December 20, 2005

That blouse brings out your eye color.

Really! Science Times says your clothes can affect your eye color.
Posted by Ann Althouse at 10:04 AM
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6 comments:

Robin Goodfellow said...

I've always known this. My eyes are variously a bluish or greenish shade of hazel depending on the color of shirt I wear.

12/20/05, 10:30 AM
Ann Althouse said...

I've often had sales people rave about how some article of clothing "brings out [my] coloring" and have always brushed it off as sales talk b.s. Yeah, that's what they all say. Trained as a painter, I would have thought complementary colors are what should bring out a persons coloring, but now I see it's more a matter of the color reflecting in your eyes. (Can it reflect in your hair too?) I have an instinctive reaction to particular shades of blue or green in clothing, and now I'm thinking it has something to do with eye color and reflection.

12/20/05, 11:15 AM
CCMCornell said...

The same thing works if you're ambient light isn't very "white" - that is, close to some natural, neutral standard like sunlight or most incandescent bulbs. I guess we've all heard the thing about shopping for clothes that look one way in the store, but different when you get home because the store used inexpensive, slightly cool (blue) fluorescent lights.

There's also a phenomenon that suggests color appearance related to colored objects that are simply nearby, but not providing non-neutral reflected light onto the object. There's a video test pattern that has a grey box surrounded by a changing solid background. As the background changes in intensity and color, the grey box, which is held constant, appears to us to also change colors and intensities.

12/20/05, 12:30 PM
stoqboy said...

People notice my blue eyes most often on cloudy days. Maybe I'll wear electric blue shirts on cloudy days from now on.

12/20/05, 12:48 PM
reader_iam said...

This as always been clear to me.

Mine were bright blue as a child and shifted to a variation between green and blue as a young teen. Now, they're usually blue-green (emphasis on the latter), but I can definitely make them appear to tilt more strongly in one direction or another via makeup (when I bother) or clothes choice.

12/20/05, 3:32 PM
CCMCornell said...

Doesn't a cat's eye color sometimes change from when they're a kitten? I think they often start out blue.

12/20/05, 7:15 PM

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