Ladies Touch – Keeping It Complimentary

Color theory is serious stuff: complementary colors stimulate the senses, playing off one another to create dynamic eye candy. In their purest form, complementary colors are extreme juxtapostions between the spectrum’s brightest of the bright – fire engine red contrasts with emerald green, electric violet with golden yellow, and royal blue with brilliant orange – but you don’t have to evoke a mobile rainbow in order to tastefully employ complementary tones to your advantage.

Outfit 1: This gent’s sartorial approach to a complementary color scheme is subtle, yet very effective. The plum tones of his sweater/scarf combo are enriched by the thin lines of yellow running through his jacket, and the buttery elbow patches complete the contrast. The rest of his outfit (with the exception of minute splashes of color in his socks and pocket square) is neutral and therefore noninvasive to the rich cardinal contrast of plum and golden yellow. When dabbling in a look that involves extreme contrasts, it’s best to highlight one dominant set of colors while downplaying the rest of the ensemble with neutrals or shades such as the browns and moss greens seen here. This allows you to highlight your favorite pieces without running the risk of blinding passersby.

Outfit 2: Now here’s a confident young man with some serious style gumption. He’s gone all out with dual complementary contrasts of varying shades of blue and orange, which work because the scarf isn’t too loud that it upstages the core of the outfit. When constructing an outfit around polar contrasts, proportions are vital. Select your dominant tone and diffuse its companion color throughout your entire ensemble – preferably at pivotal points such as cuffs, collar, detailing and if you’re feeling daring, shoes – to coax the most pleasing, underwhelming contrast out of your look.

Ladies Touch by Sarah Parniak, a freelance writer and style enthusiast