Soft Summer celebrities

The traits these famous faces share

The Soft Summer palette leans cool and muted, built from gentle, greyed colors that flatter soft, low-contrast coloring. A muted color is one that seems dusted with gray instead of looking clean and vivid. That same gray quality runs through the skin, hair and eyes of the celebrities most often placed here.

Skin in this group usually reads cool or beige, not golden. Cool beige skin is a description that comes up again for both Jennifer Aniston and Emilia Clarke. Kristen Stewart is often noted for cool pale skin.

The hair is typically ash brown or ashy blonde. Ash hair carries a smoky, faintly gray tone rather than a red or golden one. Bella Hadid and Dakota Johnson both get typed often as ash brunettes, and Cara Delevingne as a darker ashy blonde.

The eyes stay quiet rather than bright. In this group you keep running into eyes that are blue with a gray cast, green with a gray cast, soft green, or hazel leaning green.

Low contrast and why it matters

Contrast measures how far skin, hair and eyes spread apart on the light to dark scale. Here the distance is small, so the face reads as one blended whole. Low contrast coloring plus muted blue gray eyes is the main reason Sarah Jessica Parker lands in this season so often.

Low contrast also explains why loud colors can take over. Neon brights tend to wear the person, and the shirt gets noticed before the face does.

Using these faces to check your own coloring

You may also see this season called Muted Summer. Whatever the name, these familiar faces can help you test your own coloring. The plan is to set photos of one person in palette colors beside photos of that same person in the colors this season usually avoids.

1. Choose someone from the list whose coloring resembles your own, so the comparison actually applies to your face.
2. Collect pictures of the star wearing signature palette colors like a muted rose, sage, gentle lilac, a greyed teal, or a soft wine shade. Colors from this season tend to leave skin looking smooth and rested.
3. Then track down pictures of that star wearing the shades this season tends to leave out, for example vivid royal blue, bold fuchsia, clear true red, sunflower yellow, bright Kelly green or gold. Watch for the moment the color seems to show up before the face does.
4. Check any photos in pure black. Near this coloring, black can pull the life out of the face and bring out shadows under the eyes.
5. Pay attention to warm orange and bright yellow as well, because on Soft Summer skin they can create a sallow or washed out effect.
6. Hold the same pairs up to your own face by a mirror in daylight, since what a real face shows you beats any photo.

Where does celebrity color typing fall short?

Each name here is only an "often typed as" Soft Summer, not a settled fact. Ash brown hair can be dyed golden, and makeup can add warmth or brightness to a cool face. Studio lights and photo filters move skin color even further from the truth before a picture ever reaches you.

Analysts also disagree with each other, since most typings come from photos instead of in person sessions. Draping is another way to check, which means holding colored fabrics near your face in good light and watching which ones work. A quiz gives you a place to start, while checking yourself at a mirror in daylight or having fabrics draped can confirm what you found.

That is why we lean on questions and mirror checks instead of a phone picture. Cameras and indoor bulbs both change how skin color reads, and famous faces are no safer from that than anyone else.

Which neighboring seasons get confused with Soft Summer?

The 12 seasons grow out of four families, and every family breaks into three seasons named after the strongest trait. For Soft Summer that strongest trait is soft, and cool comes second. Mix-ups tend to follow one of those two traits.

• Soft Autumn has the same soft, greyed character but turns warm. A star with warm hair dye or bronzy makeup can come across like this season in pictures.
• Other Summer seasons sit on the cool side too. A star shot in clearer, brighter light can look as though less gray belongs in their coloring than is truly the case.

When a typing straddles two neighboring seasons, the colors this season skips offer a useful clue. Warm gold shades tend to look brassy against Soft Summer, while brushed silver and pewter blend quietly into the skin.