Are you an Autumn?
The Autumn tell is that richness suits you where clarity does not. Hold a warm rust against a cool raspberry in daylight: if the rust settles and the raspberry makes your skin look pink or tired, warmth is your direction. Then ask about depth — if the full-strength earthy version beats the pale washed one, you are Autumn rather than Spring. Gold jewellery usually looks obviously more natural on an Autumn than silver, which is a quicker test than most.
Your neutrals
Autumn anchors in warm depth — espresso, chocolate, camel, warm taupe, olive. A deep warm brown is an Autumn's black: the same weight and formality, none of the coldness. Cream beats optic white by a distance, and a warm navy is far more wearable than a cold inky one.
What people get wrong about Autumn
The commonest mistake is hearing Autumn and thinking muted. Only Soft Autumn is genuinely muted — True and Deep Autumn carry saturated colour at full strength and look underdressed in beige. The second is buying black out of habit, when an espresso brown does the same job and keeps your warmth intact.
Autumn, or the season next door?
Spring shares your warmth but keeps it lighter and clearer. Both of you look well in warm colour. If a clear coral and a golden yellow feel a shade bright, and the deeper earthier version of the same warmth suits better, you are Autumn.
More on Spring →Winter shares your depth but runs cool. Both can carry genuinely dark colour, so warmth is the deciding question. Compare a warm deep brick against a cool deep burgundy in daylight: Autumn takes the brick, Winter the burgundy.
More on Winter →