Lolita Color Theory: Matchmaking

For a scarce handful of days, I thought I was done with this topic. 

Then my senses returned. I can never shut up. 

With that, welcome to the second installment in the lolita color theory series! This time, I'm going to go into a little more depth about three topics: color schemes, color matching, and why sweet prints in black colorways are difficult. 

Reading the previous installment is a nice bonus, but this post should be understandable regardless. 

 Color schemes

 To explore color schemes, we need to reanchor ourselves in our color space. 

A color wheel showing the different hues at full saturation

Traditionally, color theory uses a group of three primary colors to define the hues possible within a given system: red, green, and blue form the RGB primary colors used on monitors; cyan, magenta, and yellow are the primary colors for CMYK printing; and red, yellow, and blue are the traditional trio of primaries in the traditional artists' palette. 

The full gamut of colors in each of these spaces can be achieved through mixing these primaries together, with the addition of lightness/white and darkness/black. For example, the K of CMYK stands for key, which is black; that, the whiteness of the paper, and the three primaries are all you need for the whole printing rainbow. Primary colors are the cardinal directions of color. 

Secondary colors are achieved by mixing two primary colors in equal parts. CMYK and RGB are opposites, so the primaries of one are the secondaries of the other and vice-versa. In the RYB artist's palette, the secondaries are orange, green, and violet. These are like ordinal directions. 

Tertiary colors are mixes of a primary and secondary, and this is where the names get specific, like blue-green or red-violet. 

When someone is casually referring to primary colors, they usually mean red, blue, and either yellow or green. For secondary colors, it's usually orange, green, or purple. Most people don't talk about tertiary colors much. 

RGB colors, also called additive colors because the wavelengths are added together to get white

 

CMY colors, also called additive colors because the wavelengths are subtracted from one another to get black

Traditional color theory also defines some specific, common color schemes. Using the color wheel and some basic geometry, you can make any of these color schemes. I've highlighted three of the most common schemes below. Note that these refer only to hues-- saturation and brightness are dealer's choice here. 

Complementary colors

Complementary colors are opposites on the color wheel-- red and green, blue and orange, etc. Any two complementary colors will cancel each other out, adding up to gray. Visual contrast ups the perceived intensity of colors, so having polar opposite complementary colors in an outfit really sets off them against each other. 

Blue's complement is orange

Analogous colors

Analogous colors are neighbors on the color wheel. Because the hues are close together, analogous colors tone one another down. This low-contrast aspect means that analogous colors can feel mature and even demure. 

Yellow, yellow-green, and green are analogous

Triadic colors 

Triadic colors are groups of three at a 120 degree angle from one another on the RYB color wheel, equidistant from one another. There are two main flavors of triadic colors: red, yellow, and blue; or green, orange, and violet. These colors contrast one each other, but in a gentler, more balanced-feeling way than the abrupt contrasts of complementary colors. 

Fuschia, gold, and cerulean are triadic colors

Color schemes in practice

Using these conventional color schemes in lolita is a great way to add variety to coordinates, especially sweet and classic coordinates. Goths don't use multiple hues in the same coord nearly as frequently, so these musings are likely irrelevant. 

For complementary colors, pink and mint are common in sweet, while red and green are used in Christmas and kimono-inspired prints. If a red and green print is not Christmas themed, don't worry: people will tell you it's Christmas regardless. Yellow or gold with purple or lavender is also not uncommon, although bright yellow and dark purple are more reminiscent of Waluigi than most lolita. Lolita doesn't have many oranges to pair with blues, but brown is a derivative of orange that pairs nicely with navy, in classic especially. If a pastel seems too pale or a dusty color too musty, adding its complement as a foil will liven it up. 

Baby the Stars Shine Bright's Snow White ~Fairy Tale in Apple Forest~ JSK I

 

Analogous colors are commonly used for ocean-inspired prints, where combinations of cerulean, navy, violet, lavender, and cooler pinks give a dreamy feeling. Classic also uses analogous colors generously, often in the form of low-contrast floral prints: it helps give the quintessential "grandma's couch" feeling. Brown is great for analogous color schemes.  It acts in place of orange to connect red and burgundy with gold and olive. 

