Shop My Palette: "Doing Something I Love Makes All the Difference"

I had the pleasure of speaking to Katherine Capaldi, the founder of Shop My Palette. In the interview, Katherine shares her style journey, her passion for sustainable fashion and how she made a reality of her vision for a sustainable, colour-based online shopping platform.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself

I had my colours analysed in late 2024 , at a time in my life when I spent years focusing on my kids, and just being a mum. Work had taken a back seat and I wasn't really thinking about myself very much at all. And then suddenly, getting my colours analysed gave me that spark to think about myself a bit more again, how I felt about how I looked, and how I shopped.

How did the idea for Shop My Palette come about?

I found having my colours done profoundly life-changing, as I think quite a lot of people do. I came away really excited: I had my swatches, I was looking at the items I was buying in a different way and it was lovely. And then when I came to shopping online, I just started to find it really frustrating. I would go onto a particular brand website and filter by green and

I'd get the bright emerald greens, the lime greens, I'd get everything, and I just really wanted the soft, warm greens that suited me as a Soft Autumn.

I thought, "Actually, I have got the time now to do something about this." I wanted to make a change, try to create something that would make it easier for people. So, I went away and spent months researching colours, undertones, warmth, coolness, depth, brightness, clarity, all of those things, over time learning about which colours worked within each colour season. Then I started building the website: I decided to start with the seasonal palettes rather than tonal analysis, as that seemed to be the most widespread online, and certainly the most searched for.

And towards the end of 2025, I started a Pinterest account and that's when the followers started going up. People started coming to the website a bit more and then it's just been growing from there.

Can you tell us more and how people can search for items on Shop My Palette?

When I started researching the options and looking into what possibilities there were to shop online by your colour season, there were some analysts who would do a monthly mini shop where they would email a list to clients of clothes that they could buy, or there were monthly subscription services. What I really wanted to build was free online space where people could look for all their favourite brands and then filter them by their colour season. We have about 20 brands so far, and over 2,000 filtered items of clothing, and it's growing every month.

You can filter in lots of different ways. You can go in through your colour season, so if you're a Clear Spring, you can visit the Clear Spring collection, then filter by brand, or by garment type, colour or pattern. In the future, I'll be adding tonal search filters as well. You can also search the full collection from the homepage, look for your favourite brand and then filter into your colour season or by your favourite colours.

And how have you selected the brands for Shop My Palette?

All the brands I've selected have been sustainable brands because one of my core values is sustainability. It's really important to me. I'm actually quite anti-consumerism at heart, so I did debate this quite a lot when I was setting up the website. How can someone like me who doesn't consume too much or tries not to shop too much justify creating a shopping site? But actually, the colour analysis side and the sustainability side tie in really well. My aim is not to encourage people to buy more things that they'll never wear; it's to get them thinking about what they're buying, something that they know is more likely to work for them, picking something that's going to last and be cherished for many years. And if you're going to spend money on new clothes, spend it somewhere where you're potentially doing some good or investing in companies that are trying to make a difference. I'm totally at peace now with the idea, because I'm encouraging the consumerism that I would like to be more widespread.

So which brands can we find on Shop My Palette?

Most of the brands on Shop My Palette are British. One of the initial ones I chose was Aspiga, which is a B Corp with lots of lovely organic cotton summer dresses and beautiful prints. I would describe it as resort wear and occasionwear, often with Indian-inspired prints and fabrics.

I also added Baukjen, which is another London brand. It's a great place to find wardrobe staples: lovely tailored trousers, really good quality shirts, blouses and tops.

Recently, we've added BAM which makes bamboo activewear. One thing I've noticed is that they have amazing colours for all the Spring seasons, which is refreshing because activewear seems to be often dominated by black, grey and navy.

We also have Nobody's Child, which has really nice occasionwear especially if you're shopping for a wedding guest outfit. Then there's Sugarhill Brighton, which is known for its playful prints and bright patterns. On the other side of the scale, Hush tends to offer softer, more muted colours which work particularly well for the Summer seasons. One of the biggest challenges has been trying to get a range of brands that have enough colour variety across all twelve stock for the different seasons.

