Angelina Jolie’s Surprising Color Season
Angelina Jolie is often considered either Soft Autumn or Soft Summer.
But when I typed her via virtual draping, I got a surprising result: Angelina was essentially the opposite of Soft.
She was a Bright Winter.
So I draped her several more times, in different photos, in different lighting—and again and again reached the same surprising conclusion.
What’s Angelina’s real color season? Here’s the evidence:
Exhibit A: Her father’s season
I’m fascinated by how color seasons are inherited.
Specifically, people seem to have the exact same color season as one of their parents.
This pattern isn’t necessarily true for everyone, but so far, I haven’t found exceptions to it.
So maybe Angelina Jolie’s parents’ seasons will provide clues to her own.
Jon Voigt’s season
Angelina’s father Jon Voigt is a textbook Light Spring, with very blonde hair even as an adult, and skin that emanates a golden Spring glow.
But you don’t want to type people by stereotypes, so I’ve also confirmed his Light Spring season via virtual draping.
Interestingly, while many people think Angelina’s a Summer or Autumn, and while at least a few say Winter, I’ve never heard anyone propose she’s a Spring.
And based on virtual draping, I agree—Spring isn’t her season.
This means that Angelina Jolie likely inherited not her father’s season but her mother’s:
Exhibit B: Marcheline Bertrand’s season
Angelina and her mother Marcheline look a lot alike—including their coloring.
To the naked eye, their skin tones don’t appear obviously warm or cool, Dark or Light, or, I’d argue, Soft or Bright:
Here Marcheline’s skin tone looks somewhat Soft and blended. But in other photos, she appears to have luminous, maybe even Bright, coloring.
Angelina and Marcheline both have a hard-to-define skin tone—they aren’t textbook versions of any of the 12 seasons.
So this means that Angelina’s parents don’t provide obvious clues to Angelina’s real season.
Has color analyzing her family failed us? No, because she has one more important family member:
Exhibit C: Angelina’s brother’s season
At first glance, Angelina’s brother James Haven has coloring that looks really different from anyone in his immediate family’s.
He has luminous, cool-appearing skin; dark hair that contrasts intensely with his pale skin tone; and light eyes that contrast markedly with his dark hair.
James Haven is a textbook Bright Winter:
Angelina Jolie’s lookalike brother James Haven
And James Haven doesn’t just fit Bright Winter stereotypes: based on virtual draping, this is his season.
And based on virtual draping, this is Angelina’s and her mother’s season, too.
Angelina Jolie is a Bright Winter.
Angelina Jolie’s real color season
Here’s Angelina in what appears to be very minimal makeup (you can still see a freckle or two), draped in Soft Summer (far left), Bright Winter (middle), and Soft Autumn (far right):
While Soft colors (far left and far right) are beautiful, here they have a draining effect. The delicate Soft drapes appear too muted and washed out compared to Angelina’s vibrant skin tone. The Bright Winter drape (center) balances Angelina’s brightness and depth of coloring.
One reason people think Angelina’s a Soft may be because when they see her in a photo like this—
—they can tell that something about the image doesn’t harmonize. And since Angelina’s (dyed) hair and pale skin tone are so much lighter than her black top, they assume that the top is what doesn’t harmonize, and that Angelina’s skin is soft and blended.
But look what happens when we crop out Angelina’s black top:
To my eye, the image, and specifically the color scheme, is now much harder to look at. Angelina’s skin tone is brighter and cooler than the background. Surrounded by these colors, she looks subdued and trapped.
Her black top wasn’t wrecking the image—it was saving it. Angelina’s intensely saturated skin tone is enlivened by equally bold colors.
How can Angelina be Bright?
How is it possible that Angelina is a Bright Winter, when so many people think she’s essentially the opposite—a Soft season?
Some thoughts:
First, color analysis is about how your skin reacts to different colors, not how it appears to the naked eye. I absolutely agree that Angelina often appears to have soft, blended coloring, at least in certain photos.
I’d also argue that you can find photos where she appears to have a more luminous, brighter skin tone. Ultimately the only way to know someone’s color season is to drape them, virtually or in person. Sometimes they are what they appear to be to the naked eye, but sometimes they surprise you.
