Welcome to Color Math, a monthly column by Tibi founder and creative director Amy Smilovic. Author of the Creative Pragmatist—a practical guide to expressing your personal style—each month, and exclusively for Vogue, she’ll share unexpected yet approachable ways to style a trending color through her signature mix-and-match lens. It’s time to spin the color wheel!

“Please tell me you’re not going to try and show me butter yellow.” Those are the words of Sherri McMullen, as we sip wine in a tiny restaurant in the 11th arrondissement. But you love the color, right? I ask, knowing what awaits her back at my studio. “Yes, yes. But it’s so….hard,” she says, clad in deep plum sweater and burgundy skirt with red pumps and jade earrings. This is not someone who shies away from “hard.”

When I think about what Sherri’s saying, and what I’ve heard (a lot) and experienced painfully each time I had designed into it and was forced to contend with the reality that it is, indeed, often “hard” to style, I wanted to figure out the riddle. It’s not about making it “easy.” Nothing in life that comes too easy is worth having. Rather, I wanted to share what I know: that when you’re embracing a color you love or are deeply attracted to, you need to understand first what bothers you each time you try and wear and fail. And then flip that on its head.

Vogue’s Favorite Butter Yellow Pieces:

Sometimes we instinctively want to mix an item with black but think it’s an easy out. But that’s a strong and bold combination—and it works when that’s your mood. White? That’s going to give preppy. Fine, if that’s your thing. It’s not mine, really. What about other soft colors? That’s a look, but if you live in a city, or if you seek more visual strength, it’s hard to go there often.

This means each time you’re styling, you feel locked into bold or soft, but for every day, for lots of wear, you want more options. Mixing the yellow with a range of colors, ones we call “no color colors” like strange brownish, taupey and olive-ish colors adds depth, nance, and interest. Mixing with pink and reds lends irony, which can also be interesting. Expanding beyond the “obvious” makes everything a little, well, less obvious—but still very wearable.