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Archive of ‘Personal’ category

Color, Personal, Style Systems | 9 Comments

What Are We Looking for?

This is something that has been on my mind lately, especially as I have been looking back at older posts. Why do some of us land on color and style analysis as an answer? And what question is it answering?

For me, I have always been interested in the idea that the perfect palette of colors for you exists, and that you could also fit some kind of archetype. And when I began looking at it seriously, it was because I was in my late 20s and working in my field, and I wanted to look less like a punk and more like someone that people would take seriously. I wanted to find my adult, sophisticated style.

But some people just want to find clothes that make them look better, or their best colors above all others. I think I have found the kinds of clothes that work best for me, and I have also learned where I can experiment and try something I might have felt like would be all wrong for me, if I didn’t have the knowledge I’ve gained from color and style analysis.

But on some points, my views have changed. I no longer believe in absolute truth on the color front, but an idea of what you want to look like; I know some people who tend to get a very narrow range of colors regardless of who they go to, but most people seem to get varying answers, depending on the analyst. That’s why I’ve gone with Type Four colors, because I feel the best in them and they make me the most happy when I look at my closet. I don’t think there is a color analyst around who would put me in those colors, but in the end, I’m the one getting dressed every day.

And that brings me to the main conclusion I’ve come to, which is that the purpose color and style analysis serves in my life is to help me be more myself, and to present myself to the world in that way. I always want to feel authentic in what I’m wearing, regardless of the occasion.

That’s why the next edition of the workbook is going to focus on that: creating a wardrobe that makes you happy and feels like you. To me, that is the end goal, not some kind of Ultimate Truth. What about you? What motivated you to seek out color and style analysis, and has that goal changed?

Dressing Your Truth, Kibbe's Metamorphosis, My Color Journey, My Kibbe Journey | 12 Comments

Combining Kibbe and Dressing Your Truth

I’ve never been someone who looks at one style system at a time. I have always worked with multiple style systems. My approach to doing so has evolved over the years. In my systematic way, I used to think that you can just write out a list of recommendations for each, and see where they differ and where they overlap. I no longer endorse this approach. This is partially because I now know that “recommendations” aren’t the correct way to go about using David’s work, and partially because I am interested in a cohesive look, and I feel that picking some elements, but not others, could result in something that just looks like a mishmash. I plan to go more in depth in my new workbook, but until then, I will share how I combine the two systems I use in my daily life: Kibbe and DYT.

Color

Color is easy: I stick to Type 4 colors. As I’ve said before, I feel the most like myself in these colors. I deeply appreciate David’s feedback, and maybe if I saw him in NYC and he could style me, I could see how Bright Spring or Gentle Autumn could be me, too. I don’t think mixing multiple palettes in one outfit works, and while I thought that perhaps I would have entirely Spring or Autumn head-to-toes, it just doesn’t appeal to me and I don’t seem to ever do it.

Style

Style I would describe as Flamboyant Gamine being a kind of operating system or framework running underneath, almost subconsciously, in a way. From knowing that I’m FG, I know where my star power lies. I know which clothes will accommodate my particular body, and what is best left to someone else. DYT I can use in a more concrete way, with the particular patterns, textures, etc. that go along with it, and how to balance something that maybe isn’t 100% T4 (although it always is in color!). I don’t carry around a list of recommendations. I can look at things and determine whether, when paired together, an outfit will meet both the requirements of juxtaposed yin and yang with more yang (Kibbe FG) and yin-yang-yang-yang (DYT 4/3). When used together, even in my casual days (which, as a grad student, most are), I am able to feel 100% myself and confident in my choices.

Is It Easy?

For me, it is very easy to make the two work together. My personal T4 style keywords are “Bold, Structured, and Edgy,” and it’s easy to see how FG would fit into that (although of course you could be an entirely different Image ID and those keywords would still work for you!). But sometimes, the options you get from different systems don’t really seem to coalesce. In my case, that would be the season/color palette aspect. I’m sure there are colors on the Spring and Autumn palettes that would fit into T4, but I wouldn’t get my black and white. Trying to satisfy both would leave me with very limited options. In that case, I just had to make an executive decision in terms of which I would choose.

What has been your experience with trying to merge different style systems into one wardrobe?

Flamboyant Gamine, My Kibbe Journey | 13 Comments

“Curvy” Flamboyant Gamine: 2019

Five years ago, I wrote a post about the conclusions I had come to about how I was a Flamboyant Gamine.

