The popular 1980s trend of ‘getting your colours done’ is back, only now it’s a TikTok filter. But according to one of the last trained colour consultants still working in Aotearoa, it’s no match for the real thing.
Shelly Bell, a “Summer”, is dressed in milk white. Everyone can look radiant in white, she says, but it’s just about finding the right white for your season – whether that’s an ivory, a cream, a champagne or a pearl. I tell her I never realised there were so many whites to choose from, and that so many whites could be working against you. She reaches for another example. “If I took you downstairs and stood you against the freezer? That’s snow white.” But for me – a “Spring” – freezer-white does not beget radiance. No more lurking in the kitchen at parties for me.
Like many New Zealanders, I’ve never been great with colour. When I was at university I bought a bright orange chiffon tunic with a Peter Pan collar from Dotti, until an associate told me politely that the colour “wasn’t my thing” (they didn’t mention the Peter Pan collar, nor the billowing nature of the garment, but it was 2011). Over a decade later, when we were taking test shoots for universally beloved series The Spinoff TV, a bigwig exec told me that pinks made me look “washed out” and that I should avoid them.
I immediately banished both of these colours from my wardrobe without any real understanding of why. I’m aware that certain colours look “better” on certain people, and I’ve heard colour palettes discussed in terms of the different seasons, but I’ve always struggled to understand where my dead axolotl pallor fits in – warm or cool, summer or winter, yellow or pink undertones? For years I’ve relegated colours to one of those things that everyone else understands but I don’t, like how oysters are apparently “yummy” and The White Lotus is apparently “good”.
That all changed relatively recently when a colleague made me aware of a resurgence in colour analysis on TikTok, where several popular filters are available to help you find your perfect colour palette/AI-generated Taylor Swift song title. Soft Autumn? Cool Summer? Simply stick your head in the hole like the idiot clown you are, and attempt to decipher which clown collar looks best on you. “My toxic trait is thinking they all look good on me,” wrote one user. “I don’t see the differences, I feel like no one knows!!” wrote another. The results are, indeed, confusing.
But, as Shelly Bell in her milk-white top will tell you, the idea of colour analysis is nothing new. Colour consultancy first rose to prominence in the late 1970s in Canada through her associated business Colours, which Bell’s website claims was “the first international personal colour and style consulting company”. Assessing your natural colouring in an “uncompromised” environment, consultants determine whether you are a Winter, Summer, Spring or Autumn using a range of colour drapes and rainbow collars. Clients then leave with the findings in a personal “colour wallet” – a curated selection of 30 shade swatches.
In the 1980s, colour analysis exploded around the world with the release of a similar analysis programme, Carole Jackson’s Color Me Beautiful, which sold over 13 million copies worldwide and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for most of the decade. But now, nearly 50 years and many Trinnys, Susannahs, Gok Wans and Queer Eyes later, the phrase “getting your colours done” mostly evokes a dusty bygone era alongside Tupperware parties and Jane Fonda workout videos. Kath from Kath & Kim definitely got her colours done. The concept has even been preserved in the most damning amber of all – a Tom Sainsbury video.
Shelly Bell is the only certified Colours consultant left in the country. The North Shore resident remembers having her “socks knocked off” when she first encountered a colour wallet in the mid 1980s. “I can’t describe the impact on me,” she recalls, “I was always a person who was drawn to colour, but this was a way of using it that I’d never ever come across.” She got her own colours done, discovered she was a Summer, and was hooked from there. “The empowerment that you get by having colours that make you appear extraordinary… Why not take it? Why be ordinary? Why be indifferent?”
After she and her husband decided to end their car valet service in the early 90s, Bell seized the opportunity to train with Colours in New Zealand. It was a month of theory and practical training, including colour wheel study, makeup application, skincare, client consultation. She became certified in 1994, proof of which remains proudly displayed in her sunny Totaravale consultation room. When she started, Colours boasted four consultation booths and an Auckland showroom where they would host “Seasons Evenings” where Winters etc could mix, mingle and compare wardrobe notes. “Lots of nice, happy, constructive stuff,” Bell says.
