“Miss Congeniality”

Do Natural Classic Ingenues (NCIs) have the “most likable” beauty?

Research shows that many people are drawn to:

High-trust facial features (which often have round, sweet Ingenue shapes)

Symmetrical, balanced faces (which are often Classic)

Friendly and smiling faces (Naturals tend to appear friendly, and more than any other essence, tend to look most harmonious with wide smiles)

The style type with the most likable beauty? Ultimately it’s a matter of opinion, of course.

But to some people, Natural Classic Ingenues may have a convincing case!

Natural Classic Ingenue Celebrities

Famous Natural Classic Ingenues are on Pinterest here and listed below:

Aaron Paul
Audrina Patridge
Cheryl Hines
Diane Kruger
Emily Deschanel
Helen Hunt
Jared Padalecki
Jenna Fischer
Jessica Henwick
Kate Middleton
Kelela
Laura Linney
Lauren Parsekian
Leslie Mann
Zooey Deschanel

Natural Classic Ingenue Fashion

The Natural Classic Ingenue aesthetic is simultaneously casual, posh, and girly.

So NCIs can blend the following aesthetics:

Casual Chic (Natural Classic)

Think relaxed-fit and straight-leg denim, basic crewnecks, basic button-downs, shirt dresses, and other timeless basics

Cottage Core (Natural Ingenue)

Think peasant blouses, ruffled tops, flared dresses, small floral prints, and breathable fabrics like cotton, hemp, bamboo, and linen

Vintage, especially50s-inspired (Classic Ingenue, and sometimes Natural, too)
- Think circle skirts, vertical pleating, puff sleeves, round collars, crewnecks, and pearls

Then you can merge elements of all these aesthetics based on your essence ratio, favoring:

Girly elements like ruffles, babydoll tops and dresses, circle skirts, dainty buttons, and tiny floral prints for Ingenue
Carefree and casual elements like denim, roomy tees, flannels, sneakers, and oversized sweaters for Natural
Timeless and chic pieces like basic button-downs, straight-leg dress pants, blazers, and crisp crewnecks for Classic

Putting it all together:

A very Ingenue dress (round collar, ruffled sleeves, flared skirt, tiered hemline) with a wide Natural silhouette and sneakers.

Classic comes from a basic minimalist hat and neutral color scheme.

If you have a lot of Ingenue, you get endless pretty dress and skirt options.

A short circle skirt is an Ingenue wardrobe staple. This skirt’s print also works well because of the gentle blue, pink, and white color palette, and because from far away, the print (a woman wearing a hat) creates the look of many relatively small, circular shapes.
A simple, open-neckline, slightly loose Natural Classic tank and Natural earth-toned belt complete the look.

This flared skirt with gentle pleats flatter Ingenues. The white button-down is Classic, and by being knotted into a boxy shape, it takes on a lot of easygoing Natural, too. The simple black and white color scheme also feels Classic.

(Black and white together sometimes feels more intense and bold—Dramatic or potentially Gamine or Romantic—than conventional and Classic. In this outfit, the individual pieces have an overall conventional feel, so that’s how the color scheme reads, too.)

Natural Classic Ingenue Makeup

As an NCI, your best makeup will feel:

Lightweight, fresh-faced, and chic
Similar to a “no-makeup makeup” or “clean girl” aesthetic
Typically very different from makeup described as edgy, full glam, or “Instagram makeup”—styles that can easily feel too heavy

However, this doesn’t mean that NCIs can only wear very little makeup.

In fact, NCIs, can wear high amounts the right kind of makeup:

Naturals can do heavy bronzer
Ingenues can do notable blush
And Classics can do very pigmented matte red lips, plus eye emphasis like liquid liner and tightlining

The key is balance. For instance, as seen above, if you do a red lip for Classic, you could do a lighter eye for Natural Ingenue.

NCI Makeup and Celebrities

Here’s some NCI celebrities rocking makeup that does (or doesn’t) flatter their blend:

Natural Bronzey Smoky Eyes

Jessica Henwick shows the perfect way to do a Natural smoky eye: an earthy matte eyeshadow shade a bit darker than your skin tone applied all over the eye area.

Light pink lip gloss and a dewy skin finish suit Ingenue, and dark eyeliner applied in a thin line ties in Classic.

Ingenue Subtle Smoky Eyes

And this is how Ingenue does eye emphasis! Shimmery light-colored eyeshadow all over the lids, with a matte shade just a bit darker in the crease and up onto the brow bone (and optionally a touch below the eyes). Add a thin line of medium eyeliner and lightweight lashes—SO mesmerizing for Diane Kruger’s strongly Ingenue beauty.

