![\"copyright2014LauraStempel_Match_300x225.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.laurastempel.com\/matchorclash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/copyright2014LauraStempel_Match_300x225.jpg.jpg\")
<\/a>This is the black\/grey\/white striped dress and cobalt tights that I wore today along with three lapis and silver earrings and two rings with the same color blue in them.\u00a0 (You can see one of the earrings hanging to the left of the tights.) When I looked for somewhere to set up this photo I recognized the perfect spot:\u00a0 next to a black\/white\/blue oilcloth tote bag from the German department store KaDeWe.<\/p>\nWhen I wear a scarf that picks up a color in the pattern of my dress or a piece of jewelry that matches my tights people sometimes ask how I managed to find so many things that go together.\u00a0 There are particular colors I love and buy a lot of (certain shades of green and yellow, for instance) so maybe it’s no big surprise.\u00a0 But I don’t think it’s really the buying that matters, it’s seeing the match:\u00a0 Oh, wait\u2014I’ve got gloves that go with the wool scarf I’m wearing under my coat! Those tights are the exact same color<\/em> as the stripes in this skirt!\u00a0 Don’t I have a pin somewhere that’s the same shade as these shoes?<\/p>\n What’s funny about this is that I’m actually a little bit colorblind. My problem is only with the border between blue and green, where my vision tends to yellow-shift.\u00a0 You think this paint chip or pair of socks is blue, but it sure looks green to me.<\/p>\n Colorblindness is a sex-linked trait that’s relatively unusual for women (8 to 10% of men have it, compared to something like 1\/2% of women) and I seem to be the only one in the family to inherit it from my father, who had the more severe red-green kind. He was seriously matchy:\u00a0 the shirt had to go with the jacket, the tie with the shirt, the shoes with the belt.\u00a0 When he shopped for clothes, which was often, he’d ask the sales clerk to make sure things were the color he thought they were and he always had his clothes organized accordingly:\u00a0 blue shirts in one drawer, ecru in another, grey somewhere else, socks and ties sorted so he could always find the right ones. He counted on brown belts having gold buckles and black belts having silver ones, since he could tell those apart, and if he discovered halfway through the day that he was wearing the wrong socks, he’d go upstairs and change them. Fortunately, his office was in our house.<\/p>\n I try to deal with my own color problems by carrying clothing and accessories around the house, holding them up to a window, scrutinizing them under the brightest bathroom light, trying to make sure that those are really the same shade of blue, or that they’re different enough so it doesn’t look as if I was trying to match them and failed.\u00a0 If I’m not entirely sure, I’ll sometimes pick tights or a scarf that’s in between two colors I’m wearing.\u00a0 Or I default to all black\u2014which, oddly, no one ever seems to describe as too matchy-matchy.<\/p>\n Occasionally, though, I’m on the expressway driving to work and I realize that the tights I thought were mauve are actually greyish brown or the red in my dress is a lot more orange than I thought, and I’m tempted to follow my father’s example and turn right around, go back home, and find something that matches. Since that’s usually not practical, I just try to avoid looking at the offending item for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n Coning soon:\u00a0 If you can’t match, clash. “Hey, Laura!” I hear you saying. “What’s this Match or Clash thing?” Put simply, it’s my theory of style:\u00a0 You can match or you can clash but whatever you do, make sure it looks deliberate.\u00a0 Match your socks to your … Continue reading <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"