Finding Your Stype Type
Style analysis can be difficult—but why is that?
After all, there’s only seven essences. That’s not really a staggering amount.
So why isn’t it easier to find the ones that harmonize with you?
A big reason is that almost everyone has more than one essence.
And that means you’re not just figuring out which of the seven types you have.
You’re actually figuring out which of the 63 essence blends you have (if you use a three essence system) or 98 essence blends you have (if you use a four essence system).
That’s kind of a lot of types!
So today we’ll cover strategies for determining which one is yours.
Finding Your Essences: The “Head-to-Toe” Method
Previously, I’ve alluded to a method for finding your essences that involves styling yourself in seven separate head-to-toe looks.
Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Styling and photos!
First, you’ll do a head-to-toe Gamine look, and then a head-to-toe Ingenue look, etc., and go through all seven essences until you have photos of yourself in all seven head-to-toe looks.
In each photo, you’ll want to try to keep your facial expression and pose consistent.
You’ll also want to take each photo from the same angle and with the same lighting (if possible—depending on how varied your wardrobe is, you might need to go into stores/dressing rooms and try on outfits there. You could also just style yourself in the essence from the waist up, and only take photos from the waist up).
You can try to keep the color season constant, too, though that’s optional.
You might want to keep your hair and makeup constant for all images (for the sake of simplicity—you could just choose hair and makeup that you feel comfortable in).
A different option is to make your makeup match each of the seven essences. (So your head-to-toe Gamine look might include not just a fully Gamine outfit but also Gamine eyeliner and pigtails.)
People often seem to have their dominant style essence in their eyes. So for each head-to-toe look, you could optionally make your eye makeup match the essence in your outfit.
Step 2: Evaluate!
Once you have all your photos, you’ll simply observe which head-to-toe is most flattering on you.
You’ll likely want to try to focus on the shapes and vibes of the outfits, not the literal colors (especially if the color season of your outfits differs from photo to photo).
Your most flattering head-to-toe look will plausibly reflect your dominant essence.
And your runner-up best head-to-toe look will plausibly be your second essence, and your third best look will plausibly be your third essence.
To determine if you actually have a significant third (or fourth) essence, you’ll likely want to take some extra photos and do extra comparisons:
For example, if Gamine was your best essence, Ingenue was runner-up, Romantic was third, and Natural was fourth, you’d want to compare yourself in Gamine Ingenue vs. Romantic Gamine Ingenue, to see if Romantic added to your harmony. If it did, you could add a small amount of Natural and see if that added to your harmony.
In this way, you could figure out if your best blend consisted of two, three, or four essences (or one, if you’re an amazing rare beauty with only a single essence!)
I think this approach can work very well for at least some people.
In theory, your dominant essence should be the one that’s most flattering on you for a head-to-toe look.
And your second essence should be second most flattering, and so on.
But I’ve also gotten some feedback from people who expressed that they didn’t think a head-to-toe look of their dominant essence was very flattering on them.
And I want to validate that in a way, this makes perfect sense.
Because most people’s dominant essence seems to be around 60% or less of their beauty—at least, this is generally true of the people whose percentages I’ve analyzed.
It’s certainly possible to have 70%, 80%, 90%, or even 100% of an essence—but it seems much rarer.
So this explains why determining which head-to-toe essence ensemble is your best can be tricky.
Still, it might be worth trying, since the goal isn’t for your best head-to-toe styling to be your ideal look—you just need to recognize it as more flattering for you than the other six.
The “head-to-toe method” may be especially helpful for people who have a relatively high amount of one particular essence.
What if this doesn’t work?
But let’s say you have a fairly common essence ratio consisting of around 40% of your dominant essence, 35% of another, and 25% of another.
If you’re 40% Ethereal and wear a 100% Ethereal look, then it by definition is only 40% connected from your beauty.
And thus 60% of it feels disconnected from your beauty.
So, it’s easy to see why a person with dominant Ethereal could be unsure about whether they even have the essence—because when they wear highly Ethereal styling, they may accurately perceive, “This doesn’t look ideal for me.”
And this can be even more true for your lower percentage essences.
Thinking about this really helps explain why some people can have a challenging time finding their essences.
When we think about style essences, we’re typically thinking, “Which essences connect with my beauty.” But as described above, if you only have a moderate amount of an essence, then it can be hard to be confident that it’s right for you, because high amounts can appear incorrect.
What’s the solution to this?
I don’t have a perfect one, because we’re all unique, so it’s hard to give universally applicable advice.
But below I’ll detail a different strategy that I think might be useful for people don’t find the “head-to-toe” approach successful
Finding Your Essences: The Blended Types Method
With this approach to finding your essences, instead of focusing primarily on, “which essences do I have,” you start to focus also on, “which blends do I have.”
Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Make a Guess
Begin by making a guess about an essence you think you might have—ideally the one you think you’re most likely to have.
