Enter the secondaries

The secondary colors are made by mixing equal parts of any two complementaries. So the secondary colors are green (yellow and blue), orange (yellow and red) and purple (blue and red).

Let's say you have a yellow dress and you want this outfit to be a traffic stopper. If it's for daytime, you can use bold purple jewelry and accessories. This classic combination of purple and yellow is eye catching. It can be sophisticated and definite or more playful, depending on the yellow and purple you start out with.

However, you don't always want to be quite that much the center of attention. What do you do to make more subtle fashion statements, but still use colors well?

The yellow and purple we used above are complementary colors. This means they are directly across from each other on the color wheel.

The colors to each side of our main color's complement are the triad colors. (Triad because the color you start with plus the two others make three colors total.) The triads are our friends for choosing jewelry or other accessories.

Let's look at our yellow dress again. This time we're wearing it to a business meeting. What would be appropriate jewelry? Gold on yellow is too close -- it will tend to wash out. The whole outfit will look drab (more drab than if you didn't use the gold jewelry).

Silver will work, particularly if the silver is a bit pale and the yellow of the dress if very vivid. But you don't have to stick with gold or silver. There are many colored gems and jewels out there. Try a sapphire necklace. The blue will nicely set off the yellow and both will sparkle. Or a red brooch. The red can tend towards orange for a brighter effect or towards blue for more contrast.

Now how about the vivid purple blouse you just adore? How to accessorize it? The purple is already such a bold color.

Well, we'll do exactly the opposite of what we have done with our yellow dress, since purple is yellow's complement.

For our purple blouse, if you want to be bold and outrageous, go for bright gold (yellow) or just plain yellow jewelry.
Silver will not work with the purple since the blue of the silver is too close to our purple color (as the gold was on the yellow dress). Of course red is wonderful with purple, just showing that every rule is made to be broken (with discrimination and taste, of course).