There are moments in a person’s life when they begin to suspect that civilisation has gone too far. For some, it’s when they encounter oat milk. For me, it was when a young woman named Xerene informed me that my “undertones” were cool.

In the last couple of years, people have been paying good money to have professionals tell them which colours they should wear based on their “season” like it’s the 1980s again.

The four options are Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, which sounds less like a fashion system and more like the lineup of a Gen-Z boy band.

Judging by the number of new colour analysis studios providing this service that are springing up and the long wait for available appointment slots, the trend, which fashionable Koreans revived about seven years ago, isn’t letting up any time soon.

My usual method of choosing clothes is to open the closet, pick something that doesn’t smell like barbecue sauce, and put it on.

Apparently, this is wrong.

Instead, I should pay someone to tell me which colours of clothing will make me look “vibrant.”

That was the “bonding session activity” I was dragged along to for a friend’s birthday: For S$228 per person, we made an appointment to see a “colour analyst”, a profession that exists because humanity has too much free time.

At the studio, as an introduction to the concept of colour analysis, we were shown pictures of Song Hye-kyo in her season’s colours and not in her season’s colours, which, when you are Song Hye-kyo, makes absolutely no difference to the radiance of your beauty. 

Not being Song Hye-kyo, I was enveloped in a white drape like a Roman senator awaiting impeachment. Xerene seated me before a mirror and began holding coloured cloths up to my face.