I recently completed the rather huge project of creating a version of my digital closet (clothing and accessories) organized by color groupings. For some colors, I just used the general hue category like "Red" and "Purple," but for other colors (particularly in the blue, aqua/teal, and pink groupings), I got much more specific with categories like "Cobalt blue," "Dark teal," and "Salmon pink." This way I can see at a glance what items I have in each color. For example, this is what my "Maroon" folder looks like:
Once I had everything organized this way, it made me think about two things:
(1) The color-coordinated accessory sets called "beauty bundles" by Brenda Kinsel (and other stylists like Imogen Lamport and Liz Klebba) that can be added to base outfits to create different looks; and
(2) The Pantone Spring/Summer 2022 colors from New York Fashion Week.
I have mentioned that I'm not shopping for clothes/accessories right now (though I continue upcycling magazines and catalogs into paper bead bracelets), but that doesn't mean that I have zero interest in what the current trends and colors are. It just means I'm shopping my own closet. I know that there are others who are in this same mode right now, who have decided they own enough (or too many) clothes, are cutting back on spending due to financial goals, or are simply orienting themselves toward a more sustainable wardrobe. So I thought I would share some beauty bundles that I put together from my own closet based on Pantone SS 2022 NYFW colors. This post started getting really long, so I am presenting it in two parts. Today's post covers the first row of 5 colors from this Pantone page.
Each beauty bundle contains at least one each of earrings, necklaces, scarves, bracelets, and shoes with an eye toward warm weather compatibility (e.g., no boots or heavy scarves). Note that I am aiming for neither 100% matching within the beauty bundle nor perfect fidelity to the precise Pantone color. I am quite sure that there is no Pantone Color Police Force wandering about with color swatches to make sure that your accessories are in absolute alignment to the dictated colors. If you are in the general ballpark, that's close enough! You will still be "on trend" wearing variants of the Pantone colors. (It's not like everything you see in stores that are based on these colors will be identical to the Pantone color or to each other in hue, saturation, and value either.)
Our first color is the somewhat strangely named "Spun Sugar," an icy pastel blue. I drew from my "Light blue" and "Sky blue" groupings to create this set. I didn't have a solid warm weather scarf to include here, so I put in a mostly blue one with some stripes, and then added a DIY paper bead bracelet in the same color scheme.
Our second color is another pastel, a pink called "Gossamer Pink." (I knew gossamer is a word used to describe something light and delicate, but I didn't know that its original meaning is "a fine, filmy substance consisting of cobwebs spun by small spiders"...eek! Of course, I am very well aware of Gossamer, the red-orange monster from Bugs Bunny cartoons like "Hair-Raising Hare," but clearly the Pantone color is unrelated to him!) I included a range of pale to medium soft, dusky pink items that appear to coordinate well.
Our third color is another pink, a vibrant bright pink called "Innuendo." (It's strange to imagine that it's someone's job to come up with these color names.) The Pantone color is a somewhat warmer pink than in the "Hot pink" and "Bright pink" accessories I put together, but this is my version of it.
Our fourth color is "Skydiver," a dark blue that looks very close to the navy neutral to my eye...perhaps just a hint warmer than navy? I made a point of selecting accessories that fell in the "Dark blue" rather than "Navy" groupings in my own system, but really, there's no reason you'd have to avoid navy here.
Finally, the fifth color is a bright, sunny yellow with a good amount of orange in it called "Daffodil." I don't own very much yellow, and nothing in this shade, so I just gathered up accessories from across the spectrum of yellow and called it a day.
To put these Beauty Bundles through their paces in some outfit creation, I assembled an extremely simple little spring/summer wardrobe capsule using three of the Pantone SS 2022 Core Classic neutral colors, plus denim...because about 99.9% of us have something in blue denim/chambray, right? (I hadn't noticed before that my grey top seems like a warmer grey than these pants; that bothers me just a bit but I'm going to go with it...) You could certainly create beauty bundles in these neutrals as well/instead of the accent colors.
To make this at least semi-systematic, I'm going to use 3 types of neutral base outfits...column, white T + jeans, and mixed neutrals...and I will look at variants of 1 Pantone accent color and 2 Pantone accent colors. Let's get started!
Neutral Column + 1 Pantone Accent
Aka Accent Overdrive! Four accent pieces from the Innuendo beauty bundle is kind of a lot...it might be just right for some people's style, but for others of us (me included), that might be too many bright pink items. Any of those pink pieces could be switched out for a neutral, like a set of silver bracelets instead of the pink, to maintain the pure grey + pink color combo.
Another option is to switch out one of the solid pink accessories for a print. To maintain the color combination, choose a bright pink + grey piece, but it would also work to sub in a print that has bright pink, grey, and a bit of some other colors/neutrals, like this one (that has a rather overwhelming cicada print when it's laid out flat but is just an irregular geometric print when worn).
White T + Jeans + 1 Pantone Accent / Neutral
I added four Spun Sugar accent pieces again, but I chose items that were a blend of blue and a neutral like silver or white so that they would be less overwhelming...basically a toned down version of Outfit #1. To my eye, this isn't too much blue, but of course you could substitute a fully neutral piece for one of the blue ones.
I like the scarf version of this outfit quite a bit! The repeating of the stripes from the sneakers in the scarf is very pleasing, and I like that the scarf has stripes in white and a darker blue that coordinate with the white T and jeans.
