"Anyone who isn't white is put into warm" -- thank you for addressing this, finally! I had never seen a relevant color analysis in my life for my half-arabic biotype before finding those youtube videos. And favorite food is duck.
This really shows how most people don't understand what an undertone even is. No one thinks every dark color in general is yellow-based, so why would every dark skin color be yellow-based? Very strange reasoning.
@@milica8979 I recently learned that many cosmetic companies make foundation/concealer/etc. colors by mixing white, black, red, and/or yellow pigment. This ignores people with olive, blue, and purple undertones who need varying amounts of blue in their foundation. As a dark brown person, my foundations are usually too red. I add blue pigment to make it work, so the suggestions to add green should help for olive undertones.
@@ifetayodavidson-cade5613 Yes, I'm actually a fair European girl with warm olive skin, and I also find that most foundations are too pink/peachy for me. It took me a long time to find foundations that are more golden, but not too dark for my skin.
I need as many OLIVE TONE videos as you can put out!!!! Having just discovered that I’m an African American with olive tone, I need as much help as possible.
Me too, me too! I just made a video with my updated capsule wardrobe taking into account olive warm and delicate if you would find it helpful! th-cam.com/video/ebJMantZnwQ/w-d-xo.html
Jess BeautyLit101 check out Pat McGrath Labs foundations and concealers in the shades Medium 18 and Medium 21 because they have some olive undertones in them. I bought both shades and Medium 18 is best for me during the winter or whenever I'm not in the sun and Medium 21 is best for me during the summer when I'm constantly in the sun. I always need a foundation that has a yellow undertone but the foundation is even more realistic looking if it has a slight olive undertone to it as well.
Video idea: It would be interesting to see different examples where people wear clothing too bright/too muted for their skin tone (but still correct in terms of cool or warm), and in the video you mute/brighten(?) it more and more until it matches the skin tone as close as possible. To show what you talk about the chroma/temperature.
@@Elwyn_the_Weird yes! you and Keapix should wash my video on Mila Kunis if you haven't already, I show that effect of the 'too warm colors' toward the middle end of the video.
I was always typed as a "cool summer" and people put me in bubblegum pinks and mauves and I looked like the cryptkeeper. Lol! I looked in the mirror and always saw a pale yellowish green tint. I thought I had a disease or something because no one ever talked about olive skin in Seventeen magazine during the 90's and early 2000's. Lol! And once I found info about my green skin, people told me I couldn't be olive because olives were always cool. It took me decades to realize that I look best in muted warm colors!
I suddenly remembered that around 2005 I bought a Seventeen magazine which included a lot of girls with different skin tones, hair and eye colors. They assigned each girl one "best" color according to their personal features, and the girl closest to my coloring was not the Latina (as I am), but a South Asian labeled as "olive" wearing an "emerald green" cardigan. I tried different hues of bright, jewel green and looked terrible, but the red and gold colors suggested for the Latina girl looked terrible as well, so I couldn't make sense of it. Looking back, I guess that Seventeen assumed that every olive skin is cool by suggesting emerald green, but I'm warm and that's why it didn't work.
So I tried it and it actually worked, I am warm and delicate, all my life I’ve been told I was cool tone because I am pale. It’s crazy but peach is my new best friends
So true! A lot of Asians think they are warmed toned due to the yellow/brown overtone! And yet, one can be yellowish pale overtone but cool undertone, and vice versa!
timestamps Olive Skin and Color Analysis - 1:13 Warm & Delicate Skin Tones - 7:46 Redheads - 21:34 The problem with most Color Analysis Systems - 23:55 Conclusion - 28:50
Ugh, yes, I keep getting matched to warm-toned foundations because I'm Asian 😭 and then I gotta blend it all the way down to my chest because the foundation's so yellow and my skin can't keep up with the yellow undertones lol
omg awful! try adding green primer to your foundation. if it doesn't work, try again. forget about cool/warm and everything in between when it comes to foundation (sometimes they can be labeled differently anyway). add green primer to a 'warm' foundation......adding it to a 'cool' foundation can sometimes get it to look waaaay too gray, not even like skin.
“Anyone who isn’t white is put into warm or olive.” YESSSS, thank you so much for your videos, they are much needed in an industry dominated by a caucasian viewpoint. I was told my whole life I was warm because I’m east Asian, and of course ‘yellow’ skinned. But I recently discovered (I think) that I am cool and delicate. The investigation continues… but your analysis is truly unique, well researched, and refined. Thank you.
There's a blog post about how we Asians get mistyped coz a specific group of people have a tint of yellow or brown, so people also group fair East Asians as cool toned, and brown Asians as warm toned.
I swear you deserve a Nobel Prize for how you have broken down skin tones, especially olive!!! At 36 years old, being warm and delicate, you helped me finally understand my best colors!! I literally did a huge closet purge after watching your videos. I only wish I would have known this information sooner! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I just posted my newly revamped wardrobe that takes into account warm and delicate if you want to check it out! th-cam.com/video/ebJMantZnwQ/w-d-xo.html
I was told all of my life I was cool when I am actually a warm and delicate with olive skin. In the original "Color Me Beautiful" back in the 80's all olive skin tones were classified as a "Winter". I was told to stay away from browns, beiges and olives because they said they were my worst colors. As it turns out, they are really my best. And I actually finally figured my best colors out from your videos and club. And my favorite food is mangoes. Also pineapple and oranges.
ditto on all fronts. I always come up as a winter but I look so good in muted coppery tones, muted olives, camel, brown...including cool colours as long as they are muted. I just looked at my nails and they are painted a coppery rose gold colour and it flatters me sooo much, but because I also look great in silver I have always been so confused about my undertones!
Thanks! Imagine being super “melanated” (black) but not so black that all cool and bright colors look impactful, and being brown but not warm enough to be flattered in orange or yellow.
Your way of analyzing color has been a game changer for me! I always struggled to find my good colors or even descriptions that sound like. Turns out I’m (drumroll) warm and delicate. Everything makes sense now! Also favorite food: coffee, oat milk latte to be exact ☕️😋
I've had issues for years because I'm so very, very pale. And yet when I look at my reflection in indirect natural light my skin is so clearly... green. I would not suffer God Himself telling me otherwise. Call it olive or call it anemia I will not be challenged. (Pale olives looking for foundation might want to try Nyx bare with me in vanilla nude, although it is quite yellow as well.)
Anemia? You might want to try methylfolate for a few weeks and see if your skin tone changes a bit. I've had anaemia more often than not in my life, which hid my body's reduced ability to process folate. I was olive before and I'm olive now, but I'm a far less grey olive now and I don't look as sickly anymore :D www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326181
If you ladies type in youtube search ‘pale olive’ a makeup artist has that and talks about it a lot and how to color correct foundation yourself. I forgot her name but she has a blond pixie and always has a close up of her face with a solid color background ☺️ Edit: her name is Alexandra Anele
"If you're warm and delicate, the closer a color is to yellow, the more muted it needs to be" this makes perfect logical sense because pure yellow is the brightest color on the color wheel. I really love your color analysis system because it's based on consistent logical thought instead of just repeating certain vague popular ideas
This video is absolute peak Merriam! Gentle, comprehensive rant about skin tone and color featuring a casual scientific description of skin structure and the sky, a thoroughly informed tour of the flaws of other color systems while making a separate point, graph-based visual aids, standing up for Asian and deep skin tones, detail detail detail, this kind of s- is why I subscribe. Never change. From a warm and very delicate olive (and I'm definitely warm and definitely olive!) - you're welcome for all the problems 😂 My favorite food is pasta!
I'm loving these olive skin videos! There's really NO good information about it out there, especially for pale olive skin. I would appreciate so much if you could give some general guidelines on hair color dyes and make up for olive skin tones. As a warm and delicate olive pale skin I find it so hard not to look greenish, I feel very few colours look good on me, but hair and makeup are the hardest...
A few days ago I was watching a video by Audrey Coyne about light olive skin tone here on TH-cam and she was saying that light WARM olive skin tone do not exist. I tried to explain to her that I have light WARM olive skin tone and that she should watch MerriamStyle video about it. She replied to me telling that I was wrong and the her reason was the green screen thing. 🙃
@@ingridrodriguez3273 I don't think Audrey understand in general that there's two tipe of light Olive skin, because in her video she recommends wearing cool and warm tone neutrals.
@@julipana All the misconceptions results in light skin olive people not being able to find foundation shade in most makeup brands. Everyone is talking about "extended shade range" but they are all too peach of pink on me. The only brand at the drug store to have my shade is Revlon and their foundation isn't that good.
@@gabysam2136 Exactly! I'm light warm olive too and I have to choose between my foundation looking horrible after 2 hours or walking around looking like an oompa loompa. And that "wear warm neutrals such as (I don't remember the colors) because they have a cooler base" also doesn't make any sense. They are muted and slightly warm colors, not cool based. Cool based colors are guess what? Cool lol
My cousin calls me "yellow" or "greenish" and that hell of a thruth, peach looks great on me, but also cool pinks, i'm winter and i look good in muted wams, so will take a look on all this things
You're a true expert in color. I find your videos to be the best. I figured out so much about what my colors are because of your videos. Really hated being told that I was warm due to my skin tones when I looked sick. Cool and Radiant really fit! thanks so much!
Yeah, you really hit the jackpot when you realized/created the warm delicate concept. Funny, my sister and I did Color Me Beautiful back in the 80’ as adolescents. I came out as ‘spring’, but always felt attracted to autumn colors, and also found many autumn colors too overpowering. My sister was a mystery, we couldn’t figure out if she was warm or cool! She realized on her own that soft earth tones are her thing. We are both warm and delicate after all!
I cannot thank you enough and the olive skin community on reddit for this type of content. It affected my self esteem sooo much not knowing what to wear and thinking that my skin looked ugly and sick because I did everything wrong. Now I'm learning what complements my skin complexion and I feel so confident in my skin!
Yes! All my childhood I was paranoid I never washed myself correctly. My mum used to tell me to go and wash myself again in the bath because I looked dirty. In the winter I'd be told how ill and pasty I looked. Then, in summer, she'd accuse me of being dirty again. Now, at almost 50, I understand I am a light olive with teal blue eyes.