Importantly, it doesn’t have to be your dominant essence, and you don’t have to be correct about your guess. (Being correct will make the process easier, but you can still eventually arrive at your true type even if your guess for Step 1 isn’t correct.)
Just choose the essence you think there’s the greatest possibility you could have.
You might use some of these tips, including thinking about the fashion, hair, and makeup that most flatters you.
And let’s say, for the sake of this example, that you choose Ethereal as the essence you think you’re most likely to have.
Step 2: Test!
Next, you’ll want to compare yourself to blended styling representing the essence you chose in Step 1. paired with every other essence.
So, if you chose Ethereal for Step 1., you’d want to study yourself in:
Ethereal Dramatic style
Ethereal Gamine style
Ethereal Natural style
Ethereal Romantic style
Ethereal Ingenue style
Ethereal Classic style
The order in which you do this doesn’t matter. You could start with the blends that you think you’re most likely to have, but doing a random order can work just as well.
There’s different methods by which you can do Step 2. The simplest is probably to compare a photo of yourself to images of fashion (from this site, from Pinterest, etc.) representing each of the blended types.
However, if you’re struggled to type yourself, then comparing your photo to separate images may not be an ideal method, since it’s rather indirect.
The better approach may be to actually try on outfits that blend notable amounts of the two essence combinations, and ideally to take photos of yourself that you can save and study.
So you could take a couple photos of yourself in Ethereal Gamine fashion, a couple in Ethereal Natural, etc.
To simplify things, you could try just photographing yourself from the waist up and wearing a shirt that blends two essences, or an Ethereal top with a Natural jacket over it, or an Ethereal top with a Natural cardigan, etc.
Or maybe it’s easier to photograph your whole body. Either works. Try to keep your expression and angle constant from photo to photo.
As to the percentage of essences, you can try to wear roughly the same amount of both essences, or bit a more of the essence you chose in Step 1 than the other essence. You can also try both approaches and photograph both.
What if you don’t have the right outfits?
The complication here is that you may not have fashion obviously representing each of the seven essences—many people likely have at least some Natural, Classic, Gamine, Romantic, and Ingenue in their wardrobe. So those could be good essences to start with.
It could also help to try on clothes in stores and take photos in dressing rooms.
An alternate approach could be to instead do makeup or hair that flatters each of the blended types, take photos of yourself, and study those photos.
The limitation of using makeup is that compared to fashion, makeup arguably introduces more variables, because you have to make decisions about exactly which features to apply which style of makeup to.
It could certainly help lead you to your style type. But my sense is that for most people, fashion is the more effective approach.
If you’re going to be varying your outfits, then you might want to keep your makeup and hair constant—choosing whatever you feel comfortable in.
Step 3: Evaluate!
When you finish Step 2. and have the photos of yourself in the 6 different blended type combinations, you’ll simply want to observe the photos and try to determine in which ones your face appears most harmonious—essentially, which ones you like best.
Try not to focus too much on colors, especially if the color season of the outfits differs from photo to photo.
Ideally, you’ll be able to rank your photos in order of favorite to least favorite. Its ok to have some ties if you really can’t decide.
Try to focus not on whether you like the fashion aesthetically, but on whether you like the combination of the fashion with your face.
Step 3. can vary in its difficulty.
Some people might find that there are some photos they obviously like more or less. Other people might find it much more challenging.
If you’re struggling, you could seek a second opinion. The difficulty here is if that they are someone close to you, like a significant other, or especially if they’re a family member who has some physical resemblance to you, then it may be hard for them to be unbiased in their assessment.
The ideal scenario is that you’re able to somewhat decisively settle on a top 3, ranked from favorite to least favorite. Maybe for you that’s:
Ethereal Romantic
Ethereal Natural
Ethereal Gamine
Step 4: Test again!
Now you’ll want to try to determine whether you actually have all four essences, or just two or three (or potentially one).
To determine whether you have more than one essence, you can take a photo of yourself in pure Ethereal fashion and compare it to the blends.
Whichever blends you prefer to the pure Ethereal photo, are likely to be significant for you.
So let’s say in the hypothetical scenario we’re going through, you preferred photos of yourself in Ethereal Romantic styling compared to pure Ethereal style, and you preferred photos of yourself in Ethereal Natural styling compared to pure Natural style.
That means Ethereal, Romantic, and Natural are likely significant for you.
And let’s say that you preferred yourself in the photo of pure Ethereal styling to yourself in Ethereal Gamine styling.
That means Gamine is likely not significant for you (or that it’s significant in a small enough amount where it’s not necessary for your best look).
Step 5: Experiment!
Next, you can play around with styling yourself with different amounts of the essences you’ve chosen as significant—E, N, and R in our example—to see if you can find a ratio that really clicks as appearing harmonious.
You can add in hair and makeup that suits your essences here, too, if you haven’t already.
