In my most recent Zyla Update, I had settled on Mellow Autumn. But Mellow Autumn wasn’t working for me any better than Gamine Autumn had. While my personality tends to score as very Autumn, and the Dark Autumn palette is the one that works best for me out of the 12-season palettes, Autumn textures and styling tends to be just too heavy for me.
Mellow Autumn is a lot lighter in feeling than other Autumns, but still, it wasn’t getting me where I needed to go. It is, after all, the Sexy Librarian. It was a little too serious for me. I have no idea where Zyla would put me. I think maybe Tawny Spring, but it’s too hard when recommendations are so personalized.
As I’ve been examining my gamineness, I’ve been thinking a lot about what works and what doesn’t. And I realized that one thing that has been missing from my wardrobe is fun. The brighter, juicier colors of Dark Autumn are where I try to concentrate my clothing purchases anyway, and I try to restrict my darker colors to pants, outerwear, and accessories. Emphasizing heavy textures, natural materials, and prints from nature don’t work well with either Flamboyant Gamine or my version of DA.
I’ve been interested in Fantastical Beauty lately, as you might be able to tell from my last post. I did end up buying the Maenad guide as well, and I can say that I did choose right with Fae as my primary type, but that Maenad fills in a lot of holes.
Sometimes, when I look at other systems, I feel like I’m looking for something that just replicates Flamboyant Gamine recommendations, because they do fit me really well. But I wish that we had a Flamboyant Gamine workshop tape transcript, like we have for Theatrical Romantic and Soft Dramatic. The jewelry recommendations are a section that I find particularly vague. Kibbe doesn’t even indicate jewelry scale for us.
So I’ve looked to other systems, namely Zyla, to fill in the gaps. But I basically haven’t been wearing jewelry at all since I decided I was some kind of Autumn in Zyla. I would buy things, but they’d just sit unworn. I decided to at least temporarily abandon Zyla altogether, and look at Fantastical Beauty for inspiration.
What I’ve taken away from Fantastical Beauty is that I need to lighten up my wardrobe. Not in color, but instead of seeking out heavier fabrics and jewelry, I need to go the opposite direction. I need to concentrate on making sure my outfits have fun, in addition to edge.
I went jewelry shopping yesterday, and it was actually a relief to look for jewelry without looking for heaviness. Instead, I concentrated on looking for sharpness.
I will keep some heaviness–no style system can take my leather jacket away from me!–but I will try to always make sure to keep mischief, fun, and a sense of humor–which Kibbe also emphasizes for FGs–in my look. I think the lightness and fun is something that is also present in the FG recommendations if you read them carefully, but it’s good to be able to have a strong image and an additional set of recommendations to look at.
Have you mixed in this system or any other with Kibbe’s recommendations? Or do you find that one system and set of recommendations are enough?
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