 

Angelic Pretty's Dream Marine (2018) uses analogous cool colors

Triadic primary colors (typically red, gold, and navy) are pretty common in sailor inspired styles, giving them a bright, cheerful look. They're also the colors of France, and lolita brands love France. Lolita brands also use this trio of colors in a circus context.   

Metamorphose's Marine Bear Bustle Dress contrasts red and blue stripes with gold-brown bears

The Colors That Don't Exist

One thing I didn't talk about in the previous post is The Colors That Don't Exist. They don't matter for conventional fashion color theory, but they're a cool thing to know about regardless. From red (the largest visible wavelength) to violet (the smallest), there are actual electromagnetic frequencies that correspond to most colors. 

However, reddish purples are an inference-- there's no one wavelength they correspond to, it's just what brains cook up when the blue and red cones are both hyped enough. Pink is light red, unless it's light reddish purple, in which case it's another imagined extrapolation. Brown is dark orange and sometimes dark yellow. There is no brown band in the electromagnetic spectrum. These colors may not exist, but for our purposes, they're as good as real. 

Finally, and this is a cool one, there are things called structural coloration, where instead of chemical pigments absorbing and reflecting light of different wavelength, it's arrangements of films and crystals that refract light in colorful ways. If you've ever seen the shimmer of peacock feathers or the shine of a jewel beetle, it's structural coloration you can thank! 

Color matching

Finding exact color matches in lolita is a struggle. Many lolitas recall the miserable days of unsolicited concrit in the form of "the pinks don't match!"

The thing is, the pinks will probably never match, even within the same brand. There are even some releases in which the items in a set aren't even the same color!  

The easiest solution is not to care. This is really simple, but might take practice. 

The second easiest remedy to color matching woes is to sidestep them entirely by not having a color next to itself in a coordinate. Colors can't clash if they're not even visible together. 

Color matching can also be evaded by deliberately combining multiple variations of the same color that are distinct enough to look deliberate. A variety of similar colors can balance each other out, especially in a monochromatic coordinate. This also works well with different materials-- navy pleather shoes, navy lace tights, a navy velvet JSK, a navy chiffon blouse, and a navy wool beret might be entirely different shades, but the textures cover for the variations in color. 

For those detail-obsessed enough to care, one strategy is to try and make the undertones vaguely match. With luck, it's also possible to get similar saturation levels, but intensity and lightness are less important than hue and temperature: the main goal is to keep things harmonious, not necessarily perfect. For this, a dark cool bordeaux and a lighter cool wine would match nicely, but the same bordeaux with a similarly dark warm maroon would look less deliberate. This is my preferred tactic-- I basically have three sets of bordeaux-adjacent accessories: cool and berry-toned, warm dark maroon, and a vivid wine. 

Or, for the truly committed, there's always the possibility of just buying accessories in every different shade of every different color in an entire wardrobe. It's expensive, time consuming, and there's no guarantee that items online will be remotely the same color in real life, but it's an option. Coordinates from people with truly matchy-matchy wardrobes look polished to a diamond shine. Even so, no matter how meticulously well the colors are chosen, someone somewhere on the internet will probably still complain that the pinks don't match. 

Why black is difficult with pastels

I haven't slandered bittersweet in far too long, so let's make up for lost time. 

Sweet prints often look poorly balanced in black colorways. Even if bittersweet was real, which it isn't, it would be near-impossible to balance the values of typical sweet's pale pastels and black in a way that keeps the motifs legible. To elaborate, here's a case study:  

Angelic Pretty's Milky Planet is one of the most popular sweet prints ever. It also has, in my opinion, one of the worst black colorways ever. 

Here is the dress itself: 

The black colorway of the 2010 Milky Planet JSK 

The print:

The 2010 Milky Planet print

And the colors picked out of it: 

 

From top left: white, yellow, mint, blue. Second row: lavender, pink, dark pink, black. 

As codes, from lightest to darkest, the colors are #ffffff (white) , #fdfcd0 (yellow), #bff7ec (mint), #9bc4fa (sax blue), #bba0ef (lavender), #f969b1 (pink), #febae9 (dark pink), and #060606 (black). 