Step 6: Repeat as Needed
The disappointing thing about this process is that it’s not foolproof. You might have landed on Ethereal, Romantic, and Natural as your significant essences, only to find that something about the combination doesn’t look quite right (even after varying the amounts of how much of each essence you wear).
So what do you do?
Luckily, it’s pretty easy to retrace your steps.
For instance, you could go back to Step 3. and reevaluate your photos and the essence blends you chose (Ethereal Romantic, Ethereal Natural, Ethereal Gamine).
If you’re still stuck, you might even revisit Step 1, the step where you identified Ethereal as the essence you were most likely to have.
Perhaps through doing the 6 Step process, you observed that there was another essence, maybe Romantic or Natural, that consistently seemed flattering on you. So maybe you want to choose that for Step 1. as the essence you’re most likely to have.
In summary, this process might lead you to your type fairly quickly—or it may be time-consuming or winding path.
But if other methods haven’t worked, then spending time approach may end up being worth the investment.
Additional Tips
Finally, here are some general tips that might be helpful for your style journey.
I’ve based on this on things that previously were barriers to me identifying a person’s essences, along with what I think is the more affective approach:
1) Barrier to Accurate Typing: Making strong initial assumptions about your essences.
Better Approach: Come to style analysis with an open mind—open to the possibility that you could have any essence.
This is tricky, because I don’t necessarily want to encourage people to doubt themselves.
If you have a strong sense that an essence is right for you, there’s a good chance that it is.
I bring this up because in the past, a barrier to accurate typing for me was making overly strong assumptions about what essence a celebrity did or didn’t have.
That is, I went into the style analysis process with a bias in my mind, which made it harder for my eyes to see accurately.
The other consideration is that if you are someone who has struggled to find your essences, there’s a decent chance that your essences present in a non-stereotypical way—maybe you have Ethereal or Dramatic as horizontal rather than vertical elongation; maybe you look young despite not having much Gamine or Ingenue; etc.
In that case, your suspicions about your type might be partly informed by stereotypes that don’t accurately reflect the reality of your unique beauty.
So, you can certainly have your suspicions about what essences you’re likely to have—in fact, that’s Step 1 of the typing method I described above!
But ideally, when you evaluate yourself in photos, you’ll remain open to the possibility of having any essence.
2) Barrier to Accurate Typing: Making decisions too quickly.
Better Approach: Take your time, especially when studying different photos.
When I evaluate a person’s most harmonious essences, I always make multiple comparisons—meaning, if I’m comparing them between Ethereal and Dramatic fashion, I will study them next to Ethereal, then next to Dramatic, then next to Ethereal, then next to Dramatic, then next to Ethereal, then next to Dramatic—and do that for as long as it takes for my body to have a strong sense of which image is more harmonious.
Even if you feel you have the answer right away, I’d recommend going slowly on photo comparisons.
Part of what indicates harmony is that it tends to be easier to look at harmonious images for longer, whereas disharmonious ones can make us want to look away.
So increasing the time you spend looking at your photos, and comparing them to one another, can increase your ability to accurately discern your best looks.
3) Barrier to Accurate Typing: Overly focusing on a sense of harmony or of disharmony.
Better Approach: Focus on sensations of both, and especially how these sensations differ from one another.
This may take some time to learn, but I think it can be one of the most useful approaches to style analysis.
Instead of primarily focusing on, “What do I look good in” or “What do I not look good in,” try to really pay attention to both sensations and specifically to how they differ: the difference in feeling that occurs when you study yourself in more vs. less harmonious styling.
You are looking for a greater sense of ease, peace, relaxation, and contentment that comes from viewing the more harmonious image, contrasted with a sense of greater tension and discontent when you look at the less harmonious image.
Simply practicing comparing yourself and others to different style styles of clothing is probably the best way to develop this ability.
4) Barrier to Accurate Typing: Using photos of people taken at odd angles, particularly from notably above or below.
Better Approach: Use mostly straight-on photos, unless an angle more accurately represents your face.
The issue with using a photo taken from markedly above or below a person is that it can really change the apparent proportions of the face, such as making the forehead or chin appear much larger or smaller than it actually is.
Three-quarter view photos don’t seem to be as much of an issue, especially if the person is only turned slightly to the side.
In general, you’ll likely want to use straight-on photos, or photos with your head tilted just slightly to the side—unless you feel that what you see in the mirror is better captured by a photo taken from three-quarter view. (Some people don’t photograph true-to-life from straight on, especially in a selfie.)
In this case, I’d use the angle that appears most true-to-life or most true to what you see in the mirror, and try to use that angle for all the photos you take.
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I hope some of this will be useful for your style journey!
Style analysis is wonderful in part because it is nuanced and can take time—there isn’t a five-question Buzzfeed quiz that will (accurately) lead you to your type. But you may find that even a lengthy process ends up being more rewarding.
