Color Me Employed

"From a fashion perspective, Color Me Beautiful was actually quite valuable."

-Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible

When I was thirtyish, single, and unemployed, I took a class in color selection at Marin College. I had job interviews and aimed to spiff up my appearance. We perched in rows in the Home Economics classroom, all women, some art majors but mostly a motley mix of blue-jeaned evening students. The instructor, confident in brilliant shades of royal blue with epaulettes like an honor guard, draped a large swathe of colored fabric under each of our chins. The class “oohed” or “aahed” or growled a disapproving “No!”

The book, Color Me Beautiful by Carole Jackson, came out in the eighties and proclaimed four seasons in the color palette. Everyone belonged to a specific season. Autumn was mud-colored olives, rusty oranges, toasty browns and golden umbers–my camel hair coat. Spring, Autumn’s complement, were pastels--wishy washy, I thought peaches, butterscotch, grass green, anything with yellow undertones. Bold jewel tones of red, green, blue signified Winter —what Elizabeth Taylor might wear–and complemented Summer’s warm sunset hues: pinks, dusky blues, teal, lavender, minty green.

“What if I’m in the wrong season?”

“You’ll know quickly. Listen for compliments and ask your friends.”

The instructor confirmed our category by examining the virgin skin on our inside forearms, the blueness of the veins peeking through. My forearm screamed “Summer,” apparently. When our leader draped a shawl of dark blue across my chest, the class exclaimed “aah,” while a warm gold fabric elicited the grim “No!” My camel coat was all wrong.

The next day I bought a “grayed navy” silk blouse in my “job interviewing” color (slate blue to match my eyes, my “confidence color”), said to eliminate “costly mistakes in fashion choices and missed opportunities.” A good match with the requisite “dress for success” gray suit I’d worn to five interviews that spring. I recalled nostalgically when I chose my own clothes.

Looking confidently into the interviewer’s eyes in my new blouse, I was hired. And my dating life picked up, too, but who knows if it was color or confidence? I gave away the camel coat.