Same, i have always thought all my life my skin looks ugly and sick and still think. I’m also pale, so i look pale green - grey, im european. If there was a plastic surgery solution to make skin redder/pinkier/orangier id pay a lot for it. In some lightning and photos my skin looked legit like i was very ill. Even doctors sometimes commented on it and said to do some blood tests 😂 Let alone, other people commented on my skin too since childhood because it differed from other people noticeably and was clearly not good looking. It’s one of my most pervasive and earliest insecurities about myself
Eva Mendes made me remember something. When I was in middle school in the '90s my mother bought me a silver-blue frost lipstick that looked super cool and cyber, but also very separate. Next year she bought me a Bourjois bronze-copper metallic lipstick (kinda like Eva's first dress) that was super flattering for me; it had a studded ring around the bullet and apparently was discontinued, which is a shame. Since I couldn't find a close dupe I turned to gold makeup when I wanted metallic, but it also looked a bit separate. Last year I went looking for a lipstick similar to my coveted Bourjois, but they're all too golden or too coppery/red. I'd say it's between M.A.C. Bronze Shimmer and CB 96. Being warm, delicate and olive means I need *that* perfect metallic blended shade to suit me. My favorite food is ice cream. Not really "food" food, but I still love it.
Your diagram is one of the most intelligent explanations I have ever seen on skin tone. And, yes, chocolate is definitely a food, as it has antioxidants and nutritional value! My favorite is peanut butter.
I knew I was warm this video on olive undertones totally explains why my skin works as warm and delicate - peach v pink, rose gold and pearl.....cream not optic white....my perfect black has a brownish thing going on ....Yet for a warm person you would not believe how awful I look in saturated intense colors eg bright canary yellow makes me look ill; Value is important too: I have light skin, dark brown hair and hazel eyes. the light skin introduces the whole dimension of value or contrast.....I think this may be why I can look good in the right blues especially saturated ones! Anyway your analysis makes a lot of sense to me. I love your channel! Thanks
Being olive and not tan it's a pain! The time I need to be walking around clothes that really suit me and the pain I feel when a certain piece isn't the right color, olive is such a difficult color to work with.
Exactly! I was born with very red-leaning strawberry blonde hair (that washes my skin out, and has thankfully darkened as I've grown older) and fair cool-olive skin. People liked to put warm colors and pastels on me as a teenager. Not a good combination.
@@screamtoasigh9984 redhead roots can appear a touch on the brown side, if you're looking through a thick layer of the hair (angled towards you). I have brown hair with quite a bit of red in it, and people have said that my roots are plain brown for the same reason.
Yes that’s possible ! There’s a lot of red hair olive skin girls , her videos are theories not facts , dna , genes and how your body produces melanin plays a huge part of your skin tone and also to keep it short everyone has Atleast some red pigment in their body since our body does produce red melanin.
Here’s what I posted earlier to someone else .If you have green hue into your skin you are olive ! End of story doesn’t matter what clothing or what looks good on you . This is what I disagree with her . DNA and genetics play a huge role with creating skin tone , eye color and hair . In Middle East we have tons of red hair girls with olive skin , in Afghanistan you’ll see tons of girl with auburn hair or red hair with very olive skin , no clothing is going to make them less olive . Also we all have red melanin in our body ! The thing is also our melanin plays a huge role in our skin tone and pigments . We may have certain tones in our eyes or skin that maybe different form our hair and then also with our dna and genes it’s going to come our different also since human been breeding with different races for years . You’ll see dark skin with blue eyes and warm skin . It’s possible . There’s a TH-cam who has dominant red and olive skin and her channel is Susan Elias couture she did a video on this doing her color test . Yes it’s all possible . Merriam makes these claims but doesn’t have any facts or anything to back it up and this is where I disagree with her . It’s all theories and analysis. While it’s great to learn on theories , it’s not facts . That’s why I like going I depth with science . There’s this Reddit page called olive mua . That may help you a lot .
Well articulated. Lately I've been thinking that like olive skin, translucent skin is misunderstood. My skin is very fair and translucent, yet I can't wear the same colors as someone who is as pale and fair, but has thicker, more matte skin. Having had many professional analysis, I've been told I am a spring, soft autumn, deep autumn & summer, while my hair dresser says winter. One person told me I had olive skin, but no way. I think my skin looked yellow that day from wearing warm colors. My theory is maybe with its see through quality, translucent skin is cool. With a tan, it cold then be either. You touched upon this in another video. Meanwhile, I look dreadful in muted olive, and get compliments in purple and clear blue, but have a hard time with most colors. I think in determining the best colors for individuals with translucent skin, color consultants default primarily to hair and eye color. Then they put the client in the "season" that suits those secondary features. Incidentally, many red haired people have translucent skin like me ( often with freckles), and therefore generally are placed on the warm spectrum.
thank you for this comment! i would say translucent skin is most likely cool and radiant like you're sort of hinting. the surface tones could look warm (like the freckles and parts near the freckles), but the most even aspect of the skin is the translucent pink/cool aspect. and it's ironic that one of the few instances 'surface tones aka in the color analysis world as 'overtones'' are useful they aren't used properly! most redheads are truly not warm. it's all fun and games until you put a cool redhead in chiffon yellow. :p
Sounds like we have the same skin "colour" except I'm pure black. As in eyes hair and skin. But yes I can take solid colours splendidly. While there is a strange perception that black people can wear bubblegum pink. I look like walking dead in that. I have literally have to fight to keep that away from me. Now where is that gold.
I also have translucent yellow skin!!! My freckles appear under the sun and my face tabs very easily, but the rest of my body is very pale, but with this strange yellow colour i could never identify before. To make things even harder, i was a very blond child with golden highlights. I became a dirty blond. But i started dyeing my hair very early because my hair colour looked too Dull on me Now my hair keeps looking copper because of all the layers of dye. But i know that warm hair is ugly on me. Cold red, purple and brown hair were the only colors i could pull off and I've tried dozens of colors. Thank you for writing this comment.
Thanks for touching on the olive skin. I can still not determine what my colors are because nothing suits my skin tone, I know I'm soft / delicate /muted but can't figure out if I'm warm or cool I see colors clashing my skintone a lot and the grey in my medium skin appear more prominent in most of the colors against my skin. Another thing is that my face appears cooler than the rest of my body which is on the warmer side. My favourite food is burger
nina abbas Sounds so like me. My face doesn’t support warm colors, not even copper. I have to use pink based neutrals. On the other hand, you could be like me which is warm and delicate but very close to neutral. Some warm and delicates can wear terracota for example and others don’t (I can’t)
Same here! Warm&delicate pale olive. My face is really pale-greenish, and my body looks more yellowish but still greenish. Most colors overpower me. Pure white, black and all bright shades are a big NO for me. For makeup, the only colors I find that kind of suit my face are muted peaches, beige and taupe. And I recently found out mixing different shades of blush and bronze powder suits surprisingly good. But colorful eyeshadow or lipstick make me easily look like a clown...
Yes that's the point, to trust our eyes not general rules.. I have always thought that.. I have olive skin tone and both some cool and warm colours suit me perfectly.. I was so confused until I watch your video.. thank you so much
This literally is the video that makes the most sense on all of TH-cam right now. Favorite food? That's gotta be a good bowl of noodle soup! Or lemon bars, dairy-free
I could never get matched at makeup counters properly because I was always labeled "warm"! Just found out I'm olive and the whole world of makeup and clothing colors is making so much more sense! I'm having trouble discerning what type of olive I am, but I'm sure a little bit more research will clear it up for me!
You are so far, the one channel I trust about color analisis. I look so foward when you make videos about it and try tô discover the undertones, including mine. Dried meat 😁
This is going to sound crazy, but I adjust my skin tone a bit to suit more colors. I'm light, around neutral and (not too) vibrant olive. (my best colors are Turquoise, vibrant blood red, warm khaki, optic white, khaki-leaning-camel, fuchsia, cold gold and muted-cool-gray-leaning-night-blue) And when I eat a few carrots a day, this makes my skin have a little bit more orange in it, which results in my skin being a bit more warm and easier to dress. So even what you eat or if you tan will have an effect on your skin color. Oh and I look dead in colors like soft cool muted pink, mauve, royal blue, too vibrant greens, vibrant orange, 'nude' that leans to pink, camel that leans too much to red, ivory, lavender and egg shell brown (real eggs). I also call my skin 'muted citrus olive'. :')
Super video, I am warm and delicate who has been on a loooong journey of finding my colours. I might be an olive to. I stop trusting my eyes a long time ago, but now slowly learn to trust them again. It’s difficult to know where the border is with too warm and too greyed out colours . Love to see a video on tips how to combine warm and delicate colours .
Thank you for making these videos! I have found that I am a cool and delicate olive skin tone. It’s confusing but the muted colors look great on me. These videos are so helpful. Thank you!
I'm italian & mexican. Olive, neutral/cool. Deep winter. Clear, bright. Theatrical romantic. This took hours and hours of videos to figure out but damn is it worth it. I feel so much more secure in myself and when shopping for investment pieces. Growing up id always compare myself to blonde haired blue eyed soft chroma girls and wonder why i look so bad in comparison when "copying" what they wear, and of course thinking it was me that was the problem. Its such a relief to realize how wrong this mindset was and having science/ color theory to back it up now. Thank you Merriam for what you're doing! It can really help people in so many ways.
“Calling her a cool olive is like saying she is a wet fire” 🤣 I love your explanations! I hope to see you back soon with some new sassy videos for us to learn from and chuckle to! xx
You have address the biggest issue with color analysis. The typical palettes for those who are delicate lack colors in darker tones for deeper chroma. So they automatically rule out people with deep features (hair and eyes) even though color analysis is suppose to be about skin. Because I have dark hair and eyes with tan skin, I shouldn’t be able to wear the light spring or light summer palettes. My hair is not mousy nor eyes hazy to even to fathom the soft autumn or soft summer palettes. So that leaves the richest of autumn, the brightest of spring and the darkest of winter. I never thought I was olive but this olive series probably applies to me because I have not been able to figure out my season for years. 😆 Personally, those bright warm colors of spring make me look muted. When I wear coral, I look sun burnt and coral too. The rich burnished colors of autumn make me look muddy and weird. Winter brights and deeps makes me look a little pale, but I look more normal. I have been online analyzed as Dark Autumn and even told that I’m bright instead of muted. None of these analysis are working. My affinity toward soft peaches and light pinks makes me think you are talking to me about olive skin. I don’t see the green in my skin. I recently took pictures on an overcast day with a digital camera with the white balance manually set. I look like I have a gray film over my skin. Is this the infamous olive?
So interesting! Thank you for making such great content and I really hope you didn't take my video personally. I never meant to make you feel personally targeted and I'm so so sorry if you did xx
I really liked your video better although . There’s some things on this video I really disagreed on especially when she said redhead can’t be olive skinned when I met plenty of redhead with olive undertones , they fall under the same rules or points that applies to olive skin people . That’s like saying warmer tones can’t have blue eyes or green eyes can’t have cool skin because of the whole “opposite thing “ when there’s plenty of people like that .There’s many other genetics and tones that play in your body . I think she’s also making a lot of theories and not enough evidence or facts . I’m also light skin olive but I tend to agree on something’s and some just put me off . This seems more opinions than facts .
