How to Wear Your Skin Tone Without Looking Naked or Washed Out

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How NOT to Wear Skin Tones

Ever see someone from a distance and wonder whether they are naked because they are wearing something that could reasonably be a skintone for them? The worst is when they’re wearing leggings! While it is true that your skintone is a neutral for you, that’s not the way to do it!

In Episode 22 of Signature Style Systems I explain a common mistake I see women making with regard to wearing skintone clothing, why you may not like wearing it, and a major mistake I made when I should have used skintone but didn’t. Listen on Apple Podcasts. Here’s how to wear your skintone without looking naked or washed out.

My Personal Outfit Fail

So, there are a couple of really fantastic ways to use your skintone to create a simple signature style based on your Style DNA. One of my favorites is to wear a skintone shoe with a bare leg. This solves three things: making your legs look longer, having shoes that coordinate with your look without necessarily having to match your outfit,  and avoiding a stark contrast that pulls the viewers eye down to your feet!

I remember a time before I really understood this, I thought hair, skin, or eyes were an option for shoe color. And I thought my eyes were kinda generic brown, so I was wearing brown shorts and brown shoes one day and I could see people’s eyes going to my feet before my face. I was actually pretty self-conscious about it, because my legs are shortish and I could tell this outfit experiment was a fail.

This is one application that I don’t necessarily agree with Carla about. I don’t really advise eye color for shoes, although I’m sure there are people for whom that works.

Wear Your Skin Tone Without Looking Washed Out

So let me explain how you can wear colors close to your skintone without looking naked or washed out.

  1. In shoes, bags, and other accessories. Be a little bit careful with belts. One thing I’ve seen with lower rise jeans is a belt that looks like skin tone intersected in the back with a belt loop that ends up coming off at first glance as buttcrack!
  2. In combination with your hair color. This is really the gold standard of how to make it work. Many women really dislike the idea of wearing a top in their skintone, but when combined with a jacket in their haircolor it can be stunning! Even a necklace in the haircolor can create the effect.
  3. If you are going to wear pants in something close to your skintone, they really need to be trouser cut, or at least not form-fitting like tight jeans or leggings. And still combine them using the right level of contrast for your inherent coloring.
  4. A dressy skintone coat can be a good option, especially if you accent it with your lipstick color
  5. Of course, lingerie in skintone is ideal

How to Determine Your Skintone

How to determine whether a garment harmonizes with the undertone of your skintone.

  • The easiest way: hold your hand up to a garment, palm up. Do the colors in your palm look glowy and smooth or pasty and blotchy?

How to think about which colors are skintones for you

  1. The browns and whites in your skin. You may have more than one. These are sometimes called melanin colors.
  2. The pinks and reds in your skin. These are sometimes called hemoglobin colors. I usually call it a lipstick color
  3. Sometimes there is a color that combines the two

In general, I think all you need for shoes is your hair color and maybe your skin color, but your lipstick color can make a fun option if you want more variety. 

Now What? Shopping for Your Skintones

Next time you are out thrifting, or wherever you like to shop for clothes, try using your hand to see if colors harmonize with your skintone. It takes practice.

So have fun shopping and thanks for being here for Signature Style Systems!