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About: Ensemble: Tonal Column of Colour

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Outfits Ensembles Trends Advice

Tone?

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

One challenge issued and 16 photos later, I realize that word might not mean what I think it means. Embarrazada! (Yes, that’s a linguistic joke that demonstrates embarrassment by using a word from a different language that looks similar but means something totally different.)

Helpful and color-theory-savvy fabbers tell me that “tone” refers to the intensity of a color (right? If I’m still off-base, please correct me now). The colors themselves can be similar or high-contrast. The point is the intensity, how light or dark they are. According to this definition, “tonal matching” means everything is all the same tone, nothing is lighter or darker than anything else.

The look I’m taken by at the moment, and the one I’m trying to work out, is pretty much the opposite of that. It centers on a color, then adds in lighter and darker variations of it, and other colors close to it on the color wheel. I will add pictures to this thread if I come across good examples of the thing I mean. Recent YLF examples are the gorgeous play on blues that Brooklyn posted to Irina’s thread on tonal matching, Angie’s third photo in that thread, for which she gave finds a little later, and the outfits in this blog post, particularly the lilac one. Those aren’t my colors; what I want to emulate are the ways the color shifts between different intensities of lilac and shades of pink/coral. Similarly, Angie’s pink and orange outfit doesn’t use colors I wear—it’s the way similar shades are paired up that I want to work on. The looks I’m so attracted to, and that I want to build in my wardrobe, are built around those itty-bitty steps on the color wheel and shifts in intensity.

In the interest of clearer communication, I’m looking for a word or phrase to describe this kind of matching and differentiate it from wearing all light colors, or all dark. Can you help me out?

Dressing

33 replies

Latest reply was from Jenni NZ

rachylou

Veteran

Here is an info graphic on the words tone, hue, shade, and tint from colour theory. Talking about colour is rather treacherous in my opinion, esp as you move from field to field. The info graphic definition is what I learned in painting. We took different hues (colours) and then added various amounts of white and black and grey (ie, black and white) to make little colour charts. But when I was in weaving and we were dying fibers... getting specific colours and shades was an entirely different matter. There was no adding black, white and grey. To get black, well you’d just keep soaking longer! So red it became black!

When it comes to fashion, no one has a term for outfits made of analogous colours (colours next to each other on the colour wheel) that I’ve ever seen used. Most seem to call that tonal dressing. Monochromatic dressing seems to refer to dressing in different shades of the same hue. It doesn’t refer to dressing all in the same colour - that’s ‘matchy matchy’...

Anyways. Right. So... what I’m saying is, we probably need to coin a term. And I want to put it out there that Analogous Colour Outfit has too many syllables for me... !! If we go with that, I’m gonna need to make it an acronym... !!

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Synne

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Ah.. you have a very scientific mindset, FI. I have seen this in your other posts. A sehnsucht to deeply understand something. Admirable! I am much more frivolous. For what it's worth, I am an advocate for passive knowledge. When something just feels or looks right, instincivly. But that relies on having a base of knowledge, I guess. Well. I enjoyed the book "Art in Everyday Life" by Harriet and Vetta Goldstein a lot. It is avaliable for free online. Color theory explained with (albeit somewhat dated) style examples. Maybe of interest to you?

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

Synne, you’ve got me pegged. At least in general, I tend to want to understand something all the way. In this specific case though, it might just be embarrassment, confusion, and wanting to have a name for the thing I like. It appeals to me intuitively, but when I try to talk about it, I’m misunderstood. That sort of thing frustrates me easily. You are modest, but I don’t believe for a second that you are a simpleton. My proof is that you had that reading recommendation ready to go and have internalized the book’s content.

Rachylou, absolutely! “Analogous Colour Outfit” is entirely too long. We need to coin a term. Speaking German all the time gives me plenty of opportunity to pronounce a massive quantity of syllables, lol. (Apologies to any native speakers of German—no Rufsbeschädigung or Verleumdung meant!) Your klipp & klar explanation of what’s meant by “monotone” is appreciated—I can bracket that and matchy-matchy as what I’m *not* going for in any further conversations on this topic.

Another question: “hue” seems to have two meanings—1 is the thing I mean when I say “color” but is perhaps more correctly called a “tone” 2 is that thing from 1 plus grey. Is that right?

