Style Syntax

June 19, 2015

Color, David Zyla, Personal | 12 Comments

Dark Autumn Blonde, Part Four: DIYing a Zyla Palette

My views on color analysis have changed drastically over the past few months. I used to believe strongly that Sci\ART and Sci\ART-based systems were the absolute Truth when it comes to color analysis. Stuff based on energy or body colors, or even the 16-season system, rang false to me. I believed that the absolute best results possible could only be found in the accomplished hands of a trained Sci\ART analyst. I believed that anyone who did not go this route was doing themselves a disservice, that they would never unlock their true beauty.

But after spending a lot of time in the online color and style community, I’ve learned that Sci\ART is just one way of looking at it. Some people don’t like the look that the Sci\ART result gives. Some strongly prefer their Zyla or Beauty Valued or 16-color result, and their Sci\ART palette sits and gathers dust. Some get a draping result they don’t like or don’t agree with, and spend hundreds more dollars getting redraped or getting custom palettes in other systems.

As someone who hasn’t been draped, I’ve come to a place where I feel like getting draped isn’t something I need. I was reading a blog post by Light Marigold Spring today. This blogger has been draped in Sci\ART/12 Blueprints twice, has a Beauty Valued fan, had a Zyla consult, and has some other fans. Anyway, she made the point that it comes down to personal preference, and in the end, you just choose which approach and which result you like best. No one way of looking at coloring is more right than the other. No system is “more correct” than all the others.

My approach to my own colors has been haphazard at best, and would probably make a professional color analyst shudder. I’ve simply deduced, from trial and error, that some colors are really, really bad for me. Too light and bright I turn red. White makes me puffy and gives me a fuzzy beard. I need some darkness. These factors have led me to Dark Autumn.

Would I be draped Dark Autumn? Maybe, maybe not. But the very worst thing that happens to my skin in Dark Autumn is that the line between my chin and my neck fades a little, and if that’s the worst thing that happens to you in a season, you’re not doing too badly. I can look at my fan and pick out my body colors. It connects with me energetically–maybe Dressing Your Truth is on to something with colors and energy, rather than draping. I love the colors and feel like myself in them.

Another advantage to using a palette like this is that the colors all work together. So I can create a wardrobe where everything matches, and I don’t have to think about it. That was what kept me in black for the past ten years or so: I found color selection intimidating. Now I just look for the slightly burnt, rich, and slightly warm colors of Dark Autumn, and everything looks good together.

In the interest of minimalism, I got to thinking about capsule wardrobes and color. Zyla is a system where you get a series of colors to use in certain ways in order to achieve different aesthetic goals. I decided to take my Dark Autumn palette and use it to create a Zyla palette. As I mentioned, my body colors are found on the Dark Autumn palette, so pulling the correct colors was pretty easy. Of course, Zyla could potentially give me something totally different if I ever do see him. But I think this is a pretty good approximation. (I didn’t do metals or pastels because I don’t know how to choose them, and I feel like pastels are something I wouldn’t be able to use much anyway.)

The colors are not true to fan, obviously, but here is the list of what I used from the Classic True Colour International fan:
Essence: 1.1 FN
Romantic: 6.2 A
Dramatic: 4.9 A
Energy: 3.8 A
Tranquil: 2.5 A
1st Base: 5.10 FN
2nd Base: 3.5 FN
3rd Base: 2.3 A

Some of these colors, like my Energy color, are ones that I know are special on me. My Romantic is a great lipstick/blush color on me. I love the 2nd Base. And I managed to get these colors by following Zyla’s instructions, no cheating to get my favorites on there. (Although I think in my Dramatic “extension” I’ll give myself one of the purples!)

To me, my Dark Autumn palette is simply a way to make my life easier. I’m not seeking my absolute true beauty. Simply put, they seem to work and I like them, and that’s good enough for me.

June 17, 2015

Services | 5 Comments

The Workbook

As I’ve said on my Services page, I’m currently working on a workbook. This is a workbook aimed at people who already know their Kibbe type and season, or whatever system of combination of systems they want to use. The goal of the workbook is to help people take what they know about what works for them, and translate it into a personal style that works with their real life.

To me, this is the most important and most challenging part of any style system. Figuring out your type or getting typed by someone else is really only the first step. The real work begins when it’s time to take all these recommendations and you have to figure out how to put them together in a way that still expresses your individuality and personal taste. Kibbe briefly details how he’d help Shirley MacLaine do this, but this key section of the book is woefully short in comparison to how difficult and important this work is.

