Style Syntax

August 19, 2014

Flamboyant Gamine, My Kibbe Journey, Personal, Soft Natural, Theatrical Romantic | 13 Comments

My Kibbe Journey: Part 3

***5/1/2015: I now see Kibbe in a totally different way than I write about here. Please see this post for my current views.***

Sometimes I feel like it may seem like I have no idea what I’m talking about, because pretty much every time I come to write a blog entry, I feel like I have decided on a new Kibbe type for myself, or a different season. But I think that most of us who set off to determine our Kibbe type find that it’s a pretty convoluted and confusing process, and many live in what turns out to be the wrong type for years–and the only way to actually confirm is to spend around $2000, plus hotel, airfare, etc., to see David Kibbe in person.

So. With that in mind, I’ve come to yet another major conclusion about the whole process. I recently joined a Kibbe group on Facebook, and there is a wealth of information there, including how Kibbe feels about the book, and how he wanted people to use it (look at the types presented, try stuff on it and see if it works, no quizzes necessary). It turns out that my approach to Kibbe–look at lines only, and then use your personality/essence to make it your own–is totally wrong. You should start with your essence, and then make adjustments to fit your body as needed.

This all became clear to me a couple of days ago, when it was pointed out to be that Charlize Theron is an official Kibbe Theatrical Romantic. One of the key features of a TR, according to the book, is a wasp waist (which I have, which will become important later). Charlize Theron has a straight figure, one that’d probably be called an inverted V. Looking just at her body, I’d probably be inclined to put her in Flamboyant Natural. But her face is so beautiful and full of S-curves. She looks the most herself when she is glammed up and dripping with jewels. If you compare her Dior ad to her sweatshirt look from Young Adult, which is truer to the person? I think it is jarring to see her look so dishevelled. You can tell she doesn’t have any natural in her at all.

Sorry, nothing found.

(Sources: 1, 2, 3)

Charlize’s glamorous face supersedes the fact that her body lacks these key physical feature of a TR. The TR clothes follow the lines of her face. The more reading I do, the more I realize that it’s about figuring out what is key about you, how you look the most yourself, what people notice first. Like Zyla, Kibbe was inspired to do what he does from the acting world, where he saw some people get cast and some who did not.

So maybe what we should do is typecast ourselves. I wrote about this idea in my first post in this series, and then I said I was wrong. But now I realize that I may have been right. I’m not a Soft Natural, a “Fresh and Sensual Lady.” I am much more aggressive and dynamic and funny. The energy I put into the world is that of a Flamboyant Gamine. My TR-style wasp waist that was tripping me up before? That’s not the first thing people notice about me. My task now is to find the FG clothes that work with my body, instead of hiding it. But I feel like it will be a relief to go to stores and be able to try on the clothes that appeal to me naturally, and not have to feel like I have to fit myself into styles that should work for me, taken as a sum of body parts.

August 11, 2014

Color | 5 Comments

Seasonal Color Analysis and the Minimalist Movement

So, nerd confession time: I like to play stupid games on my iPhone, and one of them is Archie: Riverdale Rescue, in which you play along with storylines featuring Archie and his friends. I was playing last night, and I had a new mission. Ginger, a character who moved to Riverdale after I stopped reading the comics, had recently gone to New York and gotten analyzed, and was now giving Betty her clothes in colors that weren’t in her season. They even used the correct terminology, like “draped.”

Of course, as someone who has been obsessed with color analysis as of late, this was very nerdily exciting to me. I even took some screenshots–although I didn’t get one about draping, sadly:

Seasonal color analysis was most popular in the 80s, when Color Me Beautiful was popular. I don’t recall ever hearing much about it in the 90s or 2000s. But it seems to me the seasonal color analysis is ripe for a renaissance. There are already plenty of sites and communities dedicated to it, and there are tons of websites focused on things like capsules and wardrobe minimalism. Minimalism is a big trend in general, and who doesn’t love a tiny house?

