Whist we can wear most colours,  Colour Consultants will tell you that it is the specific hue, clarity and undertone that cause some colours to make your skin glow with and your eyes sparkle with life. The wrong colours will dull your complexion and emphasize skin imperfections and make you look older. Some of us think we look old enough without colour adding on some years.

Great colours are those that:

• Enhance your natural colour
• Enhance your body’s shape, size and proportions.
• Are appropriate for the occasion and season.

Colour consultants clarify how a colour analysis can help co-ordinate your wardrobe. Planning your wardrobe around your best core colours gives you maximum wardrobe flexibility. Core colours include black, white, grey, beige, navy, mahogany, red brown, camel and brown. These colours are very versatile and can be used anywhere, anytime.                                                                              For versatility and interest add a range of basic colours. These colours add life and interest to your core colours. They are best used next to your face. Basic colours include reds, blues, yellows and greens in medium to dark shades.

Professional Colour Consultants will determine your best colours and provide you with a colour swatch to take shopping. This will help you to purchase clothes in the right colours, intensity and contrast so that shopping becomes a breeze.

When you go to your wardrobe, do you see a closet full of clothes that have been carefully collected to harmoniously mix and match with each other, or doing you see clothing chaos? Creating wardrobe clusters is a great way to make your life much easier when it comes to recognizing what you need to purchase to achieve an interesting and effective wardrobe.

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Personal stylists are as vital to a man as the services of an experienced resume writer . Why is this so!

When a man is seeking a new job or a promotion he well might seek the professional advice and services of an experienced resume writer.  He would appreciate the skills and knowledge this person would bring to bear on his quest for advancement. After all, a resume says so much about a person’s work experience, qualifications and aspirations. A prospective employer makes important judgements based on a resume. The job seeker would acknowledge this fact and that a professionally presented resume makes a positive impression.

However, would the same job seeker recognise the importance of his own personal presentation and accept that an employer makes equally important judgements based on this? The saying, ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’ may be true, but when there are thousands of books vying for readers, it helps if your book attracts positive attention. And I’m not sure that this analogy is completely true for people. We tell the world a lot about ourselves in the way we visually present. People may not always interpret us correctly but the point is that people use our appearance to form opinions about us.

Many men would acknowledge that appearance matters. Many others would challenge this premise with arguments that the quality of someone’s work is what really matters. However, few men would truly understand the subtleties of subliminal messages and visual short cuts. The job interviewer does not have the time to get to know the candidates sitting before him. Consciously or otherwise he or she will use visual shortcuts to form opinions about a candidate. Often they will rely on their intuition to decide whether they trust and like the person in front of them. The way a man dresses, stands and speaks tells the world a great deal about who he is, what he does, how he feels about himself, where he comes from and where he is headed.

Consider two professional men looking for a job, one in a conservative law firm the other in an innovative advertising agency. Both men will wear a suit and tie for their interviews. Both men need to be judged as qualified, capable and professional. But one needs to convince his prospective employer that he is learned, conservative and careful, the other needs to be perceived as creative, dynamic and a risk taker. Both need their visual appearance to support them. How do they do this?  Engaging the services of a personal stylist would be a great option.

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Psychologists say that a messy house trashed with useless clutter is an abstract representation of many lives.  According to Feng Shui clutter is stuck energy and the inability to move forward. This all sounds rather deep, however what resonates with many of us is the fact that when one makes the decision to de-clutter they can experience overwhelming feelings of panic. Often it’s the case of where to start and then how do you decide what’s trash or treasure? There are experts to help and guide you through the de- cluttering process. One such expert is an Image Consultant. They can’t help much with organizing your kitchen or office but they can be invaluable in your wardrobe.

Image Consultants would agree that de- cluttering your wardrobe makes so much sense. To clean out your existing wardrobe and eliminate all things that are of no use to you may sound a little distressing but it is an important step in the process of reorganization. In every woman’s wardrobe there are clothes with invisible guilty tags attached to them. They lie in wait for you to remind you of how much money you paid for them and how few times they have been worn. Keeping these clothes will actually cost you money and take up valuable space in your wardrobe.

You have decided to change your buying habits and bad clothing purchases will become a thing of the past. So it’s time to forgive yourself and give them away. Take a close look at the items in your wardrobe and put each item into the following categories:-

1. Items to keep

• Those that require no alterations to fit
• Those that are in harmony with your personality
• Those that are comfortable to wear to wear and fit well
• Those that flatter your figure and make you feel good
• Those that are in good condition and repair

1. Items that need attention

• Those with missing buttons and fallen hems etc
• Those that are soiled
• Those that require alteration
• Those that require another item to be purchased before it can be worn

1. Items that need to be given away or discarded

• Any item that is now too small or too large
• Any item that is out of date
• Any item unworn for three years
• Any item that no longer fits your lifestyle needs
• Any item that is an unflattering style
• Items in colours that are unflattering on you
• Anything you hate when you put it on

Now stand back and take a deep breath. How liberating does it feel to be rid of that dead weight and look at that new space in your wardrobe! Now before you rush out to buy more clothes make an inventory of what is left. Determine what you need to buy in order to expand your wardrobe options. An Image Consultant will then also help you to shop wisely explore all the possible combinations you can make with existing garments and any new purchases.

