Ingenue Essence Prints

Last time, we covered Dramatic’s edgy prints, including snakeskin, lightning bolts, flames, and skeletons.

Woman wearing an edgy top with a Dramatic skeleton print graphic

Our chaser will be prints of an opposite nature: Ingenue’s sweet, happy designs, like dainty florals and tiny polka-dots.

Woman wearing a puff sleeve pink dress with a tiny floral print

Ingenue Prints Qualities

Ingenue prints are often:

Woman wearing a white dress with tiny light blue floral print — **Curving**
**Small-scale**
**Low- or medium-contrast**

But it’s also possible for them to be:

Linear, such as in low-contrast gingham
Medium- or large-scale, if it’s an iconic Ingenue design, such as a print of a large bow
High-contrast, like a black dress with tiny white flowers

Ingenues have a wider range of fashion than is sometimes recognized.

You can wear lots of stereotypically girlish styles. But you can also do fashion that’s flirty and subtly sensual—like a slightly more modest, youthful version of the Romantic aesthetic.

Ingenue’s Best Prints

Some of your best options:

1) Florals

Woman wearing white ruffled dress with tiny blue and orange florals — Small-scale florals

Woman wearing a blue dress with a tiny white print — Micro-florals

Woman wearing a brown printed top — Dandelion puff

2) Polka-dots

Woman wearing a puff sleeve blue top with blue polka-dots — Low-contrast polka-dots

Woman wearing a black matching set with tiny white polka-dots — Micro-dots

Small-scale polka-dots in Ingenue’s iconic colors, like pink and white

3) Cherry Prints

Small-scale cherry prints

Woman wearing a blouse with a tiny cherry and floral print — Cherry and floral prints

4) Sweet, Feminine Prints

Woman wearing a black cardigan with a purple bow print — Bows

Tiny hearts

5) Lace or Lace-inspired Prints

Woman wearing an eyelet lace Ingenue peplum top — Eyelet lace

Woman wearing a jumpsuit with Ingenue essence circle lace — Circle lace

6) Gingham

Low-contrast gingham

Woman wearing a light pink and white gingham cottage core dress — Pink gingham

Pastel gingham (or your color season’s version of pastels—your lightest, gentlest-feeling colors)

7) And More!

Other designs that feel delicate, dainty, and sweet

Prints to Avoid

Ingenue generally doesn’t connect to:

Stripes, pinstripes, color-blocking, and large geometrics
Large-scale and oversized florals
Intense-feeling animal prints (cheetah, leopard, tiger, zebra, etc.)
Very energetic-feeling polka dots (including large-scale polka-dots or polka-dots in unique color combinations, such as blue and yellow)

But you can likely still wear some of these if you have other essences in your blend.

Ingenue Blended Prints

Most people aren’t a pure type. But even if you only have a little Ingenue, you can still be flattered by fully Ingenue prints.

You can also choose designs that combine two or more of your essences, like:

Ingenue Classic

Woman wearing a gray and pink plaid skirt — Look for Classic prints with Ingenue colors, like a simple plaid that incorporates light pink.

Ingenue Ethereal

Woman wearing a black dress with small silver butterly print — Look for butterfly prints. When small-scale and rendered somewhat literally, butterflies can be fantastic for Ingenue, feeling delicate and sweet.

And since Ethereal is flattered by prints that evoke flight, it’s a great print for Angelic beauty, too.

Ingenue Gamine

Woman wearing trendy sunglasses and heart print top — Look for small to moderate solid-color hearts in contrasting colors.
Hearts easily feel sweet and often read as purely Ingenue. And in bold hues, they can also be adjacent to Gamine’s high-spirited beauty.

Ingenue Dramatic

Woman wearing a polka dot dress paired with leather jacket for an edgy and sweet Dramatic Ingenue look — It’s tough to find prints that combine Dramatic and Ingenue!

One option is high-contrast neutral micro-dots (such as in black and white). Technically this print works for a pure Ingenue, but it has some adjacency to Dramatic’s edgy vibe.
You can also look for Ingenue prints in Dramatic silhouettes, like a deep V-neck polka-dot dress. Or throw a Dramatic leather jacket over a fit-n-flare Ingenue dress—that’s the ultimate cool and easy outfit formula for Dramatic Ingenue blends!

Ingenue Natural

Woman wearing a tree print top with an Ingenue flared skirt — Look for prints with tiny florals or small circular shapes (Ingenue) that also include trees, branches, or other earthy-feeling Natural motifs

Ingenue Romantic

Woman wearing a high slit skirt featuring large and small florals — Look for prints that blend small-scale (Ingenue) and medium or large-scale (Romantic) florals.

If you’re having trouble deciding whether a certain floral is best suited to Ingenue or Romantic, there’s a decent chance that it’s on the border of the two essences and so could work for either. There’s also a good chance that it’s especially ideal for a Romantic Ingenue blend!

Print-Mixing

Print-mixing is generally awesome for Ingenue, since:

The essence’s youthfulness connects with print-mixing’s inherent playfulness.
Ingenue fashion can sometimes have a down-to-earth, unpretentious vibe. And print-mixing can enhance this vibe by creating the impression that you don’t take yourself super seriously.

Any potential conflicts between Ingenue and print-mixing?