(Source)

If you’re working with minimal posessions, capsule wardrobes, and less storage space, it makes total sense that you’d want to make sure that every piece of clothing you owned was ideal, and that it was the perfect color and cut for you. So things like color analysis and Kibbe, which go a long way to making sure you don’t end up buying things that don’t work for you and just sit in your closet, are a perfect fit for this whole movement.

Now, Archie has always seemed to me to be taking place in both the present and the past; they may be using the Internet and the storylines tend to reflect the mores of the time, but Archie still drives a jalopy that would look perfectly at home in 1939, the year the comics came out, and the comics in general look like they can be taking place at any time over the past 75 years. So this reference to color analysis, with a book title very similar to Color Me Beautiful, could just be a callback to the past. But I think in the context of 2014, color analysis is ripe for a revival, and it could very well be that the person who wrote this little mission is lurking on the same color forums we are, and is currently deciding between Bright Spring and Bright Winter.

Now, if seasonal color analysis shows up in a mission in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, then we’ll know that it’s returned to the zeitgeist.

Have you seen any mentions of color analysis in pop culture lately?

August 7, 2014

Book Review, Style Systems | 16 Comments

Book Review: David Zyla, Color Your Style

There are lots of books out there on style systems and color analysis. Some of the older ones are incredibly expensive (like, hundreds of dollars), but there are plenty that are either still be print, or can be found used for less than $50. I’m going to be reviewing the ones I own, and like with any book review, I hope that it’ll help you decide if it’s worth parting with your cold, hard cash for, as well as give you an overview of the system described in a particular book.

I thought I’d start with David Zyla’s Color Your Style. Zyla’s system seems to be the most popular after Kibbe and Dressing Your Truth, at least on the Internet. If you see a Polyvore set labeled “Gamine Autumn,” that’s Zyla.

Zyla’s system seems more or less based off of Suzanne Caygill’s, and if you are familiar with the latter, you’ll see similarities. I’ve only read a little bit about it, as her book is the one that costs hundreds of dollars. But anyway, back to Zyla. His book is divided into several parts. The first is devoted to figuring out your colors. Zyla has a system where you find colors in yourself–your eyes, skin, hair, etc.–and use them as specific ” bases” and “essences,” like for when you want to be seen as professional or friendly or seductive or whatever.

I haven’t done this, but I’d be interested in hearing about your experience if you have. I also think it might be useful to take your Zyla palette and try to match it to a Sci\ART palette, although it obviously couldn’t replace getting your season analyzed professionally. He talks about how to use your natural colors for different purposes, etc., like even what color to paint the walls of your psychology practice.

As far as the rest of the book goes, where Zyla outlines his “archetypes,” after my first reading of this book, which was a few months ago, I was not impressed. I am not a fan of conflating season to personality. Not all people with spring coloring are bubbly; not everyone with winter coloring is quiet. Zyla even goes as far to say that he knows your “season” after talking to you for three minutes on the phone. To those of us who come to color analysis from a Sci\ART perspective, that sounds ridiculous. (Read Terry Wildfong’s post on how she drapes and then compare it Zyla’s method.)

But when I read the book for the second time to write this review, I realized something. If you went by the phone test, I’d be a winter. I want to get done what I need to get done and get out of there and back to my own thing. I get right to the point. People tend to do what I say, even though I’m generally quiet and don’t like attention. These are winter qualities in Zyla’s world. It seems to me that Zyla’s system has a lot more in common with Dressing Your Truth than anything else.

Zyla further breaks his seasons down into six archetypes. I found myself in Vivid Winter, the “earthy philosopher.” I feel like even though I’m a Type 3 (Autumn) in DYT, this still works, since I’m a 3/4. He gives oddly specific style recommendations (yes to three-layer skirts of pleated silk, no to sack dresses), but a lot of what he said resonated with me. I do get a tendency to get stuck in a black uniform, and I do need to remember to express my style. His recommendations for the seasons, however, use his color terminology of bases and essences, rather than seasonal colors, so it is easy to adjust them to the colors that suit you, rather than in Dressing Your Truth, where you have one palette that is supposed to work for every Type 1, Type 2, etc. The only issue that I have with this section is that the description for each of the 20 types is so short. I don’t think you can get a good idea of how to dress for your Archetype without actually meeting with Zyla.