With the workbook, I hope to fill this gap. It’s the same kind of work I do in The Complete Closet, but the DIY version. It takes you through creating an entire picture composed of a synthesis between your lines and your colors, figuring out what you actually need to wear on a regular basis and how to come up with outfits for different occasions, through putting a wardrobe together that expresses who you are.

The price of the workbook also includes membership in a private Facebook group for people who either bought the workbook or have signed up for one of the services. (The group will open when the workbook is released.) You’ll be able to work through the workbook with others who are also doing it, and I’ll be there to answer questions and dispense advice.

The Style Syntax Customization Workbook is now available for pre-order for $10. Until August 1st, anyone who signs up for either of the services will also receive the workbook for free when it is released. If you purchase the workbook before August 1st and later purchase one of the services, the price of the workbook will be refunded.

June 10, 2015

Color, Historical, Personal | 10 Comments

Dark Autumn Blonde, Part Three

Yesterday I received the first edition of Grace Morton’s The Arts of Costume and Personal Appearance in the mail. The second edition from 1955 is available online, complete and completely free thanks to Cornell University. The one I have is slightly different; for instance, in the clothing personality chapter, Morton uses “masculine” and “feminine,” and the revised, posthumous 1955 edition uses “yin” and “yang.” Regardless of which edition you read, it’s a book filled with dense information about everything we care about: style, line, movement, color… It’s definitely a book I recommend either downloading from the Cornell site or picking up cheaply on Amazon. A lot of it is antiquated, such as the section on how your personal appearance should make you “marriageable,” and the fact that there is no information on coloring for women of color. The information it does have, however, is incredibly helpful, and echoes of her work can be found in everyone who came after her.

(This book also solidified my view that McJimsey is the one who came up with the “types” as such. There are a few more books from this era I want to obtain, but so far, I haven’t really found anything that predates her that uses Dramatic, Classic, Romantic, etc.)

A lot of the masculine/feminine (yin/yang) stuff basically repeats what we already know from Northrup. I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing, since, as I said above, the material in this book is pretty dense, but from what I have read, what has interested me the most is the information about color. She groups people by hair color, and then hair color subgroups.

Obviously what interested me most is the section that applies to me, the blondes. She says that the best colors for blondes are blue-greens and violets, of both the red-violet and blue-violet variety. I find this true, for the most part–these are easy colors for me to wear, the ones I can steal from most palettes.

But I also found some kind of recognition for the thing that confuses me the most about my coloring:

This is the first thing I’ve found that says that some blondes do better in medium-to-dark value colors. Conventional wisdom gives blondes light pink lipsticks and puts them in light blue dresses. Getting the Light Spring palette was life-changing moment for me; the sheer terribleness of the colors on me turned everything I had always been told about color in relation to myself on its head. I’d never seen myself look so red and unhealthy. It took me a long time to figure out what was missing. It turned out to be darkness.

Darkness, for me, is magical. Even colors on the Dark Autumn palette that fall on the brighter side of things are hard for me to wear. I love Dark Autumn yellow, but if I wear it by itself, I lose some jawline definition. When I put on a lipstick described as “warm, rusty brown,” it loses all brown and looks like a nice, rosy pinkish-red. I used to gravitate toward spring colors in makeup. Now I understand why I’d look at myself in the mirror and wipe off my lipstick before I left the house. I didn’t even wear lipstick on a regular basis before this year because I had no idea what colors worked for me.

I’m a blonde, but I happen to need darkness to come alive–which is something the color world has seemed to kind of forgotten since 1942. Certainly beauty magazines and makeup companies have. It’s always nice to get a little confirmation about what you see in the mirror and in yourself.

June 6, 2015

Kibbe's Metamorphosis | 0 comment

Understanding the Dramatic Essence

I’ve completed the first article in my Kibbe series: Dramatic Essence. For the essence portion of my series, I’m looking at the celebrities Kibbe gave for each type in the book, the roles they played, and/or their public image to come to an understanding of the variety found in each type, essence-wise, and the general underlying theme(s). I then supplement this with information supplied by readers in their answers to my Essence and Body Survey (I am still accepting surveys, even for Dramatic–if there’s something new, I can always edit my article).

