Megan Bentley: How the Fashion Industry Uses Color to Manipulate You. | DSH #1639

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Speaker 2 The fashion industry is lying to you. So here's the thing, Sean.
They say that color is inclusive. Anybody can wear it, right?

Speaker 2 And they became very smart very quickly, recognizing that they couldn't always sell you fit, but they could sell you feel. So not everybody can wear that perfect pair of jeans.

Speaker 2 Not everybody is going to be able to wear that crop top, but you can wear the color.

Speaker 2 So you can grab as a woman, you can grab the matcha green handbag, and now you feel cool, you feel trendy, you're part of the club. You've seen the handbag on all the magazines.

Speaker 2 Now you're one of them. But it's visual manipulation because unfortunately, color is not inclusive.

Speaker 3 All right, guys, so you just saw me get my color analysis. Got this little booklet here.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm a winter.

Speaker 2 You're a true winter. Congratulations.
You won the palette lottery. You get true black and true white.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm very excited.

Speaker 3 I got to ask, are guys mainly one thing? Like, are they usually winters or it kind of depends? Heavens, no.

Speaker 2 It's all over the spectrum of what an individual is going to be. So, we are looking at your features and saying to ourselves, where could we drop that in nature, right?

Speaker 2 Color analysis is all rooted in the Munsell color wheel. It was the first color system to separate color by undertone, by value, lightness or darkness, and also intensity.
And

Speaker 2 those are still the three chroma characteristics that we use today when we evaluate. evaluate your features.
So, I love that question, but no, not all men are true winters.

Speaker 3 You got me looking at a color differently now.

Speaker 2 It's a totally different perspective, right? And it provides you with this compass of how to go out and curate a wardrobe that is personal for you and not programmed by the fashion industry.

Speaker 3 Right. Man, guys going on first dates with you, they must be tripping.

Speaker 2 Oh, well, I mean, it's a good thing I'm married now, but I'll tell you what, I lived out of palette for 30 years. And 20 of those years, I dated every man in Chicago.

Speaker 2 And I truly think I didn't snag one of them because I looked like a clown.

Speaker 2 You can look really sophisticated by wearing the right colors, which I call iconic colors, or you can look completely clownish. When those colors are wearing you, they're standing out first.

Speaker 2 And I know a lot of us are like, but I love that aesthetic. I want to be the one that sticks out.
Make it be you.

Speaker 2 Make the color work for you and then do something fun with the structure of your image or your clothing.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you looked like a clown, as Paul Pierce says.

Speaker 2 As Paul Pierce said, and he mentioned that about the makeup, too. And he's right.
There's an over application of that makeup, but it's also in the wrong undertone.

Speaker 2 And again, you absolutely look like bozo when that's going on.

Speaker 3 Whoa, so even the makeup color you're saying.

Speaker 2 Oh, makeup is hair and makeup is huge. Hair is the number one accessory, and then followed by your makeup.

Speaker 2 I always say post-a-color analysis, the easiest thing that you can do is get a lipstick in your color. Not you, specifically, Sean, but for a woman.
And that's the easiest thing you can do.

Speaker 2 The most impactful thing you can do is get your hair tone in the right color for your palette. It's going to make all the difference.
Because think about it too.

Speaker 2 We might go out and have our hair dyed in that icy blonde platinum, us women, right? And we're like, Something's not working. And we'll blame the clothing, we'll blame the makeup.

Speaker 2 Sometimes we don't know to blame the hair or our hairdresser for that matter. So it's really important to get that hair and makeup correct.
We need everything working in sync.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, the lips are something you really notice the color of pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely. And if we think about it even in executive dressing, we call this level one dressing.

Speaker 2 So folks that are CEOs, executives, they're in the boardrooms, level one dressing commands a woman to wear a red lipstick. And the reason why is we lose pigmentation as we get older.

Speaker 2 And a red lip draws the eye in and up to the eye. And that's where we want somebody focused on us.

Speaker 3 Yeah, red's a powerful color, right?

Speaker 2 Red is a powerful color, but it has to be the right red. There are warm reds, there are muted reds, there are blue reds.
It has to be the right color or it's going to look a mess.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm sure you've seen that photo. It's like red makes you more attractive.
Like, is there any truth to that? I think there is.

Speaker 2 And that really goes into the psychology of color, right? And I don't focus so much on that, right? That's going to be a lot of,

Speaker 2 uh, again, that psychology. Where I want to focus, though, is finding the red in your palette or finding just the favorite color in your palette.

