Pinterest, an online pinboard, is pretty darn awesome. Polyvore, an online tool for creating fashion/interior design sets, is also awesome. Together they present a pretty huge time suck in my life, and I love it. Lately though I’ve been noticing an upsetting trend with the Polyvore sets being pinned on Pinterest. Maybe it’s just me but I feel it’s very important to say this: monochromatic is boring. Even dichromatic is a waste of the 4.5 million color percepting cone cells the human eye possesses. You don’t have have to choose one color, and you really don’t have to choose just one neutral and another color. Now, I’m no fashion designer, I just think sharing my opinion would be fun and might inspire someone else. There are option peeps, let’s explore them!

First and foremost your outfit doesn’t need to match head to toe, but it should go together. There is difference between matching and going, and the difference can be pretty awesome. Let’s use neutrals to explain this.

The common neutrals are white, black, brown (khakis and tans included), blue (not always just navy) and gray¹. These colors pretty much always go together and go with other colors, and in most situations can be used interchangably. Let’s take a look at an outfit made up entirely of neutrals.

This time we went with a navy scarf, black trench, brown bag and gray heels. Similar pieces, just changed the colors around, and it all still goes. That’s why they’re neutrals, they’re awesomely versatile! Now, let’s try adding some color.

You can see on the left we added a little pop of color and hey, everything still looked great. Neutrals, baby! On the right we’ve added another pop of color, and because the yellow and the blue go together, and of course the neutrals go, everything still looks totally fab.

When it comes to going beyond neutrals and finding colors that go I always start at the color wheel. Yep, the same one you’ve probably seen a million times since kindergarten. There are two main ways to describe colors that go well together: analagous and complementary. Analagous colors are near each other on the color wheel, like red and orange, and because they look alike they look nice when paired together. Complementary colors are opposite each other on the color wheel, like yellow and blue, and when put together each is more noticable. Another thing to take into account with colors are cool and warm shades. The left half of the color wheel are the blues and greens and are considered cools. On the right are the yellows and reds, the warms. In the world of fashion, which reaches way beyond 12 colors, there can be cool and warm within the same color and shade. Take these into account when pairing colors, even neutrals. It’s easier to make things go together if they’re all cool or all warm.

Here are some more of my examples of outfits that use lots of colors. but keep it all together with neutrals.

Now I know there are lot of people out there who wouldn’t wear any of these outfits, and that’s cool. Your style is your style and it’s not good or bad, just yours. But for the people out there who are afraid of color, afraid of pairing black and brown or adding more than one bright hue, this is for you. Colors are beautiful, wear them!

1. Some people suggest olive as a neutral, which I suppose could be true, but I’m not a big fan of olive. Sometimes looks good, sometimes looks dank. Go with what you feel. [↩]

Fashion