chocolate cherry truffle color palette for fall
throwing all my brown, red and pink clothes on the bed and making fits
I got really into color over the summer when I bought a bright orange babaà t-shirt. The color is gorgeous, like a big juicy orange meets the beginning of a summer sunset, and it looks terrible on me. I kept trying to wear it and then glimpsing myself in the mirror looking like I had but weeks to live after contracting the plague. (I did contract Lyme disease this summer, however, so maybe it was that?) The knit top — so vibrant and beautiful in my hands — drained my face of color while exaggerating my underage circles and pale, SPF-protected skin. It’s not the brand’s fault at all; plenty of babaà’s other knits look great on me and it’s my favorite knitwear company, but I realized that I had found a color I couldn't quite pull off. (Not that I’ve given up on it completely. In a future newsletter I’m going to try to style it to work for me AND also I don’t believe that everything I wear needs to be flattering. My love for orange beats on.) But after that I fell down the deep rabbit hole of seasonal color analysis and discovered that I, like Richard Gilmore, am an autumn.
How convenient that we’re in autumn! At first I was disappointed because I wanted to be a season that encouraged bright, saturated colors, not because I wore them much (maybe I’ve always known?) but because I aspired to be the kind of person who does. But once I started understanding the autumn palette and making an effort to wear more muted colors and earth tones, I noticed a marginal improvement in my overall appearance. Square peg meets a square hole.
Color has been the last style component for me to address. Long ago I began noticing fit, silhouette, and eventually fabric composition, but color was always a wild card. I rarely paid attention to which colors looked good on me and worked well when paired together. I chose items instinctively, which is fun, but then left me with an incoherent wardrobe.
Inspired by my seasonal color analysis, the theory of “color paletting” coined by
and The Row’s lookbooks, I’ve started to build outfits around more complex, or at least intentional, color combinations. The improvements can be subtle, but I’m starting to believe that the best outfits are composed of subtle improvements.Today’s palette — a combination of brown, red and pink that continuously reminds me of a cherry jam-filled chocolate truffle — was born out of my desire to style my new brown Uniqlo U suit (she gorgeous!). I paired the turtleneck and blazer with a raspberry silk skirt and loved the combination, so then I pulled every brown, red and pink item from my closet and put it on my bed.
It was then when the riches revealed themselves! Viewing my wardrobe through such a specific lens opened up a lot of outfit ideas I hadn’t thought of before and also made me realize that each of the items mixed and matched with each other really well. Broken down by color, I could have made a month’s worth of unique October outfits out of just the items on my bed.
Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Now time to wear some of these out in the real world.
Thanks for reading xx
Francesca 🍒