Even by 1994 when Bell started out in the business, Colours consultants were already seeing half the amount of interest they had in the 1980s. “Although a wonderful trend, it had been completely exhausted,” says Bell. “Like any trend that gets so thoroughly thrashed.” While the customer base dwindled – “it’s an injustice” – Bell loved the job and relished seeing the transformation in her remaining clients. “Colour is like food for the eyes,” she explains. “If you find a garment that suits your requirements, and it’s in a colour that you love, you don’t need much else.”
When the owner of the New Zealand Colours franchise encountered “personal difficulties” and ceased trading, Bell continued on as the only certified Colours consultant in the country. Since then, she has helped thousands of customers of all genders, ethnicities, abilities and age groups to find their colours. Bell has worked with blind and deaf clients using interpreters, colourblind people, trans and non-binary people and has even made house calls to residents with limited mobility in nursing homes. “When you’re at your most vulnerable, and I’m talking illness, injuries, all sorts of things like that, and you put on the colour that says, ‘sorry, you look great’ it completely undoes a person’s bad mood,” she says.
“I say to all my clients that after they’ve been exposed to the reason and vision of colour, and found where they belong, they’ll never think about colour the same again.”
But trends must move on, and colour consultancy has largely fallen out of favour with the general public. Colour Me Beautiful only appears to have a handful of consultants left and Bell, the lone wolf of Colours, says she only gets a couple of new customers every year. “I think that New Zealanders don’t think they have to have a good appearance and I’m not big enough to counteract that,” she smiles. Could our national obsession with black have something to do with it? “Black is home for so many people,” she says. “Black is always on trend and always affordable – because it doesn’t have to be Gucci black, it can be Warehouse black.”
That said, black only appears as a recommended shade on the Winter palette, according to Colours. Does that mean, as a Spring, I should burn all my black clothes? “It’s not a bad thing if it’s not your shade,” says Bell. “It’s just not… radiating.”
When I sit down in front of Bell’s workstation to get a taste of her consultation process, she flicks on a frame of fluorescent lights around the mirror. As I am forced to stare into my own soul, she drapes what can only be described as a charming choirboy’s robe around me. “This is to take away the garment colour that you are wearing,” Bell explains, concealing my un-radiant black top. She then drapes a pale pink and a peach square of fabric around my neck, an indicator for either cool colouring (pink) or warm colouring (peach).
“You’re looking for what makes you look more sickly and sallow looking,” she advises. At first, I see nothing, just a sickly and sallow sleepless fool who ate a mini Crunchie bar for breakfast and hates making eye contact with herself. But when she replaces the peach with the pink, I instantly recoil in horror. “You’ve given a personal response there without me saying a thing about whether you suit it or not – isn’t that interesting?” says Bell. “And that is the starting point of colour analysis.”
In two minutes, Bell has already told me more than a hundred TikTok filters ever could (but if I want more intel, I’ll have to book in for the full consult). “This process is very intimate, so it’s really not appropriate for it to be a blast on TikTok,” says Bell. “I value the work that I do for people so highly, you mustn’t denigrate it at all, you can’t be trivial about it.” Although she is yet to see any new business appear from the social media trend, she appreciates that there is a renewed interest in the concept of colour analysis. “It’s harmless and it’s cheerful, until the person gets frustrated because they can’t really deeply understand it.”
At the very least, she hopes the trend might encourage people to do some further research into a fascinating industry that has been around for decades, but is now on life support. As of writing, the #colouranalysis hashtag on TikTok has over 461 million views, but Bell isn’t holding out hope for an influx of new Gen Z clients. “I don’t have a great deal of business and for that I’m perpetually sad,” she says. “I rate this as a trained profession, but TikTok probably doesn’t even know that there has been a history of it being a recognised, loved, helpful life tool”.
Shelly Bell pauses, then sighs. “But then, of course, anybody is allowed to do anything now.”