Babbling Wench

First post

I have no friends

Let’s dive straight in:

There are various methodologies for categorising beauty archetypes with the aim of creating a more streamlined look. Depending on the exact focus of the individual systems it may focus more on specific characteristics (the colour features of your skin – Seasonal Colour Analysis, 2D ratios of your body – Fruit system) or aim to capture a more abstracted impression (Zyla, Kibbe, Kitchener, Truth is Beauty), although it’s not that difficult to imagine that for the prescriptions to hold any weight there needs to be a hierarchy of interpretation. Therefore, you can have more or less volatile ways of approaching and teaching these systems.

If your goal is to leverage these schools of thought (euw) in a synergistic manner then my proposed way of doing that is to start off by working with your face (so a system like Zyla or Truth is Beauty) and then move on to analysing the body (Kibbe, Fantastical Beauty’s Animal Familiars, Kitchener ish). There are two reasons for this; One being that there is likely a lot of emotion and identity attached to the impressions that your face gives off (which needs to be attended to if there’s any baggage before moving on to picking apart your body) and the second one being that it is going to guide you through the body type prescriptions in a way that tailors them better to you. Although you can’t out-dress your body with just your face it will give you direction as well as an overview of your individual flavour. Again, don’t mistake this for your body being of secondary importance, it can significantly alter your best aesthetic, but it’s just easier to deny your physicality if you don’t acknowledge the connection you feel to certain essence characteristics outside of it.

An example of four people with the same body type (if they’re not all SD I’m gonna cry) but all unique face/colour types, they share a powerful sensuality, but they’d be losing their personal magnetism if forced into the same style.

Here is another example of how it’s beneficial to get a clear idea of what’s projected through your body and face respectively. Both are Copper Autumns (Zyla) but still carry pronounced differences easily identified through their Kibbe IDs. On the left you have someone with a “bold, exotic physicality combined with a powerful sensual essence” (Soft Dramatic) and to the right you see the manifestation of “a strong, sharp physicality with a cool reserve and charismatic power” (Dramatic).

Anyway, if you want to familiarize yourself with how to analyze faces it’s pretty straightforward:

Look at the empty space between eyes, brows, lips as well as the frame (face shape), note things like prominence (can be colour or structure), literal shapes, angles. Now find a good match for that from the official Pinterest boards (Zyla, TiB) based on how well these empty spaces between points of visual interest as well as the prominence of that detail reflect that which is found in your face. Note that the format of your collage will influence how well the images connect, so things like border size and shape as well how zoomed in the images are will matter for the harmony.

Example from Zyla (Vital Spring, Eva Longoria).
Example from Truth is Beauty (Dramatic Natural, Sandra Oh).

To end this first post I would like to note that this is a proposed approach of how to work with already existing systems in a way that gives you clarity and understanding of your own features; It’s not about appealing to the mommies and daddies of the style world. Steal what makes sense and let them approach it artistically in their own business if they’d like to. The goal is to see what you have to work with, not to fall in love with a type, you have plenty of room to incorporate personality and ideals without twisting reality. In the upcoming posts I’ll do my best (I have low standards) to illuminate some key things to effectively apply the various tools at your disposal.

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