Of course, this being so long ago, I didn’t really understand a lot of David’s system. I somehow understood intrinsically that I was a Flamboyant Gamine, but I didn’t really understand what my body was showing me. Reading that post, I have no idea why I didn’t think I was a Soft Gamine except for pure instinct, and that I knew that attempting to dress taking into account what I saw as my “curves” was a disaster.

I’m always learning new things from David, and one of the things he has said recently is that Women start with a baseline of curves. Men have a baseline of length and width. Having measurements that indicate a bust, waist, and hips are not enough to add yin. The most yang women can have a body shape that would be considered “hourglass” if you put it into a calculator.

What matters it how clothing falls around the body. On a Dramatic woman, they have their long vertical:
Lauren.

(And no, I am not suggesting people try clothing on to see! David has an exercise to figure this out on Strictly Kibbe.)

For me, as an FG, it is a mixture of long and short:

Audrey

For an R, their curves need to be accommodated:

Marilyn

Having a bust, waist, and hips does not mean that you have to accommodate curves. It may sound funny, but I dress to accommodate my lack of curves, width, and balance. I am not a unicorn among FGs, because what I have is a baseline of curves, and not curves that need to be considered. I simply have a juxtaposed mix of yin and yang, and yang wins out.

Dressing Your Truth, Personal | 8 Comments

Five Signs Type Three Was Wrong

This post uses affiliate links.

I mistyped myself for about five years. While it took me a long time, there were signs all along that Type Three was wrong.

1. I didn’t like the clothes.

The idea of doing the 30-day challenge didn’t appeal to me at all. I was never inspired by the OOTDs in the T3 Facebook group. The only T3 pattern I liked was leopard. I ordered a handful of things from the DYT store, back when they still sold clothing and accessories, and none of the clothing ever made it out of the bag. The jewelry didn’t fare much better, and a lot of time, it was literally too big for my ears, especially stud earrings. I didn’t know it was possible for jewelry to not fit, but it happened.

2. I felt like I looked different from other T3s.

I always felt like there was just something different in the way I looked. I could see some T3 features, like the lump of clay nose, but the overall quality of my bone structure and skin seemed different. I thought maybe finding my secondary would help, but I didn’t look like the 3/4s and I couldn’t see myself being 3/1 and being the highest energy on the planet.

3. I never felt shamed for what I saw as my T3 qualities.

When I read The Child Whisperer, I thought that I must have been raised very true to my nature, because I related to nothing regarding shaming of a T3 child. (The T4 child? Very much so).

4. I was not a T3 child.

Going from that, when I was very, very young, I barely moved. I sat in a chair and observed the world. I had no need to be physical in the world. I preferred to read and write, once I was old enough, and do my own thing. When it comes to being competitive, the only place I could identify being competitive was… reading. I wanted to read more books than my peers. When it came to sports, however, I would do everything I could to get out of it.

5. Being physical and active didn’t support me.

After about four years of this, it came to a point where I felt very out of sorts. I thought that I wasn’t doing enough to support my T3, that I needed to extrovert myself more (in the way Carol uses it, to describe a quality of movement, versus being more social). But I don’t support myself by getting things done and connecting with the outdoors. I support myself by making sure to give myself time to go within.

Of course, there were many ways I was living true to my nature as a Type Four, even when I thought I was a Type Three. About a year before I realized I was a T4, I got a Type Four haircut. My clothes were basically T4 in T3 colors. And about six months before I realized I was a T4, I started getting up an hour earlier in the morning to have some time to intellectually connect with my interests before my day started, because I was working retail and that required a lot of extroversion. I still do this and I find it to be the single most important change I’ve made in my life, because it allows me to start my day off in a way that supports me. This is the first time in my life that I feel like I’m not underachieving in school, and I think it’s because I have learned how to support my T4 energy in a way that allows me to live up to my potential.

So these were all the glaring signs that I had misprofiled myself. Now, I think that someone could have one or two of these present, and it could be wounding, or that they haven’t found their way of living in their type yet. But I had so many things showing me that T3 was not my primary that it just couldn’t be right. When I realized I was T4, I couldn’t wait to buy all the things, and I related so much to everything Carol says about the T4 child, and I saw how Big Picture Thinking is my way of operating in the world. I like to get things done, but I like to come up with the perfect solution to a problem, not just do things for the sake of doing things.

Even if you’re not interested in DYT, I still think we show signs of when we have put ourselves in the wrong place in any system. What have been some signs that you placed yourself wrong somewhere?

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My Color Journey, Personal | 15 Comments

Dressing for Yourself, Part Two

Back when I started this site, my belief was that we each had a combination of lines and coloring (our “syntax”), and then we could personalize our look within these boundaries (“style”). At the time, the conventional wisdom within the nascent color and style community was that your lines would be determined by your Kibbe “archetype,” and then your true coloring would be revealed through a Sci\ART draping.

