NEW research led by the University of St Andrews has found that a person’s eye colour directly links to what colour of clothing they suit.
Published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, the study reveals that "cool" blue hues match grey or blue eyes and "warm" red/orange hues match dark brown eyes.
Lead researcher Professor David Perret, from the School of Psychology and Neuroscience, said they were “surprised at how much agreement there was”.
He said: “Previously, our work indicated the importance of a person’s complexion for clothing colour choice, but we did not define the critical aspect of complexion. Those with a darker complexion tend to have darker pigmentation in their hair, their eyes, and their skin.”
Through this new research, it is concluded that skin colour is “unimportant”.
One experiment used images of white women, half with light-coloured skin, hair and eyes with the other half having darker features.
These images were then also transformed to swap the natural skin tones around.
100 participants chose from a whole spectrum of colours and despite the changes in skin tones, colour preferences stayed the same.
The second study then aimed to isolate one of the two, comparing natural face images with light eyes and those with altered/transplanted dark eyes.
100 new participants then chose blues more frequently with light eyes and orange/red with dark eyes, for both the natural pictures and the transplanted ones.
From a spectrum of colours, light blue clothing was chosen most frequently for the faces with light eyes and brick red clothing was chosen most when the eyes were dark.
This reveals the dominant role of eye colour, as hair colour had little influence.
Current fashion advice is based on many categories, including the three investigated, but they had not yet been defined scientifically and are often based mainly on skin tone.
Professor Perrett finished with: “Skin tone may be important at a distance, such as for modelling on a catwalk, but for intimate encounters, such as lunch or an in-person interview, it’s the eyes that matter.”
