Not one to wear many bright warm colours , as they really do horrendous things to my skintone, I’m never averse to using them in my accessories. You may not know this, so please read on as this is the science bit, that we can use opposite (complementary) colours on the colour wheel for dramatic effect. I’ll spell it out in simple layman’s terms as this is something that you can use when you get fed up with black and white ( and I hope you do because it’s boring!).

The science bit – there are 3 primary colours, red, yellow and blue. When you take any 2 and mix them together, you create a secondary colour , so for instance red and blue = purple, yellow and red = orange and yellow and blue = green .  Match one of the seconadry colours with the primary colour that hasn’t been used in the mix and you create excitement and drama. So, purple (red and blue) teamed with yellow, orange ( red and yellow) teamed with blue and green (blue and yellow) with red look amazing.

Why am I telling you this? Long story, short – I wanted an orange bag as I have lots of blue in my wardrobe. Orange does not suit me but as I’m a bit of a drama queen an orange bag would be great as it’s not worn close to my face. Seek and ye shall find and I did. The perfect bag stood on a high shelf in John Lewis yesterday. Two assistants helped me bring it down to earth safely, and commented on what a lovely shade of orange it was. Only it wasn’t. When I got it home it was a blue/red! Not even scarlet or orange/red.

The moral of this tale? Beware of shop lighting. It will warm up most colours on display so they appear very different in daylight. This applies to clothing, accessories and make up. So don’t throw any receipts away until you get your purchase home.