ETA Trying again on the 1&2 thing, per Rachylou’s post:

Hue can mean
1.) a color, in the very naive sense of the word a child uses. Another word for this, in more sophisticated color theory terms, is “tone”.
2.) a version of a tone/color to which grey has been added.

rachylou

Veteran

Um, not sure I could ... ok, I’m sure I couldn’t, lol... follow the one and two thing. Hue is unfortunately used to mean shade as well as colour, if that’s what you’re getting at... ie, ‘a hue of blue’ and ‘a shade of blue’ rather mean the same thing. (Compare to: ‘the hue, blue’)

...?

ETA: It really all gets worse the deeper you dive. You can talk about wavelengths. You can talk about the variations of a colour being due to variations in hue, chroma and lightness. And it gets painful, just painful, when you encounter ‘CIECAM02, the color appearance model published by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) Technical Committee 8-01 (Color Appearance Modelling for Color Management Systems)’ which says things like "the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.”

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

RL, i think you got it the first time around, but is my addition above any more clear?

Your technical comment made me laugh! I have zero desire to go that deep. This is starting to feel like asking for the meaning of “Brötchen” and getting an essay on philosophy of life and the chemistry of baking, when all I really wanted was “a roll”.

Runcarla

Veteran

SarahD8 provided this excellent link in your previous thread. The one with the outfit photos.

https://stylingscrapbook.wordp.....or-theory/

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

Carla, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t able to find the answer to my question in that last night, and still can’t this morning. It is quite a bit of detail on color theory and how to apply it to clothes, but doesn’t give names to the various strategies. We all know by know what strategy I want to use. It’s the one after triads and before neutrals. Would you just tell me, please, what word or phrase one should use for a group of analogous tones which might vary in intensity, all centered around one central shade? And then of course, what do we call an outfit made of such a group?

rachylou

Veteran

Ok... so...

Hue can mean
1.) a color, in the very naive sense of the word a child uses. <— I say this is a safe Yes. As in the basic colours of the rainbow.

Another word for this, as used in more sophisticated color theory terms, is “tone”. <— I say No. Although Hue can kinda mean Shade sometimes, and Shade is kinda like Tone, it’s not a
strict ‘a=b, b=c, therefore a=c’. If Hue is used as the term for colour in the naive sense, it becomes ‘not Tone’. Tone is a quality of Hue in this situation. And Tone is never = Colour.

2.) a version of a tone/color to which grey has been added. <— I’m thinking again, Tone never equals Colour (Tone ≠ Colour). BUT a tone IS ‘a colour plus any given amount of grey.’

Synne

Veteran

Analogus outfit, or AnOut for short. Maybe AnGiE. Analogus Garments in Excessity. Maybe someone else has a better acronym

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

Yikes, Rachylou! Way, way beyond my head. I probably could understand it, but I just want the right phrase for this one thing. I need my think power for something else today (working on a research grant proposal). You said before you don’t know a name for it. Maybe that where we should stop. Whenever I want to refer to this way of combining colors in the future, I’ll just throw up a ton of charts and articles and tell people to figure it out. Or I could say “outfits made of analogous colors, possibly in varying intensity”.

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

Synne, awesome!

rachylou

Veteran

Right. Analogous Outfit occurred to me, but I didn’t like it when I suggested it to myself. I was all ‘analogous to what?’ But when YOU say it, Synne, I’m thinking yes... that sounds all right... lol!

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

“Analogous to what?” is what I’d think at that phrase too, but I guess I don’t ask “tonally matching what?” when I hear that phrase.

We could still give OMOACPIVI
(Outfits Made Of Analogous Colors, Possibly In Varying Intensity) a try, lol.

Brooklyn

Veteran

I think I’d refer to the outfit having “graduated” rather than “matching” tones. I think it’s the “matching” that causes confusion.

rachylou

Veteran

My head exploded years ago. I do not understand. I do not do colour theory. But I’ll always have ‘CIECAM02’ to make me laugh

Synne

Veteran

Yes, I know, Rachylou. You and Carla said it already, only parroting what has already been said in my simpleton way. Haha! Thanks for the lovely morning brain twister, ladies! I am eager to see more of your outfit combos FI. Whatever we end up naming them.