He then goes into how you can use your color palette for situations ranging from a job interview to a family get-together, and how to overhaul your closet. I do think all of this information is useful. I might try to do my Zyla colors now, and see if this use of color works for me.

Overall, I see this system much as I see Dressing Your Truth. I think Kibbe and a Sci\ART-based season make the best backbone for your wardrobe you can get in terms of what flatters your lines and your coloring. But both Zyla and Dressing Your Truth can be used to flesh out your understanding of your personal style, and how to reflect your personality and nature in your wardrobe. I also like Zyla a lot better if I pretend he is not using the term “season” to determine type.

Have you tried Zyla? Did you find the color thing he talks about works? Did your Sci\ART season, DYT type, Kibbe, and Zyla all match up, or are they all over the place, like mine? (I’m actually questioning if I might be a LIGHT SUMMER now. So no more attempts at color analysis for me until I can get draped professionally. I give up.)

August 2, 2014

Kibbe's Metamorphosis | 3 Comments

Kibbe’s Romantics, or Your Inner and Outer Essence

I think that sometimes, Kibbe’s flowery descriptions work against you when you’re trying to figure out your type. Take, for instance, the description for Romantic:

If you’re hosting a dinner party, chances are you’ll expend enormous energy on things like place settings, flowers, and soft lighting. You’ll gladly search the entire city for those rare and exotic orchids that evoke images of a mysterious, faraway land, or dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to locating special gardenias with a heady fragrance. When you’re planning the menu for this party you’ll be coordinating color and texture in addition to taste. The added dimensions of your attention to the sensual elements of touch, taste, smell, and above all the look of things brings us much pleasure, and an invitation to one of your soirees is very much coveted!…Lest we categorize your Yin qualities as frivolous or superficial, let’s remember the extreme magnetic power that exist within you. We don’t describe your extreme Yin nature as “the irresistible force” without reason! You are capable of effecting enormous change in the world – when you remember that the power of the Yin is always indirect. Steamrolling through outworn attitudes or attempting to knock down mountains won’t work for you. Direct attacks are never effective, since they are so contrary to your projected softness.

(Source)

Now, to be honest, this “dinner party” business is what I think when I think of a Romantic. The image really stuck with me in my mind. But then I start to think of someone whose body lines and facial features fit very well in Romantic, but who couldn’t care less about the aesthetics of their home or being subtle and whatever else Kibbe is talking about to. Will someone be turned off from Romantic because they have a personality with more yang in it?

I suppose this brings up a key point about Kibbe: are we supposed to assume that, like in Zyla, where your coloring matches your personality, that you outer and inner essences should match? Or, say, could you be a Romantic who relates to Soft Dramatic, and look to Soft Dramatic for some clues to develop your personal style and maybe introduce some snake jewelry into your Romantic look?

Even the examples for Romantic Kibbe mentions in the book–Madonna, Susan Sarandon, Elizabeth Taylor–are women that I see as being quite ballsy, and not exactly ones who sit around waiting for their yin charm to get them what they want–they do seem to use the steamroll technique at times. Madonna, a Type 3 Leo lioness like myself, is someone who stirs some controversy when Kibbe’s classification of her as Romantic is brought up. If we ignore how she looks today–she seems to have exercised and nip/tucked the Romantic right out of herself–Madonna in her early career had quite a Romantic look to her. I feel like her “Like a Virgin”-era look would be great for a young, punk Romantic to draw inspiration from, and it’s no surprise that she used Marilyn Monroe, Prime Kibbe Romantic, as her inspiration for her look in “Material Girl”:

Sorry, nothing found.

(Sources: 1, 2)

Of course, there’s still the question of how to express her Type 3-ness. But maybe she doesn’t have to. If we go back to McJimsey, Romantic women are still the epitome of female charm, but they’re theatrical and sophisticated and a yin/yang blend, and not total yin like in Kibbe. Even when Madonna is dressed in head-to-toe pink, her strength still comes through. Maybe it’s a case of if you’re dressed exactly right for your face and body type, your personality can come through and take precedence. Maybe she doesn’t need all the angles and the fall color palette of Type 3 because her own inherent Type 3-ness is enough.