Speaker 2 Cause that's what's going to, red is powerful, but for you, you might feel really powerful in your blues. And if that's it, if that's what you feel powerful in, so be it.
Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3 Do you think the fashion industry is manipulating women

Speaker 2 and men, but the fashion industry is lying to you so here's the thing sean they say that color is inclusive anybody can wear it right

Speaker 2 and they became very smart very quickly recognizing that they couldn't always sell you fit but they could sell you feel so not everybody can wear that perfect pair of jeans the it gene of the moment not everybody's going to be able to wear that crop top but you can wear the color so you can grab as a woman you can grab the matcha green handbag and now you feel cool, you feel trendy, you're part of the club.

Speaker 2 You've seen the handbag on all the magazines, now you're one of them. But it's visual manipulation because unfortunately, color is not inclusive.

Speaker 2 And here's why, I can dictate exactly how and where you're going to look at me. So it all depends on the undertone, the contrast, and the intensity.

Speaker 2 And if something is out of balance, it's where your eye goes. And you'll look far more sophisticated, right, if you're in those right right colors.

Speaker 2 Now, the second biggest lie that the fashion industry is giving us is that black is for everyone.

Speaker 2 It's for you, Sean, but it's not for 87% of the population. 87%.
87% of the population looks like garbage in black.

Speaker 2 But we think it is chic and we think it is slimming, and that is not at all the case.

Speaker 2 So if I were to wear black, which is not in my palette, your eye would go to my body first and then my love handles, which is something I'm trying to hide, right?

Speaker 2 Before it would ever come up to my face and then eventually to my eye. It conveys mistrust at the end of the day.
I don't want anybody focusing on my love handles, right?

Speaker 2 Now, there is something to be said. Darker colors are slimming, but you need to be in the darkest color of your palette then, if that's something that you're trying to achieve.

Speaker 2 But it is profit for the fashion industry. They know they can sell black.
They've programmed you to think that you look good. in it.

Speaker 2 So if they're not able to sell the skews of the orange sweater or the pink shorts, anything that's left in the factory, they will dye black, push it back onto the shelves, and you've been programmed to buy it.

Speaker 3 Wow, they do that. It's wild.
Holy crap. It is wild.

Speaker 2 That's crazy. And listen, I'm not down on all of the brands, right? And the entire fashion industry, but there is a shift in how we are consuming a product.
Color analysis is so hot. It's so popular.

Speaker 2 And it's because we are a nation that is obsessed with looking younger, slimmer. It's Ozempic.
It's filler. It's Botox.
But we want because we want to to do things really cheap and easy.

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Speaker 2 Color's that. You give you this instant facelift without the needles, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it does seem like more people are talking about it.

Speaker 2 More people are talking about it. I can't tell you the number of times I go into dressing rooms and I'll overhear somebody saying, but it's not in my palette.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure if this works for me, which I always say, come out, I'm a color analyst. Let's take a look, right? But it is just, the whole thing is wild.
Yeah. The whole thing is wild.

Speaker 2 going back to the black thing real quick because you said 87% of people can't pull off black so what is only 13% are winters like yourself right so I guess what would be the workaround of that say at a black tie event great question so let's just really focus on women first because this is what this caters to the most not to say that I don't have a ton of male clients but when we have to wear black we're all going to have to wear black right what we want to do is try to protect our triangle of happiness as much as possible.

Speaker 2 So an off the shoulder for a woman, right? Because a black is going to bring all these shadows up to your face. It's going to start here and start to draw the eye down and give you a double chin.

Speaker 2 We don't want any of that. If it's not in your palate, if it is in your palate, it's going to reflect off of you and really brighten you up.
So always something,

Speaker 2 if you could do anything a little bit strapless, or if we have to be head-to-toe black, be in the, make sure your hair is correct. Let's make sure we're wearing the right jewelry.

Speaker 2 Let's get the makeup on point. Everything that we can do to offset that black.
And for men, the the same thing. Let's get a, let's get their best white shirt, right?

Speaker 2 Let's make sure we're doing a bow tie in an iconic color, a nice little pocket square. Let's pop the outfit with the right metal in the cufflinks and the watch.

Speaker 2 Let's tell a sophisticated story even though we're having to walk, we're working, pardon me, even though we have to work around that black.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yep.
That is crazy. I still can't believe that 87% thing.