Looking young is a positive attribute in a world which is youth obsessed.  However, ‘young’ is a relative adjective. When you’re 18, someone who is 25 is old; when you’re 50, someone 25 is a child; and to an 80 year old, young is anybody not drawing a pension. Generally speaking however, being truly ‘young’ is a fleeting experience. Our real youth passes very quickly.  In regards to our physical appearance, it’s the time when our skin is firm,  our eyes and hair shine bright with natural  colour and radiance, our posture is strong and straight and our face is unmarked by the lines and creases that will come with laughter, anxiety and tears. In terms of stereotypical thinking, youth is synonymous with energy, aspiration, ideas, spontaneity and the future.  Age is associated with wisdom, experience, scepticism, entrenched practices and the past. Is it any wonder that many if not most of us aren’t keen on being perceived as ‘old’?

If you want to look youthful i.e. vital, positive, engaged and living in the present, an Image Consultant is a very useful person to have around. Why? Well, for a number of reasons.

1. They are trained in Colour Analysis, a simple but enlightening process that determines the colours, contrast levels and textures that flatter you best. The right colours will ease the appearance of lines and wrinkles, even your skin tone and bring out the colour of your eyes and the highlights in your hair. These colours will imbue you with a healthy and youthful appearance.
2. They are experts in line and design. They understand the power of vertical, horizontal and circular influence. They assess your figure’s natural proportions and know how to create a more balanced silhouette for you. They will enable you to walk taller and slimmer.
3. An Image Consultant understands the power of stereotypes to create negative or positive impressions. Peter Pan collars, cardigans and pearls may look sweet on a 20 year old but when someone over 40 wears them, they ‘scream’ establishment’, maturity and common sense.  Not necessarily bad things but together they create an impression of ‘age’. An image consultant can show you how to avoid the stereotypes that will unconsciously age you prematurely in the minds of others.
4. Being current in our dress is an important element in creating a youthful appearance. This does not mean ‘mutton dressed up as lamb’; nothing advertises your age more. However, embracing the current trends (as opposed to fads) is a great way to look youthful. Your Image Consultant can guide you towards discerning the trends that work positively for your appearance while eliminating those that do not.

An Image Consultant will help you look younger and feel fabulous. They will be an investment in your appearance, your self esteem, your present and your future.

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There are many ways to look younger. From anti-wrinkle creams to cosmetic surgery, and all of them offer some hope in the quest to defy our aging appearance. Another consideration and a much less expensive option is finding out how Colour Consultants can make a difference to your appearance and how they can make you look younger.

Colour Consultants won’t deny that lots of things help give you a more youthful appearance. Skin care treatments, anti-aging creams, Botox, cosmetic surgery, a healthy diet, exercise, drinking lots of water and sleep all affect the way we look.

But most important of all is knowing and understanding what colours will make you look fabulous and what colours will make you look tired and sick. All sounds a bit mysterious? Well it isn’t really.

The impact of colour should never be underestimated. Colour consultants are able to inspire others to enjoy the benefits of perceptive colour selection. We admire and appreciate the existence of our colourful world.  We take pleasure from watching the colours of a setting sun. We are fascinated by the beauty of a rainbow or a field of spring flowers.

Many of us even have a basic understanding that colour is not only seen but felt. The whole experience of colour is influenced not only by light energy that enters the eye from our surroundings, but also by subjective factors from within the brain. So is it any wonder we can even have positive or negative reactions to colour. For example the colour red can evoke feelings of excitement or threat. Yellow can be associated with cheerfulness or apathy and purple can relate to Royalty or depression. These are just to name a few as there can be almost as many reactions and responses as there are actual hues.

So why does colour have such a profound effect on our appearance? Colour is reflective , and when worn near the face reflects up onto the skin, hair and eyes. When a colour is worn that is in harmony with a personal natural colouring, that person will appear healthier, brighter, more youthful and alive.  The human eye responds positively to harmony and balance. It is aesthetically pleasing when colours relate to each other in some orderly logical way. In fact wearing the wrong colours can give the wearer the appearance of being older, unwell, and tired. So don’t reach for the expensive face creams or sign up for the Botox just yet.  Simply find out what colours look great on you.

Colour Consultants can make us look younger because they have an understanding of certain areas of our colouring that are important and should be considered in combination. That is skin, natural hair colour and eye colour and intensity. We all have the elements that make up our colouring in varying amounts, i.e. hemoglobin, carotene and melanin.

Because the human eye responds positively to harmony and balance and it is aesthetically pleasing when colours relate to each other, it is logical then that the information from Colour consultants would be of huge benefit in the quest to look younger.

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