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…Or did I start doing it, at least my definition of it?
In recent months, I’ve been moving away from stricter views of style. You can see that my first post on this subject, as well as in my posts about disobeying your recommendations and abandoning Sci\ART.
Some people may like having a very narrow outline of what they should wear, and having everything in their wardrobe coordinate. I see the appeal of this, and for a long time, I believed that this was the best way. But I feel like it’s started to feeling too constricting for me. It was taking the fun out of clothes. When I started my style journey, I pretty much only wore black and gray. I had no idea what colors looked good on me. Exploring all of these color and style systems has given me clarity, which in turn I now feel allows me to know how I can break the rules.
One of the problems with the stricter systems is that they can almost make you feel guilty for not following them. For instance, if I don’t dress as a Type Three, am I letting myself down because I’m not showing my “true” self? If I don’t want to wear shades and substance, is it giving the wrong impression about who I am?
As it so often happens, the answer came to me while reading Metamorphosis:
Since you don’t have Louis B. Mayer guiding you in developing your star quality, you’ve got to do it for yourself. Discovering your Image Identity is the first step, for it allows you to utilize everything you are–both physically and innately–so that you can integrate your essential uniqueness into your own total look.
Not only will you end perfectly coordinated, with all elements of your appearance working harmoniously and holistically, but you will also get to experience the fun, the excitement, and even the glamour of discovering how thrilling and fulfilling it is when your star quality is out in the open for everyone to see and appreciate. The most exciting part of your metamorphosis becomes the new way you experience yourself as you begin to glory and revel in your totally radiant being!
By putting your uniqueness on display, you allow the world to see that there is no one else exactly like you. You are also able to remember that fact yourself, which is not always easy to do. That’s what Metamorphosis is all about. We’re not transforming you into something that’s going to disappear when you slip out of your clothes or wash the makeup off your face and watch it slowly drain down the sink.
Your true special essence already exists. Your star quality is inside you this very instant as surely as the ability to take your next breath. All you need to do is discover it, acknowledge it, enhance it, allow it to be seen, and then simply sit back and experience the wonder that is you!
I’m putting so long an excerpt here because I think it really captures what I love so much about the way David Kibbe works, and what I think sometimes other people struggle with when they try to work out Kibbe’s system for themselves. You simply are who you are. I can’t make myself into a Marilyn Monroe type anymore than Marilyn could have turned herself into Audrey. It’s about embracing what you are, and letting go of what you’re not.
To some, letting go of who you are not means rejecting things based on color, or by following DYT’s principles. But being Dark Autumn didn’t feel like an essential part of who I was–it was simply a set of rules to follow. DYT didn’t feel like an expression of me. It seemed to just get in the way of who I was, with rules to follow that may reflect my heavy footplant, but that were not as good a representation of me as Flamboyant Gamine is.
For me, using my intuition to follow my yin/yang balance and enjoy being FG is the fullest expression of who I am and my truth.
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Sarah B
June 13, 2018 at 12:38 pmThat part about watching your makeup slowly drain down the sink is one of my favorites in the entire book.
Bla31ze
June 14, 2018 at 8:00 amI strongly agree about the “guilt” part. I think that feeling bad for disobeying a system is a nonsense, but it has taken time for me to realize that.
For what concerns Kibbe, I still am on my journey to discover my own image identity: at the moment I suspect I may be a Flamboyant Gamine too. For what concerns my season, however, I am pretty sure I am a Soft Autumn Deep: and sometimes, since finding my best colours while shopping can become a challenge, I try to avoid mistakes so hard that I end up making even worse ones. A total gray uniform may be “seasonally correct”, but whatever my Image Identity is, that surely looks insignificant on me.
I have become interested in image analysis because I want to look past the rules society or fashion have set about look: then, what is the point if I start wondering what my Dark Winter friend would think about me, if she noticed that I am wearing bolder shades than I “should”? That certainly is neither fun nor “self-acceptance” anymore. In the end, that is why I am considering Flamboyant Gamine now: creating outfits is starting to feel like a joy to me, not just like another thing to do.
Sigrid
June 16, 2018 at 11:27 amI’ve studied various style systems too and have come to a similar conclusion. I think the most important thing for me has been to train my eyes and become more conscious. When I think back about what I’ve thougth suited me and what not, I’ve somehow had a basic understanding, but I’m now more able to put into words what works and what doesn’t. I friend who has known me for many, many years commented on just that when she complimented my outfit: “I seems like you’ve reached another consciousness the resent years”.
Nouveau
August 4, 2018 at 2:45 pmI too abandoned the Dressing Your Truth system. I used it off and on for about 5 years. And while I did find some valuable tidbits that resonated with me, many of the recommendations for my dominant and secondary just didn’t appeal to me.
I burned out on that system and the whole DYT machine. When I realized that I felt guilty for “going rogue” (choosing things outside of my “types”), I woke up and thought “what am I doing?” LOL.
The other thing that bothered me about DYT is that so many people agonize for ages, trying to figure out their types. And I know many people have left the DYT system because they couldn’t determine their types and got tired of trying to figure it out.
Carol could have made that easy for people, from the very first time they accessed her website. The DYT four-types system is derived on the classic “Four Temperaments” / “Four Humors”.
I used a quick, free open-source quiz that tells you which order the four temperaments (types) are present in you:
https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/O4TS/
The results of that quiz gave me a great deal of peace, clearing out the indecision about my type, and enabling me to move on and turn my mind to other things instead of constantly pondering what my primary and secondary types were.
And I feel so much better for leaving DYT.
Kristin
October 11, 2018 at 12:56 amI’ve spent an enormous amount of time over the past several years trying to figure out my best colors and style, etc., and blogs like yours have helped me to make tremendous progress (thank you!), though it often felt like one step forward/two steps back. I changed my color season and style identity all the time, and wondered if it was all just a waste of time and effort. One day, I was watching a video of myself and it finally clicked. I “saw” myself more clearly, and was able to make some definite choices per color and style. Literally, my eye had to be trained. And I had to spend enough time really looking at myself–I mean really looking–to appreciate what was truly unique about me. In the process of trying to fit myself into various categories, I trained my eye to look more critically than I ever thought possible at colors and lines. I developed a vocabulary. It was time consuming, but after paying my dues (years of work!), I can honestly say that I see “me” and I’m able to *finally* style myself in a flattering way. If our beauty is unique, then of course no one system can explain everything to us; but after lots of research, we can train the eye and take what’s useful from the systems at hand.