benefit more from high contrast clothing. For choosing the right color coordination for your face, consider an image of your face on a white paper, here a darker skin tone would create higher contrast while a lighter shade of dark (brown) will create a medium level of contrast with the white paper. If your skin tone is a darker shade of black, you will benefit the most from high contrast clothing while if the contrast between the skin tone and the white surface is less (brown or lighter shades of black), then choosing outfits of lower contrast could benefit you more.

 

Due to an immense amount of fashion tips available on the internet, it is easy to get intimidated by the number of details. If you could get the basics right, you could experiment with the rest. Color coordination is one of the very basics that a man should be aware of for sartorial perfection. Other basics of dressing and fashion like choosing the right sizes and proportions will be uploaded soon on my blog.

 


If you did find the content insightful, share it with your friends and subscribe for more content like this. Also let me know what are your thoughts|comments on this.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "Association and Dissociation" Technique and "The fear of Public Speaking"

By
The "Association and Dissociation" Technique Benefits Neutralize Experiences of low to medium intensity. amplify the positive feeling or some positive experience that you had in the past. This exercise is not recommended for traumatic experiences Note : To understand this technique, we will perform an exercise. You don’t need any equipment to perform this exercise but it is expected of you to sit in a quiet place with minimal disturbances so that you can focus on this exercise. Running Exercise Sit straight with your spine and shoulders erect. Close your eyes. Now imagine that you are seeing yourself running from a distance. i.e you are observing yourself running from far away. Well, you can imagine seeing yourself running on the road while you are sitting on a park bench. How do you feel about it? Most of you will probably feel nothing. Now merge yourself with the object i.e imagine yourself running and observing through the eyes of a runner. You would ...
7 comments
Read more

How to give Feedback when stakes are high?

By
I don’t want to hurt him/her. But he/she needs to know this because this is affecting his/her relationship with me and other people around us. Have you ever been in a similar situation and wondered if there is a warmer way to do it without hurting the person. Yes, there is a way to give honest feedback without hurting the person in front. To learn this way, we will first understand the “Gain-Loss principle” given by Elliot Aaronson and Darwyn Linder based on the results of an experiment conducted by them in the year 1965 first. The experiment: In this experiment, people who volunteered as the subject were interviewed by a confederate(Someone who assists in a plot) of the experiment. Then in this experiment, the subject would overhear the conversation between the confederate and the researcher where the confederate would describe the subject to the researcher. The Description of the subject was always one of the four mentioned below: 1.         ...
4 comments
Read more

Are you being manipulated to believe in Astrology?

By
To understand this, let us first talk about the “ Confirmation bias ” and the “ Egocentric bias ”.   Confirmations Bias: The tendency of people to seek confirmation of their current beliefs and impressions.                People generally tend to ignore the things that are against their current beliefs and tend to stick with the ones that support their belief system. That is people try to absorb only the information which fits in with the information they currently have. This could be seen with the fact that people generally marry their spouses who have a similar mindset and depart from the relationships where their beliefs are being questioned and challenged.   Egocentric bias: People relate more to situations and stigmas that apply to them than the ones that aren’t.                     People tend to keep themselves at the cent...
3 comments
Read more

How to motivate yourself?

By
Have you ever set a goal where you were really motivated at the start and eventually lost the interest/motivation to pursue it? This habit is not only hindering your goals but also decreasing your confidence in yourself. When the frequency of non-fulfillment of goals is increased, your sense of self-worth suffers, and you start thinking that maybe you’re not made for that work or maybe you are just an average human who is not made for non-average things. Today we will talk about a better way to commit to your goals. If this doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t mean that you are not good enough perhaps you need to understand that same jabs and hooks don’t work for all boxers and you should rather try to find the ones that suit your style. To understand this technique, we must first understand the experiment which proved its effectiveness. The Experiment: This Experiment was conducted by two renowned psychologists Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerald in 1995 . In this experiment, the parti...
6 comments
Read more

Emotional Intelligence: Acknowledging the Irrational/Emotional Side of our Brain

By
“Why do I become so irrational during discussions?” “Why do I get so anxious over things so simple?” “Seriously! What was I even thinking?”   Have you often noticed yourself asking these questions? If yes, then you have come to the right place. Today we will talk about why we behave irrationally under emotions. Before understanding why and how this happens, let’s delve a little into how our brain works.   The Brain: We will not go into the intricacies of our brain. The only parts of the brain that concerns us are the Frontal lobe and the limbic part of the brain. The Frontal lobe is responsible for the rational/logical decisions that we take while the limbic part of the brain is responsible for our behavioral and emotional responses. The limbic part is more primitive while the frontal lobe is a newly formed part of the brain. The limbic part is responsible for emotional memories. It controls how you process strong emotions like fear and pleasure. During vario...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to not worry/panic/procrastinate?

By
In often every conversation, you will hear people saying things like “Don’t worry about it” or “Don’t Panic”. Consider this, if I ask you to not imagine a “A cute Panda”, what would immediately happen? You will imagine it right away. Despite listening to what I said, you will still imagine the Panda. The same thing happens when we say   “I won’t procrastinate today”, our brains do not know how to process the negative language. Instead of not doing what we are asked not to do, we do it. Have you ever been in a moment where you said “I won’t do this, this is destroying my health/wealth/reputation” and you end up doing it right away? Take the case where you say “I won’t panic” and you end up panicking a lot. What happens is you end up panicking about what would happen if you would panic, so you end up panicking about “Not Panicking”. This is what Mark Manson in his book “The Subtle Art of not giving a F*ck” referred to as the “Feedback loop from Hell” where you worry about the p...
2 comments
Read more