Color Me Beautiful

by Carole Jackson

Book Overview

Using simple guidelines, professional color consultant Carole Jackson helps you choose the thirty shades that make you look smashing. COLOR ME BEAUTIFUL will also help you: develop your color personality; learn to perfect your make-up color; discover your clothing personality; use color to solve specific figure problems, and more, including full-color palettes containing the thirty shades for each season--pages you can cut out to carry when you shop!...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345332946
• ISBN13: 9780345332943
• Release Date: September 1985
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Ordered to replace my original; info timeless

Still the best!

This helped me when I needed an umph in the arm

It has been several years ago now that I put this on my Christmas list. I still have it in my library and the pages are starting to fall out so you know I used it! its contents helped me with understanding color schemes and what would make me look my prettiest and best or worst and ugliest! it has stuck in my brain all this time. Thank you for an easy to understand book that I found useful. Some things may be dated but others still remain. Try it!

Changing my Colors

This book is great. I would get compliments when I would wear certain clothes and I always seem drawn to certain colors. Most of the colors I wore were great for me but some were not. This help me find the colors I needed to wear to look my very best. I get more compliments than ever since I eliminated certain colors from my wardrobe. Buy this book, you will change the way you feel about yourself. Great book.

This is the first book that started it all for me!

Years ago I was browsing through a now-extinct local used bookstore and ran across this book. I was immediately intrigued by it and purchased it for a DOLLAR plus tax. Best dollar plus tax I ever spent! I absolutely stayed up all night poring over the pages repeatedly as if I had found gold - except in my case, white gold or silver is much more flattering...Anyway, this started an absolute addiction to learning about style and color and makeup and design for me. I highly, highly recommend Clare Revelli's books for learning even more - that is, if you can still find them - she had a disagreement with the original publisher and evidently if you find them new from her they are now $30.00 each (they used to be $7.99 new). You can find some copies here used in good condition, and after you are armed with both Color Me Beautiful and Color and You books you will be amazed at how much better you look after changing your makeup and wardrobe colors to flattering colors for your season. I am convinced that this is the best initial purchase any woman can make who wants to present herself to the world in the best possible light. Buy now and change the way you see color and image forever!

Banish a "blah" appearance!

Please, if you are reading this, get this book. I'm not kidding. I still can't believe how much this book has helped me in thoroughly enjoying my physical appearance. It is not as though I ever thought I was ugly, but this book has actually turned me from plain to pretty. The way the book works is you learn to analyze your physical coloring, and based on this, you are put into one of four color "seasons"; Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring. It can be difficult to see yourself objectively, so friends are helpful, but once you figure it out, it is as though the fashion fairy godmother has visited you and you begin to build a truly amazing wardrobe that makes you look great every single day. It took me about a year to really settle in and accept my season because I was wearing colors from all of the seasons, but now I am spending far less money on clothes and I have so many more combinations that go together. My only word of warning is that if you are not white, it will be a little more difficult for you to distinguish your season because there aren't as many pictures for you. But, the author does give a lot of physical descriptions in writing, so you should be able to find your season too. If you think that you are between seasons, just pick the one that works the best overall. You should not expect all of the colors in your season to flatter you, just most of them. This book should be required reading for every girl.

A love-hate relationship for almost twenty years

When I first found this book, I analyzed myself, cleaned out my closet, went shopping - and then helped my friends do the same thing. For a while it worked so wonderfully well but, once everything got all "matched-up," I got bored. I reverted to my old patterns, just buying without preconceived notions. And then I would go back to the Color system. After Doris Pooser refined the original four palettes into twelve systems, it went better. (I am a Spring/Summer). I have gone back and forth between loving the color system, and then thinking, with make-up, that I can wear anything I want. The truth is that I cannot; I am 57, tall and good-looking - but I get compliments when I follow my natural coloring and pay attention to my body shape. The bottom line is that this book has probably influenced my life more than any other book and, even though I sometimes think I can ignore it, I am most comfortable when I just accept who I am and how I naturally am comfortable in my own skin.

Once a bestseller, now a classic

This book is showing its age. As a one-stop beauty bible or whole-image builder, it doesn't quite work any more--it's too dated. As a color guide, it has lost some of its visual impact--the book has been through so many printings that the color palettes are changing color and turning useless as shopping guides. So why, you may ask, do I give it all five stars? Because I've never seen another beauty/style manual (and I've seen plenty) that instructs and inspires readers as effectively as Carole Jackson's does in the art of enhancing your personal beauty through color. The author conveys her love and knowledge of her subject through clear, chatty, infectiously enthusiastic, genuinely informative, sometimes even poetic prose; as other reviewers have noted here, this book is fun to read! Besides, each of the printed color palettes still distinctly represents its particular "season" in overall appearance, and the 32 color photos of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter women remain striking illustrations of the seasons in human coloring. Above all, countless readers have color-typed themselves and started using color to look their best just by reading this book. I did, and I'm happy to report that now, in my 50s, I receive more compliments on my appearance than I did in my 20s! So, even though a revised and updated edition of Carole Jackson's original COLOR ME BEAUTIFUL would be most welcome, I won't knock a single star off my rating. After all, can you name another beauty / style manual that was first published 20 years ago and is not only still in print, but usually ships within 24 hours?

What seemed new now seems timeless

When this book was originally published,so many women benefitted from the simple concept of knowing what your best colors were and buying only those colors. Once I knew I was a summer, I saved hours of shopping time because now I knew what colors would look good. I also understood why I always felt great in ice pink: it was a one of my colors and subconsciously I felt more confident wearing it. Frequently overlooked is the money saved by NOT BUYING clothes that look good on the rack but don't look good on you. 12 years later, the same colors still make me look good. It's a simply ingenious system.