Soft Summer.

The complete palette – colour names, exact references, and personal harmonies – is included in your dossier.

Soft Summer is the most muted of the cool seasons – colouring of mist on the sea, of weathered driftwood, of grey pebbles in flat light. The palette holds the lowest end of the cool chroma scale: nothing announces itself, nothing performs, every colour reads as integrated with the surrounding tone. The maison observes that Soft Summers often spent years being told they were 'washed out' or needed to add 'pop,' a misreading that confuses muting with weakness. The signature of Soft Summer is harmony achieved through chromatic restraint; the face wearing this palette appears at ease – the features and the cloth in agreement rather than opposition. High saturation overwhelms entirely; warm tones throw the complexion off-register; clear bright colours read as costume. The palette serves as a discipline against the noise of ordinary fashion advice – Soft Summer flatters by allowing the face to come forward through the recession of the colour around it. What flatters you is what disappears.

Note de transition.

As hair silvers, Soft Summer's palette achieves its most distinctive expression. The cool muted register of the palette and the cool muted register of silver hair belong to each other completely. Soft Summers often discover that silvering does not soften their look – it sharpens what was already true. The full muted palette becomes available; the deeper accents (prune poussiéreux, étain) become more central as the silver provides the cool foundation.