What Hannah Louise Poston Taught Me About Art Composition

Understanding art composition transforms how you think about getting dressed.

Recently, I was watching a video by Hannah Louise Poston where she talked about using foreground and background to create a focal point in an outfit. She’s brilliant at breaking down visual concepts, and I was following along, nodding. But then something clicked for me that went beyond what she was teaching.

The principle of foreground and background isn’t just about your outfit. It’s about your outfit in relationship to where you are.

You are the foreground. Your environment is the background. And when you understand this one principle of art composition, suddenly so many wardrobe mysteries start making sense.

In this article, I’m going to show you how this artistic principle explains why your black outfit feels perfect on a rainy morning but dull in afternoon sunshine. Why your orange sweater works with brown in October but feels wrong with brown in April. Why the same dress reads completely differently indoors versus outdoors.

We’ll look at three environmental contexts: day versus night, weather and seasons, and built environments versus nature. Then I’ll give you a simple project to help you see these principles at work in your own wardrobe.

Foreground and Background in Art Composition

Here’s what HLP was teaching: in visual art, the foreground is what you want people to notice first. She was talking about having an element of your outfit be foreground, like the focal point, with the background supporting it but not competing.

But I thought, “yes, this is true, but also … the whole artistic composition of the person is always the foreground. Every environment we enter becomes our background.”

And just like in a painting, the relationship between foreground and background matters. You want to be in harmony with your background, not fighting against it or getting lost in it.

This one principle of art composition gave me the framework to finally understand something I’d been noticing for years: how I feel about what I’m wearing changes in different environments.

Let me show you how this works in three different contexts.

Day Versus Night: How Light Changes Everything

The quality of light completely changes your background.

Daytime creates bright, open backgrounds. Natural light is revealing. Colors appear crisp. Contrast is visible. Your clothing reads clearly against whatever environment you’re in.

Nighttime creates darker, more intimate backgrounds. Warm light softens everything. Colors appear richer. Everything becomes more blendy. 

Think about that little black dress everyone says works for everything. It actually works differently depending on the light quality. Against a bright daytime background, black creates strong contrast – your silhouette becomes very defined. Against a dim evening background, black helps you stand out without harsh edges.

The same principle explains why your summer whites feel so right during the day but can feel too bright under restaurant lighting.

You’re not imagining things when an outfit feels different at noon versus eight PM. The light quality changed your background, which changed the relationship between you and your environment.

Weather and Season: Your Backdrop Keeps Shifting

This is where art composition gets really interesting for wardrobe planning.

Spring brings bright greens, fresh growth, and often gray skies. The background is light, cool, and somewhat muted. Colors that harmonize with this tend to be clear but not too intense – those tinted colors mixed with white that feel fresh and optimistic. I always crave green in March (perfect for St Patrick’s Day in the U.S.).

Summer creates deep blue, lush backgrounds with strong sunlight. Everything is saturated. Colors that work here can be either very soft (those muted, grayed colors that create calm) or surprisingly bright because they hold their own against intense natural color. White feels cool and black becomes ultra-dramatic.

Fall shifts to browns, oranges, rusts – those toasted colors mixed with brown. The entire background warms up. This is when I reach for my orange sweater with brown, or with shaded yellows. These combinations feel grounded and natural because they echo the background.

Winter strips color away – bare branches, gray skies, white snow. The background becomes stark. This is when shaded colors darkened with black suddenly make sense. They create drama against a simplified backdrop.

Here’s my rainy morning story again: that black sweater felt perfect against a gray, drizzly spring background. The contrast was gentle. But when the sun came out and the greens brightened and the sky turned blue, suddenly the black felt heavy and dull against all that brightness. The background changed, and the foreground-background relationship shifted completely.

My Guide to Seasonal Energy & Personality Colors breaks down these seasonal color resonances – how tinted, muted, toasted, and shaded colors create different effects.

Built Environments Vs Nature: Where Are You?

Indoor and outdoor settings create completely different backgrounds for your clothing.

Built environments tend to be more controlled. Offices have neutral walls. Restaurants use deliberate lighting. Your home has whatever color palette you’ve chosen. These backgrounds are predictable and often fairly neutral, which means your clothing can be more varied without creating visual discord.

Nature is bold and constantly changing. Sky, trees, water, earth – these create strong backgrounds that shift with weather and season. Your clothing needs to either harmonize with these elements or provide enough contrast to stand out without fighting.

Here’s where that “black is slimming” myth falls apart: imagine yourself as foreground wearing black against a bright outdoor background – a sunny day, a light-colored building, a beach. The point of highest contrast isn’t your clothing against your body. It’s your entire silhouette against the background. You’ve just outlined yourself in bold marker.

This doesn’t mean don’t wear black outdoors. It means understand what you’re creating. Against certain backgrounds, black creates drama through contrast. Against others, it creates harmony through depth. The art composition principle helps you see which effect you’re getting.

I wear orange all year round. In spring and summer, I combine it with hot pink or blue and white – colors that hold their own against bright backgrounds. But today I’m wearing orange with a shaded yellow, and last week I wore it with brown. I only do these combinations in fall because they harmonize with autumn’s toasted color background. In spring, orange with brown would feel muddy against all that bright green.

This explains another frustration of mine: gym clothes only seem to come in black and gray, while outdoor sporty clothes, besides coming in black which is ubiquitous, mostly come in muted greens and blues.

Making This Work in Your Wardrobe

So how do you actually use art composition principles when getting dressed?

Start noticing the relationship between what you’re wearing and where you’ll be. You are the foreground. Your environment is the background. The goal is harmony between the two.

This doesn’t mean everything has to match the season or blend with the walls. It means being intentional about whether you’re creating harmony or contrast, and making sure that contrast is working for you rather than against you.

Some questions to consider: Where will you spend most of your day? Indoors or outdoors? What’s the light quality? What season is showing up in the background – is it the green of summer or the brown of fall? Are you moving between environments, and if so, which one matters most?

When you understand these art composition principles, you stop feeling confused about why an outfit works in one place but not another. You start seeing the background, not just the foreground. You start treating yourself like a walking work of art.

If you’re realizing that understanding your colors in relationship to your environment is something you want to explore more deeply, The Congruence Code might be your next step. It’s where we discover the wiring of your mind, define what truly matters in your style, and align your colors with your energy. You can learn more at signaturestylesystems.com.

This one principle of art composition gave me the framework to finally understand something I’d been noticing for years: how I feel about what I’m wearing changes in different environments.

Your Art Composition Try-On Project

Here’s something simple you can do this week to integrate these principles into your wardrobe:

Go around the rainbow in your closet – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple – and for each color you own, notice what other colors you like to combine with it. Do those combinations shift by season?

For example, I wear orange all year, but I combine it with hot pink or blue and white in spring and summer. In fall, I reach for orange with shaded yellow or brown. Same foreground color, different background season.

Try this with each color family in your wardrobe. You might discover that your blue pairs with white in summer but gray in winter. Or that your green works with navy in spring but brown in autumn.

These aren’t random preferences – you’re instinctively responding to the changing environmental background. Once you see this pattern consciously, you can use art composition principles intentionally in your wardrobe planning.