Reinvent Yourself with Color Me Beautiful: Four Seasons of Color, Makeup, and Style [Paperback]

JoAnne Richmond (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 2008

It wasn't luck that propelled the first Color Me Beautiful guidebook to become a major bestseller, creating a sensation that continues to change lives today. It introduced a whole new way of looking at clothes and makeup. Like the first book more than a decade ago, this updated guide will change your outlook on life. The concepts you'll find here will give you the right tools to make the right choices at home and in the store. If you haven't organized your closet for a while or find yourself unsure about what to buy, this is the book for you. This handy guide provides a springboard to the concepts, colors, and regimens that can make you look your best. Inside, you'll find great new information and perspectives...and a few all-new colors too. The Color Me Beautiful concepts have been refined and developed to give you more flexibility than ever before. The author has blended two all-new color concepts, warm and cool, with our tried-and-true Four Seasons color palettes: Winter, Summer, Autumn, and Spring, to help you better understand and choose the shades for you. Do you color your hair? Well, then we've got you covered. Do you need to update your makeup? This is the place to learn how to do it. Do you need some direction when shopping through all the amazing new colors--and determine whether they are really "new"? We give you ideas on how to wear colors in ways you never have before. You will find our color anlysis life-changing. Learn what generations of women have known about this revolutionary approach to make a change of a lifetime.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

JoAnne Richmond is a graduate of Penn State University with over 20 years experience in the image consulting and fashion merchandising fields. Since 1996 she has been associated with Color Me Beautiful as an independent fashion consultant. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

JoAnne Richmond is a graduate of Penn State University with over 20 years experience in the image consulting and fashion merchandising fields. Since 1996 she has been associated with Color Me Beautiful as an independent fashion consultant. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing (August 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589792882
• ISBN-13: 978-1589792883
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #85,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars So-So, September 18, 2008

By 

Elizabeth Phillips (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reinvent Yourself with Color Me Beautiful: Four Seasons of Color, Makeup, and Style (Paperback)

"Reinvent Yourself with Color Me Beautiful" by JoAnne Richmond is okay for the rank beginner, but I really can't recommend it for anyone else. It's simply-written and easy to understand, but incomplete.

For instance, Richmond doesn't mention the expanded, 12-category system that CMB has used in the last few years (detailed in "Color Me Beautiful's Looking Your Best" by Mary Spillane and Christine Sherlock). That's a real shame, because not all of us fit neatly into only four categories.

Nor does she mention clarity of coloring at all, just warm and cool, deep and light. The warm/cool- and deep/light-only descriptions are going to be especially confusing to Soft Summers and Soft Autumns who have medium coloring and both warm and cool characteristics.

In addition, Richmond implies that there are no brunette Springs. I'm afraid this means there are going to be some Clear Springs who think they must be Winters because they have Dark Hair, Bright Eyes, and Fair Skin, and look good in silver as well as gold.

On to the jewelry section: This seems like a really good idea, but, again, it's too simple and there are some iffy choices. When did malachite become a "warm" green? Every piece I've ever seen has been a combination of pine, emerald, and mint (just to be sure, I checked a piece I have against my swatches last night). All cool colors. Not all emeralds are warm, either; some of them are quite blue in tone. "Siamese" rubies are often warm enough for Autumns and too warm for Winters. Some sapphires are warm enough for Springs and some lapis is light enough for Summers.

Finally, while the colors in the author's photo may be off, I would have expected someone with all those years of experience in color analysis to know that your teeth are not supposed to be bleached whiter than the whites of your eyes. That is, if you want people to look at you and think, "What a great smile she has!" not "I wonder how long it took them to get her teeth that white?" A smile is supposed to light up your eyes, not blind the observer.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Basic overview, October 3, 2008

By 

Jo Stanford (Southfield, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reinvent Yourself with Color Me Beautiful: Four Seasons of Color, Makeup, and Style (Paperback)

Unlike the other reviewers, I was not familiar with the original Color Me Beautiful book. So as a "rank beginner" I wanted to learn all about using color to enhance my look. In Richmond's book, she guides you in choosing your season and then identifies the "right' colors for that season. She uses clearly labeled color patches that can be used when shopping. I also used the color patches to identify clothes I already had in my closet as good, bad or ugly. It turns out that many of the colors that were not listed in my season, were items I rarely wore anyway because they just didn't do anything for me. Richmond's book has helped me understand why.

There are also sections on makeup, skin care and accessories. I found the makeup section to be helpful, but the section on jewelry was rather rudimentary and the book would not have suffered had this section been left out. She also has a nice before and after section in the beginning that illustrates how color can totally change your look. One suggestion I would give is to use the book as a guide, but still use your own judgment in deciding what colors look good on you. For instance, it states that my season should "never wear pink." However, whenever I wear shocking pink, I see how it enhances my skin tone and I generally get positive comments.

One thing I found a little annoying was the very light and tiny subtext print used for the captions & margins. It is a very light gray, almost transparent, and was hard to read. All in all, it was an informative, "basic" book. I have already implemented some of the suggestions given (and by the way, got a few compliments along the way!).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sad retread of previous CMB books, June 6, 2009

By 

K. Russell (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reinvent Yourself with Color Me Beautiful: Four Seasons of Color, Makeup, and Style (Paperback)

I've given this book two stars for the decent color palettes. Color blocks are large and clear. But this book repeats information in previous Color Me Beautiful books, especially in Carole Jackson's original, and offers nothing new except a revision of a system that has been applied to people of all races and geographical areas, and now applies to fewer people than ever before.

The genius of Carole Jackson's original Color Me Beautiful is in presenting a system of four palettes, each distinguished by three factors: cool or warm, clear or muted, and light or deep. In all three of her books, Jackson also offers advice to fair and darker subtypes in each season. But the photo illustrations feature mostly Caucasians and no other races among the Springs and Summers.

Subsequent CMB books, and the latest is no exception, have marginalized other races more comprehensively, declaring that only Autumns and Winters may be found among races other than Caucasian. That observation contradicts not only other books on the seasonal and similar color-type theories, not only visual demonstrations you can see online, but also my personal experience. (My sister-in-law is Chinese, I'm descended from northern Europeans, she looks better than I do in stronger colors, but we are both Summers. Neither of us looks good in black, and she does look good in soft pastels.)

Reinvent Yourself with CMB also contradicts itself--for instance, stating in one place that your skin tone never changes as you age, and in another place that your skin tone may change from warm to cool as you age. This book also contains errors such as the claim that cool people have blue pigment in their skin, or the claim that blue eyes turn gray as they lose their blue pigment. As the author of a book on human coloring should know, cool-toned skin reflects a shortage of warm pigment, and blue eyes reflect a lack of any pigment. Nobody has blue pigment in their irises or skin!

Finally, this book sometimes borrows too freely from Carole Jackson's original. The author claims to present "all-new color concepts, warm and cool" (these concepts were old when Carole Jackson first presented them, and at least she acknowledged her source). On page 52 the author summarizes seasonal coloring by comparing it to images of the seasons in nature. The same images, along with some of the same phrases, appear on page 11 of Jackson's original. On page 115 of the new book, a chart of neutrals and basic colors for each season is copied from Jackson's original, with Jackson's color names instead of the newer color names on the palettes. None of the color names in this book are really new--those not in Jackson's books may be found in Spillane and Sherlock's Looking Your Best.

In short, CMB's latest book may be helpful to those who fit the narrow categories presented here, but it's a disappointment to me and I'm afraid will be a disappointment to anyone familiar with previous CMB books.