Do you relate to the description of your Image Identity’s Inner Essence? Should you consider the Inner Essence description when trying to figure out your Kibbe? Was Kibbe wrong when he typed Madonna?

July 26, 2014

Color, Personal | 10 Comments

Spring or Autumn?

Somehow, I feel like every time I write something about where I am on this journey to discover my natural colors, lines, and style personality, I soon figure out that I’m not what I thought it was at all. If you read my Banning Black post, you’ll know that I considered myself a Light Spring. I don’t think that anyone looking at me would think otherwise, except to perhaps suggest Light Summer. But as I also wrote about in that post, I have been having a hard time connecting to the Light Spring palette. So I decided to do some drapes using actual fabrics, not just photoshopping colors onto myself.

What I discovered is that my skin is EXTREMELY reactive to colors. In the span of five minutes, with photographs taken in the same spot, I went from looking on the sallow side to like I had a sunburn, all depending on what color I was wearing. (I have also learned that just because you have natural light golden blonde hair does NOT mean you can wear Barbie pink.)

So all of my previous drapings, opinions, etc. meant nothing. I can only understand how colors look on me when they were reacting to my face in real time. I also realized that the only way I can confirm this is to be analyzed professionally.

What I am pretty certain of is that I am probably not a Spring. What was suggested for me is True Autumn. True Autumn was a palette I never considered because I look nothing like the stereotypical True Autumn woman. Their colors tend to be deeper. They have brown or auburn hair. But your skin doesn’t lie (although the camera does, so like I said, I’m going to do an in-person color consultation eventually).

One thing I also realized is that I was only connecting to Light Spring’s neutrals. True Autumn’s neutrals are quite similar:

The grays are warmer, there’s more yellow, but a lot of the colors I like–the warm grays, the corally peaches, the olives–are still there.

I’d also always thought of Autumn palettes as containing a lot of orange and brown. While there’s some of that, looking at True Autumn palettes, there were a ton of colors–actual colors!–I connected with, and can’t wait to try on:

(Source)

I find myself loving those deep, rich colors.

I think it’s important, for both color analysis and Kibbe, to let go of preconceived notions of what a certain type should look like and how they should dress. Each Kibbe and each palette has a very wide spectrum of how it can be used and applied, and there is no one way for a person of this Type or Season to look. When it works, it works. Anything that tries to use a flowchart to determine something as variable as natural color, just click the “x” at the top of the screen. It can’t tell you how your skin will react.

I’m not sure if I’ve found my seasonal home yet. It may take a long time, and maybe even multiple professional analyses. But I do feel like I have learned a lot so far. I also think you have to listen to your inner voice. I spent all spring wandering around stores, looking at Light Spring colors and not wanting to try on any of it. Autumn clothes start trickling into stores, and I’m in a store for five minutes before I’m standing in line to pay for a dress. Fall has always been my favorite season to shop–perhaps this is why.

(Also I’m a Type 3, and True Autumn colors=Type 3 colors, so this is getting spooky.)

Are you settled in your season or are you still looking? Were you surprised by what you found out?

July 24, 2014

My Kibbe Journey, Personal, Soft Natural | 2 Comments

My Kibbe Journey: Part 2

My last post on my Kibbe journey was only twelve days ago, but reading it again, it feels like a lifetime ago, in terms of where I’m at with Kibbe’s system. Basically, I still see the things in me that led me to believe that I was a Soft Dramatic, but after trying on clothes, I now believe that I actually fit with the Soft Naturals.

This makes sense, because I think it seems to be fairly common for Soft Naturals to misdiagnose themselves as Soft Gamines, and vice versa. This pin by Rachel Nachmias has been a revelation for me. Yes, I am youthful looking, but my bone structure is too substantial and my face is too yang.

