December 12, 2012

Skin tone charts for grey haired.


Hello everybody, I've been away for years I think! Now I'm ready to discuss such an important question as different skin tones in many sorts again!

Oh my God, I'm going grey! Is it awfully inglorious? Or is it trendy? Could grey hair be attractive and stylish? How to bring yourself to gracefully natural grey hair? How to match your skin tone to different shadows of grey hair? How to choose the right tone of clothes and accessories to your skin and grey hair? There are so many questions, so let's look at this matter in details with visual skin tone charts.  

There is no secret grey hairs appear even in youth, so grey hair can't be only the mature age sign in fact of genetic inheritance, global environmental influences and other matters. According to the recent famous fashion magazine Glamour more than 2500 persons poll 43%  of people that took part in it answered that they found grey haired women and men attractive. Only 4% of asked persons thought grey hair to be unattractive. The great power of public mind is on grey-haired people side.

Grey hair were in fashion in 18th century as we can see thanks to the paintings of famous art members like Thomas Gainsborough, Francois Boucher, and others. Duchess of Devonshire in her powdered silvering grey wig has a fresh complexioned skin tone with blue undertone like a garden rose. Grey hair were considered as a mark of high social status. Only quite well doing people could venture themselves the luxurious wigs in white, grey and lightly colored grey tones made of real human hairs. Moreover, those volume shaped grey hair wigs of 18th century should be generously powdered with oak powder or with starch. What a deepest relief  that we are not obliged to do something sophisticated this way!

 Grey hair is in fashion now: Karl Lagerfeld's and Calvin Klein's favorite supermodel Kristen McMenamy wears her naturally grey hair on the catwalks and says "You can get older and still be rock'n'roll". Even the style icon Kate Moss is going grey and she does it gracefully fashionable. Many of celebrities were driven by this trend: Pink, Kelly Osbourne, Nicole Kidman and Lady Gaga, of course.  

Let's imagine I'm finally encouraged enough to go gray. But would it match my complexion? I want my grey hair suits me very well, and I definitely do not want to look like just a person who've forget the way to stylist. Let's have a look at the charts by the example the celebrities such Jamie Lee Curtis, Helen Mirren, Maye Musk and Meryl Streep.

Superstar Jamie Lee Curtis has a medium skin tone with golden undertone. You can read about medium skin tones in my article about determining skin tones and undertones with charts. She's so lucky about her complexion! When she was a brown-haired person, she hadn't enough contrast of colors in her appearance. But recently Jamie Lee Curtis went grey haired, and we can see a striking change to impressive good-looking. The truth is in the science of colors: the warm tones are in contrast with cool tones. If you put warms and cools nearly, you can see them brighter and more vibrant then they are in itself. This quite clear principle is in use by the world artists and stylists. Hair tone is always opposite to skin tone or skin undertone in the matter of warmth.



I think Jamie Lee Curtis is much prettier with grey hair. Her skin looks vivid, and her expressive eyes are appreciable now. Her appearance gained some special dynamics of tones interaction. That's because of high contrast between very light grey hair and golden warm skin tone. We can see Jamie Lee in search of best matching tone of grey for her skin. In according to the science of tones, warm orange golden is opposite to blues. It doesn't mean Jamie Lee should have her hair in futuristic manga style. But the best matching tone of grey is cool silver for her. We can see in a chart that warm grey hair looks not very fresh on Jamie Lee Curtis.



Stay tuned, more articles with charts are coming soon!