"Just as you are born with perfect pitch, you are born with a perfect eye for color," says Diana Thomson. "And I have it."

Thomson has a long history of working with Harvard students. She spent three years as the wife of the Leverett House assistant senior tutor, taugh. English Car, and revealed to 16 classes of freshmen everything they have always wanted to know about Expository Writing.

But last fall Thomson left the ivory tower to return to the artist's studio she left as a child, opening a shop as a color consultant.

"It's just another form of teaching, only now I'm teaching people how they should look instead of how they should write," Thomson says.

Spiffy

As a color consultant, Thomson examines her clients' skin and hair tones to select the colors that are best for them to wear.

The first step, Thomson explains, is to classify the person as either a "spring," a "summer," a "fall," or a "winter." The categories have nothing to do with the four seasons or the hues traditionally associated with them, but instead classify colors into those based on blue and those based on gold.

People with fair complexions fall under the spring or summer rubrics, while their counterparts with dark complexions fall under either fall or winter. Once she finds the subject's general categories. Thomson uses both personal preference and trial and error to further narrow the selection, draping swatches of cloth around the client's shoulders in front of a full-length mirror.

Within each "season" come about 35 colors. Some, however, look better than others on the individual clients, so Thomson tries them all.

Brrrr

Thomson calls herself a winter. "I can wear burgundy, teal, black, light true blue." Her "medium taupe brown hair" has no red in it, which she says make her look better in blue tones rather than golden ones.

She also says she is a "permissive" color consultant, which means she does not restrict a person's "palette" to those colors included in the seasonal category.

"The doctrinaire approach to color is simple, but it lacks the fluidity that real people need," she says. "For instance, almost anyone can wear black (a winter color) if they have enough makeup on."

Thomson also advises women in cosmetics. In addition to about 150 different colors of cloth, Thomson's workshop includes a table full of rouge, eyeliners, and lipsticks to go with each group.

An entire color session runs from one and a half to two hours, at $45 an hour, or $25 for the entire session for Harvard students. For a small extra charge, Thomson makes up an individual book containing samples of each client's best colors.