Pointless ’80s fashion trend back in vogue again

If you were a woman who lived through the 1980s then there is no doubt that this fashion trend guided your entire wardrobe. I hate to tell you, but it’s back, writes Frances Whiting.

Do you remember when women went mad for “getting their colours done”? There may have been a more professional name for it; something like “bespoke colour styling”, but nobody called it that.

Everybody just said “I’m getting my colours done”, usually followed by a triumphant “I’m an autumn”.

This is because getting your colours done meant being allocated a specific season, based on your hair, skin and eye colour and, I imagine, whether or not you liked tramping through the forest and playfully jumping on a pile of fallen leaves.

Now, depending on which season you were deigned to be, certain colours were meant to look good on you, and these colours were chosen by a colour consultant, usually called Pam.

I don’t why this was so, I just know that in the ’80s, a lot of women in our neighbourhood were running around saying “Pam says I’m a winter!”

Bringing the 80s back.

And as far as I can tell, the way these consultants chose your season was by waving a variety of scarfs under your chin, and saying: “Now do you see how that lemon washes you right out”, and then waving another scarf around and saying “Let’s look at what happens when we try a lovely watermelon. I knew it, Susan, you’re a summer!”

Getting Your Colours Done was massive in the ’80s, and there are still women walking this earth today who refuse to wear anything other than salmon, beige, ivory and coral. These women are springs, by the way.

They may also be onto something, because, along with all sorts of other ’80s trends, getting your colours done is apparently making a comeback.

This is good news for all the colour consultants out there, who are retrieving their colour swatches from their garages as we speak.

And while I don’t know if I’ll ever get my colours done, I do know that colours can make a huge difference, not just to how we look, but to how we feel.

This in itself is extremely personal, isn’t it? Nothing soothes me more than gazing on a deep, forest green, but I remain violently opposed to orange.

Orange is the colour wheel equivalent of the coffee creme in a chocolate box. Nobody wants it, and only chooses it if there’s absolutely nothing else left. And do not come at me, orange lovers, you know it’s true.

Which colour are you?

And each season does indeed have its own colours – whether or not they suit our skin tones. Autumn, to me, is the rich reds of a piping hot tomato soup, the comforting chocolate of hot cocoa, the yellows and golds of the bush turning.

Winter is the bluish white of snow and ice, the silvery puffs of exhaled air on a cold morning; the turn of a tan leather boot. Summer is the candy stripes of beach towels, bright yellow buckets and spades, the neon green of a Pine Lime Splice, and every sort of blue dancing on the water. Spring is the first glimpse of white and yellow freesias, dark green blades of grass, and frilly, red carnations, so gloriously frivolous.

By the way, if anyone would like to knit me a winter scarf, I’m fairly sure I’m an autumn.

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Originally published as Pointless ’80s fashion trend back in vogue again