Merriam, I have noticed that the majority of makeup products in the last 5 years have been targeting warm tones. Every freaking palette has oranges, copper, yellows, reds etc. Like 95% of eyeshadow palettes for example. This to me suggests that actually the majority of people is warm and that’s why is financially smarter to sell those colors. I never buy palettes because I can’t use any warm color in my eyes whatsoever.
Di :3 I think it might be because more women are self tanning and want a golden goddess look. I can’t find many beauty channels that have features like mine (dark hair/eyes and fair skin) because SO many of them fake tan.
Brandi Davis That makes sense! I am a light-medium tone but when I tan (naturally) I look grey😂 It’s even worse due to the fact that I am Hispanic but I don’t look like the stereotypical latina at all😒
I've read terrible reviews about the ABH Subculture palette, but have you tried those colors? Do they flatter you? I think I can't remember a single beauty blogger who looked genuinely good, but most of them are warm or have fake golden tans.
Once again I refer to this video. Absolutely the best on this topic, you’re very knowledgeable. I’m not a color analyst exactly but as a painter, my color theory thought process is very close to yours. In my opinion, chroma and saturation are indeed more “important” than hue itself, for the longest time people have been neglecting their importance in this field.
Olive cools are really the most challenging. I am warm and delicate but on the end of the spectrum towards cool, why I say this? Because terracota makes me look dead but salmon pink is awesome. A cooler olive green would look much better on me than a warm. Cool and delicate colors actually look good on me with a cool toned blush and lip color. I have been confused my whole life having this literal green cast with blue/purplish veins. My favorite food is almost all food😂 but I have a massive weakness for Persian food.
@@di3486 agree with everything u said. Im delicate cool and it is a struggle finding right make up. Ohhh dont mention Persian food...i have major cravings cause i love it and here in Serbia we dont have it 😢
OMG! I have a struggle with looking grey easily... Never heard of cool and delicate, all analises and it looks like I'm a winter, but actually the strong winter colors are way too strong, I always like more muted colors 😄
It absolutely drives me nuts when people take eye colour and natural hair colour into consideration when trying to determine undertones. It's nice and romantic to think that those are determining factors but nature is not always predictable in how your colouration will turn out as to whether they will end up looking harmonious together. There is a reason why some celebrity have transformative makeovers when they dye their hair a colour that complements them more. Sometimes that happens when putting on coloured contacts as well. Keeping those natural factors into consideration before figuring out undertones first will just muddle things up. It's after youve determined undertone that you should keep those features in mind because it's just much easier to incorporate it in a colour pallete as a non-negotiable colour swatch to design around, at least until they make the choice to change it for themselves. Some people like their natural hair colour and want to keep it, and as stylists or colour analysts one has to respect those wishes.
eye, hair and skin colour can be any combination that you have inherited from different people. The one exception is that for blondes, the hair gene is linked to eye colour. But that's complicated and not important. Nevertheless nature does give you a combination that is in harmony. And yes you can't change your skin undertone so your clothes colours do have to centre around that. Once you've determined the undertone and season the hair and eye colour serves as confirmation and to decide the best colours in palette or subgroup within a season
I never knew it was possible to be a medium deep, or deep olive? Please explain more 🙏🏾. I’m neither warm, cool or neutral…I struggle to find my shade. Even neutrals sometimes show up differently. This is so intriguing … I look best in *ROSE* gold.
This explains so much! I'm pale olive, and recently discovered that I have more yellow in my skin, so you would think that warm looks good on me. But gold eyeshadow is not flattering, rather it's muted and even cool colors. But then gold jewelry looks better 🤷♀️ honestly it's so confusing sometimes
I find that clothing stores carry mostly warm tones. You will see a dress in cream, olive green, beige and black. If you don't want black you are out of luck if you are cool-toned. As a result you end up wearing black all the time. Or you are stuck with the warm tones and it doesn't look good.
These olive skin tone videos have been so helpful! Thank you. I would love if you could talk about makeup colors that are suitable for olive skin, too. Every blush and lip color I try looks so intense and overwhelming on me, even when I apply them lightly. I've wasted so much money trying to find lip/blush colors that flatter me, and I still feel like I've barely found any.
I'm a very pale olive and my hair (brown) and eyes (dark olive) are deep. By seasonal coloring I'm a deep/dark winter but I recently noticed that gold works so much better on me rather then silver and off white is better then true white. I'm definitely not autumn since warm browns and yellow looks awful on me. I suppose im a soft winter (going by 16 seasonal coloring analysis) so I have some scheme to follow when buying clothes/ accessories. For foundation there's still not much hope for me but hoping things will change soon. I'm kinda struggling with lipsticks. I usually wear cranberry shades but I want more shades to work with... 😥
Maybe if they're non-white. My youngest niece for example has medium-dark red auburn hair & medium-deep golden olive warm skin (& to make things trickier, cool, dark grey-blue eyes). Her older sister is very fair, green eyed, warm golden olive with strawberry blonde hair. We're mixed with everything under the sun though so color analysis gets very complicated 😅.
Another brilliant video , thank you I have this awkard difficult skin, this is helpful .it is completely spot on about muting colours as they get warmer. Before I did this it would make me doubt my colouring. And cool and delicate is indeed a better choice than domr high chroma warms. I think it works better too, with Cyan magenta yellow black. Those toner colours seem to be base. Otherwise I think we would use green ink red ink blue ink etc
Heeey, I'm pretty sure I'm olive skin tone although I'm still confused if I'm warm and delicate or cool and delicate. Anyway, any of you guys have tips for buying foundations??? I feel like a yellow undertone in a foundation would match me better than a pink one but I still feel like the end result is toooo yellow
Mix green primer or green color corrector into foundation. It'll up your foundation game by a million. If it seems off, try again with a different foundation, it might take some playing around, but trust, it works.
It is so hard to explain to people (even makeup consultants) that I am olive skin, with a medium yellow in skin. I look so faded in soft warm colors, but ok in extremely deep, bright warm colors. In the last years I try to by warm autumn colors because they look good on me without make up. But I'm in love with colors and make-up, so I'm using both of them to create a balance. For example I fell in love with a dark blue cold-shoulder dress, & when I wear it I feel the need for a bright, full of joy rosy - peach lipstick & blush and champagne highlighter. I do the same, using make up with warm spring (because I love those colors). Regarding food, I love to cook and eat, but if I will have to choose a last meal it will be a fresh baked sourdough bread with the most delicious butter and flaky salt.
Thank you for making the distinction between warm and cool olive skin tones!! It explained why I struggled so much to find colours that suited me to wear as clothes & lipstick. I believe I have cool olive skin. My favourite food is ham & pineapple pizza!
yes if they're truly green, then you're warm. of course there are always exceptions. but if they're teal, you could be cool and delicate, and if they're blue, it doesn't tell you anything. if they're purple then those veins are just little don't worry.
Merriam Style I have one green vein and one purple vein next to each other on my inner wrist. There is literally no test that could’ve told me what you explain so well in your color theory!
@@exhater7820 yes sorry i forgot to say that if you don't have enough pigment they could be teal if you're warm and delicate too. the vein test is most accurate if they're truly green, then you know you're warm, but otherwise you could still have blue veins if your wrists are light enough. i actually have a video on the vein test too.
@@merriamstyle I am a little on the darker side I guess I do have pigment? Lol this will be a hard task for me I think I'll watch your videos all over again .
Another big issue to address is how societies /cultures /fashion drags you to the wrong color analysis or choices of makeup /clothing. In the west there's this idea that a golden hue/tan is the meaning of beauty and cool undertones are pushed to "warm up"... In Asia or Middle East or Africa there's a passion for lighter pinkish tones (in some cases also a light yellow hue is appreciated) and people are pushed to be lighter,cooler and adding pinkish tones... Usually in the culture preferring lighter pinkish skin people perceive that all colors look good on that skin and especially the tones that make it even more pale, basically the wrong match for everybody everywhere. A lot of confusion and preferences. At this point is better to say "to look more yellow wear this, to look less yellow wear that colors or to look lighter or darker or more pink wear the other colors"....
I feel like I finally need to say this . If you have green hue into your skin you are olive ! End of story doesn’t matter what clothing or what looks good on you . This is what I disagree with her . DNA and genetics play a huge role with creating skin tone , eye color and hair . In Middle East we have tons of red hair girls with olive skin , in Afghanistan you’ll see tons of girl with auburn hair or red hair with very olive skin , no clothing is going to make them less olive . Also we all have some red melanin in our body ! Depending on the level of phemelanin , The thing is also our melanin plays a huge role in our skin tone and pigments . We may have certain tones in our eyes or skin that maybe different from our hair and then also with our dna and genes it’s going to come out different also since human been breeding with different races for years . You’ll see dark skin with blue eyes and warm skin . It’s possible . There’s a TH-cam who has dominant red and olive skin and her channel is Susan Elias couture she did a video on this doing her color test . Yes it’s all possible . Merriam makes these claims but doesn’t have any facts or anything to back it up and this is where I disagree with her . It’s all theories and analysis. While it’s great to learn on theories , it’s not facts . That’s why I like going I depth with science . I also think this video is great for people who need help on fashion and style but it’s not me really trying to bash her but I just really disagree with that statement also because she gets passive aggressive .
Good point. I feel that representative sampling (which is science lol) is crucial to figure this out and have a better system. The only redheads that are commonly used as examples are those like Julianne Moore and those with ginger hair. The people you mentioned are unfortunately not paid attention to and not commonly shown in mainstream (US/euro-centric) internet space. As a result, I personally have not seen anyone from Middle East, South America, and South Asia with natural red (as in red, not brunette with hints of red) hair and olive skin since the red usually comes from a hair color choice (by using henna, dye, or by not toning the hair with purple/blue shampoo after lightening the hair). It would be lovely if you name some examples who we can use as references? But I do understand that these natural redhead and olive-skinned people do exist, as you said. I look warm olive but when I lighten my hair (wihtout toner/additional hair dye) or spend too much time under the sun, my hair “naturally”appears a deep red. It amplifies the fact that I appear olive, but I dont look gray unlike what Merriam said. Maybe with a lighter shade of red, I would look gray, idk. I feel that looking at someone’s hair isn’t very useful to describe the skin for me at least. The hair is a feature. to me, skin comes first. I agree that science is important but is more useful and practical to enthusiasts and manufacturers of clothing and beauty products. The responsibility is on the manufacturers & brands, I think, to make more nuanced colors and variety to actually serve whatever population they are targeting. But for the average person who isn’t passionate enough to deep dive into color theory, fabric draping to test which colors look best is fine and is more concrete. 😊
@@ave_rie I reccamend you look up people from Afghanistan and Middle East and look up regular people , it’s actually common to have red hair and olive skin over there although a lot of them are also multi toned with red , brown and golden . Celebraties at times can be misleading since some of them Add different tones in their body or fake tan .My aunt actually have red hair with very olive skin . Everything olive tone matches her the best and you are right skin comes first when it comes to matching stuff like foundation and things close to your skin tone . The thing is and my hair stylists told me when you hair has high melanin it’s usually a red color . Usually red in the pheomelanin is the most melanin side and from the eumelanin black or dark brown is the most . The levels and the genes alter everything . I don’t like fabric testing it still doesn’t determine skin tone however I will say it balances and contrast to your skin but it doesn’t determine your skin tone . I say makeup helps the best because the point is to use a foundation that matches your skin and then using mixers and everything helps it as well . I recommend you watch Robert Welsh video on Undertone , he helps a lot saying it’s more what your skin needs as in studying your skin tone and color and see how to get it . Also I dyed my hair a ginger red before and I never had problems with my skin turning gray . It can be a complementary color depending on the spectrum of olive . Aly art made a video and it explained why like some gingery tones can compliment olive tones .