Mixed Neutrals + 1 Pantone Accent / 2 Neutrals
I purposely created a more "colorful" base outfit here by using the grey pants and sage top because I wanted to see how it would look to add accessories from one of the Pantone accent bundles and both neutrals from the base outfit. I chose 3 yellow pieces that punctuate the top (necklace), middle (bracelet), and bottom (ballet flats) of the outfit as the accent color. The sage neutral (or semi-neutral, to my eye) is repeated in the earrings, and both the earrings and necklace have a silver metallic that is closely related to the cool grey. The bracelet stack doesn't have any print/multi-color pieces, but by putting the yellow, sage/olive, grey, and silver bracelets in close proximity in the stack, it almost functions that way. Something about having those pieces so close together that they are seen not as several separate bracelets but as one multi-color bracelet stack ties the colors together for me. (This is probably related in some way to the Gestalt principle of proximity, but I'm not any kind of expert on that.)
Of course you can also integrate the yellow accent color into the outfit by choosing an accessory with that accent color plus at least one of the base neutrals (in this case, the sage) in place of a solid yellow piece. The navy background of the scarf does not appear elsewhere in the outfit but feels related to the cool grey pants.
Neutral Column + 2 Pantone Accents (in related colors)
Let's ramp things up a bit by incorporating items from two of our Pantone beauty bundles. For this first one, I used the sage column and added items from the Innuendo and Gossamer Pink bundles. (Sage + Pink is like softened Green + softened Red, which is a complementary color scheme.) Using two variants of the same hue for the two accent colors may feel like a bit of a cheat (and depending on how you think about color, any and all pinks may only count as 1 color in your analysis vis-a-vis personal color contrast), but I thought this was a good dip-the-toe-in-the-water of combining accessories from two different accent color beauty bundles. I think this one comes together beautifully and is helped by the fact that the accessories have traditionally feminine motifs such as flowers, butterflies, and bows. On a girly base outfit, this might be too much for me, but I like it with the sage column that has a very relaxed style.
That necklace already had a subtle range of pink tones in it, but to make the multiply-pink aspect more explicit, I substituted in this striped pink scarf...and I think it works well in the outfit also.
White T + Jeans + 2 Pantone Accents (1 of which is kind of neutral)
Remember that "Skydiver" dark blue Pantone accent color is that is very close to navy? Using it as your second accent color in an outfit with dark wash denim is an easy way to achieve a sense of cohesion while drawing on two of your beauty bundles. Here the simple white T + jeans base outfit is accompanied by 3 Daffodil pieces and 2 Skydiver pieces that are made from lapis lazuli, which has golden flecks and lines from the pyrite (aka fool's gold) in the stone. The golden pyrite flecks and the gold-tone jewelry findings are a nice color link to the yellow accessories.
If you like prints, wearing a printed accessory with both of the Pantone accent colors in it (and perhaps a bit of some other colors as well, if you like) is another great option for tying these accent colors together.
Mixed Neutrals + 2 Pantone Accents
For our mixed neutrals outfit, I put the grey top and jeans together, since we hadn't used that combination yet. For accent colors, I selected two of the light colors, the Spun Sugar and Gossamer Pink, which I thought would coordinate well due to sharing a soft, light quality. Remember when Pantone selected Rose Quartz and Serenity as the color of the year in 2016 and it looked like a gender reveal party? I understand if it's still too soon to revisit a light pink + light blue combination after that, but I gave it a try...and it was...okay. The accent colors coordinate but feel a bit disjointed to me.
I tried substituting a medium wash of blue denim that is more closely related to the light blue accent color, and to my eye, that did help! A light wash of denim/chambray would probably work even better, I just don't have any light wash jeans right now.
Of course you knew the scarf with both light pink and light blue was coming, right? This looks great. I love to add a print as a bridge piece to link colors together in an outfit and I won't apologize for it ;)
Neutral Base + 2 Pantone Accents Accessories + An Accent Bridge Accessory
I'm going to wrap up this post with a trio of outfits that hit my sweet spot of a neutral base outfit, two accent colors, and a bridge piece that contains both of those accent colors. Here, the floral scarf brings the Innuendo and Skydiver accents together beautifully...and as a bonus, distracts my eye from the mismatched greys in the base column. The bracelet stack contains multi-color DIY paper beads that further link the outfit's colors together...specifically, the striped beads have grey and bright pink, tying one of the accent colors to the base neutral.
Bright pink + yellow are not an obvious color combination for me, but I decided to give it a shot, using the world's most neutral possible base outfit as the background. I had never really noticed the yellow stripes in these ballet flats, but it's there. I selected the multi-colored DIY bracelet stack with striped paper beads from the Innuendo beauty bundle to continue this motif. Print shoes are a nice alternative to print scarves for linking colors together in warm weather. Though don't dismiss scarves entirely just because it's summer! Take care in choosing one with the right weight/fabrication, then remember that they can be worn in a lot of ways that don't add much/any warmth.
In our final outfit, I tried the Daffodil again (since I need more practice finding ways to wear yellow), this time with the Spun Sugar as its companion accent color. It was an easy decision since this white scarf with a light blue, dark blue, yellow, and coral/orange floral large-scale floral print is always top of mind for me in warm weather due to its light weight and spring-y/summery palette. Yellow with grey is still relatively uncommon (though it was only last year that Pantone selected Ultimate Grey & Illuminating as the color of the year!) but it's a very pretty combination. The repeated colors across both the accents and neutrals in this outfit creates a strong sense of cohesion, and I pretty much love it.
Related link: Janice at The Vivienne Files shared accessory "families" in the Pantone Spring/Summer 2022 accent colors back in January (and some of the items in the shoppable links are still available).
Do you have a favorite of the 5 Pantone accent colors in this post? A favorite of the neutrals? Have you ever put together an accessory set/beauty bundle? Are there any outfits here that strike you as ones you especially would/wouldn't wear?
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