Determining Your Kibbe Type: Listen to Yourself

When you first discover Kibbe and start looking at blogs, communities, forums, etc., inevitably you’ll begin asking for feedback on what other people think you are. This can sometimes be helpful, but other times it can set you back farther on your Kibbe journey than you were when you started. The only person who I would 100% trust when it comes to my Kibbe type is Kibbe. While I know many people who have been very satisfied with their analyses from people who offer their own services based on Kibbe, they are still offering their own vision of what Kibbe says.

This fact goes double for random people in communities. No matter how much of an expert someone seems to be presenting themselves as, and no matter how sure they sound of how they see Kibbe, don’t forget to listen to what you think and what you know about yourself. This would apply even to me, if you happen to see me around on message boards or if you ask for my advice in the comments. Like anyone else, I’m always learning new things and coming across new discoveries in this style analysis business, and I don’t claim to be an expert, just someone who loves discussing this subject. This especially goes for things I wrote early in this blog. If you read My Kibbe Journey, I went from thinking I was a Soft Dramatic (correctly recognizing the mix of yin and yang in my features), to Soft Natural (thinking that I was a youthful looking SN, recognizing that I had gamine youthfulness but was too yang for Soft Gamine), to finally Flamboyant Gamine, where I remain today. But since I discovered Kibbe, which was only around April (!) of this year, I have had many a world-shaking revelation.

And there have also been instances where someone else’s vision of Kibbe has distorted what I knew from the beginning, which is that Flamboyant Gamine is where I belong. Others’ doubts and distortions clouded my instinct. How did I know I was Flamboyant Gamine? Looking at the groups of celebrity examples, I knew that the Gamines and Flamboyant Gamines were where my “people” were. While I do distrust Pinterest and Polyvore and recommend staying away until you know the difference between Kibbe’s recommendations and a type’s stereotype, everything on a Flamboyant Gamine board made me go “I WANT THAT.” I knew from experience that these were the clothes that worked for me. And for every style I tried outside of FG, I just wanted to add angles and asymmetry to it. Lastly, and most importantly, if you put my face in the Flamboyant Gamine face collage, it just makes sense there.

Basically, what I want to say is that there are two important sources of information when trying to determine your Kibbe type: things that come straight from the horse’s mouth (the information Kibbe provided in the book, although there are some errors–we just learned that Natalie Wood was supposed to be in the Soft Gamine section!–and things he has said to people during their sessions with him) and you. Use your own eyes to see what people verified by Kibbe have in common, and try to discern patterns. Listen to your own inner voice and how you feel in different clothes, and try to see yourself objectively, although it’s very difficult. It is still fine to ask for advice and to seek out information (or an analysis!) from non-Kibbe stylists whose work is based off of his system or people in communities and on message boards, but ultimately, your happiness with your Image Identity is what matters, not someone else’s opinion. Listen to Emerson and “trust thyself.”

Below are images from my own Pinterest that I have connected with along my Flamboyant Gamine journey. I encourage you to look for places where you see yourself, too.

9 Comments on Determining Your Kibbe Type: Listen to Yourself

  1. ithinklikeme
    November 12, 2014 at 3:47 pm

    A million times YES to all of this. Especially if you’re a person who has very strong intuition, I think. I didn’t know exactly how to articulate what I saw proportionally in common w/a lot ot SD ladies, but I could see it was there. Same with you and FG. I may have voted for SG, but I was pretty consistently sure that I saw strongly Gamine features in you. Defiant woodland sprite couldn’t be any other type than FG, lol!

    Reply
    • stylesyntax
      November 12, 2014 at 5:03 pm

      Exactly 🙂 I asked my boyfriend what bird I would be the other day (one of the questions in a recent blog entry by Sabirah) and he said I would be a hummingbird. No way my base type could be anything but gamine!

      Reply
      • voodoo
        November 14, 2014 at 8:33 pm

        can i please please please have that blog’s link(Sabirah)?i googled it but i din’t find anything! 🙁

        Reply
  2. Hanna
    November 12, 2014 at 7:20 pm

    A year or two ago (maybe? don’t quite remember when it was) I posted about my Kibbe-type on yuku. People insisted on C, probably SC with pure C removed and I almost convinced myself it was true and could work. And sure, maybe my face appears more balanced than the average G, but plenty of Gs do appear fairly balanced to my eyes (and I think people misuse what “balanced” or “symmetrical” is supposed to mean, it’s mostly about being balanced between yin and yang I think and not what we normally think of as balanced) and I’ve mostly worn classic-ish hairstyles in various lenghts and they don’t work, I don’t look like myself in clean, symmetrical blunt cuts (and definitely not in softer flowy styles) whereas when I cut my hair short last year I instantly looked more like myself than I had probably since age 5 or so, hah. As far as style goes (though I think people put too much emphasis on specific interpretations of styles for the types) the classics (and SC in particular) are so anti-me that it’s a bit repulsive trying to imagine myself in the clothes (though to be fair, not all G-styles appeal either, my tolerance for “cute” on myself is low, but I’d rather wear “cute” and glare at people looking at my funny than “preppy pretty princess in the office”). Even personality wise FG is the only thing that doesn’t make me feel I’d have to hide part of me, I’m both very direct, focused and serious in a way that can inadvertently intimidates people *and* very easily amused and giggly, and wearing Cish clothes would make me feel I had to hide *both* those sides and try be more average.

    Reply
    • stylesyntax
      November 12, 2014 at 8:28 pm

      I think the key with G versus C is contrasted vs. blended. A G face may not have things that really stick out, like large eyes, even though that’s what we think of with G. It’s more that in both cases, the face will basically be balanced between yin and yang, but with a C face, the features themselves are balanced between yin and yang, and in a G face, you can pick out that the nose is yang and the eyes are yin, or whatever. FG isn’t very cute, either. I think of cute as SG’s thing. I feel exactly the same way about Classic, though. Any Classic would be my absolute nightmare type. Reminds me of country clubs.

      Reply
  3. Nikki
    April 23, 2016 at 4:39 am

    I just re-read this, along with your stereotypes post. Looking at the SG example you gave, this is what I am connecting with, as far as what’s ‘missing’ in FG. The stereotypical C feel, sleek, uncluttered, what would now be considered a long line. Interestingly, when I was going through my old try on pics from a year ago to re-post them in the new group, my comments were exactly what is still echoing in my head, “There is too much going on in FG”, “I feel blah in SN” (and N in general I think, although I don’t understand FN enough to say for sure). If I do turn out to be a more yin type, my tattoo is sooo the wrong style 😉

    Reply
    • stylesyntax
      April 25, 2016 at 5:54 pm

      I’m excited to see how SG works for you 🙂

      Reply

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