Yes—Ingenue does prefer a relatively calm and neat aesthetic. And print-mixing can easily feel zany and high-energy.

But this isn’t necessarily a conflict, because there’s also ways to mix prints that feel calm and coordinated.

Here’s some great methods for Ingenue print-mixing:

Mix Prints, Match Colors

Woman wearing a floral printed top paired with a plaid jumper — Ingenue is flattered by a neat, cohesive-feeling aesthetic.

One way to achieve this is by mixing prints with similar color schemes, like a dress and top that both contain pink, white, gray, and black.
Doing so, you can embody Ingenue’s youthful, subtly playful and flirty feel while still maintaining the cohesion the essence likes.
This outfit is a really cute look for a Classic Gamine Ingenue.

Match and Match

Woman wearing a blue floral cardigan paired with blue floral dress — Another option is pairing two different but similar prints together.

From a distance, this outfit could resemble a long-sleeved dress, but it’s actually a layered look—a floral print dress with a floral print cardigan layered on top.
This look could be amazing for a blend with Ingenue and Ethereal.

Accessorize Dramatically

Woman wearing an Ingenue floral wrap dress paired with Dramatic geometric purse — An Ingenue dress with tiny floral print plus a Dramatic snakeskin purse creates a cool juxtaposition.

Stay Neutral

Woman wearing a creative printed look with polka-dot skirt and heathered cardigan — An Ingenue light neutral polka-dot skirt plus maze-print bag and heathered knit cardigan… there’s a lot of essences going on here, but if you happen to be an Ethereal Dramatic Natural Ingenue, this could be the dream look.

And More!

Ingenue can have a lot of fun with print-mixing, with many options beyond what’s covered here.

Accessories can be the perfect starting place.

The essence’s youthful feel makes it an ideal match for dainty pieces like headbands or short scarves with tiny florals.

These could be paired with printed tops, dresses, or skirts (or with more printed accessories!)

There really are endless options.

Colors and Color Season?

Ingenue can work well with any season.

It’s true that Summer is probably the most natural match for Ingenue’s calm, soft, gentle vibes.

But as we saw above, Ingenue fashion can also come in dark and very high-contrast colors.

The great thing about choosing an iconically Ingenue print, especially tiny florals, is that it can help you look authentic as an Ingenue even if you prefer wearing very high-contrast or very dark colors.

By wearing the colors that you prefer in an Ingenue print, you can (sometimes) project a highly Ingenue vibe while still wearing hues that are ideal for your season.

That’s one reason prints are such a powerful tool. Since they tend to strongly communicate a specific vibe, they make it so you can look really harmonious in colors that could otherwise feel unideal for your essences.

General Print-Mixing Tips

Here’s a summary of general print-mixing strategies (we also covered all these previously when discussing Dramatics!)

These are absolutely guidelines, not rules—all can sometimes be broken with success:

Pair a subtler print with a louder one
Mix a simpler print with a more complex one
Mix a more well-known and recognizable print (like polka-dots) with a more unusual one
Pair larger scale with smaller scale
Pair a printed garment with printed shoes, accessories, or jewelry
Have one or more of your prints be mostly neutral
Mix prints in the same or similar color schemes
Keep color season mostly consistent—if the print mostly suits your season while also incorporating some colors that are outside your season, it may still work for you. But in general, if you like to dress by your color season, then you’ll want the majority of the print’s colors to match that

Blended Prints (And Faces)?

Above I mentioned that sometimes a print can be on the border between Ingenue and Romantic.

This relates to our series on essence subtypes, where we explored how Ingenue and Romantic are adjacent in conceptual and visual space.

And, arguably, there is a place where these two essences overlap.

What does that mean? For instance, certain necklines, such as moderate-length scoop necklines, can suit both Romantic and Ingenue.

(Factors like fabric, embellishment, and the overall silhouette of the garment will tend to determine whether the blouse overall is a better fit for one essence or the other.)

Moderate-scale florals can also sometimes work for both essences. (Although again, depending on what the garment looks like overall, it may read as being a better match for one essence vs. the other).

And if you can’t decide whether a floral print is better for Ingenue or Romantic, there’s a good chance that it’s ultimately best for a person who has both essences.

Can a Face be on the Border between Romantic and Ingenue?

This all brings up the question of whether facial features can be perfectly on the border between Romantic and Ingenue.

I think the answer is theoretically yes: you could have a facial feature that reads as exactly on the border between Romantic and Ingenue.

If so, that would simply mean that you have both Romantic and Ingenue in that facial feature—and thus that you have both essences in your style type.

Your face would very likely have vibes that reflect aspects of both essences, feeling simultaneously sensual and demure.

So you would be able to wear elements of Romantic fashion and elements of Ingenue fashion.

It wouldn’t make sense to create a brand new essence that’s located right on the border of Romantic and Ingenue, because there’s really no room for a new essence there, in a fashion sense: the fashion that flatters Romantic and Ingenue is already quite similar (at least in certain manifestations) and in some cases, has overlap (e.g., the scoop-neck example we discussed above).

If you’ve had a hard time determining whether you have Ingenue or Romantic, it’s possible that you have one and don’t have the other (or that you have an essence that can be mimicked by the combo of Ingenue and Romantic, such as Ethereal).

But it’s also possible that you simply have both Romantic and Ingenue in your style ID.

Next Time

More prints next time! : )