Emphasizing the eyes with dark colors and heavy applications can be tempting for anyone, since that’s the simplest, most efficient way to make the eyes stand out. This is particularly true if you’re going to be photographed on a red carpet under bright lights.
And there are versions of heavy eye makeup that flatter NCI. But especially if you’re highly Ingenue, then lightweight-appearing eye emphasis can be one of your absolute best looks.
Diane completes her makeup with a Natural matte-appearing light pink lip and Classic well-groomed brows that are horizontal along the tops with a controlled arch beneath.

NCI Siblings!

Finally, here’s the Deschanel sisters in some intriguing makeup and styling.

To me, Zooey Deschanel can easily pass for Gamine, especially since her persona in films is often described as “quirky.” (She’s also frequently compared to celebrities who have notable Gamine, like Katy Perry.)

But see how much more authentic she looks in:

Style types often seem to be inherited in predictable ways, meaning that your essences are likely some combination of your biological parents’ essences.

But that doesn’t meant that you’ll have the exact same essences as your parents or siblings.

In fact, often your parents will have more than three or four essences between them. And that means there’s a good chance that you and your siblings will inherit at least slightly (or sometimes very) different style IDs!

Natural Classic Ingenue Faces

Based on the celebrity examples we’ve covered so far, we see that NCIs often have:

Curvy, dainty, and youthful-feeling **Ingenue** features, like large rounded foreheads and small upturned noses
Balanced Classic qualities, like faces that appear symmetrical and divided roughly into equal thirds (meaning that the forehead makes up about a third of the face’s vertical height; the middle part of the face from the bottom of the forehead to the tip of nose is about a third; and the tip of the nose to the bottom of the chin is about a third)
Wide, strong **Natural** bone structure (see the similarities in Diane Krueger’s and Emily Deschanel’s broad, chiseled jawlines)

Natural and Dramatic can look almost identical. So how do you distinguish them?

It’s tricky! Sometimes it seems impossible to do so with naked eye.

The best way is often simply to determine whether the person is more flattered by Dramatic or Natural fashion (or both).

However, there are clues that can be garnered by looking at a person’s literal features. In general, Natural bone structure appears wider and broader, especially at the lower jaw, and Dramatic bone structure appears narrower and more convergent.

So as a very rough rule, if the width of a person’s jawline at the widest point is as long as (or even longer than) the full vertical length of their jawline, then that can be a sign of Natural.

Conversely, if the jaw horizontally appears notably shorter than the vertical jawline, that can be a clue to Dramatic.

But that’s 100% a guideline, not an absolute rule

The other complication is that Gamine and Classic can also sometimes give the face sharp-appearing bone structure that mirrors Dramatic or Natural.

Ultimately, a person’s style essences will reflect their best fashion, hair, and makeup, regardless of the apparent shapes of their literal features.

Style Essences: Men!

Do style essences look similar on women and men?

Sometimes, yes!

Natural Classic Ingenue Aaron Paul has similar features to what we’ve seen so far, including:

Youthful (also called “neotenous”) Ingenue facial features and proportions, like a large forehead, large round eyes, and a rather small nose with a curved tip and visible nostrils
A generally balanced, symmetrical Classic feel to his face
A prominent Natural jaw that has a flared, broad quality, rather than feeling convergent and Dramatic (though his bone structure could definitely pass for Dramatic or Gamine to the naked eye)!

So men and women with the same style type can look similar.

But this won’t always be the case. For instance, Jared Padalecki is also an NCI, but he appears to have quite a high amount of Natural that gives him a distinct look from the other celebrities we’ve seen so far.

Additionally, regardless of essence blend, male faces tend to have (sometimes subtle) differences that make the face appear more stereotypically masculine.

So even though Aaron Paul appears to have a lot of Ingenue, his Ingenue in my view has a more masculine feel than it does for female NCIs.

Why NCIs are Hard to Type

In addition to Natural and Dramatic easily being confused, and sometimes Natural and Gamine, the combination of Natural and Ingenue can easily resemble Ethereal.

To me this can be seen on Diane Kruger, Zooey Deschanel, and other NCIs: the gentleness of Ingenue combines with the elongation of Natural to mimic Ethereal’s gentle, elongated look.

Hair can be a good way to distinguish Ethereal vs. Ingenue—is this person best in tight, short or moderate-length ringlets (Ingenue), or most flattered by extra-long mermaid waves (Ethereal)?

Though the tricky part here is that many NCIs won’t necessarily find curls to be their absolute best look.