Speaker 2 Oh my God. And it creates closet chaos and it's incredibly profitable.
So color analysis becomes the antidote to that, right?

Speaker 2 Because if you think about it, we're all walking around in, let me tell you a little bit about how this all lays out, Sean. So it all starts with a color story, right?

Speaker 2 The fashion industry, it's rooted in this color story. And what happens is it goes down to forecasters.
These forecasters, such as WGSN, Fashion Snoops, they create a color mood board.

Speaker 2 From there, it goes down to the color councils, Pantown. Color of the year, Mocha Brown.
Do you know what garbage you and I would look like in Mocha Brown?

Speaker 2 You want to spend money on Mocha Brown to look like garbage? That's what they're programming you to do. I digress.
So we go from these color councils.

Speaker 2 Now we go down to the fashion houses, which splash it all over the runways. From there, we go to the retail buyers, finally the influencers, and then you are walking around in Mocha Brown.

Speaker 2 And you're saying to yourself,

Speaker 2 I don't know if this is actually working for me, right? After a couple wears. And that is really, we're being programmed.
It's not personal to what your features are.

Speaker 2 And it sits in your closet and it sits and it sits. And maybe you pull it out another time, but you're always putting that on and saying, I don't know if this color is really working for me.

Speaker 2 And then eventually, along with 81 pounds of garbage that we do in clothing each year, the annual disposal of clothing is 81 pounds. And you're probably saying, I don't throw away 81 pounds.

Speaker 2 You probably don't clean out your closet once a year.

Speaker 2 But every two, three years, you have multiple, the average woman has multiple bags of garbage that are going into the landfills, into our oceans, and then the cycle starts all over again.

Speaker 2 So fashion is not selling you confidence. They're selling you disposable waste.
Wow.

Speaker 3 81 pounds a year of clothes.

Speaker 2 It's wild.

Speaker 3 That is crazy.

Speaker 2 I know. And it's so,

Speaker 2 it's just the full circle. It's environmental.
It hits our pocketbooks and it hits our confidence eventually. But we don't know that the whole thing is masked.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'd be curious, the history of color analysis. Was this pretty widely adopted back in the day?

Speaker 2 Great question. So color analysis is nothing new.
So back in the 1900s, the Munsell color system came out. And again, that's where we separated everything from undertone, hue, and intensity.

Speaker 2 But it was in the 1920s that

Speaker 2 a Swiss painter by the name of Johannes Iten found that his students painted better when they painted in colors that matched their undertone.

Speaker 3 Whoa.

Speaker 2 Cool versus warm. And so in the 1950s, Suzanne Cagill, poplish, who's a an image consultant, she

Speaker 2 popularized separating colors by season.

Speaker 2 So the, you know, the jewel box of winter, which you're very familiar with, the spring garden, right, of spring, the foliage that we see in the autumn, for example. And so she organized it by season.

Speaker 2 And then came that bestseller by Carol Jackson, Color Me Beautiful, that put this entire thing on fire. And that was back in the 80s and 90s.

Speaker 2 And then as we've evolved through the years, we have found that people, there's more nuance, right?

Speaker 2 So we've split up these, not everybody fits into those four buckets of color analysis so we've split those up now into flows somebody could flow from winter to spring somebody could flow from winter to autumn just like we did in your analysis and that makes it really precise so that when you leave a color analysis you really have a compass on how to buy those clothes how to curate a wardrobe because once you start buying things in palette everything seamlessly works together and for you.

Speaker 3 That's incredible. I'm gonna have to throw out some sneakers when I get home.
You throw out some sneakers.

Speaker 2 I'm not so concerned about the foot. And I would tell you too, this is more of a little bit of an image trick, matching, and I'm sure you have a ton of black shoes, right?

Speaker 3 Or white shoes. Usually black because I get so dirty.

Speaker 2 Okay, well then you don't have anything to throw out.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I guess maybe I do black, blue.

Speaker 3 Is brown one of my colors? Brown is not one of your colors. Okay, so maybe the brown one's got to go.

Speaker 2 Brown is inherently warm.

Speaker 3 Okay. Right.

Speaker 2 So, but a little image trick is to always match your hair color to your foot color because you want to be bookended as a human being.

Speaker 2 But depends how provocative you want to be showing up. And this doesn't just, you know, it starts with color, but it goes on to image too, right?