But as the years have worn on, I have seen color gurus of equal respectability give completely different palettes to the same person. Even people trained in the same system can see different things in a single individual. As such, I no longer believe that there is one true answer for either aspect.

What I think matters most is how you feel. Do you love your style? Do you love the fact that you get to wake up and wear your lines and colors and express yourself?

I can say that when my color journey led me to Dark Autumn and then four-season Autumn and Spring, I didn’t feel that way. Everything was just okay. I always felt like I was holding myself back from what I actually wished I could wear.

So when I had the realization I was actually a Type Four (update since that post: I have since realized I am a 4/3), I was a little afraid. Type Four’s colors were the colors I had told myself were off-limits to me. At first, I thought I would just do it some of the time, and have a wardrobe with different outfits for different moods.

But I also realized as a Type Four, I don’t really have that in my personality. I’m more constant. It just doesn’t happen that I’d rather wear Spring or Autumn colors over bold hues, neon, and black and white. I don’t need the choice. I need to allow myself to be myself.

So if you have conflicting results in different style systems–that’s okay. You may not even be happiest in the one that is “objectively the best” on you. Go with what makes you the happiest to get dressed in the morning. For me, letting go of forcing myself to choose made it very clear which one I actually liked best. You may, in fact, like having choice, and always have a wardrobe with different “moods.” This is also fine! Let you wardrobe serve you, and don’t feel like you have to restrict yourself to some edict that comes from outside of you.

Dressing Your Truth, My Kibbe Journey, Personal | 19 Comments

Dressing For Yourself

I am still firmly entrenched in my Dressing Your Truth experience. Being a 4/3 is natural and effortless for me. There is still some conflict, however.

I still love Kibbe’s work, and remain actively involved in it. I know, however, that he would never place me in a season that gets black and white. The crux of David’s work is to look at yourself with enlightened subjectivity, and to accept yourself as you are. It is easy for me to accept myself as a Flamboyant Gamine. My coloring, however, is a little more complicated in that regard.

I know that based on online photos, he sees me as a Spring or Autumn. In real life, he may switch to Summer, but Winter would just never happen, based on his color theory. But shopping for Spring and Autumn clothes, I’ve discovered, just does not bring me the joy that the T4 saturated hues do. I am happy to open my closet and see bold, high contrast colors.

So here is the conundrum: is it lacking self-acceptance to not wear the season your coloring dictates, or is better to match your inner self, which DYT T4 does for me? With style, it is easy: once you accept your Image ID, you can now express yourself in any way you’d like. But with color, it doesn’t really work that way. You can express a certain mood with any of the palettes, but some things will just not exist for you–like black for anyone but a Winter.

While the T4 palette also limits what is available, it limits to me what is already speaking to me. It expresses my inner self.

So there is a conflict here between what my coloring is dictating, at least according to David’s theory, and what my inner self is satisfied by. So far, the inner self is winning out, because it is just so much more fun for me to dress in T4 colors every day. But again, I have to wonder if it is the best presentation of my physical self.

How do you deal with conflicts in different systems? In the meantime, I have these VERY 4/3 glasses on my wishlist!

Dressing Your Truth, Personal | 17 Comments

DYT Update

It has been a while and I have not yet gotten around to the historical project I started, because I had too much freelance work and then school started up again. But I have also spent a lot of time really delving into Dressing Your Truth.

I have a long history with this system. It may even be the first system I came across when I began this whole process. For a long time, I kind of dismissed it as a style system that was lacking, or more of a “starter system” compared to others. But I think part of that was that I had placed myself incorrectly, so of course the style component didn’t work for me, and since I first discovered it, the team behind it has made real headway in developing new ways to use the information.

To quickly summarize my journey, when I discovered the system, I decided I was a 3/4, since I couldn’t see T4 perfection in my features, and I related a lot to both descriptions. I never liked the T3 clothes on me–too substantial, too heavy, not enough structure. I generally stuck to the colors, because they aligned well with where I had placed myself in Sci\ART, but I never wore the clothes in any real way. Over the course of the years I believed I was a 3/4, I never did a 30-day challenge, for instance.

Then out of the blue, I saw the T4 in my face. I assumed I was a 4/1, because there is a video about how 4/1s and 1/4s can mistake themselves for T3, and somehow that more convoluted explanation made more sense to me than the simple idea of having simply reversed my dominant and secondary.

But after going back recently and watching videos on their website about the yin/yang balance and energy levels of different types, and how to make your T4 style true to you by incorporating your secondary–I realized that an S1 didn’t make sense for me at all. My style instincts were clearly pointing in the direction of an S3, and so was my movement.

