How to keep warm and look cool

Your mother was right. Wear a hat.

People who have had a colour analysis are lucky to have their Season as a compass to point them in the general direction of colours that make their skin radiant, even on the dreariest of winter mornings while waiting for the bus to work or in the check-out line at Waitrose.

And wearing your Season’s colours next to your face makes you look healthy, fresh and radiant. Especially your warmer colours, like terracotta red, deep ochre yellow, softly heathered mango, happy-go-lucky pink, electric coral, antique rose, or blazing scarlet.

I know this from experience, having knit an embarrassingly high number of hats for myself over the years. And I have found that the hats I feel the best in, are the ones in C O L O U R S.

I had a grey hat that I loved because it was merino wool, and in a style that is super comfortable and with an ingenious super warm design. The Leith Hat by Ysolda, if you’re familiar with that knit designer. I featured it in this post.

I have knitted several hats using this pattern, and one was in one of my favourite neutrals, a cool medium grey. Nothing wrong with the grey, but next to my face the grey just didn’t manage to lift my spirits. I felt the appropriate accessory would be shackles and chains, for rattling in an eerie manner as I dragged my left leg.

I do wear lots of neutrals, but I reserve the space next to my face for colour. My current favourite colour is pink. Barbie pink happens to be in my colour palette. I have knitted a Barbie pink cardigan too, I call it my Barbiegan.

This is me in my pink hat. It gives my dark navy winter coat a lift, and I don’t look like a Dickensian ghost.

If you don’t have time to knit, don’t worry. I found some nice merino wool hats for you (scroll for suggestions for all 12 Seasons):