Speaker 2 So for example, you're a winter, so you can handle really high shine, anything reflective, because that's what your skin is doing.

Speaker 2 We want to mirror everything that's going on with your features from texture to color as well.

Speaker 3 What about guys wearing pink? Can you bust that myth?

Speaker 2 I support a man in pink because right pink, absolutely. You in a hot raspberry or an ice pink is going to be phenomenal.
It's a real power color for men because it's really unexpected, right?

Speaker 2 Still to this day, right? And we always say, I love a man in pink, but we do.

Speaker 2 It speaks to the feminine energy and it's really attractive when a man shows up powerful, but it has to be in the right hue.

Speaker 3 Respect. Because I'll speak for some guys.

Speaker 3 They're like scared to wear it, you know? Yeah. But if you could pull it off, you got to be a spring, though, right? No, look at your pinks.
Oh, I got some pinks in mine. I got some hot raspberry.

Speaker 3 Oh, wow. You have barbie pink.

Speaker 2 I got barbie pink. You got barbie pink, my friend.
But if you're a spring, you want to have some of these warmer pinks.

Speaker 2 So you want to have ones that are going to fall more like a watermelon, for example.

Speaker 2 Everybody gets a pink. I always say autumn kind of fights with those pinks.
They're more of a salmon, more of a terracotta. But, you know, this becomes really popular.

Speaker 2 I drape really popular with eye drape executives, professional athletes, mega-influencers, because they're taking this to the next level.

Speaker 2 Fashion is fun, but for them, it's strategy. And showing up as your best self really conveys power, respect, and trust.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And that's what we want, especially when we're in these types of settings. 100%.

Speaker 3 This is going to help with my confidence.

Speaker 2 Well, I hope it does, you know, and we say that that first impression is made in the first seven seconds, absolutely. But we are a nation that is doing Zoom calls day in, day out.

Speaker 2 And that first impression happens in 1.7 seconds.

Speaker 3 Holy crap.

Speaker 2 You don't have the entire environment fighting against you.

Speaker 2 So not only do I want you in an iconic color, I want your background in your iconic colors as well so that you pop forward and you immediately command that Zoom meeting.

Speaker 3 Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 One day I'll be at these big events, you know, the Met Gallers or whatever.

Speaker 2 Yes, you will, and you're going to know what to wear and you'll send me a text and say,

Speaker 2 is this my right rat?

Speaker 3 Yeah. I love it.
Well, Megan, anything else?

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's one other thing that I wanted to say, and it's a little bit about how the hairstylist and the makeup industry is suffering. And here's the thing, Sean.
They are trained on...

Speaker 2 color theory, which is mixing color and how colors relate, but they're not trained on the harmony of color.

Speaker 2 And it's so incredibly important for them to know undertone so that they can be a consultant to their clients versus a client saying, here's my Pinterest board. Can you make me this?

Speaker 2 And you do, that client leaves, something looks off kilter, and then they never return.

Speaker 2 So I'm actually rolling out a training for hairstylists and makeup artists on how to discover a client's undertone so that you can have maximum

Speaker 2 maximum client retention.

Speaker 2 And the other thing I'm doing is I'm working with big global brands that are getting on board with this.

Speaker 2 My goal is that when you go to a website, you can click on, we can shop by size, we can shop by style, we can shop by color. Let us shop by season.

Speaker 2 And there are big brands right now that are allowing me to separate their

Speaker 2 product by season. And I'll tell you who's on it right now is Victoria Beckham.
She just dropped her eyeliner last month and

Speaker 2 she has sorted it by season, 16 seasons, and she's selling one every 30 seconds. The consumer is commanding it.

Speaker 3 That's incredible. So that's the future of shopping right there.

Speaker 2 That's the future of shopping.

Speaker 3 Well, thanks because you're a huge part of that. So you're making it easy.

Speaker 2 I hope to be. I absolutely hope to be.
So any brands out there listening, I'd love to help you have a splashy marketing campaign, but really cater to the consumer.

Speaker 2 And I promise your profitability will go up.

Speaker 3 Beautiful. We'll link your socials below if anyone wants to get a reading, right? Fabulous.
Thank you, Alice.

Speaker 3 Perfect. Well, check her out, guys.
You changed my life.

Speaker 2 So thank you. You are so welcome.
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 3 Thanks for watching, guys. See you next time.
Peace.

Speaker 3 Thank you. Nice.

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