LITTLE ROCK — Q. Apparently, I am not great with colors. When I pick a tie to go with my tweed jacket, my girlfriend says they don’t go together. Maybe I’m partly colorblind or maybe I’m just not good at matching colors. Do you have any rules that can help?
A. There are a couple of possibilities. One is that you may indeed be the one in every 11 men who is actually “colorblind.” If your ability to differentiate between shades is less acute than it might be, it may be next to impossible to select the tones and shades necessary for exact harmony. Here are a few tested, foolproof solutions for colorblind (and color imperfect) people.
Ask a friend who has good taste — or your girlfriend — to spend an hour or so with you, going through your collection of suits, sport coats, shirts, ties and socks. Arrange them into compatible combinations. On the label of each piece, use an indelible marker to identify its set by number. For example, all shirts and ties that coordinate with gray suit #3 are marked #3.
A trick that works with socks: Buy all your black ones from one manufacturer and all your blue ones from another, choosing brands that have some identifiable stitching on the toe.
Since so many men are colorblind, it makes little sense to be embarrassed or hide the fact from the salesman when shopping for clothes. He sees people who are colorblind every day. Ask him, for example, to show you a blue shirt that has no hint of green or purple in it. (That can be useful even if you are not colorblind.)
On the other hand, even people who can differentiate colors may not be good at choosing handsome matches. Here are a few helpful coordinating hints.
A common mistake that men and women make when trying to match or coordinate colors is to examine a tweed jacket or a tie with a smallpattern tie too closely, trying to determine just exactly which colors are in the fabric. Instead, the right approach is to step back, at the very least, an arm’s length away or, better yet, several feet away, and look at the garment from a distance. What color does your eye perceive? Interestingly, you will not see each of the actual colors that you find when examining it up close. What you will see in the tweed or in the tie is the effect of the colors blending with each other.
I heard about a dramatic example of this color-blending principle: A female friend bought a beautiful wool tweed rug that was a mix of blue and yellow threads. When the rug arrived and was laid down on the floor, she was shocked to see that it looked like a green rug!
Here are a few clothing examples of this same principle: A black-and-white tweed jacket looks gray from a short distance; a blue-and-red smallpatterned tie from a distance will assume a purple cast; a red-and-yellow patterned tie looks orangey-red from several feet away. The first of these two ties (the one with the blue/red pattern) goes with blue or gray suits or sport jackets, and looks terrific with a light blue or pink shirt. The second tie (the red/yellow pattern) would look terrible with a pink shirt, but would be great with a khaki, tan or olive suit and a soft yellow or ivory-colored shirt.
Another important rule is two-color dressing. Once you have the hang of it, you can practically never go wrong.
Start with the suit. It is your base color.
Add a second contrast color with the shirt. It is your accent color.
With the tie, you tie it all together by repeating the two colors.
Your suit, let’s say is dark gray, making gray your base color. Add a shirt in a contrasting light color, perhaps a red and white fine stripe. Now you have two colors — gray and red. (The white in a striped shirt doesn’t count.) Your third selection is the necktie. Since you want to tie the color combination together, you choose a red or burgundy tie with a small gray pattern. Your three pieces have stayed with two colors.
Note: These color coordination guidelines are not limited to dressing in a suit, shirt and tie. They apply equally well to casual weekend dressing in sweaters, knit shirts, khakis and jeans. Follow them and listen for the compliments.
Send your questions for Male Call to:
lois.fenton@prodigy.net
High Profile, Pages 49 on 11/18/2012