Shock wave

While it is understandably arduous to completely recover from fall 2005’s total blackout, the advent of spring ushers you to a rainbow bright season of sun-faded flares and Technicolor aesthetics. Who needs Prozac when you can put a spring in your step with summer’s high-octane jewel colors? While it was once considered completely preposterous to combine blue eyeshadow and orange lipcolor, this season that just won’t cut the fashion mustard. It’s time to bring the shock back to fashion.

Jewel colors connote an air of undeniable opulence. Ruby reds, sapphire blues, emerald greens and citrine yellows are certainly back in our lives in sweet, seductive fashion. Almost never completely out of style, these shades are total showstoppers. Jewel colors have always been highly desirable, but proper application has gotten a little more complicated. The way to wear it this season is in blocks. Recent international collections proved that designers have gone mad with color once again. Such is the kaleidoscopic spectrum on display that style ingénues such as Roberto Cavalli and Marc Jacobs are proposing: varying shades look much more chic than wearing one block of color. With the spring season back in business, colors are headed in the same direction.

Although today’s most influential designers such as Prada, Pilati and McCartney opted for the polar opposite and presented collections bound by the naïve innocence of white, the surreal plastic ‘80s aesthetic of Marc Jacobs’ Louis Vuittton has once again opened our eyes to idiosyncratic jewel colors.