I think you maybe missed the point. Of course if you have green in your skin, rather than predominant red, you are olive. The point though is that olive can be warm or cool. The warm (yellow) to cool (blue) axis applies to those with olive skin as much as it applies to those with pink/red skin. Both green and red can have different amounts of yellow or blue, leaning warm or cool, respectively.
@@stephanien6237 Um I do know that , what point did I miss , never did I claim olive can’t be warm or cool . We are talking about people whose hair are red and have olive skin which yes it’s there are people out there just because you don’t see it’s common doesn’t mean it’s not . I do know there’s warm or cool olive . I am a cool olive myself . I don’t think you read my comment at all ? Your claims has nothing do to with what I wrote ?
Merriam, I was so happy to see a new video on this channel! And when I saw it was half an hour long... JOY! I love when you take the time to explain complex things in detail s2
I just recently found your channel and thank you so so so much for talking about the fact that almost all color analysis are centered on white people.!! As someone with olive skin tone all the videos I saw about undertones were very confusing. Thank you for making it more comprehensible! :)
Hi Merriam I think your the only one! I FOUND BECAUSE OF YOU THE I AM WARM AND DELICATE PERSON! Thank you so much after all this time searching which color palette was good on me and never found my answer. Keep going your work your the best I never watch! love you xxx oh my favorite food is wine with cheese and cookies because it's just so good
I enjoyed this! I do not have olive skin but I am warm and delicate and I have been typed as both winter and autumn in the past. Finally I know my colours and it's such a relief. I've edited this to add that this might be my favourite of all your videos. It's brilliantly presented.
What I understand from the vid is that it doesn't matter if you are Caucasian, Black, Asian, Latino, Arab or whatever, you can be cool or warm, whether radiant or delicate.
Another thing I think some redheads are typed as olive is because (in my theory) the red-green balance is a spectrum, just like yellow-blue balance (temperature) You can be bright or muted close to neutral, where the two colors meet and become gray in both balances, so an "olive" redhead is not that they are actually olive, it's just they're not red enough to that color be clearly noticeable in the skin, so they look paler to the more pinky redheads, so you can be a bright red or delicate red, or bright olive or delicate olive, why? Again: spectrum in all the balances. All colors have spectrums, including value and chroma or saturation, so there's no exception with the red-green balance
My favorite food is chocolate too! (Although, I did not have it for breakfast... I am on my third cup of coffee watching your color videos!”🤪) You color analysis of Olive skin tones is BRILLANT! Thank you for the diagram! I take notes while replaying segments and the diagram really helped! I love the “Artistic License Language”; “Underlying Tones” instead of under tones, under the skin (leaning towards yellow, blue, green and red). It the underlying tones causing skin bias. “Surface Tones” instead of overtones- the actual perceived color, degrees of “chroma brownness”- ivory, beige, brown, dark brown. Sorry, I’m a kinesthetic, visual learner... writing it out helps me learn it! I think I got it? If you made it to the end of this comment, please feel free to grade it.🤓 If you haven’t done an analysis of “Warm & Radiant Olive” yet (maybe I haven’t found it yet), can you please do one? Science in your defense: Blood is always red- oxygenated blood is bright red, deoxygenated blood is dark red. “Veins look blue because light has to penetrate the skin to illuminate them, blue and red light (being of different wave lengths) penetrate with different degrees of success. What makes it back to your eye is the blue light.” - LIVESCIENCE
Thank you for this. I sense a bit of reticence in your deep dive into olive, but (1) I love people who nerd out on their passions; (2) accurate language is super important; (3) articulating nuance is super important, especially for people who literally want to feel more comfortable in their skin, and makeup and clothing colors can facilitate this, so knowing how to see and knowing what you are is so helpful; and (4) a system and terminology that is INCLUSIVE -- thank you!!! It's helpful psychologically and financially, no more wasting money on things that society tells you to buy just because something looks better on someone of a completely different surface and underlying skin tone. Home-whipped heavy cream, to which a touch of coconut oil, cinnamon, and vanilla extract is added; it's almost like ice cream but without the sugar and it's great in coffee and with frozen berries.
TEX-MEX! omg I miss it. Really enjoyed this, it made sense. I'd love to see more examples of deep olive skintones like Kebede, because that can be especially difficult for me to discern.
Omg! Your videos are simply the best when it comes to colouring! Really! Before I could never understand my skin tone! The struggle of everybody telling me I am warm but then I look good in pink and light blue
I was told I had an olive skin tone my whole life. I’m pretty sure I do I look really good in olive green though and light pink colors seem to wash me out unless it’s a nude pink or maybe nude brown. I think I look better in a cream white color instead of a bright white. My eyes are medium brown color not dark not too light
Kelly Nicole You sound like me. Have you tried peach or rose gold? I can’t do bright peach, but a muted soft peach looks nice. You’re probably a warm and delicate.
An olive skin tone is often mistaken as warm when it is usually a cool undertone with a warm overtone. I was analyzed as a winter in seasonal color analysis and most of my friends with the same coloring are also winters. Warm colors make my skin look too yellow and sickly!
Ok, first and foremost, 90% cacao chocolate is my favorite: it feeds my acerbic side ;) Second, as a fellow INTJ, your explanation is true to form. You are extremely thorough and know your subject inside and out. It is also obvious that you take pleasure in teaching it to those who want to learn. Third, knowing I am a Dramatic CR (your first Dramatic client), changed my life. Everyone should get Merriam’s consult. It is worth every penny. I never thought I would like hot pink, but seeing how it really lights up my face, I have several items in that color now and have come to love it. By the way, Merriam, I know you are cool and delicate, but I still want to say you look radiant in your vids, meaning you look truly fabulous! Thank you for sharing what you’ve learned. It is really informative.
I feel like olive skin tones are the people version of that dress from 2014/2015 that was white and gold or blue and black 😂
Haha! True
Nice
Omg yes
Nice one! We are mystical!
😂😂😂
The olive tone struggle: I look like a porcelain doll when it's winter, I look like another race when it's summer. 🙃
So trueee
This struggle is so real….
Winter: Oh, you must be Irish.
Summer: Do you have Latin ancestry?
Im Irish/French
@@Awall79 i'm french descendant & italian 😂
@@mrswagaswaga My mother is French and she is olive too, but a bit darker than me. French ancestry must have a lot of olive in the dna.
🙂 Indeed
I really wish makeup companies would make pale olive shades, all of my foundations are so yellow
@Sylvie Kb Oh I didnt know that even existed thank you!
You should check out the subreddit ‘OliveMUA.’ There are lots of makeup recommendations from other ladies with olive skin 😊
THANKS!! YES! I’m a very pale olive toned girl and my foundation options are usually a bit too pink or too yellow/orangey for me
EX1 cosmetics specializes in olive skin! Their foundation was honestly life-changing
Dr Jart cicarepair colour corrector, when you warm it up it goes olive-ish skin tone colour but pale
"Anyone who isn't white is put into warm" -- thank you for addressing this, finally! I had never seen a relevant color analysis in my life for my half-arabic biotype before finding those youtube videos. And favorite food is duck.
This really shows how most people don't understand what an undertone even is. No one thinks every dark color in general is yellow-based, so why would every dark skin color be yellow-based? Very strange reasoning.
Charlotte Tilbury is an example of a brand that assumes this.
Milica yeah dark skin can have yellow, red, neutral, olive or blue undertones
@@milica8979 I recently learned that many cosmetic companies make foundation/concealer/etc. colors by mixing white, black, red, and/or yellow pigment. This ignores people with olive, blue, and purple undertones who need varying amounts of blue in their foundation. As a dark brown person, my foundations are usually too red. I add blue pigment to make it work, so the suggestions to add green should help for olive undertones.
@@ifetayodavidson-cade5613 Yes, I'm actually a fair European girl with warm olive skin, and I also find that most foundations are too pink/peachy for me. It took me a long time to find foundations that are more golden, but not too dark for my skin.
I need as many OLIVE TONE videos as you can put out!!!! Having just discovered that I’m an African American with olive tone, I need as much help as possible.
Dani Le'jai dark skin with olive undertones unite! I have yellow undertones with slight olive undertones in my skin tone especially during the winter.
jrmetmoi me too! If you have not checked out nars foundation or the “c” series of Mac foundation they have good colors for us!
Jess BeautyLit101 📝
Me too, me too! I just made a video with my updated capsule wardrobe taking into account olive warm and delicate if you would find it helpful! th-cam.com/video/ebJMantZnwQ/w-d-xo.html
Jess BeautyLit101 check out Pat McGrath Labs foundations and concealers in the shades Medium 18 and Medium 21 because they have some olive undertones in them. I bought both shades and Medium 18 is best for me during the winter or whenever I'm not in the sun and Medium 21 is best for me during the summer when I'm constantly in the sun.
I always need a foundation that has a yellow undertone but the foundation is even more realistic looking if it has a slight olive undertone to it as well.
Video idea: It would be interesting to see different examples where people wear clothing too bright/too muted for their skin tone (but still correct in terms of cool or warm), and in the video you mute/brighten(?) it more and more until it matches the skin tone as close as possible. To show what you talk about the chroma/temperature.
Yesssss!!!!!
Us warm and delicates causing confusion 😋 I wore cool colours for ages, because bright warms didn’t look right on me.
same! cool colours look much better on me than bright warms, but I recently discovered that coppery and camel tones look so good on me.
@@Elwyn_the_Weird yes! you and Keapix should wash my video on Mila Kunis if you haven't already, I show that effect of the 'too warm colors' toward the middle end of the video.
Off the subject but what Kibbe body type is Heidi Klum and Jennifer Garner? Thank you M.
Helen I’m no expert, but I’d guess FN for Jennifer. I think FN is also a common type for super-models?