This is because Natural and Classic both tend to prefer straight or straight-ish hair (with notable exceptions).

So even if you’re an NCI with dominant Ingenue, you might find that your best hair is straight or has just a slight wave.

Makeup can be another way to differentiate Ethereal and Ingenue. While there is overlap in these essence’s best makeup, Ethereals tend to handle more unconventional colors and unique, elongated applications.

Essence Stereotypes?

As is probably true of all the types, some Natural Classic Ingenues look like more stereotypical versions of their blend than others.

One celebrity who I’d consider a pretty textbook Natural Classic Ingenue—meaning she looks the way we’d theoretically expect an NCI to look—is Jenna Fischer:

With her curvy pretty eyes and small rounded nose, Fischer is highly Ingenue. Her broad bone structure adds Natural, and her overall balance and symmetry add Classic.

I think it’d be hard to argue she has a lot of anything else, besides maybe Gamine, because the combination of youthful Ingenue with straight Natural shapes, plus restrained Classic, can sometimes mimic the look of youthful, angular, short Gamine shapes. But I don’t think Gamine is significant for her, and in this green top, the main thing disconnected from her beauty appears to be the colorful Gamine polka dots—which admittedly aren’t the easiest thing for anyone to pull off, but especially for someone’s whose beauty is overall too sweet, relaxed, and serious for that level of whimsy.

I associate Jenna Fischer with The Office, where she played a character whose personality sometimes embodied aspects of the Natural Classic Ingenue vibe: kindness, patience, and friendliness in her role as a secretary.

So the fact that her casting seems to align with certain aspects of her style essences, and the fact that The Office is what I know her from, might also be why she’s such a clear example of an NCI to me. I wasn’t at all surprised when that was the result of my virtual draping.

But for others with this beauty type, I was really surprised by the results of analyzing them. One is Audrina Patridge:

My mental representation of Audrina typically includes long, sleek, straight (Dramatic) hair and glam makeup. I think I assumed she’d have Romantic or Dramatic or both.

But when you study Audrina’s facial features and ignore the vibes of her styling, you can see that she actually has a ton of facial similarity to Jenna Fischer—rounded, pretty eyes, small nose with rounded tip, strong bone structure at the jaw, and an overall balanced face. And virtual draping reveals that Audrina’s best lines are Natural, Classic, and Ingenue.

Yet it still feels a little disjointed for me to think of Audrina as Natural Classic Ingenue, because that’s not how I’m used to seeing her styled.

Audrina is also so gorgeous with her highly Ingenue beauty: her dainty, rounded, precise features. So it’s easy to see her as harmonious in anything.

This Romantic Dramatic “bombshell” hair, makeup, and outfit isn’t her ideal. Yet she’s still stunning—it’s just that the heavy makeup is fighting against her face rather than enhancing her evident beauty.
This illustrates how people can still be attractive in unharmonious styling.
But it’s true that styling yourself in a harmonious way will allow more of your authentic beauty to be perceived, because it puts your beauty in a context where it’s highlighted and accentuated, rather than masked by competing elements.

Another reason it’s hard to recognize Audrina as an NCI is that when I picture her typical face—surrounded by glam hair and makeup—with Natural Classic Ingenue fashion, her face doesn’t necessarily harmonize with the NCI fashion.

Her facial features do, but her facial features are wearing makeup that does not.

So based on her features, Audrina is a beautiful NCI. But because historically her styling has been highly glam, with heavy Romantic Dramatic vibes, it can make it tricky to visually and theoretically think of her as being best in NCI fashion.

This illustrates one of the many reasons it can be so hard to type celebrities: because if we get used to seeing a celebrity in certain hair, makeup, and/or fashion, then even if that styling doesn’t reflect their essences, it can sometimes feel “right” for them, because it feels familiar.

And if a celebrity almost always wears, say, Romantic Dramatic makeup, then if you virtually drape their face in Natural Classic Ingenue style, it might be hard to see them as harmonious in NCI, even if it is their style type, because the fashion clashes with their makeup.

Over the years, I’ve trained my eye to ignore makeup and to really focus on facial features during the virtual draping process. But it was something that took a lot of practice to do.

Most Likable?

With their friendly, balanced, and sweet vibes, Natural Classic Ingenues have magnetic beauty.

Their faces embody key qualities that most of us desire in our relationships: kindness, openness, sturdiness, stability, and trustworthiness.

Humans might even be hard-wired to admire many of NCIs’ key visual traits.

Natural Classic Ingenue

Natural Classic Ingenue Celebrities