I know that one of the issues for many people is that they’re just not familiar with the celebrity examples. Not everyone is like me–I wrote my sixth-grade research report on “The Golden Age of Hollywood” and TCM is one of my favorite channels. I probably know more about stars of the past than stars of the present. Since image today is not quite as manufactured as it was when the Studio System was the law of the land. This “image creation” is the basis for the whole Kibbe system, and I find the old stars more useful than their modern equivalents, who most of the time dress in a way that is completely counter to how Kibbe or Zyla would style them. My hope is that these essence articles will help people who have no idea who these people are to understand what Kibbe is trying to communicate with his list of celebrity examples.

Also, tomorrow is the last day to sign up for The Subscription Service for the month of June. If you sign up on Monday, your subscription will start in July. And, of course, like my Facebook page if you haven’t already (and you want to).

June 4, 2015

Services | 0 comment

More on The Subscription Service

If you would like to start your subscription to The Subscription Service this month, you must sign up by June 7th. If you sign up after the 7th, your subscription will start in July. Also, if you sign up before August 1st, you will receive the workbook for free when it is released.

I thought I’d explain each of the services I’m offering in a little more depth. This way, if you choose to sign up for either of them, you’ll understand exactly what you’re getting.

Today I’m going to discuss The Subscription Service. As I said on the Services page, The Subscription Service includes three items a month picked out especially for you for six months. When you sign up, I have you fill out a service including questions on Kibbe type, season, lifestyle, budget, etc. Everything that I pick out will be things that you can realistically purchase at that moment.

Every month on the 7th, I will send out an email to all subscribers asking what they want me to find for them. If you need a warm winter coat, I’ll find three options for you. If you need shoes to go with a certain dress, you can send me a picture of the dress and I’ll find the best options I can. If you want a dress, coat, and shoes, I’ll find one of each.

Since I use Hue & Stripe for this service, I’m able to offer a lot more functionality than I would if I were sending these out by email or if I used Polyvore or Pinterest. Your closet is completely private, and you will be able to comment on the items to let me know what you like or don’t like. You can add photographs or links to items you already own or like to help me understand your personal style. And, of course, Hue & Stripe’s own system for searching for clothes makes it easier for me to find things that fit your budget, recommendations, and season.

If you have any questions, you can comment or email me at hello@stylesyntax.com.

June 1, 2015

Services | 2 Comments

Services Now Available

I have finally officially launched my style consultation services. You can read all about them here. Currently, I’m offering two kinds of services: one is a subscription service, where I send three items a month to your Hue & Stripe closet, and the other is a full, one-on-one consultation where I find a lot of different clothing items and help you create a truly individual personal style using the information you already have, like type and season. Knowing what flatters you is just the beginning. The hard part is taking that and creating an image that is uniquely your own.

In addition to these services, I’m currently writing a workbook that will help you to DIY this process. The workbook will also be sent to anyone who orders either of the services I mentioned above, and will include membership in a private Facebook group focusing on creating a personal style while using tools like Kibbe. (Anyone who purchases one of the services will also be invited to the group.)

I’ve also rearranged the menu a bit. I’ve gotten rid of some menu items and added new ones, like “Start Here,” which contains what I consider to be my important posts. If the new way is more confusing, let me know.

I’d also like to thank everyone who volunteered to be a beta tester and everyone who has answered my questions on Facebook about certain types and what they can wear. Also, if you’d like, you can like my page on Facebook, and I am still accepting Essence and Body Survey responses.

May 29, 2015

Kibbe's Metamorphosis | 10 Comments

Keeping C, G, and N

(Source)

As I prepare to begin my thorough exploration and explanation of Kibbe types, I’ve made a decision that deviates from the current common way of looking at the types. That decision is to include C, G, and N as separate types.

Apparently, Kibbe has told people who have gone to see him in the past couple of years that he no longer gives people these designations. He still tells some people to use the recommendations, but will give them a designation depending on how slightly more yin or yang they are. The typing services that used Kibbe as their starting point, Best Dressed and Guiding Lines, have followed suit, with Guiding Lines keeping Natural and Best Dressed splitting each base type into yin and yang variants.

For a long time, I felt that whatever Kibbe is currently doing is what we should follow. I never used the middle types when giving someone my opinion about their type. But more and more, I saw that doing so was doing people a disservice. Some truly suit the middle types better than going to either the yang or yin version of the base type.