@@Alabastergirl they both soft natural kibbe verifed😊
I was always typed as a "cool summer" and people put me in bubblegum pinks and mauves and I looked like the cryptkeeper. Lol! I looked in the mirror and always saw a pale yellowish green tint. I thought I had a disease or something because no one ever talked about olive skin in Seventeen magazine during the 90's and early 2000's. Lol! And once I found info about my green skin, people told me I couldn't be olive because olives were always cool. It took me decades to realize that I look best in muted warm colors!
I suddenly remembered that around 2005 I bought a Seventeen magazine which included a lot of girls with different skin tones, hair and eye colors. They assigned each girl one "best" color according to their personal features, and the girl closest to my coloring was not the Latina (as I am), but a South Asian labeled as "olive" wearing an "emerald green" cardigan. I tried different hues of bright, jewel green and looked terrible, but the red and gold colors suggested for the Latina girl looked terrible as well, so I couldn't make sense of it. Looking back, I guess that Seventeen assumed that every olive skin is cool by suggesting emerald green, but I'm warm and that's why it didn't work.
@@rdpcl omg! If you ever see that copy of Seventeen, keep it away from me. my trigger 'warm, cool, olive, deep'.
@@merriamstyle 😂🙈
Exactly the same for me
My skin looks unhealthy too, i used to think green and gray tones in it are a sign of bad health😂
So I tried it and it actually worked, I am warm and delicate, all my life I’ve been told I was cool tone because I am pale. It’s crazy but peach is my new best friends
Monse Mares Tapia same for me. I’m fair/light skinned but warm and delicate colors are best for me. I believe I have a peach undertone
so happy. :')
Same here! My skin is very very fair but I look best in warm browns, coppers, peaches. I LOVE peach blush. Anything cool toned makes me look awful.
the very palest skins are redheads, and they are either Spring or Autumn.
So true! A lot of Asians think they are warmed toned due to the yellow/brown overtone! And yet, one can be yellowish pale overtone but cool undertone, and vice versa!
timestamps
Olive Skin and Color Analysis - 1:13
Warm & Delicate Skin Tones - 7:46
Redheads - 21:34
The problem with most Color Analysis Systems - 23:55
Conclusion - 28:50
Loving all the olive skintone content!
Ugh, yes, I keep getting matched to warm-toned foundations because I'm Asian 😭 and then I gotta blend it all the way down to my chest because the foundation's so yellow and my skin can't keep up with the yellow undertones lol
Related! lol
I literally hate getting matched by other people lol they always just immediately go for the yellow foundations because I'm Asian.
If you are Hispanic, they tell you the same BS! Lol
omg awful! try adding green primer to your foundation. if it doesn't work, try again. forget about cool/warm and everything in between when it comes to foundation (sometimes they can be labeled differently anyway). add green primer to a 'warm' foundation......adding it to a 'cool' foundation can sometimes get it to look waaaay too gray, not even like skin.
Girl same here!!!!!
“This mysticism of undertones and overtones”. Great job logically identifying the issue at hand
“Anyone who isn’t white is put into warm or olive.” YESSSS, thank you so much for your videos, they are much needed in an industry dominated by a caucasian viewpoint. I was told my whole life I was warm because I’m east Asian, and of course ‘yellow’ skinned. But I recently discovered (I think) that I am cool and delicate. The investigation continues… but your analysis is truly unique, well researched, and refined. Thank you.
There's a blog post about how we Asians get mistyped coz a specific group of people have a tint of yellow or brown, so people also group fair East Asians as cool toned, and brown Asians as warm toned.
I swear you deserve a Nobel Prize for how you have broken down skin tones, especially olive!!! At 36 years old, being warm and delicate, you helped me finally understand my best colors!! I literally did a huge closet purge after watching your videos. I only wish I would have known this information sooner! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Same!!!
Yeah, same. Finally
I just posted my newly revamped wardrobe that takes into account warm and delicate if you want to check it out! th-cam.com/video/ebJMantZnwQ/w-d-xo.html
I’m a cool bright olive skin tone, I only have one complain, olive skin tones tend to scar easily 🙁
yep, keloid city here.
Yes 😭 any scratch, cut or burn stays with me for either years or - forever!
Yeah, rosacea team here
You have an excuse to act like a princess and so do I. 👑 ✨🍃
@@Natalie98798 same 😭
I was told all of my life I was cool when I am actually a warm and delicate with olive skin. In the original "Color Me Beautiful" back in the 80's all olive skin tones were classified as a "Winter". I was told to stay away from browns, beiges and olives because they said they were my worst colors. As it turns out, they are really my best. And I actually finally figured my best colors out from your videos and club. And my favorite food is mangoes. Also pineapple and oranges.
ditto on all fronts. I always come up as a winter but I look so good in muted coppery tones, muted olives, camel, brown...including cool colours as long as they are muted. I just looked at my nails and they are painted a coppery rose gold colour and it flatters me sooo much, but because I also look great in silver I have always been so confused about my undertones!
Super Confident You This sounds like me! Sometimes when I wear cool colours my skin just looks green.
I look green in them too. Cool pastel pinks and blues are just not doable for me.
Snap! Same skin...and mangoes :)
same !! We have cursed skin tone :D
Thanks! Imagine being super “melanated” (black) but not so black that all cool and bright colors look impactful, and being brown but not warm enough to be flattered in orange or yellow.
I'm brown but I look terrible in yellow and orange 😂
Mee too
Your way of analyzing color has been a game changer for me! I always struggled to find my good colors or even descriptions that sound like. Turns out I’m (drumroll) warm and delicate. Everything makes sense now!
Also favorite food: coffee, oat milk latte to be exact ☕️😋
lol huge surprise! :p
I love this video. Merriam makes me happy when she professionally rants.
I know right!
I've had issues for years because I'm so very, very pale. And yet when I look at my reflection in indirect natural light my skin is so clearly... green. I would not suffer God Himself telling me otherwise. Call it olive or call it anemia I will not be challenged.
(Pale olives looking for foundation might want to try Nyx bare with me in vanilla nude, although it is quite yellow as well.)
Thank you for recommendation ! I use Revlon "Colourstay " in 180 "Sand beige" 😊
I use Revlon colourstay in Buff! And Missha Perfect Cover BB Cream in 21. Pale olives ftw!
Anemia? You might want to try methylfolate for a few weeks and see if your skin tone changes a bit. I've had anaemia more often than not in my life, which hid my body's reduced ability to process folate. I was olive before and I'm olive now, but I'm a far less grey olive now and I don't look as sickly anymore :D www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326181
If you ladies type in youtube search ‘pale olive’ a makeup artist has that and talks about it a lot and how to color correct foundation yourself. I forgot her name but she has a blond pixie and always has a close up of her face with a solid color background ☺️
Edit: her name is Alexandra Anele
"If you're warm and delicate, the closer a color is to yellow, the more muted it needs to be" this makes perfect logical sense because pure yellow is the brightest color on the color wheel. I really love your color analysis system because it's based on consistent logical thought instead of just repeating certain vague popular ideas
This video is absolute peak Merriam! Gentle, comprehensive rant about skin tone and color featuring a casual scientific description of skin structure and the sky, a thoroughly informed tour of the flaws of other color systems while making a separate point, graph-based visual aids, standing up for Asian and deep skin tones, detail detail detail, this kind of s- is why I subscribe. Never change. From a warm and very delicate olive (and I'm definitely warm and definitely olive!) - you're welcome for all the problems 😂 My favorite food is pasta!
I'm loving these olive skin videos! There's really NO good information about it out there, especially for pale olive skin. I would appreciate so much if you could give some general guidelines on hair color dyes and make up for olive skin tones. As a warm and delicate olive pale skin I find it so hard not to look greenish, I feel very few colours look good on me, but hair and makeup are the hardest...
You should write a book... we need all "color analysts" to get with the program.
I want to!!
A few days ago I was watching a video by Audrey Coyne about light olive skin tone here on TH-cam and she was saying that light WARM olive skin tone do not exist. I tried to explain to her that I have light WARM olive skin tone and that she should watch MerriamStyle video about it. She replied to me telling that I was wrong and the her reason was the green screen thing. 🙃
She thinks “olive” skin people have green undertones so they can’t be warm because green is neutral (yellow and blue) ?
@@ingridrodriguez3273 I don't think Audrey understand in general that there's two tipe of light Olive skin, because in her video she recommends wearing cool and warm tone neutrals.
That video makes me cringe SO MUCH, the amount of misconception there just drives me crazy
@@julipana All the misconceptions results in light skin olive people not being able to find foundation shade in most makeup brands. Everyone is talking about "extended shade range" but they are all too peach of pink on me. The only brand at the drug store to have my shade is Revlon and their foundation isn't that good.
@@gabysam2136 Exactly! I'm light warm olive too and I have to choose between my foundation looking horrible after 2 hours or walking around looking like an oompa loompa. And that "wear warm neutrals such as (I don't remember the colors) because they have a cooler base" also doesn't make any sense. They are muted and slightly warm colors, not cool based. Cool based colors are guess what? Cool lol
My cousin calls me "yellow" or "greenish" and that hell of a thruth, peach looks great on me, but also cool pinks, i'm winter and i look good in muted wams, so will take a look on all this things
all olives are actually winter, it's a cool undertone
@@SueRosalieno, most winter colours look really bad on me personally
I was also confused as I am a Dark Winter but some summer lipsticks look cute on me, esp. pink! 😅
You're a true expert in color. I find your videos to be the best. I figured out so much about what my colors are because of your videos. Really hated being told that I was warm due to my skin tones when I looked sick. Cool and Radiant really fit! thanks so much!
Yeah, you really hit the jackpot when you realized/created the warm delicate concept. Funny, my sister and I did Color Me Beautiful back in the 80’ as adolescents. I came out as ‘spring’, but always felt attracted to autumn colors, and also found many autumn colors too overpowering. My sister was a mystery, we couldn’t figure out if she was warm or cool! She realized on her own that soft earth tones are her thing. We are both warm and delicate after all!
I cannot thank you enough and the olive skin community on reddit for this type of content. It affected my self esteem sooo much not knowing what to wear and thinking that my skin looked ugly and sick because I did everything wrong. Now I'm learning what complements my skin complexion and I feel so confident in my skin!
Yes! All my childhood I was paranoid I never washed myself correctly. My mum used to tell me to go and wash myself again in the bath because I looked dirty. In the winter I'd be told how ill and pasty I looked. Then, in summer, she'd accuse me of being dirty again. Now, at almost 50, I understand I am a light olive with teal blue eyes.