Since realizing I’m a 4/3, I have enjoyed shopping so much more. It feels almost full-circle in a way, because 4/3 is fairly close to how I dressed before I ever got into style systems. 4/3 means getting to wear all the things I love, and not feeling like I’m limiting or depriving myself. I still love Flamboyant Gamine, and that is still incredibly informative for the yin/yang balance of my lines. I know how to make things work on me and how to combine them. But 4/3 gives me a different kind of yin/yang balance, the yin/yang balance of how I move through life, and how to reflect that in my style.

The real conflict between the two systems is in color. Right now, I’m enjoying Type 4 colors, and I plan on focusing on them. But I will see how it feels to live in these colors for a longer period of time.

Do you do DYT? Have you tried it in the past? Have you ever mistyped yourself in a system for a long period of time?

Color, Personal | 7 Comments

Color Resistance

I didn’t really have any Image ID resistance to being a Flamboyant Gamine. Many people come to the system with a “grass is greener” attitude, and that’s what made it hard to see themselves. I came to it with, “It can’t really be that easy or what I want; it has to harder than that.” Perhaps it’s my Enneagram 4 coming out, but I enjoy being a type that is less common and that can be disruptive to traditional beauty standards.

I have to come realize that the resistance I do have, in terms of my yin/yang balance, is that I can tend to go too yang, which is something that David identifies in the book as a problem common to gamines–that we tend to accept our yang side more easily than our yin side. It is important for me to remember that I am not yang-dominant; I am yang and yin, in a juxtaposed and almost-equal combination.

Similarly, I have a tendency to go heavier in my colors than I actually am. And this is where I really have resistance. In my heart of hearts, I love the Winter palette. I appreciate DYT, because it gives me permission to explore this desire, but I know that I am actually have more warmth, less contrast, and more delicate coloring. I can dress up and carry the movement and energy, but it is not going to be the perfect harmonious match for me. (Carol herself mentioned in a video I watched that she was draped as a Winter in the 80s. I don’t think it’s uncommon for your DYT type to not be a good fit for where you would be based on coloring alone.)

While I still think my skin generally looks OK in Dark Autumn, I think the heaviness can overwhelm me–my natural coloring can’t really hold it up. I suppose it was a bit of compromise for me–some brightness and warmth, but still with Winter. I also looked for that in Bright Spring, but it wasn’t the right combination for me, either–I think some of the colors go too cool in a way I can’t handle.

After consulting some of my most trusted Color and Style friends, I purchased a True Spring fan. I think it is a good starting point, and I like just having a fan to look at–sounds weird, but it’s true. When I read Christine Scaman’s True Spring chapter, a lot of it resonated with me, from my coloring as a child to the finishes I prefer in my makeup, which is more translucent acrylic than the oil painting of Autumn.

I don’t think, however, that my feelings on Sci\ART have really changed: I still feel like the color spaces are too limiting. Maybe they’re your top colors in a four-season space, but this exact color setting of hue/temperature/chroma isn’t representative of your entire color space.

What I have come to is simply Four Season Spring. It feels right to me because:

  • These are the colors I have surrounded myself with when I look at my interior decorating choices (See Johannes Itten and students choosing the colors that suit them without being aware of it)
  • These are the colors that I get complimented on. I did not get compliments in Autumn colors for the most part, except for my style choices. I worked retail for a while, and I heard a lot of opinions on my own choices!

When looking at four seasons, it is understood that not every color in a palette will be good and some will be better than others. When pondering Spring and Autumn, I took the Color Me Beautiful palettes and crossed out all the colors that don’t work for me in Spring (the ones that bring out redness in my face) and the colors in Autumn that feel too heavy for me.

Spring

Rather than using a palette, however, I am just going to trust me own eye and go with colors that appear to be warm enough and clear enough. I have been doing this dressing T4 (since I feel that I still need red-orange and not fuchsia, for instance). My approach is to do both, sometimes separately, sometimes in combination, if there are colors that are warm enough for Spring but also pure enough for T4. This is made easier by David Kibbe’s philosophy of head-to-toe dressing, although he would not approve of anyone who is not a Winter wearing black! If I want to wear black and my silver jewelry, I can, in an outfit that is totally in line with the T4 pure hues; if I want to wear brown and my gold jewelry, I can, in an outfit that is all Kibbe/CMB Spring.

