Trend Alert: How To Do Colorblocking?

You ever looked at someone and asked "how the heck did they come up with those two colors together?" Well, most of the time, there is a method to their madness.

With that said, I have been asked to do my take on how to correctly execute colorblocking styles.

The simple answer is: if nature could do it, so could you. The more complicated answer -- well, the method that requires you to do a little more thinking -- is to attempt to match/coordinate colors using the color wheel (which I will discuss in another post ). For this blog post, I will use flowers to demonstrate my point.

(Disclaimer: I am not good with names of flowers, but I am familiar with colors, so here we go.)

Here are a few examples of nature being used for fashion colorblocking:

(First Photo Source: www.2bnmaine.com; Second Photo Source: www.Gucci.com)

(First Photo Source: www.scenicreflections.com; Second Photo Source: www.Gucci.com)

(First Flower: www.turtletrack.org; Second Flower: home.howstuffworks.com; Third Flower: www.allposters.com)

Now you see side by side how the color combos become possible. So, the concept of colorblocking is to take at least two bold colors and make them "pop." Adding a neutral color in there (including black, brown, nude, white, metallics -- even leopard, etc.) will balance the extremities of two bold, bright colors.

And no, all colorblocking does NOT have to be bold colors, there are other color combinations you could try -- like black and white. But that is the simplest and the most common form of colorblocking (which is why I did not post a picture because neutrals tend to work well with each other).

Second guideline (as you would notice with some of the pics above) is to wear the darker color on the bottom. If you are laying, you could add the darker layer on the top. You can add the lighter color on the bottom or as a top layer, but it normally looks better if you wear the darker color on the bottom or as a top layer.

Would you rock the trend?

Sparkle Fade keyhole top, $54

Nine west shoes, $89

Fendi shoes, $740