A couple of weeks ago, I did something I’ve been waiting to do for nine years: I went to see David Zyla. Why Zyla? It’s the one system where I felt like I had a hard time DIYing. And I knew that even if I didn’t end up using the palette or recommendations I received, it would still be an interesting experience and a chance to see myself through the eyes of someone whose expertise I respected.

One of the reasons I’d put it off for so long is that my personal rule with analyses is that I need to be able to go and not have it be such a huge investment–financial or emotional–that I can’t leave the room and leave the analysis there if I feel like it’s something that wouldn’t work for me. And with the unconventional path my life has taken, it took a while for the financial part of that to be true.

So mostly, I went out of curiosity. I had so many friends in the color and style community who had gone, and I wanted to have the experience. I was happily surprised that not only did I love my palette and my recommendations, and I felt like everything David was saying resonated with me, but I feel revitalized in my love for fashion and style in a way that hasn’t been the case for a long time, maybe since high school nearly 20 years ago.

Seeing David is a lovely experience. The initial consult consists of about an hour of him putting your palette together, and another hour of going over it and style recommendations and, of course, the reveal of your Archetype. While you’re talking to him, your palette starts to take shape in front of your eyes. I was a little nervous when he started because some of the colors he settled on early, like my Tranquil and First Base, are a little cooler than I’m used to. But as the whole palette came together, my fears settled and I saw that it was going in the direction that I thought it would in terms of Archetype. And once my Metals went down, I knew it for sure.

So I’m a Tawny Spring. In hindsight, it seems obvious, and I did come to this conclusion myself at one point, but I think I got distracted by the path of Type Four and went in another direction for a while.

But sitting across from him, even though I had felt for most of these nine years that there wasn’t an easy fit for me in Zyla so whatever I got would have to be very customized for me, veering away from the archetype’s usual recommendations, Tawny Spring just seemed so obvious and such a natural fit. Everything he said confirmed what I had figured out for myself in my explorations.

I am also very happy with my palette. It contains things that I really wanted, like a golden brown. But it also contains things I haven’t really worn since I started with color analysis, like my lilac Tranquil, blue without green for my Dramatic, and the dark blue-gray of my First Base, bringing me out of my comfort zone. I think he’s said that usually, about half would be what you thought, and the other half will be a surprise. My Essence, Romantic, Energy, and all my Bases were about what I expected. My Dramatic and Tranquil were big surprises for me. I expected something more in the turquoise/teal range for both, which are common in Tawny palettes (I’ll see if I get any at my eventual Extension!).

What I’m most excited about with my palette is the wide range it gives me. I have versions of peach, red, green, purple, blue, navy, brown, and tan–basically the entire rainbow. Having such a wide range of colors to choose from makes my palette more usable for me. I’ve seen some palettes where there is more similarity between colors, and while I think this can work beautifully for other people and their Archetypes, having a lot of different colors is something that is important to me. I want variety. I wasn’t sure if I was going to use my palette is lieu of other palettes, like Autumn or T3, but currently, I feel like I want to explore what a wardrobe consisting entirely of this palette would look like.

I’ll get into my recommendations in my next post, as I feel like this post is already very long, but mostly, I want to convey how happy I am that I went. It has truly revitalized my love for style, and I also feel like what I got works really well with Soft Gamine and gives me direction there as well. I’m also oddly glad that I waited so long because I feel like I got so much more out of it with all of the work I’ve done on my own. Please let me know if you have any questions about my experience or seeing Zyla in general in the comments.