Deep Autumn color palette (Dark Autumn): what to wear and what to avoid

Start underneath. Depth tells you little here, because Deep Autumn skin runs from warm ivory to deep brown - the undertone beneath it is golden, olive or bronze every time.

What sets this skin apart from a spring's is density. It looks even, velvety and opaque rather than translucent, as if light stops at the surface instead of passing into it. What sets it apart from a winter's is the undertone: even at its lightest there is no pink-blue or porcelain cast, and at its deepest no ashy blue-gray one.

Two signs point away from this season before you run a single test: freckles that are gray or ash-brown instead of reddish-brown or gold, and a bare-skin flush that goes cool pink instead of a warm peach-brown. The next section shows what this skin looks like at four depths, in the sun and when it flushes.

Three checks for the undertone

Test 1 Check the veins inside your wrist

Stand at a window in the daytime and turn your wrist palm-up. It has to be daylight: incandescent light pushes everything yellow and cool LEDs push it blue, so either will mislead you. Wait a few seconds, then read the vessels as a group, ignoring any single one that stands out.

• Greenish or olive - warm. Deep Autumn and the other warm seasons stay in the running.
• Blue or purple - cool, so look at the summers and winters instead.
• Hard to call either way - probably neutral, so let tests 2 and 3 decide.

Caveat: dense or deeper skin, which is common in this season, often hides the veins almost completely. If you cannot make yours out, move on to test 2, which works on every complexion.

Test 2 Hold white paper under your chin

Clean face, hair pulled back from the cheeks, window light. Slide an ordinary sheet of printer paper up under your chin. It must be genuinely white, because off-white stock brings its own warmth and skews what you see. Then study the edge where the white touches your skin, not your face as a whole.

• Your skin looks golden or peachy next to it - warm, and consistent with Deep Autumn.
• Your skin shifts pink or bluish - a cool undertone.
• Your skin looks a little gray - usually neutral with an olive note, which is common at the olive end of this season.

Caveat: this is the most dependable of the three, whatever your depth. If you have just come in from the cold or the wind, wait ten minutes first, or the flush will read as a pink undertone.

Test 3 Gold against silver

Take two simple pieces with no stones, one yellow gold and one silver, and hold each to your wrist or near your face in turn. Watch the skin, not the metal: does it clear and brighten, or do a sallow tint and dark circles show up?

• Gold, bronze or copper makes the face look lit from inside - a warm undertone.
• Silver, platinum or white gold makes the skin look more even - a cool undertone.
• You see no real difference - neutral, so something other than warmth will decide your season.

Caveat: compare pieces of the same shape and width, because a wide gold cuff beats a thin silver chain simply by covering more skin. On deeper skin neither metal may look wrong at arm's length; hold them beside the face and check under the eyes, where the difference shows up soonest.

Warm on the paper and warm with the gold: that rules out the winters, Deep Winter included. The remaining question is which warm season, and blocks 3 and 4 settle it on depth.

Deep Autumn eyes are dark and saturated, never watery, pale or icy. What gives the season away is the warmth inside that darkness.

Most are dark brown, some close to black; the rest are a deep hazel, a dark olive or marsh green, or a rich cognac. Look closely and the iris is rarely one flat color: gold, honey or ginger flecks gather around the pupil, and they are what makes the eyes read warm rather than merely dark.

The whites help more than people expect. On a Deep Autumn they tend to be a soft, slightly creamy white rather than the bright blue-white of a winter, so the dark iris sits against them without a sharp, cold edge. It is a quiet sign, and a useful one, because hair and eyes can be equally dark on both seasons.

Light, clear eyes - pale blue, bright aqua, light hazel - point elsewhere, usually to a spring or a summer. If yours are dark but look steely, with no warm flecks anywhere, take Deep Winter seriously.

Darkness is not the test. Warm flecks and a soft, creamy white are, and both point here rather than to Deep Winter.

Natural Deep Autumn hair is always dark and dense, from medium chestnut down to deep chocolate. What it never is, is cold.

The range covers chestnut, dark chocolate, coffee and espresso, and auburn or mahogany. Ash and mousy tones do not turn up. Even hair that looks nearly black indoors shows copper, bronze or red-brown in direct sun - step outside with a mirror, or find a photo taken in daylight, and that glint is your answer.

The glint is also the quickest way to tell this hair from a Deep Winter's. Winter near-black stays blue-black or neutral in the same light, with no red coming through it.

Texture decides nothing: straight, wavy and coiled hair can all be Deep Autumn. Dyed hair? Judge your roots, or a photo from before you started coloring. And before your next salon visit, know that cool ash shades rarely hold on this coloring - the warm pigment underneath pushes back through, and within weeks the color turns brassy or muddy.

Look for red in the sunlight. Dark hair with a copper glint belongs here; dark hair that stays blue-black does not.

Deep Autumn has more contrast than any other autumn, with dark hair and eyes standing well apart from the skin. The effect is still rich rather than stark, because every tone in the face is warm.

Contrast is a measure of how much lighter or darker hair, skin and eyes are than one another. On this season it runs from medium to high: chocolate hair against warm beige skin, espresso against olive. That is what separates this season from Soft Autumn, whose features sit close together, and from Warm Autumn, whose contrast is gentler.

It is also why contrast cannot settle the Deep Winter question. Both seasons put dark features against lighter skin, and in black and white the two can look much alike. The difference is temperature - a winter face looks sharp and frosty, a Deep Autumn deep and warm - so take that question back to block 1 and forward to the drape test.

Strong contrast narrows it to the deep seasons. It cannot tell you which one - temperature does that.

Black and white, done for you

Left: a Deep Autumn in color. Right: the identical photo with the hue taken out, so only lightness is left to compare - and her chocolate hair drops a long way below her skin, even though nothing about her face looks harsh in color.

Hair Skin Ramp runs black to white

Height on the ramp shows how deep a face is; the gap between the two markers shows its contrast, and that gap describes one face rather than grading people against each other. Now compare the fair Deep Autumn with the Winter: in gray, her span is as wide as the Winter's, if anything wider. That is the honest result, and it is why this test places you among the deep seasons without choosing between them. In color, the Winter's black hair looks cold and the Autumn's chocolate looks warm - and a black-and-white photo erases exactly that difference.

The most direct check, and the one that answers the Deep Winter question. Stand in daylight without makeup, hold each color under your chin, and watch your skin rather than the fabric.

Many Deep Autumns are sure black suits them, and it is still on the list below: a hard, cold black flattens this warmth and can leave the skin looking sallow. A swatch on a screen cannot show that fairly, since black against skin reads as a patch rather than cloth, so try a real black top at a mirror. If it drains you, Dark chocolate or a warm green-black gives you the same depth without the drop.