Looking around for Soft Natural clothes has been a breath of fresh air. I don’t feel at all like I did when I was looking for Soft Gamine clothes, like I was trying to put myself in a box that wasn’t right for me at all. Part of this stems from my most major Kibbe revelation of all: Image Identity does not define your style.

When I look for sets and boards for various Image Identities on Polyvore and Pinterest, I find that most of Identities are seen in a very narrow way. For Soft Natural, this seems to be Boho Chic with a dash of Jennifer Aniston. I don’t even like Jennifer Aniston, except for her Living Proof line at Sephora. I had spent all of this time I’ve been looking at Kibbe feeling turned off by Soft Natural because it was presented in this very narrow way. But as I read about Kibbe’s clients’ experiences, it became clear to me that there were no set styles. Obviously, it’s easiest to dress in your “native” type, so a Soft Classic in a Classic style or a Romantic in a Romantic style. Some things are more challenging, like making Dramatic Classic boho (as was recently discussed on Seasonal Color. But Kibbe seems to dress everyone differently to work with the individual.

I think it’s important to not look at “examples” of dressing for a type because it can really throw you off. You get mired in thinking that a Soft Natural, or whatever you think you might be, has to dress in certain ways. Just look at the guidelines in regard to print size, fit, cut, etc. and try things on. Ask for objective opinions. See how you feel.

I know that my Soft Natural will look different than the Pinterest boards. So will my Light Spring. But it’s the one that will work for me.

For some Soft Natural non-Boho inspiration, I’m on the fence as to whether this works, and it’d probably on work on SNs who are super skinny, but I like the mix of textures and the fit of the dress that Carine Roitfeld, my favorite SN who doesn’t often dress SN, is wearing:

(Source)

July 21, 2014

Color, Personal | 15 Comments

Banning Black from My Wardrobe

If there’s one look I love, it’s a dramatic, non-romantic, modernized post-punk goth style. I think the person who best exemplifies this look is Wes Eisold of Cold Cave:

(Source)

This picture has been the cover of my personal Pinterest fashion board forever:

(The Pinterest source says it was on a tumblr blog, but I can’t find it anywhere but Pinterest)

I would love to dress like this. But the chances of me actually looking good in this outfit are about the same as me owning a Birkin: it’s not gonna happen. I don’t have the ultra-skinny and dramatic body type, and my Light Spring coloring makes me pretty much the opposite of someone who looks good in black. So I’m going to figure out how to incorporate the spirit of this look using accessories, and in the meantime, I have two major things I have to do:

1) Stop buying clothes in this style. It just doesn’t flatter me, and it makes me sad. I’ve been dressing as Soft Natural as my wardrobe can get for the past couple of days, and I can immediately feel a difference. I feel much better about myself, which is the point of Kibbe–he is all about working with and emphasizing what you have, and not trying to be someone else.

2) No buying black for fall. I am going to stick to my Light Spring neutrals:

(original Light Spring Sci/Art palette found here)

Light Spring non-neutrals will be for my accessories. I can’t bring in too much color into my wardrobe at once, or it will be too big a shock to my system.

I may find that I don’t feel like myself without black, and that’s okay. I can always go back to buying black. But maybe I’ll find that, like with Soft Natural, I’ll just feel better and like my true self in my Light Spring neutrals.

Do you, too, have a Problem with black? Or are you a Winter that hates black and you’re jealous of my Light Spring palette?

July 20, 2014

Dressing Your Truth, Kibbe's Metamorphosis, Style Systems | 31 Comments

Kibbe vs. Dressing Your Truth

Most of us who have delved into style systems deep enough to end up getting into a system from thirty years ago like Kibbe has undoubtedly come across many different style systems. One of the most popular today seems to be Dressing Your Truth, which is a Four Types-based system. Before I start talking about, I have to say two things. One, I haven’t bought the course and have only read Carol Tuttle’s books and watched her YouTube videos. So I don’t know the exact recommendations you get once you shell out the $99-$297 for the course, but I feel like I get the general idea. Two, I think it’s important to understand some criticism of DYT, which include not giving sources and some customer service issues. I still find DYT helpful, though, because the materials are much more accessible than the older Four Type systems, and I think it’s good for understanding your inner yin/yang balance and how it can potentially influence your style.