What it does is split types that have a middle type down the middle. In the Facebook group for Flamboyant Gamines, this obvious. There is a distinct group who suit the Flamboyant Gamine recommendations the best, and there is a distinct group that does better with the regular Gamine recommendations. I wrote about this here. This can cause confusion. In fact, I think I would have gotten to Flamboyant Gamine much faster if Flamboyant Gamine didn’t always seem to be mixed with Gamine. I can’t wear Gamine clothes at all, although I could at lower weights. Many aspects of the Flamboyant Gamine recommendations are actually rarely reflected on Pinterest. Plunging necklines and chunky knits are rejected in favor of cute little mod dresses with cute little pointy collars.

It not only does people a disservice to tell them to go either more yin or more yang when they clearly suit the middle type best, it also does a disservice to people who are trying to understand Flamboyant Gamine or Soft Classic to mix them up with Gamine and Classic.

That is not to say that I don’t think people who are Gamine should shy away from certain aspects of the Flamboyant Gamine or Soft Gamine recommendations, and ignore the fact that their yin/yang balance might tip them a little one way or the other. Far from it. But I also think that it’s more useful to identify these types as separate types, since the basis for the recommendations is different and you can see the differences in body shape and facial features.

The way I see it, we can see the transition from the yin version to the yang version of a type as a continuum. The distinctions aren’t hard and fast; they flow into one another. And where you are on this continuum may change with body changes like weight gain, as I mentioned above, or pregnancy. Your type, however, will not fundamentally change. You should understand both your own type and the other type(s) that fall under the umbrella term (Romantic, Classic, etc.) and understand whether you can pull from them or not. But I think it’s better to understand the middle/base types as distinct types on their own, rather than lumping in with the very yang or very yin version.

I don’t know as much about the Classic/Gamine/Natural types on their own, which is another problem with getting rid of them altogether. My hope is that by including them in my Kibbe type study, I will increase both my own and others’ understanding of what makes these types distinct.

P.S.: I am still accepting Essence and Body Survey responses! Also, I have a new Facebook page where I will post both links to new articles and random style and color thoughts.

May 26, 2015

David Zyla, Kibbe's Metamorphosis, Personal | 7 Comments

Using Zyla to Customize Your Kibbe Type

Flamboyant Gamine is a type usually represented in colors from the Bright color palettes and True Winter. A lot of black and white, graphic geometric prints, and so on. This works with the idea of Flamboyant Gamine as funky, colorful, and offbeat.

But of course, being a Bright season or a True Winter are not prerequisites for being a Flamboyant Gamine. While my self-designation of Dark Autumn hasn’t been confirmed, I know that I am not in the Brights or True Winter.

This is not what I have to work with.

(Source)
This is closer to what I am. Texture. Leopard-print fur.

(Source)

But still, I often try to make the other vibe work for me, basically taking what you’d give a Winter or a Spring and trying to find it in DA colors. It works, because I’m a Flamboyant Gamine and the shapes work, but it’s still not what I want it to be.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what archetype Zyla would give me if I did see him. I don’t talk about Zyla very much on here. This is because Zyla’s system is one that is truly about a single person’s vision and the results are hard to DIY.

The types in the book are so specific that it’s hard to see yourself in them. You see yourself in none of them and all of them at the same time, kind of like horoscopes. I have often felt that in the descriptions, there’s really no room for me.

I was discussing Zyla in the Flamboyant Gamine group a while back, and Gamine Autumn was suggested for me. Of course. I had discounted Gamine Autumn before, because it seemed to be relatively Soft Natural-looking on Pinterest. But as we all know, Pinterest is one of the greatest hindrances out there to really discovering a type, since it locks you into someone else’s perception of what a type looks like.

When I read the reports of people who have been typed Gamine Autumn, a lot of things clicked for me. Lots of texture. Brushed metals. Prints from nature. And he said something very important in all of the Gamine Autumn reports I read:

You are not a Mondrian.

Whoa.

(Source)

Not everything would work for me personally. But a lot of what he said resonated. And when I went back and looked, the things that resonated could be found in the Flamboyant Gamine recommendations as well. They just get ignored, often in favor of things actually found in the Gamine recommendations. But that’s a story for another time.

I realized that I don’t need to find an autumn version of a chevron print. My Autumn influence causes me to look toward nature: my beloved animal prints and perhaps a splashy botanical. Blanche Deveraux’s bedroom decor, which is originally from the Beverly Hills Hotel, would be perfect for me.