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

Brooklyn, thank you for that input. I think it’s a winner.

Synne, thanks for the confidence-booster. I think that whole post with 16 pix landed with a thud because people were expecting something very different. And then with the lead-up of having started a challenge. Oh je!

Anonymous

You all got me confused too!

I may be wrong but I think of:
Monochromatic as just 1 color- like a dress or dyed to match

Tonal as variations of the same color in different depths- like aqua + turquoise or black + charcoal

Low value contrast, which seems to be the way some are thinking tonal. Same or near same darkness level. Purple + forest green or cream + blush

Low color contrast, or analagous. Colors next to each other on color wheel. Mustard + orange or cobalt + violet

Also (re: embarrazada) : Felicitaciones! Cuando vas a dar la luz

LaPed

Veteran

Despite the fact that some people who work in the fashion industry are designers, I don't think "tonal dressing" abides by a strict art school definition in common usage. Yes, a "tone" is a hue that's been muted by grey. But I see tonal outfit used to describe at least two different things, possibly three:

1) Outfits with multiple tints/shades/tones of one hue (moving inward and outward on the colour wheel). Example: Red, pink, burgundy

2) Outfits with multiple adjacent hues (moving sideways on the colour wheel). Example: Red, red-orange, red-violet

3) (This one is a maybe for me but I feel like it comes up in these conversations.) Outfits with hues from anywhere on the colour wheel that are all of equal tone, so if you took a black-and-white photo the garments would all read as the same grey. To me, this isn't really tonal dressing, just a low-contrast outfit.

Another example of something that once had an art school meaning that no longer holds in the fashion world is ombré. Originally, ombré was a particular dip-dying technique that would give you darker and darker shades of a single dye (a tonal gradation), but these days you see ombré garments with multiple hues, like a pink-purple-blue gradation. Really those should just be called dip-dyed, but I guess people like the French word. All that to say, it's hard to get technical terms to stay technical once they enter the vernacular!

Helena

Veteran

Another one who would just go for analagous, even though it's not snappy ... maybe harmonious (as opposed to contrasting), which could encompass tonal, analagous and any other gradient-type schemes?

L'Abeille

Veteran

Well at least you're not talking about tone policing, which I feared when I saw your thread title!

I read up on the colour wheel in middle school, when I thought I wanted to become an interior designer. So I retained a simplified understanding, which might be helpful here. I think "tone" (+- mixed with grey) refers to brightness or intensity: pure vs muddy. Hue refers to the exact spot on the wheel, eg how much blue or green is in teal.

Funny, I've never forgotten the "complementary" (opposite) colour scheme, but this thread has me second-guessing whether yours was always called "analogous" in the design books. I think it was; just shows how unwieldy and unmemorable a term it is. The colours are analogous because they are beside each other, or close, on the colour wheel. Maybe calling them close colours would work? Although not as catchy as tonal.

And for the language nerds only... Variations in dialect lead to different meanings, or shades of meaning, for the same word within a language. As a Canadian who spent some time living in South Africa, I was very aware of differences between "English" English and American English. (My all-time favourite is "pumps" vs "court shoes".)
One I encountered was the use of "toning" to describe colours that went together, instead of "matching". I used it that way in my recent skirt thread, to describe the wine-and-plum socks worn with the fringed dress. Wondering how it would be understood.

rachylou

Veteran

Mwahaha... Just have to add this: Value is the lightness or darkness of a hue and it is changed by adding black or white to a color. Intensity is the brightness or dullness of hue and is changed by mixing a color with its complement (the color directly across from it on the color wheel).

Also: ‘chroma’ is associated with intensity and ‘lightness’ associated with tone, meaning intensity and tone are considered different.

What a delightful subject!

ps: ‘toning’ is entirely new to me! Cool word

kkards

Veteran

I just want to say that i did not read 1/2 of what’s written here...because honestly I’m not sure how there can be so much written about COLOR a visual thing, and there be only 1 visual...for me this post is like trying to learn how to ride a bike thru reading...

