Color Blocking - What the 80's SHOULD Have Looked Like!

Are you tired of looking like a penguin every time you dress in your formal attire?  Black shoes, black socks, black pants, white shirt, black tie, and a black coat?  Do you want to bring some color into your outfit, but don't quite know how to do it?  Well, you're in luck!  This week's topic will help you not only add color to your outfit, but will undoubtedly open your eyes to just how much color you can actually put into an outfit!

Color Blocking
First and foremost, what the hell is color blocking?  The easiest, but not necessarily best, way to describe color blocking is what SHOULD have happened to fashion in the 80's.  Let's forget about the many many mistakes made about hair (mullets and flat tops, anyone?) and focus on what the 80's did moderately well - they used color and lots of it!  The purest of the pure in color blocking avoid all patterns whatsoever and focus solely on solid contrasting colors!

What's wrong with this picture?  Well, there's TOO much color.  The human eye has no idea what to focus on, when to focus on it, and for how long - but if you look at this picture for longer than a split-second, your eye will be drawn to the solid purple scarf.  Why is that?  The mind perceives order among the chaos and clings to it desperately - there's calm within that sea of overwhelming color and your eyes/brain love it!  That's the principle of color blocking (without all of the useless and hideous eccentric color patterns seen on that model's coat).

Color blocking works off of the principle that your mind enjoys color combinations that it "knows" work.  Blue and orange, purple and yellow, black and white - just think back to 2nd grade color wheels in art class!  If your brain so readily enjoys those color combinations, what's not to say that your brain can't enjoy orange and yellow (as seen to the right), teal and neon green, or purple and blue?  Color blocking teases out combinations that don't seem to work at first glance, but really captivate an audience when the outfit has time to "sink in" to their glances.

A word of warning, though...SOME COMBINATIONS JUST DO NOT WORK WELL TOGETHER!  As a reference, I've included a color wheel to teach a very basic trick that will help broaden your color palette as you wander into the world of color blocking.  Don't be afraid to experiment with your own color combinations, but please PLEASE have the decency to realize when an outfit just does not work well together.  It's best if you have a significant other, best friend, well-trained pet, or someone to run new color blocks past - if none of those are available, you're going to have to get very comfortable being your own critic.

Color blocking is about contrast, not about subtleties and ideal combinations are made by pairing a chosen color with its opposite on the wheel (e.g. Yellow-Green pairs with Violet-Red).  To ensure that you maintain that POP in your outfit that you still want to bring attention to parts of your outfit such as a belt or shoes, make sure to stray away from pairing colors that share similar names - don't pair Orange-Yellow with Yellow-Green...instead try Orange-Yellow with a Blue-Green or Green.  That will get you to stray away from the go-to combinations of pure opposites and will help you find those uncommon fashion trends that you will soon be known for wearing!

I leave you with a few color blocking outfits that I've fallen for online!  Tune in next week for a beginning monthly segment (the 2nd week of every month) where I talk about some common fashion boo-boos that men make and how to fix/prevent them!