Same, i have always thought all my life my skin looks ugly and sick and still think. I’m also pale, so i look pale green - grey, im european. If there was a plastic surgery solution to make skin redder/pinkier/orangier id pay a lot for it. In some lightning and photos my skin looked legit like i was very ill. Even doctors sometimes commented on it and said to do some blood tests 😂 Let alone, other people commented on my skin too since childhood because it differed from other people noticeably and was clearly not good looking. It’s one of my most pervasive and earliest insecurities about myself
Eva Mendes made me remember something. When I was in middle school in the '90s my mother bought me a silver-blue frost lipstick that looked super cool and cyber, but also very separate. Next year she bought me a Bourjois bronze-copper metallic lipstick (kinda like Eva's first dress) that was super flattering for me; it had a studded ring around the bullet and apparently was discontinued, which is a shame. Since I couldn't find a close dupe I turned to gold makeup when I wanted metallic, but it also looked a bit separate.
Last year I went looking for a lipstick similar to my coveted Bourjois, but they're all too golden or too coppery/red. I'd say it's between M.A.C. Bronze Shimmer and CB 96. Being warm, delicate and olive means I need *that* perfect metallic blended shade to suit me.
My favorite food is ice cream. Not really "food" food, but I still love it.
Your diagram is one of the most intelligent explanations I have ever seen on skin tone. And, yes, chocolate is definitely a food, as it has antioxidants and nutritional value! My favorite is peanut butter.
I knew I was warm this video on olive undertones totally explains why my skin works as warm and delicate - peach v pink, rose gold and pearl.....cream not optic white....my perfect black has a brownish thing going on ....Yet for a warm person you would not believe how awful I look in saturated intense colors eg bright canary yellow makes me look ill; Value is important too: I have light skin, dark brown hair and hazel eyes. the light skin introduces the whole dimension of value or contrast.....I think this may be why I can look good in the right blues especially saturated ones! Anyway your analysis makes a lot of sense to me. I love your channel! Thanks
Being olive and not tan it's a pain! The time I need to be walking around clothes that really suit me and the pain I feel when a certain piece isn't the right color, olive is such a difficult color to work with.
Yes, I’m redhead and everyone wants to put warm colors on me. My eyes and hair are warm but my skin is neutral leaning cool
You have brown roots in your picture
@@screamtoasigh9984 no I don’t.
Exactly! I was born with very red-leaning strawberry blonde hair (that washes my skin out, and has thankfully darkened as I've grown older) and fair cool-olive skin. People liked to put warm colors and pastels on me as a teenager.
Not a good combination.
@@screamtoasigh9984 redhead roots can appear a touch on the brown side, if you're looking through a thick layer of the hair (angled towards you).
I have brown hair with quite a bit of red in it, and people have said that my roots are plain brown for the same reason.
Red hair, green eyes and olive skin toned.
My veins are green, I look sick in cool tones especially pinks.
Yes that’s possible ! There’s a lot of red hair olive skin girls , her videos are theories not facts , dna , genes and how your body produces melanin plays a huge part of your skin tone and also to keep it short everyone has Atleast some red pigment in their body since our body does produce red melanin.
Here’s what I posted earlier to someone else .If you have green hue into your skin you are olive ! End of story doesn’t matter what clothing or what looks good on you . This is what I disagree with her . DNA and genetics play a huge role with creating skin tone , eye color and hair . In Middle East we have tons of red hair girls with olive skin , in Afghanistan you’ll see tons of girl with auburn hair or red hair with very olive skin , no clothing is going to make them less olive . Also we all have red melanin in our body ! The thing is also our melanin plays a huge role in our skin tone and pigments . We may have certain tones in our eyes or skin that maybe different form our hair and then also with our dna and genes it’s going to come our different also since human been breeding with different races for years . You’ll see dark skin with blue eyes and warm skin . It’s possible . There’s a TH-cam who has dominant red and olive skin and her channel is Susan Elias couture she did a video on this doing her color test . Yes it’s all possible . Merriam makes these claims but doesn’t have any facts or anything to back it up and this is where I disagree with her . It’s all theories and analysis. While it’s great to learn on theories , it’s not facts . That’s why I like going I depth with science . There’s this Reddit page called olive mua . That may help you a lot .
Well articulated. Lately I've been thinking that like olive skin, translucent skin is misunderstood. My skin is very fair and translucent, yet I can't wear the same colors as someone who is as pale and fair, but has thicker, more matte skin.
Having had many professional analysis, I've been told I am a spring, soft autumn, deep autumn & summer, while my hair dresser says winter. One person told me I had olive skin, but no way. I think my skin looked yellow that day from wearing warm colors.
My theory is maybe with its see through quality, translucent skin is cool. With a tan, it cold then be either. You touched upon this in another video.
Meanwhile, I look dreadful in muted olive, and get compliments in purple and clear blue, but have a hard time with most colors.
I think in determining the best colors for individuals with translucent skin, color consultants default primarily to hair and eye color. Then they put the client in the "season" that suits those secondary features. Incidentally, many red haired people have translucent skin like me ( often with freckles), and therefore generally are placed on the warm spectrum.
thank you for this comment! i would say translucent skin is most likely cool and radiant like you're sort of hinting. the surface tones could look warm (like the freckles and parts near the freckles), but the most even aspect of the skin is the translucent pink/cool aspect. and it's ironic that one of the few instances 'surface tones aka in the color analysis world as 'overtones'' are useful they aren't used properly! most redheads are truly not warm. it's all fun and games until you put a cool redhead in chiffon yellow. :p
@@merriamstyle Haha! Yes! It"s so wonderful you understand! 💛💛
Sounds like we have the same skin "colour" except I'm pure black. As in eyes hair and skin.
But yes I can take solid colours splendidly. While there is a strange perception that black people can wear bubblegum pink. I look like walking dead in that.
I have literally have to fight to keep that away from me.
Now where is that gold.
I also have translucent yellow skin!!! My freckles appear under the sun and my face tabs very easily, but the rest of my body is very pale, but with this strange yellow colour i could never identify before. To make things even harder, i was a very blond child with golden highlights. I became a dirty blond. But i started dyeing my hair very early because my hair colour looked too Dull on me
Now my hair keeps looking copper because of all the layers of dye. But i know that warm hair is ugly on me. Cold red, purple and brown hair were the only colors i could pull off and I've tried dozens of colors. Thank you for writing this comment.
I would love to see you do a video on real life people where you analyze their colors ❤️ These videos are very helpful! Also 🍟 are my favorite🙈
Thanks for touching on the olive skin. I can still not determine what my colors are because nothing suits my skin tone, I know I'm soft / delicate /muted but can't figure out if I'm warm or cool I see colors clashing my skintone a lot and the grey in my medium skin appear more prominent in most of the colors against my skin. Another thing is that my face appears cooler than the rest of my body which is on the warmer side. My favourite food is burger
nina abbas Sounds so like me. My face doesn’t support warm colors, not even copper. I have to use pink based neutrals. On the other hand, you could be like me which is warm and delicate but very close to neutral. Some warm and delicates can wear terracota for example and others don’t (I can’t)
@@di3486 me neither 😒
Same here! Warm&delicate pale olive. My face is really pale-greenish, and my body looks more yellowish but still greenish. Most colors overpower me. Pure white, black and all bright shades are a big NO for me. For makeup, the only colors I find that kind of suit my face are muted peaches, beige and taupe. And I recently found out mixing different shades of blush and bronze powder suits surprisingly good. But colorful eyeshadow or lipstick make me easily look like a clown...
Clara Rivillo haha I so relate when I say my favorite blush shade is “dirty brush” 🙈
Clara Rivillo Taupe is our best friend!
Yes that's the point, to trust our eyes not general rules.. I have always thought that.. I have olive skin tone and both some cool and warm colours suit me perfectly.. I was so confused until I watch your video.. thank you so much
This literally is the video that makes the most sense on all of TH-cam right now.
Favorite food? That's gotta be a good bowl of noodle soup! Or lemon bars, dairy-free
I could never get matched at makeup counters properly because I was always labeled "warm"! Just found out I'm olive and the whole world of makeup and clothing colors is making so much more sense! I'm having trouble discerning what type of olive I am, but I'm sure a little bit more research will clear it up for me!
You are so far, the one channel I trust about color analisis. I look so foward when you make videos about it and try tô discover the undertones, including mine. Dried meat 😁
please make more videos about olive skintone, this has helped me so much to finally find the right colors for myself!:)
This is going to sound crazy, but I adjust my skin tone a bit to suit more colors. I'm light, around neutral and (not too) vibrant olive. (my best colors are Turquoise, vibrant blood red, warm khaki, optic white, khaki-leaning-camel, fuchsia, cold gold and muted-cool-gray-leaning-night-blue) And when I eat a few carrots a day, this makes my skin have a little bit more orange in it, which results in my skin being a bit more warm and easier to dress. So even what you eat or if you tan will have an effect on your skin color. Oh and I look dead in colors like soft cool muted pink, mauve, royal blue, too vibrant greens, vibrant orange, 'nude' that leans to pink, camel that leans too much to red, ivory, lavender and egg shell brown (real eggs).
I also call my skin 'muted citrus olive'. :')
Super video, I am warm and delicate who has been on a loooong journey of finding my colours. I might be an olive to. I stop trusting my eyes a long time ago, but now slowly learn to trust them again. It’s difficult to know where the border is with too warm and too greyed out colours . Love to see a video on tips how to combine warm and delicate colours .
Thank you for making these videos! I have found that I am a cool and delicate olive skin tone. It’s confusing but the muted colors look great on me. These videos are so helpful. Thank you!
I'm italian & mexican. Olive, neutral/cool. Deep winter. Clear, bright. Theatrical romantic. This took hours and hours of videos to figure out but damn is it worth it. I feel so much more secure in myself and when shopping for investment pieces. Growing up id always compare myself to blonde haired blue eyed soft chroma girls and wonder why i look so bad in comparison when "copying" what they wear, and of course thinking it was me that was the problem. Its such a relief to realize how wrong this mindset was and having science/ color theory to back it up now. Thank you Merriam for what you're doing! It can really help people in so many ways.
You need to write a book, maybe it will revolutionize color analysis systems. Favorite food is korean and italian food. I am korean and italian.😁
“Calling her a cool olive is like saying she is a wet fire” 🤣 I love your explanations! I hope to see you back soon with some new sassy videos for us to learn from and chuckle to! xx
Could you please make a video explaining how to choose foundation or bb cream for olive skin? Should we get foundations with yellowness in them?
I would say it depends if you are warm or cool. I have to buy true neutral, if my foundation has some yellow, it would show up really muddy.
@@di3486 I am cool
HighFrequency Go for a neutral undertone if you want to tone down redness. Yellow is what you want to avoid!
Going to Sephora to get color matched helped me. She told me I was very neutral which doesn’t help lol
Brandi Davis they told me the same thing! But the neutral foundations make my skin look grayed out. 😫
You have address the biggest issue with color analysis. The typical palettes for those who are delicate lack colors in darker tones for deeper chroma. So they automatically rule out people with deep features (hair and eyes) even though color analysis is suppose to be about skin. Because I have dark hair and eyes with tan skin, I shouldn’t be able to wear the light spring or light summer palettes. My hair is not mousy nor eyes hazy to even to fathom the soft autumn or soft summer palettes. So that leaves the richest of autumn, the brightest of spring and the darkest of winter.
