Hong Kong
NCS
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“You have pretty hair,” my colleague mentioned. “Is it your natural color?”
“I…. don’t know?” I responded.
That wasn’t presupposed to be a humorous reply. It was the reality.
Three years in the past, I went through treatment for most cancers. The illness took many issues from me — one breast, a number of lymph nodes and my hair.
Healing is available in fragments, and “better” is a relative time period. But the simplest visible signal of an individual’s restoration comes within the type of hair.
Every morning, I poked my head expectantly, like my dormant hairs have been crops about to burst forth from the earth. When they lastly arrived, the auburn I’d had my entire life was a darkish chestnut brown. Formerly stick-straight, my hair was now wavy and flopped up on the ends.
This is a standard expertise for individuals who have undergone chemotherapy. While chemo kills off most cancers cells, it additionally kills a variety of different cells, together with hair follicles. I misplaced my eyebrows, physique hair, and a few eyelashes along with the hair on high of my head.
But chemo also can have an effect on the form of follicles. It’s a phenomenon so widespread that there’s a reputation for it utilized by sufferers who report their hair rising curly after remedy: “chemo curls.” Treatment impacts everybody in a different way. Some folks have darker or curlier hair at first, then discover that their “old” texture and shade return over time. For me, although, this doesn’t appear to be the case.
Sometimes, I stare within the mirror not figuring out who’s wanting again at me, or attempt to determine why the lighting is so unusual within the rest room. I pull hairs out of my brush and marvel if a pal borrowed it with out telling me.
My post-cancer physique reminds me of the post-puberty one I’d had as a teen, when my previous garments didn’t look proper anymore. The “go-to” black cardigans and pink lipstick immediately appeared all fallacious.
As I struggled to determine what to put on, somebody steered making an attempt a “personal color analysis” session.
Already an enormous pattern in South Korea, the method of analyzing folks’s pure shade tones has surged in reputation up to now 12 months due to TikTok. During the session, a stylist holds sheets of various coloured cloths up towards your face to see which look greatest on you. Analysts start with teams of garments organized by “warm” and “cool” tones, then perform close-ups of particular single colours for extra precision.
It could also be trendy now, however the apply has deep roots.
Like many ladies within the Eighties, Ruth Merrion was launched to non-public shade principle by the artist Carole Jackson’s bestselling guide “Color Me Beautiful.” In the guide, Jackson categorized ladies into one in every of 4 classes, primarily based on seasons of the 12 months. These classes turned a tough rubric for deciphering which colours can be probably the most flattering for his or her clothes and make-up decisions.
But for Merrion, the guide didn’t do sufficient.
Australian-born Merrion had resettled within the UK however struggled to make buddies. Later, after learning shade principle, she realized that her mistake had been selecting garments in shades that made her “look about 10 years older,” when she’d been making an attempt to venture herself as likeable and assured as a substitute.
Later, she wrote her grasp’s thesis on private shade evaluation at Australia’s Curtin University.
“I learned a hard lesson that (choosing clothing) is not really about being beautiful,” she mentioned in a Zoom dialog. “It’s about good communication.”
As Merrion explains it, the colours we put on are about extra than simply what’s thought of flattering. They’re a fast, visible means of telling the world who we’re.
The connection between the colours round us and the best way we really feel has been used to affect the whole lot from prisons (painted in pastel colors within the hope of calming incarcerated folks) to food packaging (natural merchandise in earth tones, designed to look extra “natural”).
Vivian Seo skilled in shade evaluation in her native South Korea and began her firm, Find Your Colour, in Hong Kong, the place we each dwell. I went to my session along with her anticipating some normal recommendation about whether or not I ought to put on neutrals or pastels. What I acquired was a mixture of makeover and remedy session, each of which I wanted desperately.
Seo additionally begins with the 4 seasons, however then breaks each down into 4 sub-categories: clear, mushy, deep and lightweight. Each of these 16 varieties then has a spectrum of colours that greatest go well with particular folks.
By that methodology, for instance, a “soft winter” individual ought to put on grey tones, whereas a “light summer” one will look good in vivid pinks and purples.
Finding my shade — and my voice
My private shade evaluation session emphasised the private.
Before pulling out the coloured drape cloths, Seo requested about how I needed to understand myself and my private fashion. I discussed eager to look skilled and discovering some go-to workplace fundamentals, and wrote down immediate phrases: “classic,” “elegant,” “healthy.”
This is exactly what, Merrion would say, these shade evaluation periods really hinge on — I don’t simply need to really feel fairly once more; I need to telegraph to the world that I’m now not sick.
And it’s not nearly hair, both. Seo made notes on my eye shade, pores and skin tone, facial construction, and extra to craft her evaluation.
Her prognosis: I’m a “clear spring,” which implies I look greatest in vivid colours.
It was onerous to think about giving up black, the uniform of each New Yorker (having spent my skilled profession within the metropolis earlier than relocating to Asia, there’s a big quantity of black garments in my wardrobe). But there was incontrovertible proof within the type of seeing myself within the mirror with a turquoise or vivid inexperienced drape versus a black one.
Growing up, I’d at all times prevented the colour orange, because it clashed with my then-reddish hair. But seeing an orange-red lipstick on myself for the primary time — and completely adoring it — was an sudden reminder that getting used to one thing doesn’t imply it’s true endlessly.
Knowing it may be onerous to shake folks out of their routines, Seo was fast to say that she’s simply providing recommendation. She additionally famous that there’s no such factor as a “banned” shade. I didn’t have to surrender my favourite, yellow — however she steered making an attempt a extra lemon-y shade as a substitute of a buttery one.
I additionally don’t must throw out all my black garments simply but. (Not that I’ve the cash to go purchase a complete new wardrobe anyway.) Seo steered black equipment, and famous that black pants and skirts are additionally “approved” — mainly, if it’s not subsequent to my face, it’s truthful sport.
After the session, Seo handed me a pre-printed card with my clear spring colours on it, so I might maintain it in my pockets and use as a reference whereas procuring.
Later, she despatched me a protracted, detailed PDF stuffed with options about what to put on — and never solely colours. Seo included options about patterns (small ones), jewellery (colourful gems) and earring shapes (swirls over geometric strains), in addition to advisable cuts for jackets and blouses, full with photographs of fashions and celebrities whose outfits labored as examples.
Just a few weeks later, I purchased a lemon-yellow costume that made me smile as quickly as I noticed myself within the dressing room mirror.
Although I’m now not sick, I’ll by no means be the identical individual I used to be earlier than my most cancers prognosis. I’m on drugs that I’ll doubtless take for the remainder of my life. I’ve mismatched breasts and visual scars. I’m in remedy to deal with the sentiments that developed throughout my remedy. The phrase “remission” remains to be one thing I solely say in whispers, a superstition.
But perhaps the following time I look within the mirror, I’ll acknowledge myself.