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Color & Men's Clothing Video - Style System August Announcement - Grab FREE Mens Color
Guide eBook
Hey guys! Antonio here, coming to you from my home office in Wisconsin. I've been working
on The Style System August 2012. I'm about to launch this, but as I was going through,
I thought, you know, I could do a quick video on color and walk you guys through my e-book.
For those of you that are on the Style System early bird list, you actually get a copy of
this 41-page e-book on color, and I can tell you there's not much out there when it comes
to color for men. Well, there's one book, but the e-book we put together is much better.
It's 30 years younger than that book I just showed you.
Let me go ahead and start off the video in the regular way. As I always say, guys, if
you would, please subscribe to my channel. You know why I ask you to do that, so these
videos will come right to you. In addition, if you like this video, if you find it useful,
I would appreciate it if you would click on the "like" button.
What is the goal of this video?
Well, I want to create in you a hunger to learn more about color. This is an intro video.
I would say color in itself could easily be a college course. And in fact, there are many
of you guys out there that are designers that have taken entire courses on color. So this
presentation, it's based off of a 41-page e-book, which I'm going to be walking you
through, and it's part of my style system. You can get it for free actually if you're
on my early bird list.
Quick Overview
So a quick overview of what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about:
• Why you should care about color • Understanding colors
• Introduction to traditional men's colors • Understanding color relationships
• Understanding patterns and textures • Putting it all together
• Examples from film • Energy, personality, and hidden meanings
I would like to thank Cori Burchell. She's an image consultant up in Canada and she just
worked on the latest movie with Colin Farrell, Total Recall, the remake. And so, she's going
to be helping me bring in some great examples here.
A Man's Guide - Color & Clothing
With that, let me go ahead and go right to the e-book. This is a Man's Guide to Color
and I'm sorry. I know my picture here is going to block off part of this, but I'll try to
keep that in mind. Here's what we just covered.
First, why care about color? Well, the first reason I talk about is understanding that
color, you're not going to make obvious mistakes. So whenever you make a mistake with color,
it is obvious to the world. Unfortunately, close to 10% of men are color-blind, so that's
something that for those of you that are color-blind, I've got an article over at Real Men Real
Style that you can check out, but you need to have systems in place so that you're not
making common mistakes.
Reason number two, color lets you guide people's eyes. So if you know how to use color, like
when I'm looking at this picture here with this gentleman, I'm drawn to the red, not
necessarily the softer colors around it, but to that red right on his chest, kind of like
a robin. I don't know. Here in Wisconsin, I can look out my window and there are robins
all the time out there grabbing worms, but I'm always drawn to that bright orange chest
on the male.
Reason number three -- or I'll skip that -- color is a Jedi mind trick. Well, not really, but
it is something that if you understand what colors truly mean, you can find that -- and
I'll talk about this at the very end, but you can understand -- let's take white. White
signals cleanliness. It's just got a very authoritative feel to it, so if you understand
that, you can use it to your advantage. And number four, understanding colors makes shopping
easier.
Step two, understanding color as it affects you, so the effect of complexion and contrast.
Now, here's a picture of Alain Delon and he was a famous French actor. Look at this picture
of him. We're drawn to what? To his face because he's got the dark hair.
Look at me, what I'm wearing today, so I'm in a camp shirt. This is a shirt made for
me by my friend, Rafael, down at D'Accord in Miami, Florida. He actually makes guayaberas
as well, but look at the dark color here. I've got a little bit of embroidery right
here on the sides, double-pockets, but you're drawn to my face even though I've got this
light background. I know it's bad, but you're still drawn to my face because I've got the
dark hair, the dark shirt, and it's like a picture frame, so color enables you to do
things like that.
I talk about the three types of contrast. There are the high contrast men, the low contrast
men, and the medium contrast men. High contrast men, you've got light colored skin, dark hair.
Medium contrast, like me, I've got medium skin, dark hair, but not black or anything.
And then you've got low contrast men. They usually have lighter colored hair with lighter
colored skin, unless you're really East African, then oftentimes those gentlemen from the ivory
coast area have sometimes very, very, very dark skin, almost the same color as their
hair. In that case, they would be low contrast as well.
But African-American style, I'm not going to go down that path. It's something that
a gentleman of mine named, or a friend of mine named Grant Harris, and we've actually
written -- we talked about how that applies and it's got its own set of rules, so we're
coming out actually with a style book specifically for the Black men.
Okay, so discovering your contrast, a great way to do this is to use a grey scale. So
if your hair is over here and your skin is over here, you're going to be high contrast.
However, if your hair is here and your skin is here, you're going to be medium contrast.
However, if you have really light colored hair, light colored skin, you're going to
be low contrast.
The effect of skin color. So we get into here and we talk about a little bit of what I've
already covered. The interesting thing I cover here is skin tone, so that's something a lot
of people -- people think that they're drawn to certain colors. Actually, what it is, is
their skin tone draws them to either warm or cool colors, so this is something that's
a little hard for most men to grasp, but think of it this way.
If you're a cool-toned person, basically, blue is the undertone. If you are a warm-toned
person, you're going to have colors like orange, red, and yellow as your warm undertones and
that's going to affect what type of red looks best on you. Actually, both of these men -- and
I'd show two examples here. The man here right here, he is warm toned, while the gentleman
over here, Jay-Z, he is cool toned. And so, they can wear in a sense the same colors,
but they're going to want to wear different hues of the same color. I know this is a lot
of detail, guys. That's why I've got this 41-page e-book. I go into a lot more there.
