Seasonal analysis is a technique that attempts to place individual coloring into the tonal groupings of Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn, and their sub-variants.
[4] Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889) was a French chemist whose career took a new direction in 1824 when he was appointed director of dyeing at the Gobelins Manufactory in Paris, where he worked for 28 years.
[5] Godey's Lady's Book (1855 and 1859) introduced "gaudy" American women to Chevreul's idea of "becoming colors" for brunettes and blondes.
Johannes Itten (1888–1967) was a Swiss-born artist and art educator who expounded upon the principles of simultaneous contrast which Chevreul set forth in his 1839 treatise.
In his final chapter titled 'Composition', Itten spoke of bringing two or more colors together in such a way that they harmonize to give an expression unambiguous and full of character.
[12] Robert C. Dorr (1905–1979) was an American artist who, in 1928, observed the harmonious effects of paint colors when grouping those of either a green or yellow undertone.
[15] After moving to California in the late 1950s, Dorr taught courses and gave lectures on his Color Key Program until his death in 1979.
A milliner, poet, dress designer and night club singer, as a young adult, Caygill turned her attention to color in 1945 and devoted the rest of her life to creating individual style guides and color palettes for clients and teaching design seminars.
Caygill may have been influenced by her association with Edith Head, wardrobe designer and consultant to Hollywood studios and stars.
In the 1950s, Caygill starred in a self-improvement television program on fashion and relationships, Living With Suzanne, which aired on CBS in Los Angeles and began to teach seminars in which she described her work on style, personality, line, and color.
[17] Many devotees attended her classes, adapted and popularized her theories of personality style and color analysis in the late 1970s and 80s.
In this book, Caygill identified a wide range of sub-groups within each season, and gave them descriptive names such as "Early Spring", "Metallic Autumn", or "Dynamic Winter", each with its own set of special characteristics.
Most agree, for example, on the following basic points: In the 2020s the concept received renewed attention, becoming a viral phenomenon and drawing what the New York Times in 2024 called "views and exasperation on TikTok".