With that out of the way, one of the issues that many people come across is that things don’t always match up. Once you’ve typed yourself in all of these systems, your various types may not be all that compatible. For instance, I’m a Light Spring in 12-color systems, a likely Soft Natural, and a Type 3 in Dressing Your Truth. Light Spring and Soft Natural work pretty well together, but Type 3 in Dressing Your Truth wears shaded colors, colors that have had black added. This is basically as incompatible with Light Spring as you can get, which is as light as you can get and would be compatible with Type 1 energy.

Then there’s Kibbe. I realized that Kibbe’s recommendations are based on yin/yang balance and contrast/blended, and Carol’s are based on yin/yang balance and high/low energy. “Contrast” and “Energy are basically referring to the same thing, right? So I took a graph showing the exact location of Kibbe Image Identities on a graph and overlaid the DYT type, thinking that the influence of balance of your non-primary energies of DYT would pull you into a certain direction of yin/yang and energy balance on the graph and you would find the Kibbe compatible with your DYT type that way. (I found the original graph on Pinterest and I tried finding the original site, but they were all linked to the image file on Pinterest and not a website. So if this is your graph, please let me know if you want me to take this down or give you credit. I have my own graph, but it doesn’t illustrate what I’m talking about as well.)

So as a 3/4 with 1 being a strong tertiary, I figured I’d end up in on the far left portion of Soft Dramatic. I hope this makes sense. But of course, I’m pretty sure now I’m an SN, which is in the opposite quadrant. The other issue with this chart is that, despite the fact that Carol presents the Energies this way visually, the movement levels of the types next to each other on the X-axis are not equal. The movements go 1, 3, 2, 4, from highest to lowest. So I guess you could say Type 1 is Yin Highest Movement, or SG; Type 3 is Yang High Movement, or D/SD; Type 2 is Yin Low Movement, or SN/SC; and Type 4 is Yang Lowest Movemnent, or DC. These kind of seem to work, if you look at the recommendations for the types, but there are, of course, four other Kibbe Image Identities to consider that then wouldn’t be included in Dressing Your Truth at all.

More importantly, when I posted this image on Seasonal Color, it was pointed out to me that Kibbe is mainly focused on the lines of the body, and Dressing Your Truth on your inner expression. A Dressing Your Truth purist would insist that your inner energy movement would trump all. So I, as a Type 3 Light Spring Soft Natural (if I am in fact a Soft Natural, which I’m not sure of yet), should forget about the light-yet-bright colors of Light Spring and the softer lines of Soft Natural, and just dress with the sharp lines and heavy autumnal colors of Type 3, since that’s what my inner energy requires.

I am not, of course, a Dressing Your Truth purist, if you couldn’t tell from the fact that none of my blog posts have focused on DYT thus far. But I do think it’s important to understand how your inner self can affect your Image Identity. Kibbe does, after all, dress people within the same type differently. People fall in different places on the continuum. You may find that if you have a yang DYT type and you’re a yin Kibbe, you may want to look for inspiration in accessories or prints in the yang version of your type. If you’re a Type 4 and a Light Summer, try using the purest colors your palette has. If you’re a Type 1 Soft Classic, look for things that are a little more “fun” than the usual Soft Classic might wear. And so on.

This is only one way of looking at this issue of conflicting seasons and types and identities, but I think it could be a useful tool for those of us feeling overwhelmed by all of this information. Have you experienced a mismatch between your various types?

July 12, 2014

Kibbe's Metamorphosis, My Kibbe Journey | 2 Comments

My Kibbe Journey: Part 1

When I started looking at Kibbe, I was fairly certain I was a Gamine of some kind. I’m small in general, with especially small feet and hands, short legs for my height, and what I felt was a gamine energy. When a friend compared me with a celebrity, it was usually someone like Jean Seberg, who is obviously ultra gamine:

(Source)

At first I thought I was a Flamboyant Gamine, since those are the clothes I’m drawn to naturally and what my closet is already full of. But as I read the description, I realized that I was in no way leggy and lacking curves, the way a FG would be. I figured then I was a Soft Gamine, since I have curves, short limbs, and feel heavy even when I’m not, since I don’t build muscle easily and am always soft.