Now, let's talk about eye color. I always think that a gentleman with blue eyes, green
eyes, or even dark-colored eyes, this is really where you want people to look. When you're
talking with somebody, you want them looking right in your eyes. So if you have blue eyes,
make sure to wear a shirt a lot of times which reflects that color because what that does
is it draws out. Again, a picture of Alain Delon a little bit later on in life and he
had very piercing blue eyes, and he used his clothing to even draw those out even more.
So if you've got green or hazel, look to somehow bring that out by bringing some of that into
your clothing.
The effect of hair color with what you're going to be wearing. Now, George Clooney is
an interesting example. Let's look at George Clooney 15 years ago. He actually had black
hair; it wasn't grey. Nowadays, he's graying and George is really smart, kind of like Fred
Astaire did 50 years ago. George realizes that okay, my colors are going to need to
change. So here, he's wearing a medium grey suit with actually a black shirt, but that
medium grey works much better with his gray hair. So again, he's framing his face by properly
using color.
And putting it all together, we've got these gentlemen here. I don't know who they are
exactly. I know some of you guys can tell me in the comments, but what I really like
here is you've got three different styles, three uses of color. This one over to the
right, a little bit more flamboyant, but all of them perfectly fine for what they do as
entertainers and all of these did a great job here.
Okay, so part three, an introduction to traditional men's colors. Let me stop here really quick.
A lot of guys get wrapped around the axle with color because they think that, "Oh, I've
got to bring in purple, orange, red, and yellow." Really guys, 80% to 90% of your wardrobe should
be very simple colors.
Think of those bright colors as a spice. If you're making something, you don't want to
put a whole lot of spice in there. It just needs to add to the flavor, so I talk about
white, grey, navy blue, light blue, brown, indigo, which is with dark colored jeans,
black, tan and khaki, grey. Those are the core colors. They should make up 80% to 90%
of your wardrobe.
Now, understanding color relationships, you are allowed to bring in those brighter colors
as spices. Now, I know some of you guys are really big into wearing a lot more of your
brighter color and you can do that like this gentleman here. It really gives a younger,
spring feel, high contrast combinations with complementary colors. It's really jarring
to the eye, but it can be used to affect, especially for men who are entertainers, artists,
or even students.
However, I'm a bigger fan for the professional men of low contrast combinations like we see
here, and then you can bring in one or two bold colors as a spice. So I talk about tints.
We talk about shades. Tint is where white has been added; shades where black has been
added to the colors. And so, you see we both see yellows here, but this yellow has black,
this yellow has white, and they're going to go for -- remember we talked about the hot,
the cool complected guys.
Okay, understanding patterns and textures, talk about this briefly. Actually, in my Style
System, I go into this a lot more, but texture, it's really cool because you can actually
wear the same color, what would look like a monotone outfit, but if you change up the
texture, you can actually wear those colors together and it really adds to the eye.
So what is texture? How is texture created? Well, really quick, I show you different weaves
and how that creates texture. So this has got a little bit of probably a plain weave
here. You can play with black and brown, but right here, if you look down here at the image
I show you, the plain weave, the pile weave and the twill weave, and other times actually,
the satin weave is a great example, so if you think satin, you think something really
smooth and shiny. Let's take flannel or tweed. Those use oftentimes a three-dimensional weave
and it causes to have that soft, almost a napped surface that you want to touch.
Step six, I'll skip through this one, which just got some quick little tips there, but
step seven, examples from film. This is really good because unfortunately, I hate to use
movie stars as examples, but since there are so many images of them out there and because
we see contrast, they're the best ones.
Look at Colin Farrell, and again, thank you Cori over at Cori Burchell Image Consulting.
She brought this to my attention, but she did work on the latest movie, Total Recall,
and they really wanted to go -- look at the straight color. It's got a little bit of color
here, but we're drawn to Colin's face here. Now, when I bring this down, look at Colin
here, do you guys remember this movie? I haven't watched it yet. Tell me if it's any good in
the comments, Terrible Bosses, but they went with this yellow color because they knew on
most men, it does not complement them. And it really made him look over -- I mean, in
addition, they put some stuffing in there, but it really made Colin look bad, which is
exactly what they wanted to go for.
Let's look at Richard Gere, another example. We can look at a younger Richard Gere when
he had brown hair and that would work for him. Here, the problem with Richard Gere is
that he is stuck with the same type of clothing and you can see with his light-colored hair
now and his light colored skin, this really is too much. It looked a lot better when he
was a younger man. I would say Richard should start leaning towards lighter colors.
Okay, now let's get into Ryan Gosling, a perfect example. You guys should go out and watch
his movies. What was the latest one? Crazy, Stupid, Love, great movie when it comes to
helping understand how fit and color affect a man's style. But in this middle picture,
we can see that Ryan actually is a bit overpowered by the black tie, so he actually looks better
in navies and blues.
All right, so step eight, we talk about the hidden images and meanings in colors. And
really quick, each color has a meaning. This is one thing I really recommend to salesmen,
that they consider colors like brown, which express trust. Black, it actually means you're
a good listener and it's an authority color. The same with red, it's a dramatic, self-assured
color, and orange.
Okay guys, well, let me go ahead and step right back to the presentation. All right,
so guys, The Style System August 2012, I'm about to launch it. And if you want a copy
of this e-book, again, 41 pages, we spent dozens and dozens of hours researching and
through my client interaction, putting this together. It's a $50 value. I'm offering it
free for those of you guys in the links below, to go ahead and check out my Style System.
And those of you that are already on the Style System early bird list, you'll receive this.
It's going to disappear though once the Style System registration is closed.
All right guys, this has been Antonio Centeno with Real Men Real Style. I'll have some more
other videos up for you soon, but I'm going to be focusing on putting out the Style System.
I hope to either see you in the Style System or I'll see you here in more videos. Take
care. Bye-bye.