Right from the start, I wanted people to feel that Shop My Palette is a safe place to shop, because I’d already done some research for them. Every brand has passed a basic sustainability check before it’s added to the site. The site has a brands page which explains a little about each brand: Does it have a Good on You rating? Is it a B Corp? What is it doing to be sustainable? I've done a little dive into each brand, so people can make more informed choices.

I'd love you to share a little about your own style and whether that's changed over time and how having your colours done has affected the way you dress.

I had my colours analysed but I didn't have a style analysis, which I think would be a really amazing thing to do. Working out your own style when you haven't had it professionally explored is quite hard.

I think I've always been quite casual. Even as a child, I was much happier in shorts and a t-shirt than a dress. That carried on throughout my teenage years and into early adulthood. Then I started working in London in the early 2000s, so my wardrobe changed quite a bit. I wore pencil skirts, blouses and heels or ballet pumps, because I worked in quite a formal office. But that never really did feel like me. I've always been happier in jeans and a t-shirt or a summer dress and flip-flops. The more formal clothes in my wardrobe have dropped away now since I moved to Devon, had children and stopped working in an office.

These days, I'm working from home, going to the beach, doing the school run, walking the dog. All of the formal clothes that I had have gone, apart from the occasional lovely dress to wear to a wedding.

Having my colours done really helped. I felt a bit lost before when I went shopping. I'd go to the shops and see things I'd like, but wasn't really thinking about whether the colour was going to suit me, whether I would wear it, or whether it fitted with the rest of my wardrobe. Now I realise that you can still look put together even if you prefer casual clothes. You can wear jeans and a t-shirt and still look polished, because your colours work. That’s probably the best way to describe my style now: intentionally casual.

If you had a message for the fashion industry what would it be?

I would love there to be more regulation around sustainability in the fashion industry. As we all know, there's a huge problem still that needs to be resolved in terms of processes, production, materials and the cost to the planet of all these clothes. But I’d also like to see a shift in messaging. Collections move so quickly and the turnover of items means that people are buying things immediately, only to wear them a few times before moving onto the next trend.

From a colour analysis perspective, my message would be stop making so much black and white! I always wonder if brands make so many black clothes because that's what people want to buy, or because they’re seen as the safest commercial option because “black suits everybody”. I went into [a high street shop] recently and everything in there was black, white and navy and it just felt such a depressing place to be. There's no joy in these collections, there's no individuality, there's no expression.

I'd love to see retailers embrace a much broader range of colours, so people with different colour seasons have more choice and can build wardrobes that really reflect who they are.

Is there anything else you want to add? I know you're making a directory colour analysts.

Creating the colour analyst directory felt like a natural next step because so many people come to Shop My Palette to learn about seasonal colour analysis. They're interested, but don't know their colour season yet and they're not really quite ready to shop. I spent a long time thinking about how to help those visitors. Some people suggested adding online tools for people to analyse themselves, but that never felt authentic to me. Seasonal colour analysis is something that benefits from real expertise, so it made much more sense to help people find a qualified analyst. And yet I kept thinking, how can I somehow encourage these people to get analysed so that they might come back in shopping mode rather than browsing and education mode?

The response from analysts has been overwhelmingly positive. I've had so many write back and say how much they like the website and that they'd be happy to recommend it to clients. We’ve already grown to 60 analysts on the directory, which is incredibly encouraging.

It makes the site work on a whole other level because it completes the journey for visitors. Someone can discover seasonal colour analysis, use the directory, have their colours analysed, and hopefully come back to Shop My Palette to build a wardrobe in colours they know will work for them. So I'm really, really glad I did it. The site is becoming exactly what I hoped it would become. At its heart, it's about helping people, and building relationships with colour analysts has become one of the most rewarding parts of the journey.

Where can people find you, other than Shop My Palette?

Shop My Palette is definitely the best place to start, but I'm also very active on Pinterest (https://uk.pinterest.com/shopmypalette/). It's become a fantastic way of sharing colour inspiration and helping new people discover the website. I really enjoy creating the content, and it's lovely seeing so many people finding Shop My Palette through it.

Thanks so much, Katherine, for the conversation. It's been wonderful and thank you very much for your time!

Find Shop My Palette here.

Find Katherine's Shop My Palette on Pinterest here.

You can also see my own listing on Katherine's directory here!

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