Second, Bright Winters are often stereotyped as having very dark hair, very fair skin, and shockingly blue eyes—and sometimes they do. But because Bright Winters are Winters with Spring influence, and because Spring is characterized by (generally) lighter hues, Bright Winters will often have lighter coloring (including hair color) than other Winters. I agree with color analysts who reflect that Bright Winters are often mistyped as Summers.
I suspect this is a large part of why Angelina is often miscategorized: her hair color doesn’t look dark enough to fit Winter stereotypes, so many people go with Summer—typically Soft Summer, because people accurately perceive that she’s not purely cool-toned (True Summer), and that she doesn’t have extreme overall lightness (Light Summer).
(Importantly, you don’t actually need to have obviously “Light” coloring—like blue eyes, fair skin, and blonde hair—to be a Light Summer. But these are stereotypes that some people will rely on when judging people’s color seasons. Relying solely on these stereotypes is a recipe for mistyping.)
As to why Angelina is often typed as Soft Autumn, I suspect it’s partly because her highlighted hair can read as a warm, autumn-y brown, and people are (subconsciously) reacting more to her hair than to her skin:
Here Angelina’s dyed hair could easily read as warm and autumn-y. But her skin is vibrant, clear, and Bright.
Why lightened hair works for Angelina
Interestingly, highlighted hair can sometimes be very flattering for Bright Winter, because highlights can have a brightening effect.
Plus, in fashion, Angelina’s most frequently-worn color is overwhelmingly black. So if she kept her natural hair color—which actually appears to be fairly dark and cool—it would arguably be feel too serious and stark to match the vibrance of Bright Winter.
The fact that Angelina so frequently wears and pulls off black is another clue to her real season. For Soft Autumns, like Behati Prinsloo, black is extremely harsh against their skin tones.
But for Bright Winters, like Angelina, black does work. The qualifier is that all-over, head-to-toe black tends doesn’t tend to be Bright Winter’s ideal look, because it’s too somber for their Spring influence, and it lacks the contrast that Bright Winter craves.
All-black isn’t awful on Bright Winter—it’s just usually not their absolute best look.
Angelina’s skin tone does balance black. But the combination of a black dress, black eye makeup, and very dark hair (this may actually be her natural color, or at least close to it) can feel too serious for the lightness of Bright Winter’s Spring influence. Bright Winter also thrives in color contrast, rather than dressing all in one shade.
Angelina’s frequently lightened and brightened hair is plausibly an unconscious (or maybe even conscious) strategy to look more harmonious as a Bright Winter while still getting to wear copious amounts of head-to-toe black.
Angelina Jolie is hard to color type
When I first heard that Angelina was a Soft season, it made perfect sense to me—you can find plenty of photos where she looks like she has Soft coloring, and her hair doesn’t appear stereotypically Winter-y, and all-black can look overwhelming on her (because all-black often looks harsh on Spring-influenced Bright Winter).
It’s only after virtually draping her that I realized how unharmonious Soft colors actually are against her skin.
What about Angelina Jolie’s style type?
Angelina has been typed by others as Romantic Dramatic Classic, and based on virtual draping, she definitely has these three essences—but I also think she has Ethereal. I may make a separate post about her style type, but one major clue to her essences is that all her immediate family members have a strongly Ethereal quality.
Based on my draping, Marcheline Bertrand is a Romantic Ethereal Classic, and Jon Voigt and James Haven also have notable Ethereal.
That’s definitely not proof that Angelina has Ethereal. But it does seem like a clue.
Regardless, though, the main reason I think she’s primarily RED, with Classic as a fourth essence, is because she’s breathtaking in RED hair, makeup, and outfits, and not quite as good in RDC. Again, maybe this will be a future post.
Summary
Many people think Angelina Jolie is a Soft Summer or Soft Autumn, but virtual draping reveals she’s essentially the opposite—Bright Winter
Her real color season makes sense, because virtual draping also suggests that her mother and brother are Bright Winter, and people tend to inherit the same color season as one of their parents
Angelina’s frequently lightened hair might be a (conscious or unconscious) way to compensate for frequently wearing all-black outfits. As a Bright Winter, she is harmonious in black. But because Bright Winter is influenced by the lightness of Spring, and because Bright Winter craves color contrast, head-to-toe black can feel overpowering. Angelina’s lightened hair helps give her look the vibrant contrast that Bright Winter needs
