Color Me Beautiful's Looking Your Best: Color, Makeup and Style

This is an excellent book that elaborates on the very helpful Seasonal Color Theory. Not only does this book discuss color, it also reviews body types, personality styles, suggestions for approrpriate seasonal make-up and eyeglasses, plus other helpful hints. I am having great fun reading this book and applying some of the knowledge to my own life -- and I'm an almost seventy-year old woman! The color plates are very poor, but I found a place online to order swatches for my color season -- Light Spring -- and intend to order them immediately. Have fun with this book!

It's the end of 2007. I live in L.A., where staying on the cutting edge of fashion is practically blood sport (pun intended), and I can't believe I'm saying this: I bought this book on a whim. I found a cheap, used copy and thought, "Why not?" When I found tons of useful information, including the first correct "diagnoses" of my season AND my body type, I just about fell out of my chair. I've tried the original CMB, and the supposedly new-and-improved methods by Doris Pooser and Leatrice Eisemann. They don't hold a candle to this method of finding your best colors and styles. Instead of three color palettes (Eisemann), four (the original CMB), or six (Pooser), Spillane and Sherlock give us twelve to choose from, and a simple rule for expanding our palettes as designers present new colors. If, like me, you don't fit comfortably in the more limited seasonal/time-of-day systems, you'll find yourself here (people of color are included and well represented). When you find your best colors, wearing an actual color (instead of the ubiquitous black) makes you look and feel sophisticated, stylish, and au courant. This method even works when you want -- or need -- to blend in or present a conservative image. What a relief, and what a pleasure! Spillane and Sherlock don't just give advice on finding the best clothes for your figure; they actually include a formula. All you need is a tape measure to figure out your bodyline. Then, just follow their advice, and you're on your way. Other reviewers have mentioned the outdated illustrations and the crayon-style swatches. The bad news is that books, like styles, go out of date. The good news is that, armed with your favorite Internet search engine; the name of your new, expanded season; and a well-constructed search term (like, say, "cool summer" + swatches), you can find several ways to buy fabric swatches in this expanded seasonal color system. With this book and your fabric swatches in hand, you can't go wrong. And, maybe, if enough people ask for it, they'll publish a new edition of this book, or create a web site where styles and photos can be regularly updated.

...books on makeup. Not everyone knows "how" to do it well but this is not only a book to "read" but also practical in its uses on how to do makeup well.

The only thing I didn't like about this book is the fact that the colors aren't realistic. Other than that, I think it's a great book. I read the original "Color Me Beautiful" book first, but was unable to determine whether I'm a Summer or a Winter. This updated version is much better, because they've expanded the 4 basic seasonal color palettes into 12 (3 for each season). This made it much easier for me to figure out which colors I look best in. I now know that I'm a Clear Winter, not a Summer.

Looking your best is the best source of its kind in my opinion. I found the new version of Color Me Beautiful to be much more helpful than the original because of the expanded 12 color catagories. I could see where I fit in exactly. The theory behind it was very clear. I look at this book every month. This is my favorite book!