But when I would go to a store and look at Soft Gamine clothes, I didn’t even want to try them on. They just felt wrong. At first, I thought it was just a classic case of resistance to my Image Identity. But I liked the idea of Soft Gamine. I had no underlying psychological issues about being Soft Gamine. The clothes just didn’t seem right.

So I went to Seasonal Color, and asked for some opinions. I found, with the help of the very helpful members there, that the broken, staccato silhouette of the Gamines doesn’t work for me. I need a continuous line. I also found that my face while my face has a lot of volume, it still is quite yang in structure. (This makes sense, considering I’m a Type 3/4.) It lacks the sweetness and doll-like qualities of a Soft Gamine face.

Where my face does fit is with the Soft Dramatics. I have full features and a prominent nose. I also have the high hip common to Soft Dramatics, and I can relate to the idea of my curves being “circles placed onto a square,” the source of which I can’t find at the moment. But my limbs are shorter. Also, it’s far harder than I imagined it would be to find Soft Dramatic clothes in stores; I think I am going to wait until fall clothes are in so I can find some nice sweaters with SD lines. I also think I’ll probably have more luck in expensive stores, so I am going to have dress up nicely and brave the snobbishness and try stuff on in fancy places.

There are also the Classics and the Naturals to experiment with. I don’t relate to the Classics at all, though, because my features are not even. “Symmetrical” is not a word I’d used to describe myself. But the only thing to do is to try things on and see what works and what doesn’t.

How are you doing with Kibbe? Do you know your type and happily go to the store and buy all the clothes and love it? Do you know your type but are unsure if you can live your life in that type? Are you completely lost, like I am?

July 5, 2014

Kibbe's Metamorphosis | 0 comment

Why Your Kibbe/Image Identity Matters

One thing that’s long flummoxed me is the fact that when you see a picture of a star on the red carpet, inevitably what you see the result of the hard work of stylists, makeup artists, and top fashion designers. But somehow, even with an entire team behind them, sometimes the stars just look… off. Is the dress ugly and no one noticed, or is it just not the right dress for that person?

Understanding Kibbe can go a long way to help you avoid this in your own life, even if you’re not going to be on a red carpet anytime soon. Let’s take Jessica Paré as an example. Most seem to be in agreement that she is a Soft Dramatic. If you look on Pinterest, two of her most-pinned looks, if you search for her name, are these:

Sorry, nothing found.

(Sources: 1, 2)

What comes to mind when you look at these dresses? They’re bold and dramatic. For a lot of people, these dresses would be just too much. But for a Soft Dramatic, these dresses are exactly what she needs. Anything less would be not enough.

Now, look at her in this dress:

(Source)

It’s not dramatic, at least, not in the right way. Picture it on a Flamboyant Gamine like Lizzy Caplan. Totally different dress, right? But it’s simply not enough for a Soft Dramatic. It kind of looks like a tablecloth is wearing her.

That’s the point of all of this Kibbe business. Once you figure it out, it makes it easy to go to a store and immediately know what’s going to work for you and what’s not, without even trying a whole bunch of stuff on. It’s about understanding what nature gave you and using that information to look fabulous. I also think it goes deeper than something like Trinny and Susannah’s 12 Body Shapes, because Kibbe takes into account the entire person, and not just a series of deviations from the norm. According to Trinny and Susannah, I’m a Skittle and should wear chunky shoes, bows, and A-Line skirts. But what kind of prints? What kind of vertical line? How dramatic or how can cute can I go?

Knowing your body shape is helpful, of course. But you can dress your body shape perfectly fine, and still look off, somehow. Without knowing your Image Identity and your season, a.k.a. most flattering colors, you’re still fumbling around in the dark.

(To see more analysis of stars’ red-carpet looks in relation to Image Identities, see this pinterest. They use Yin/Yang C, G, D etc. instead of Kibbe’s names, but the idea and the concept are the same.)

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