While this may seem like two wardrobes, I just think of Audrey Hepburn’s first wedding set, which was a stack of bands in gold, rose gold, and silver, because she was so into fashion and couldn’t be restricted to one metal. Rather than just choosing between two options, I want to have both options. Maybe one option will win out. Maybe I’ll just be happy to have options and wear whatever strikes my fancy on a particular day.

Are you dealing with two (or more!) color palettes/style philosophies? How do you handle it?

Dressing Your Truth, Kibbe's Metamorphosis, Personal | 12 Comments

Why Did I Return to DYT?

Of course, the last post on this blog before my unintentional hiatus was Why I Stopped Dressing My Truth, Part 2. And of course I stopped, because what I thought was my Truth was not my truth–the post before that was perfectly 4/1 and I was talking about disobeying my recommendations.

So I left DYT because I was tired of trying to fit myself into Type 3, where the jewelry was too big and the clothes were too textured and heavy. I think some people do find that DYT just does not work for them, but in my case, it wasn’t working because I had placed myself incorrectly within the system. Once I realized that, though, it was like getting everything back that I loved after years of thinking that I just wasn’t bright enough to handle black and white and pure colors.

This began to change a little when I realized that all of David Kibbe’s palettes go pretty bright. He doesn’t seem to be much of a fan of things in the Soft range. Accepting David’s view of color, I gave myself permission to go brighter, especially as even DYT T3 seemed to be moving in a more vivid direction.

I pretty much rejected T3 style but kept the T3 colors, thinking of it as a four-season Autumn. But once I realized I was 4/1, it was basically just giving a name to what I was doing already, and giving myself permission to add black and white to my wardrobe, as well as some colors like non-peacock blue.

I don’t think that I would get black from David–only Winters get black in his world, and his Winters are very cool and high contrast. But I’m still enjoying allowing myself to express myself using the T4 palette, and I find that keeping 4/1 helps me get my FG yin/yang balance correct. Like many Gamines, I have a tendency to go entirely to the yang side, and T1 reminds me to add back in more yin.

Besides Kibbe, the only stylist I’d want to go see is David Zyla, but that is forever a puzzle to me. For now, using 4/1 to inform my FG expression feels right to me.

How have you found working with DYT, if you use it? Does it work with your other style system discoveries?

Dressing Your Truth, Personal | 7 Comments

Finally Revealing My Truth: Why Did It Take Me So Long to See It?

It’s shocking to me that it took me so long to see that I was T4. I have heard from others who know me that it was fairly obvious. So why couldn’t I see it? I fell into some common traps.

1) Thinking I wasn’t perfect enough for T4.
Many T4s fall into this trap: our perfecting nature makes it so that we have a hard time seeing ourselves in T4’s symmetry and perfect posture, and/or feel like we don’t hit all the checkboxes. I don’t have perfect posture. Like anyone else, I can see where I have asymmetry in my face. My nose has long been a sore point for me in terms of my appearance, and when I read “lump of clay” for T3, I felt like I couldn’t be anything else in the system, especially not the “perfect” type.

2) Confusing “still + upward” with “push forward.”
T4s and T3s can both have what is considered to be a “strong” personality. I am definitely a bold person, and the S1 makes me a little more high energy than, say, a 4/2. Things that I had thought were an indicator of T3 actually were an indicator of being T4 and being my own authority and not being afraid to express my opinion.

There were a lot of things that should have clued me in:

1) My childhood behavior.
No one would have ever called me an “active” child. I was very still–you could place me in a chair and I would stay there, observing the world. I didn’t talk much. I enjoyed spending time alone, working on my own things. I didn’t have much use for other children. I never related to the ways that T3s are shamed as children because, well, I wasn’t that kid.

2) Never dressing T3.
Many people who have placed themselves in the wrong type will dress with all the other elements of their actual type, just in the colors of the type they think they are. My “T3” wardrobe was basically 4/1, just in the T3 colors. The T3 elements never felt right on me and never suited my taste–even when I would buy T3 jewelry from the DYT store, it would literally be too large for my ears or wrists, and I never took any of the clothes I bought from there out of the package.

So why didn’t I see these obvious things? I think it all goes back to #1: I just didn’t think I was “enough” for T4. I didn’t think my facial features would qualify. I had to see them from a different perspective (my license, with proper T4 hair because it worked better than T3 hair… another sign) in order to see myself as T4. And once I allowed myself to see myself as T4, I have been able to go back to what I love and what I feel expresses me. The Autumn colors never suited my personality, really. I am a bold person, and the clear, strong hues have always been what I have wanted to be in all of these systems.

Again, I don’t feel like I would drape into these colors in any of the color-based systems, but when everything is put together, it is what feels the most true to me. And in the end, I think that is what we all want: to feel like ourselves.

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