ABOUT ME
My name is Lena Glidden and I am a Personal Color Analyst and Wardrobe Stylist living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.
I was trained and certified in the SciArt 12-tone Seasonal Color Method by Cate Linden. My teacher Cate was trained by Terry Wildfong of Your Natural Design, who studied under Kathryn Kalisz, the founder of SciArt.
Growing up, I lived in a historic house with a wild forest of a garden. There began my love for natural beauty—I preferred drawing flowers and watching dragonflies to climbing on monkey bars.
From early childhood I had an interest in the fine details of human aesthetics, scrapbooking for hours on end from magazines and scrutinizing fashion photography for what worked, and why. I was intrigued with our cultural shorthands for beauty, and how that manifested in the shopping and dressing habits I saw around me. Fashion and makeup were my primary hobbies throughout my school years and into my adult life.
But years of dressing for an office job and going through the common adult experience of visibly aging and gaining weight left me dissatisfied and despondent in my clothes. Everything I put on seemed to enhance my worst attributes—and I forgot that there was anything attractive about me at all. Dressing for conferences or weddings became imbued with dread and disappointment. And all I could focus on was how I fell short, not on actionable steps to improve.
When I had my own personal color analysis done, something clicked. Proportions, cut, and fabric of clothing meant little when a color was all wrong. And even the cheapest item of clothing could take on an expensive, alluring quality when rendered in the right color on the right person. The shape of my limbs and torso, once so objectionable, settled into a kind of sense-making once I dressed in harmony with my natural coloring.
The question turned from “How have I failed?” to “What else can I add to improve?”
Once I found my most harmonious colors, I took on a joyful exploration through personal style and self-expression. I encountered new constraints and stereotypes within my color palette, and found there were few resources online that helped me reconcile color and style together. I take clients through the color analysis process and beyond, helping them to express and embrace color in their own wardrobes in a way that is right for them.
Why “Kigo”
Kigo (季語) is a Japanese term meaning “season-word.” Kigo are used primarily in haiku poetry, and are richly loaded with season-specific meaning and associations. Each kigo is at home in its specific time and place, just as each beautiful color in our world is most suited to its native palette. Kigo is the language of haiku, as color is the principal language of physical beauty. Kigo individually may represent objects or activities, but they are always tied to a point in time, a subseason such as Early Spring or Late Autumn, and evoke the emotions and sensations associated with that time.
The Japanese concept of poetic seasons harmonizes perfectly with the 12-Tone Seasonal Color framework I work with. Each of the 12 Color Seasons represents a kind of unified whole, a shorthand for a brief time of year in which unique weather, botanicals, and human activity evoke a particular sense and harmony. While these poetic associations are not necessary to an understanding of personal style, they are dear to me and have helped form my unique relationship with color and beauty.