A hearty welcome and happy new year to our dear readers. You’ve made it to the MediVoice fashion column and we’re starting the year on a colourful note, literally!
When it comes to colour combinations for our outfits a lot of us like to play it real safe so we go monochrome most of the time but while it’s not bad to play it safe, you shouldn’t be scared to play around with colours from time to time, so look out for suggestions and tips in this piece that will help you make bold combinations without you coming out looking like a clown.
Flashback to primary school fine art class where we were taught the primary colours, secondary colours and tertiary colours. It was definitely a lot of fun back then to mix blue and yellow to give green or red and blue to give purple, and I hope you still remember the colour wheel that shows the colours and their relationship because now it is actually a useful tool in determining and planning out colour combos. When combining colours you could choose to go with:
Complementary colours: These are any 2 colours that are opposite each other on the wheel e.g yellow and purple, orange and blue. Combining these colours will result in a high contrast colour combo that is so bright it pops. You can add a third colour to make the colour combo less intense by using one colour as a base and two colours adjacent to it’s complement e.g red as the dominant colour paired with teal and lime accessories.
Adjacent colours: These are any 2 colours next to each other in the wheel e.g yellow and green or yellow and orange which are very wonderful combinations especially for melanin popping!, yellow is a perfect heavenly match with brown skin.
Triad colours: Any 3 colours that are evenly spaced on the colour wheel and that will yield a bold combination. Combinations like these are usually very risky and high fashion, only those with guts and a high sense of style pull this off successfully e.g red, blue and yellow.
Tetradic colours: A set of 4 colours that are evenly spaced out on the colour wheel and works best if you use a dominant colour with supporting accent colours.
Two unique colours that have been high in trend for a few years now and are very fashionable are the mustard yellow and the neon green. The mustard yellow and burgundy make such a bomb combo, other colours that look fabulous with mustard yellow are dark green, red, wine and orange. Neon green, on the other hand, is already extremely bright on its own so it should be combined with neutral colours like black, white, nude and grey. It also looks pretty superb with teal and turquoise.
Based on the method of combining colours above you’ll find that in fact, any two colours can actually go together although by the time you hear combinations like red and pink or pink and yellow or maybe purple and red and you try to picture it in your mind you’ll shake your head violently and disagree. While these colours will most likely look good as an Ankara print or any other type of pattern, if they are paired as plainclothes on top of one another they might not fit but then again it entirely depends on the person wearing the outfit, factors like your skin tone and the style of the outfit come into play.
When you choose to combine colours make sure you look to see in the mirror if it is indeed beautiful and complements you well. If what you see in the mirror is you sporting a smile and making a twirl and then hyping yourself with the words “ko por ke” then that means you like what you see, also maybe, just maybe a friend walks in just then and also hails you enthusiastically saying ” kpk”! then my dear you are most definitely good to go.
See you next time
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