The value of each color, as a percent, is 100%, 99.2%, 96.9%, 98.0%, 93.7%, 97.6%, 99.6%, and 2.4%. This means that they're basically as light and bright as physically possible, except for the black, which is almost as dark as is physically possible. 

To illustrate the value clustering of the light colors, I went ahead and desaturated the original print to grayscale. 

The 2010 Milky Planet print in grayscale

Without the hues to distinguish them, the pastel colors are almost uniform in lightness, rendering the print totally unreadable. 

Because the pastels are so light, they get totally overwhelmed by the darkness of the black. The density of the border print mashes them together into an indistinguishable mess of near-white, like a pile of mini-marshmallows half-melted in a microwave. It's sweet, but it has no substance. 

Angelic Pretty's Candy Treat print is a lot less popular, but the black colorway is a much stronger dress. Unlike the white at the bottom of Milky Planet, the bold purple at the bottom of the border print is legible from a distance, while the vivid pink, mints, yellows, and blues stand out against both backgrounds and each other. The colors are all strong enough to hold their own. 

Here is the dress:  

The black colorway of the Candy Treat JSK

The print image: 

The Candy Treat print

And the colors picked out of it: 

From top left: white, yellow, mint, light blue, dark blue. Second row: lavender, purple, pink, dark pink, black. 

The hex codes are: #ffffff (white), #f5e258 (yellow), #4cc4a9 (mint), #36a4d7 (light blue), #3857aa (dark blue), #e1c4f0 (lavender), #5a47a1 (dark purple), #f9b4d3 (pink), #d02c68 (dark pink), and #010101 (black). The image lacks red (#e8003c, 91% value) and the medium pink (#ea69a1, 91.8% value) and purple (#bc87d7, 84.3% value) because they're unique to specific colorways. 

The value percentages are 100%,  96.1%, 76.9%, 84.3%, 66.7%, 94.1%, 63.1%, 97.6%, 81.6%, and .4%. This is a much more diverse spread than the Milky Planet colors, with even the lighter colors averaging darker. The variance means that the black background still contrasts nicely, but there's enough contrast elsewhere to make the print legible from afar, against any color background. It's still plenty sweet, just with a little more oomph. 

The Candy Treat print in grayscale

This variation in value means that, even tiny and in grayscale, each candy in the Candy Treat print is immediately legible.

Bittersweet is defined by the black colorway. But there actually are other dark colors!Navy can be an excellent option for sweet prints in dark colorways. Milky Planet's 2013 navy colorway is similar to its black colorway, but the darker blue accents in the print provide a middle ground between the offwhite foreground and the navy background, keeping the shapes much more legible. The navy color, #03256c, has a value of 42.4%, making it intense in comparison to the pastels but objectively not that deep. The coolness of the navy works just as well as the black in approximating the starry sky while also working with the cool undertones of the pastels. 

The navy colorway of the 2013 Milky Planet JSK 

 The print in its 2013 incarnation: 

The 2013 version of the Milky Planet print

The colors:

From top left: white, yellow, mint, lavender. Second row: purple, dark pink, pink, navy. 

Hex codes are: #ffffff (white), #ffffe2 (yellow), #b6d8fe (mint), #b3b1fa (periwinkle), #9985dc (purple), #ff63b3 (dark pink), #f8caef (light pink), and #06246c (navy). The purple is less vibrant than the corresponding purple in the original (at only 86.3% value), and the colors are cooler in general, but the overall impression is similar. 

The moderating effect of navy is only accentuated in the grayscale version: 

The 2013 Milky Planet print in grayscale

Please excuse the jpeg artifacts. Because the navy is lighter, it doesn't overwhelm the sweets and stars, keeping them visible against the background and maintaining a low enough contrast that the internal details can be perceived. 

Putting it all together

The recommendations and opinions in this post are more esoteric than in the previous post, and even more subjective. For the good parts,  I owe a lot of my inspiration to Cupcake Kamisama, who makes excellent resources and actually wears colors. The bad parts are all me. The bittersweet slander is 100% me. 

Color theory is only an analytical framework, if a well-studied one. As someone committed to a rigid palette, I lack real experience in wearing other colors. I'm leaning on my theoretical rigor to hopefully make up for my practical shortcomings. Anyway, any theory of the arts is meaningless on its own. The real test is putting it into practice.