Katie Holmes Dabbles in Color Theory

Are you a Hufflepuff? A Gemini? An ENFP? Do you also have an anxious-avoidant attachment style? And would you perhaps describe yourself as a “true winter?” Over the past couple of months, color analysis has emerged as the latest way to demarcate your identity online, with thousands of Instagram Reels espousing the benefits of having your “colors” professionally read. Ie: visiting someone’s living room and paying them hundreds of pounds to tell you to avoid wearing red if you have spots.

Much like Harry Potter houses, star signs or Myers-Briggs tests, there is perhaps some (some) truth to color analysis. But the whole thing ultimately rides on an outdated idea that the primary function of your wardrobe is to be as “flattering” as possible: a tool to smooth over perceived flaws, as opposed to, I don’t know, wearing clothes that make you feel interesting and cool. “What ‘suits’ me has never been a driving force in how I get dressed. I am an emotional, inexplicable dresser who is driven by my heart,” wrote the journalist Laura Antonia Jordan, as she reflected on getting her own colors “done” back in February.