I never thought I was olive but this olive series probably applies to me because I have not been able to figure out my season for years. 😆 Personally, those bright warm colors of spring make me look muted. When I wear coral, I look sun burnt and coral too. The rich burnished colors of autumn make me look muddy and weird. Winter brights and deeps makes me look a little pale, but I look more normal.
I have been online analyzed as Dark Autumn and even told that I’m bright instead of muted. None of these analysis are working. My affinity toward soft peaches and light pinks makes me think you are talking to me about olive skin. I don’t see the green in my skin. I recently took pictures on an overcast day with a digital camera with the white balance manually set. I look like I have a gray film over my skin. Is this the infamous olive?
Love how passionate you are about your work 😊 great video
So interesting! Thank you for making such great content and I really hope you didn't take my video personally. I never meant to make you feel personally targeted and I'm so so sorry if you did xx
I also notice that I look great in peach because it's usually largely orange (especially in makeup) and that looks so good with green :)
I really liked your video better although . There’s some things on this video I really disagreed on especially when she said redhead can’t be olive skinned when I met plenty of redhead with olive undertones , they fall under the same rules or points that applies to olive skin people . That’s like saying warmer tones can’t have blue eyes or green eyes can’t have cool skin because of the whole “opposite thing “ when there’s plenty of people like that .There’s many other genetics and tones that play in your body . I think she’s also making a lot of theories and not enough evidence or facts . I’m also light skin olive but I tend to agree on something’s and some just put me off . This seems more opinions than facts .
My favorite food is either coffee or.... steak. Loooove love love the “nerdy” content!!!
Merriam, I have noticed that the majority of makeup products in the last 5 years have been targeting warm tones. Every freaking palette has oranges, copper, yellows, reds etc. Like 95% of eyeshadow palettes for example. This to me suggests that actually the majority of people is warm and that’s why is financially smarter to sell those colors. I never buy palettes because I can’t use any warm color in my eyes whatsoever.
Di :3 I think it might be because more women are self tanning and want a golden goddess look. I can’t find many beauty channels that have features like mine (dark hair/eyes and fair skin) because SO many of them fake tan.
Interesting observation! I’m warm and delicate, and a lot of the newer warm palettes are even too warm for me (unless I have a strong tan).
Brandi Davis That makes sense! I am a light-medium tone but when I tan (naturally) I look grey😂 It’s even worse due to the fact that I am Hispanic but I don’t look like the stereotypical latina at all😒
Keapix If I tan I can support maybe a warmer blush but never an eyeshadow😭
I've read terrible reviews about the ABH Subculture palette, but have you tried those colors? Do they flatter you? I think I can't remember a single beauty blogger who looked genuinely good, but most of them are warm or have fake golden tans.
Thank you for olive skin videos! I hate that some people have been giving you a hard time!! I love the information you give us!
by the way I love chocolate too !!
Once again I refer to this video. Absolutely the best on this topic, you’re very knowledgeable. I’m not a color analyst exactly but as a painter, my color theory thought process is very close to yours. In my opinion, chroma and saturation are indeed more “important” than hue itself, for the longest time people have been neglecting their importance in this field.
Olive cools are really the most challenging. I am warm and delicate but on the end of the spectrum towards cool, why I say this? Because terracota makes me look dead but salmon pink is awesome. A cooler olive green would look much better on me than a warm. Cool and delicate colors actually look good on me with a cool toned blush and lip color. I have been confused my whole life having this literal green cast with blue/purplish veins.
My favorite food is almost all food😂 but I have a massive weakness for Persian food.
Same 🤣
YEAAYYY and SAME on Persian food! haha also I'm warm delicate too
Sarah V Persian food is life!🤤
@@di3486 agree with everything u said. Im delicate cool and it is a struggle finding right make up. Ohhh dont mention Persian food...i have major cravings cause i love it and here in Serbia we dont have it 😢
Thank you for delving into the complexities. I love all things potato to answer your question, though I'm late to the video by 2 years 😅
"Deep skin tones are deep. Like... thanks.." I laughed out loud at that haha 😂😂
OMG! I have a struggle with looking grey easily... Never heard of cool and delicate, all analises and it looks like I'm a winter, but actually the strong winter colors are way too strong, I always like more muted colors 😄
It absolutely drives me nuts when people take eye colour and natural hair colour into consideration when trying to determine undertones. It's nice and romantic to think that those are determining factors but nature is not always predictable in how your colouration will turn out as to whether they will end up looking harmonious together. There is a reason why some celebrity have transformative makeovers when they dye their hair a colour that complements them more. Sometimes that happens when putting on coloured contacts as well. Keeping those natural factors into consideration before figuring out undertones first will just muddle things up. It's after youve determined undertone that you should keep those features in mind because it's just much easier to incorporate it in a colour pallete as a non-negotiable colour swatch to design around, at least until they make the choice to change it for themselves. Some people like their natural hair colour and want to keep it, and as stylists or colour analysts one has to respect those wishes.
eye, hair and skin colour can be any combination that you have inherited from different people. The one exception is that for blondes, the hair gene is linked to eye colour. But that's complicated and not important. Nevertheless nature does give you a combination that is in harmony. And yes you can't change your skin undertone so your clothes colours do have to centre around that. Once you've determined the undertone and season the hair and eye colour serves as confirmation and to decide the best colours in palette or subgroup within a season
I never knew it was possible to be a medium deep, or deep olive? Please explain more 🙏🏾. I’m neither warm, cool or neutral…I struggle to find my shade. Even neutrals sometimes show up differently. This is so intriguing … I look best in *ROSE* gold.
Chocolate is not a food, it is an undertone!! Lol. My favorite food is bread.
This explains so much! I'm pale olive, and recently discovered that I have more yellow in my skin, so you would think that warm looks good on me. But gold eyeshadow is not flattering, rather it's muted and even cool colors. But then gold jewelry looks better 🤷♀️ honestly it's so confusing sometimes
My favourite food is olives. Green ones ;)
Mine too!
Merriam, You need to patent this idea of warn and delicate and cool and delicate. It's revolutionary! The olive analisys too! Thnk you
I find that clothing stores carry mostly warm tones. You will see a dress in cream, olive green, beige and black. If you don't want black you are out of luck if you are cool-toned. As a result you end up wearing black all the time. Or you are stuck with the warm tones and it doesn't look good.
These olive skin tone videos have been so helpful! Thank you. I would love if you could talk about makeup colors that are suitable for olive skin, too. Every blush and lip color I try looks so intense and overwhelming on me, even when I apply them lightly. I've wasted so much money trying to find lip/blush colors that flatter me, and I still feel like I've barely found any.
Cool Olive Skin Tone!!!! Finally we are being addressed.
I'm a very pale olive and my hair (brown) and eyes (dark olive) are deep. By seasonal coloring I'm a deep/dark winter but I recently noticed that gold works so much better on me rather then silver and off white is better then true white. I'm definitely not autumn since warm browns and yellow looks awful on me. I suppose im a soft winter (going by 16 seasonal coloring analysis) so I have some scheme to follow when buying clothes/ accessories. For foundation there's still not much hope for me but hoping things will change soon. I'm kinda struggling with lipsticks. I usually wear cranberry shades but I want more shades to work with... 😥
And yessss I totally agree about the red headed "olives" like oh come on 😐
lol well what are they supposed to do!
Well if they’re mixed race I have seen girls with auburn hair and tan skin that looks olive
My grandma was a real life red headed olive so it is possible :)
Maybe if they're non-white. My youngest niece for example has medium-dark red auburn hair & medium-deep golden olive warm skin (& to make things trickier, cool, dark grey-blue eyes). Her older sister is very fair, green eyed, warm golden olive with strawberry blonde hair. We're mixed with everything under the sun though so color analysis gets very complicated 😅.
@@floatinghead5392 You know that is true. I'm Puerto Rican and I have definitely seen some olive toned redheads. Totally forgot about that.
Another brilliant video , thank you
I have this awkard difficult skin, this is helpful .it is completely spot on about muting colours as they get warmer. Before I did this it would make me doubt my colouring. And cool and delicate is indeed a better choice than domr high chroma warms.
I think it works better too, with
Cyan magenta yellow black.
Those toner colours seem to be base. Otherwise I think we would use green ink red ink blue ink etc
Heeey, I'm pretty sure I'm olive skin tone although I'm still confused if I'm warm and delicate or cool and delicate. Anyway, any of you guys have tips for buying foundations??? I feel like a yellow undertone in a foundation would match me better than a pink one but I still feel like the end result is toooo yellow
Mix green primer or green color corrector into foundation. It'll up your foundation game by a million. If it seems off, try again with a different foundation, it might take some playing around, but trust, it works.
Thank you soo much!! I'll definitely try it🥰💕💕
It is so hard to explain to people (even makeup consultants) that I am olive skin, with a medium yellow in skin. I look so faded in soft warm colors, but ok in extremely deep, bright warm colors. In the last years I try to by warm autumn colors because they look good on me without make up. But I'm in love with colors and make-up, so I'm using both of them to create a balance. For example I fell in love with a dark blue cold-shoulder dress, & when I wear it I feel the need for a bright, full of joy rosy - peach lipstick & blush and champagne highlighter. I do the same, using make up with warm spring (because I love those colors). Regarding food, I love to cook and eat, but if I will have to choose a last meal it will be a fresh baked sourdough bread with the most delicious butter and flaky salt.
"If you're still here, congratulations " 😂 Watermelon
Thank you for making the distinction between warm and cool olive skin tones!! It explained why I struggled so much to find colours that suited me to wear as clothes & lipstick. I believe I have cool olive skin.
My favourite food is ham & pineapple pizza!
Hey Merriam , if your veins are gree does that always mean you're warm?
yes if they're truly green, then you're warm. of course there are always exceptions. but if they're teal, you could be cool and delicate, and if they're blue, it doesn't tell you anything. if they're purple then those veins are just little don't worry.
Merriam Style I have one green vein and one purple vein next to each other on my inner wrist. There is literally no test that could’ve told me what you explain so well in your color theory!
@@merriamstyle yup they're definitely teal! Thank you!
@@exhater7820 yes sorry i forgot to say that if you don't have enough pigment they could be teal if you're warm and delicate too. the vein test is most accurate if they're truly green, then you know you're warm, but otherwise you could still have blue veins if your wrists are light enough. i actually have a video on the vein test too.
@@merriamstyle I am a little on the darker side I guess I do have pigment? Lol this will be a hard task for me I think I'll watch your videos all over again .