(Source)

So while I don’t think I’m going to make it to see Zyla anytime soon, and I don’t know for sure that he’d give me Gamine Autumn, the information he has still helped me figure out how to make Flamboyant Gamine my own, and I’m excited to explore and develop it further.

This segues into another big announcement of mine. In addition to launching styling services and working on my ultimate guide to Kibbe types, I’m also writing a workbook. This workbook will help you to DIY the customization of your Kibbe type. Using a system as a springboard to creating a personal style is really what this site is all about, so I’m very excited about it.

I also finally launched my Facebook page today. So go and check it out. 🙂

May 20, 2015

Kibbe's Metamorphosis | 10 Comments

Things to Consider When Looking at Kibbe’s Celebrity Examples

Most people know that Kibbe has said that he doesn’t like to type modern celebrities because many of them have had too much plastic surgery to make it worthwhile. I generally agree with him; it can very, very tricky. Anyone who has followed the Kardashian/Jenner sisters since Keeping Up with Kardashians began can confirm that the people out there in Hollywood can do magical, magical things.

Sorry, nothing found.

(Sources: 1, 2)

I would also argue, however, that there is another factor that makes understanding modern celebrity types difficult: the diet and exercise regime expected of most stars. Where did Romantic Madonna’s yin go? Only her personal trainer knows.

(Source)

So we default to looking at the celebrities listed in the books, no matter how badly we want to find a modern celebrity to identify with. While plastic surgery has been in the star-making arsenal since Joan Crawford became a star, in the Studio era, it was more along the lines of the nose job and chin implant Marilyn Monroe received, rather than the coolsculpting and butt implants some are subject to today.

(Source)

While bodies didn’t receive as much attention from cosmetic surgeons as they do today, there is something else we have to consider, something that hasn’t been on our minds for about fifty years. And that is girdles.

(Source)

Although the effect is not as dramatic as corset training, you can see that the bikini bodies of women in the 1950s and 1960s were quite different. Basically, everyone had a small waist, and there’s something about it that differs from that of TRs and other naturally wasp-waisted women. Look at Faye Dunaway in the 1960s and then many years later:

Sorry, nothing found.

(Sources: 1, 2)

In the later picture, it’s easy to see why she was named a Dramatic, even outside of her amazing legs and cheekbones. But in the ’60s? It would take some convincing.

So the best period for understanding what Kibbe-type bodies look like are from the ’70s through the mid-’90s: bodies weren’t altered by girdles OR strict personal trainers.

(Source)

Aerobics for everyone!

May 13, 2015

Services | 22 Comments

Why I Won’t Be Offering Typing Services at This Time

(Source)

As I prepare to launch a styling service (which I write more about soon, but I am really excited about), I’ve had some people suggest that I should get into the typing game. I’ve decided not to do it for now for several reasons.

The first is that I feel that the market is saturated. Best Dressed and Guiding Lines both offer typing in their interpretations of Kibbe’s system. Truth Is Beauty offers a style evaluation quiz. Jane Rekas types people according to McJimsey’s system. 20 Types of Beauty is another option for a Kibbe-based system. And of course, Kibbe himself, John Kitchener, and David Zyla all work in their own systems. Plus there are many Caygill analysts out there.

So anyway, what I’m saying is, there are a lot of people who can tell you what you are in their eyes.

But when I think back to my own experience of discovering my Kibbe type, the experience itself of discovering myself is something that I value almost as highly as having a set of guidelines for dressing that is easy for me to follow. I think this has allowed me to understanding myself better than if someone had sat me down and told me that I was a Flamboyant Gamine, here’s why and here’s what you should wear. And even Kibbe himself has people who were typed by him and then felt like it wasn’t their true home.

So instead of offering typing services, what I am planning to do is put together a thorough guide to each Kibbe type and the physical characteristics and variations within each. My hope is that these guides will enable you to simply look at the information I’ve compiled, look at yourself, and then have an “ah-ha!” moment. I have always wished that the Kibbe book provided more illustrations of what he’s talking about, and I hope to make up for that somewhat.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be reorganizing some things around here, launching social media pages, and launching my paid services, but I think this is the project that will be one of the most valuable for you guys. 🙂

As always, if you’d like to be alerted when I do launch my services, please email me at hello@stylesyntax.com.

Previous 1 … 17 18 19 20 21 … 26 Next