Star

Veteran

KKards that is funny - 'learning to ride a bike thru reading', quite apt!
I am keeping quiet as I have no clue about this.

kkards

Veteran

So just re read what i wrote, and I realized the tone (particular feeling, mood of my words) was a little harsh, must have gotten out of bed on the wrong side this morning, but I’m leaving the comment because I’m still confused about the lack of visuals...for me the best part of Angie’s blog posts is that she always shows as well as writes, so that i can see what she is explaining and match my understanding of the words with the pictures.
So, to that point, FashIntern when you posted your challenge, i assumed that you were talking about creating outfits similar to what Angie had posted, but now I’m not sure...for me it would help if you could/would post an example (culled from anywhere) of what you are trying to do....

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Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

Kkards, you are entirely correct that this is all about the multiple meanings given to words and phrases. I had thought, when I posted the challenge, that the phrase I used was as clear as, say “neutral” or “pastel”—a core meaning everyone agrees on with maybe some fraying around the edges. Woah, have I found out that’s not the case. Several people give multiple definitions here, and if you click over to the other post you’ll see that some folks are very certain there is only one meaning and it is not the one I’ve heard. But I’m a little confused that you complain about no visuals and then add one of the three (besides the 16 photos on the other post) that I referred to. Ummm not sure how you saw that one but not the others. Hang on a sec and I’ll get you the urls of the rest
ETA ok, here is the post referred to in the first line of this one. https://youlookfab.com/welookf.....st-2170356

And here is the url of the post referred to halfway through this one. https://youlookfab.com/welookf.....hallenging. Copying from above which pix I’m thinking of:
Recent YLF examples are the gorgeous play on blues that Brooklyn posted to Irina’s thread on tonal matching, Angie’s third photo in that thread, for which she gave finds a little later, and the outfits in this blog post, particularly the lilac one. Those aren’t my colors; what I want to emulate are the ways the color shifts between different intensities of lilac and shades of pink/coral. Similarly, Angie’s pink and orange outfit doesn’t use colors I wear—it’s the way similar shades are paired up that I want to work on. The looks I’m so attracted to, and that I want to build in my wardrobe, are built around those itty-bitty steps on the color wheel and shifts in intensity.

If I come across other examples during the day, I’ll paste them in.

Here are all those pix (except for the one you already copied)

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SarahD8

Veteran

I want to add a +1 to LaPed's comment, she captured my thoughts on this topic exactly!

If I remember correctly FI your previous post (with the pics of your outfits) was originally titled "Tonal Matching" and I wonder if it was the "matching" bit that threw people off.

It seems like some people interpreted that to mean "matching in tone (intensity) regardless of hue (color in a ROYGBIV sense)." That is the #3 definition in LaPed's post.

But I interpreted you to mean "matching (ish) in hue but varying in darkness and/or intensity." Tonal matching rather than matchy-matching. Like the color version of slant rhyme.

So maybe it would be better to refer to "tonal dressing" rather than "tonal matching"?

It does seem that the fashion world and art world use these words in somewhat different ways (the fashion meaning of "tone" seems to be more expansive than the art/color theory meaning of "tone"). When you're neither an art nor a fashion expert (as I am not) it can be confusing to sort out!

I found it useful yesterday when we were having this discussion to try to familiarize myself a bit with the art world/color theory terms. Here are a couple of links that helped me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tints_and_shades
https://thevirtualinstructor.c.....-intensity

Images #1 and 2 below are from those sources, respectively.

When I think of "tonal dressing" I think of what I've tried to illustrate on the color wheel in image #3 below. Combining anything inside the black circle would be "tonal" to my mind -- similar hue, but varying in darkness, intensity, etc. Different people might draw the circle larger or smaller, make it more or less ovoid in one direction or another. Does that capture what you're after?

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kkards

Veteran

FashIntern...yup i saw the other post, but honestly was still not sure what you were going for, and the other replies here, without visuals also made it difficult for me to follow...
anyway, thanks for the visuals of what you are trying for...
so, one thing that i would add, outside of the whole color conversation, is that IMO to pull off this type of dressing, (and home decor) is that proportion becomes even more important, as do the little details, as they are the glue that keep the outfit together

unfrumped

Veteran

Oh, what helped me was LaPed's inward-outward vs laterally on the color wheel. Not thinking about what to call it, but what types I like. May be different for different colors.

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