Another big issue to address is how societies /cultures /fashion drags you to the wrong color analysis or choices of makeup /clothing. In the west there's this idea that a golden hue/tan is the meaning of beauty and cool undertones are pushed to "warm up"... In Asia or Middle East or Africa there's a passion for lighter pinkish tones (in some cases also a light yellow hue is appreciated) and people are pushed to be lighter,cooler and adding pinkish tones... Usually in the culture preferring lighter pinkish skin people perceive that all colors look good on that skin and especially the tones that make it even more pale, basically the wrong match for everybody everywhere. A lot of confusion and preferences. At this point is better to say "to look more yellow wear this, to look less yellow wear that colors or to look lighter or darker or more pink wear the other colors"....
I feel like I finally need to say this . If you have green hue into your skin you are olive ! End of story doesn’t matter what clothing or what looks good on you . This is what I disagree with her . DNA and genetics play a huge role with creating skin tone , eye color and hair . In Middle East we have tons of red hair girls with olive skin , in Afghanistan you’ll see tons of girl with auburn hair or red hair with very olive skin , no clothing is going to make them less olive . Also we all have some red melanin in our body ! Depending on the level of phemelanin , The thing is also our melanin plays a huge role in our skin tone and pigments . We may have certain tones in our eyes or skin that maybe different from our hair and then also with our dna and genes it’s going to come out different also since human been breeding with different races for years . You’ll see dark skin with blue eyes and warm skin . It’s possible . There’s a TH-cam who has dominant red and olive skin and her channel is Susan Elias couture she did a video on this doing her color test . Yes it’s all possible . Merriam makes these claims but doesn’t have any facts or anything to back it up and this is where I disagree with her . It’s all theories and analysis. While it’s great to learn on theories , it’s not facts . That’s why I like going I depth with science . I also think this video is great for people who need help on fashion and style but it’s not me really trying to bash her but I just really disagree with that statement also because she gets passive aggressive .
Good point. I feel that representative sampling (which is science lol) is crucial to figure this out and have a better system. The only redheads that are commonly used as examples are those like Julianne Moore and those with ginger hair. The people you mentioned are unfortunately not paid attention to and not commonly shown in mainstream (US/euro-centric) internet space. As a result, I personally have not seen anyone from Middle East, South America, and South Asia with natural red (as in red, not brunette with hints of red) hair and olive skin since the red usually comes from a hair color choice (by using henna, dye, or by not toning the hair with purple/blue shampoo after lightening the hair). It would be lovely if you name some examples who we can use as references?
But I do understand that these natural redhead and olive-skinned people do exist, as you said. I look warm olive but when I lighten my hair (wihtout toner/additional hair dye) or spend too much time under the sun, my hair “naturally”appears a deep red. It amplifies the fact that I appear olive, but I dont look gray unlike what Merriam said. Maybe with a lighter shade of red, I would look gray, idk. I feel that looking at someone’s hair isn’t very useful to describe the skin for me at least. The hair is a feature. to me, skin comes first.
I agree that science is important but is more useful and practical to enthusiasts and manufacturers of clothing and beauty products. The responsibility is on the manufacturers & brands, I think, to make more nuanced colors and variety to actually serve whatever population they are targeting. But for the average person who isn’t passionate enough to deep dive into color theory, fabric draping to test which colors look best is fine and is more concrete. 😊
@@ave_rie I reccamend you look up people from Afghanistan and Middle East and look up regular people , it’s actually common to have red hair and olive skin over there although a lot of them are also multi toned with red , brown and golden . Celebraties at times can be misleading since some of them Add different tones in their body or fake tan .My aunt actually have red hair with very olive skin . Everything olive tone matches her the best and you are right skin comes first when it comes to matching stuff like foundation and things close to your skin tone . The thing is and my hair stylists told me when you hair has high melanin it’s usually a red color . Usually red in the pheomelanin is the most melanin side and from the eumelanin black or dark brown is the most . The levels and the genes alter everything . I don’t like fabric testing it still doesn’t determine skin tone however I will say it balances and contrast to your skin but it doesn’t determine your skin tone . I say makeup helps the best because the point is to use a foundation that matches your skin and then using mixers and everything helps it as well . I recommend you watch Robert Welsh video on Undertone , he helps a lot saying it’s more what your skin needs as in studying your skin tone and color and see how to get it . Also I dyed my hair a ginger red before and I never had problems with my skin turning gray . It can be a complementary color depending on the spectrum of olive . Aly art made a video and it explained why like some gingery tones can compliment olive tones .
I think you maybe missed the point. Of course if you have green in your skin, rather than predominant red, you are olive.
The point though is that olive can be warm or cool.
The warm (yellow) to cool (blue) axis applies to those with olive skin as much as it applies to those with pink/red skin.
Both green and red can have different amounts of yellow or blue, leaning warm or cool, respectively.
@@stephanien6237 Um I do know that , what point did I miss , never did I claim olive can’t be warm or cool . We are talking about people whose hair are red and have olive skin which yes it’s there are people out there just because you don’t see it’s common doesn’t mean it’s not . I do know there’s warm or cool olive . I am a cool olive myself . I don’t think you read my comment at all ? Your claims has nothing do to with what I wrote ?
Merriam, I was so happy to see a new video on this channel! And when I saw it was half an hour long... JOY! I love when you take the time to explain complex things in detail s2
I just recently found your channel and thank you so so so much for talking about the fact that almost all color analysis are centered on white people.!! As someone with olive skin tone all the videos I saw about undertones were very confusing. Thank you for making it more comprehensible! :)
Hi Merriam I think your the only one! I FOUND BECAUSE OF YOU THE I AM WARM AND DELICATE PERSON! Thank you so much after all this time searching which color palette was good on me and never found my answer. Keep going your work your the best I never watch! love you xxx oh my favorite food is wine with cheese and cookies because it's just so good
She mic dropped with the Liya Kebede example. My favorite food is popcorn
Hi Malikah!
Merriam Style 🤗
I enjoyed this! I do not have olive skin but I am warm and delicate and I have been typed as both winter and autumn in the past. Finally I know my colours and it's such a relief. I've edited this to add that this might be my favourite of all your videos. It's brilliantly presented.
Lmao imagine olive skinned people just disappearing into a green screen 😂
What I understand from the vid is that it doesn't matter if you are Caucasian, Black, Asian, Latino, Arab or whatever, you can be cool or warm, whether radiant or delicate.
Lasagna🤓❤️
Another thing I think some redheads are typed as olive is because (in my theory) the red-green balance is a spectrum, just like yellow-blue balance (temperature)
You can be bright or muted close to neutral, where the two colors meet and become gray in both balances, so an "olive" redhead is not that they are actually olive, it's just they're not red enough to that color be clearly noticeable in the skin, so they look paler to the more pinky redheads, so you can be a bright red or delicate red, or bright olive or delicate olive, why? Again: spectrum in all the balances. All colors have spectrums, including value and chroma or saturation, so there's no exception with the red-green balance
My favorite food is chocolate too! (Although, I did not have it for breakfast... I am on my third cup of coffee watching your color videos!”🤪) You color analysis of Olive skin tones is BRILLANT! Thank you for the diagram! I take notes while replaying segments and the diagram really helped! I love the “Artistic License Language”; “Underlying Tones” instead of under tones, under the skin (leaning towards yellow, blue, green and red). It the underlying tones causing skin bias.
“Surface Tones” instead of overtones- the actual perceived color, degrees of “chroma brownness”- ivory, beige, brown, dark brown.
Sorry, I’m a kinesthetic, visual learner... writing it out helps me learn it! I think I got it? If you made it to the end of this comment, please feel free to grade it.🤓
If you haven’t done an analysis of “Warm & Radiant Olive” yet (maybe I haven’t found it yet), can you please do one?
Science in your defense: Blood is always red- oxygenated blood is bright red, deoxygenated blood is dark red. “Veins look blue because light has to penetrate the skin to illuminate them, blue and red light (being of different wave lengths) penetrate with different degrees of success. What makes it back to your eye is the blue light.” - LIVESCIENCE
Thank you for this. I sense a bit of reticence in your deep dive into olive, but (1) I love people who nerd out on their passions; (2) accurate language is super important; (3) articulating nuance is super important, especially for people who literally want to feel more comfortable in their skin, and makeup and clothing colors can facilitate this, so knowing how to see and knowing what you are is so helpful; and (4) a system and terminology that is INCLUSIVE -- thank you!!! It's helpful psychologically and financially, no more wasting money on things that society tells you to buy just because something looks better on someone of a completely different surface and underlying skin tone. Home-whipped heavy cream, to which a touch of coconut oil, cinnamon, and vanilla extract is added; it's almost like ice cream but without the sugar and it's great in coffee and with frozen berries.
thank you for your comment! oh my gosh I will have to try that cream recipe that sounds amazing.
TEX-MEX! omg I miss it. Really enjoyed this, it made sense. I'd love to see more examples of deep olive skintones like Kebede, because that can be especially difficult for me to discern.
Omg! Your videos are simply the best when it comes to colouring! Really! Before I could never understand my skin tone! The struggle of everybody telling me I am warm but then I look good in pink and light blue
I was told I had an olive skin tone my whole life. I’m pretty sure I do I look really good in olive green though and light pink colors seem to wash me out unless it’s a nude pink or maybe nude brown. I think I look better in a cream white color instead of a bright white. My eyes are medium brown color not dark not too light
Kelly Nicole You sound like me. Have you tried peach or rose gold? I can’t do bright peach, but a muted soft peach looks nice. You’re probably a warm and delicate.
Brandi Davis I’m going to have to try those two colors thanks 🙏 for the advice I think you’re right about me being a warm and delicate.
Thank you so much for these videos!!! I have been struggling with stuff for years! I feel like hardly anything looks good on me.
Do you have a video on cool and delicate? I desperately need it 😂
OMGGGGGGG I know I'm OD'ing on the comments but YESSSSSSSSS YES YES. Olive is not automatically just a medium tan skin tone on color spectrum!! 😑😑😑
An olive skin tone is often mistaken as warm when it is usually a cool undertone with a warm overtone. I was analyzed as a winter in seasonal color analysis and most of my friends with the same coloring are also winters. Warm colors make my skin look too yellow and sickly!
Ok, first and foremost, 90% cacao chocolate is my favorite: it feeds my acerbic side ;)
Second, as a fellow INTJ, your explanation is true to form. You are extremely thorough and know your subject inside and out. It is also obvious that you take pleasure in teaching it to those who want to learn.
Third, knowing I am a Dramatic CR (your first Dramatic client), changed my life. Everyone should get Merriam’s consult. It is worth every penny. I never thought I would like hot pink, but seeing how it really lights up my face, I have several items in that color now and have come to love it.
By the way, Merriam, I know you are cool and delicate, but I still want to say you look radiant in your vids, meaning you look truly fabulous!
Thank you for sharing what you’ve learned. It is really informative.