Romantic Classic Ingenue Style ID

“Classic Hollywood Beauty”

So far, I’ve identified just three Romantic Classic Ingenue celebrities, and they all happen to be Old Hollywood movie stars.

Is this purely coincidental, or is there a meaningful reason that modern Romantic Classic Ingenues seem so rare?

Romantic Classic Ingenue Celebrities

Romantic Classic Ingenue celebrities are pictured on Pinterest and listed here:

Ingrid Bergman
Lana Turner
Yvonne De Carlo

I’ve also identified some Romantic Classic Ingenues who have a fourth essence:

Anushka Sharma (with Ethereal as a fourth essence)
Ester Expósito (with Dramatic as a fourth essence)

Romantic Classic Ingenue Faces

With their rounded faces and features, RCIs epitomize soft beauty.

Classic can also lend RCI faces a bit of bluntness or sharpness, such as in the hairline or jawline.

But overall, RCI faces are defined by their curvy, almost circular, features.

You can trace roughly circular shapes around the contours of their eyes, lips, cheeks, and nasal tips.

Even their jawlines can sometimes appear quite short and curved, lacking obvious definition.

This is RCI Ingrid Bergman in the film “Gaslight.”

She was about 29 at the time but could easily pass for much younger, because nearly all her features appear curved, soft, and short.

RCI Lana Turner also has uniquely compact, delicate bone structure, without obvious angles.

With their symmetrical and curvy features, Romantic Classic Ingenues can have a youthful yet glam, Barbie-doll type look.

Romantic, Ingenue, or Ethereal?

Due to their soft, delicate beauty, RCIs can resemble Ethereal blends.

One difference is that Ethereals often have notable elongation in horizontal or vertical space.

For instance, Ethereal lips might be subtly horizontally elongated, and Ethereal eyes might appear somewhat protruding, as if stretched in vertical space (or appear somewhat narrow and elongated horizontally).

That’s not a perfect indicator of how to distinguish RCIs from related Ethereal blends, since it’s often hard to determine with the naked eye whether a feature is truly “elongated.”

But if someone’s features appear extremely curvy and compact, then that can be a clue that they have Romantic or Ingenue, rather than Ethereal.

Romantic Classic Ingenue Blends

Modern day actress Ester Expósito is close to being purely RCI. Those are her top three essences, and she has a small amount of Dramatic as a fourth:

Ester Expósito appears similar to the Old Hollywood RCI celebrities we discussed above. But her jawline appears bit longer and sharper, giving her face some Dramatic intensity.

Romantic Classic Ingenue Fashion

Just like RCI faces, RCI fashion can feel conspicuously formal:

A Romantic Classic Ingenue crinkle jacquard suit and matching purse.

Romantic velvety berry top with Classic crewneck sleeveless silhouette and Ingenue necklace with small heart pendant.

However, you also have many options for more casual style.

Modern RCI Fashion

As an RCI, florals are your friend:

Prints with moderate and small florals are typically Romantic Ingenue. Scoop-necks, short puff sleeves, small bows, tiny cutouts, subtle waist emphasis, and flared or body-skimming silhouettes enhance the Ingenue impression.

You can add your Classic with timeless accessories, like a pearl pendant necklace.

Or layer a basic neutral Classic cardigan over a floral blouse.

This large floral print suits Romantic, while the short scoop neckline suits Ingenue.

Or do a Romantic Ingenue print in a conventional Classic straight silhouette with a band collar, crewneck, or button-down neckline.

You can also pair Romantic Ingenue tops with minimalist straight-leg Classic dress pants or even Classic jeans.

For Classic pants, look for styles that appear very simple and polished, and that don’t appear extreme in any dimension (like not being overly long, overly embellished, or having an extremely low rise).

For dresses, floral prints again can work well:

Deep scoop-neck for Romantic, flowy tiered babydoll silhouette for Ingenue. Layer over a Classic plain white tee.

As an RCI, you have many dress options. Sundresses and babydoll dresses commonly have a lot of Romantic, Ingenue, or both—though sometimes these styles do incorporate Natural elements, so you’ll want to check for that, especially in silhouette. This dress here suits Ingenue since it has flow and doesn’t feel particularly wide or oversized for a babydoll style, but look out for dresses that feel exaggeratedly loose or wide—those often have Natural.

For other dresses, look for elements like thin straps and lace-up detail for Romantic, along with tiers and flared skirts for Ingenue.

Classic can be added with polished basic shoes or accessories, like neutral ankle strap sandals or a minimalist wristwatch.

As a Romantic Classic Ingenue, you can also take inspiration from fashion described as:

Glam
Soft Glam
Girly
Coquette (often has a lot of both Romantic and Ingenue, sometimes with Classic, sometimes with other essences)
Femme Nouveau
Feminine Classic

For Romantic Classic Ingenue fashion, hair, and makeup, you can even take inspiration from Golden Age Hollywood actresses: stars who were prominent in film sometime between the 1920s and 1960s.

Golden Age hairstyles, for instance, exuded quintessential “Hollywood Glamour,” with hair often styled in Romantic or Ingenue curls, and in a chin-length or shoulder-length cuts that suits Classic.

Is Romantic Beauty Intimidating?

So far, we’ve discussed how RCIs are flattered by conventionally feminine fashion, and how RCIs have extremely “soft,” curving beauty.

RCI Yvonne De Carlo is a dominant Romantic with notable Ingenue—she has a face full of curvy shapes.

And yet despite her very soft beauty, Yvonne De Carlo is famous for playing a character who exudes intimidating vibes.

On the show The Munsters, she was styled like this (yes, this is the same Yvonne as the one pictured above):

With dark eyeliner, heavy contour, thickened brows, and a very unique hairstyle (assuming it’s a wig, especially because she suddenly has a deep widow’s peak), Yvonne De Carlo’s soft RCI beauty becomes a lot more intimidating.

Her face is still composed almost entirely of curving shapes. But the Dramatic hair and makeup give her image a much more intense feel.

Is Yvonne De Carlo fully harmonious in the intimidating Munsters makeup and hair? Maybe not, but to me her facial features do seem to be able to exude some degree of intimidation, especially when she tilts her head downward and stares straight at the camera. This pose tends to make a face look more Dramatic (even when a face doesn’t have any Dramatic essence to begin with), because it makes a face appear narrower and longer, key Dramatic qualities.

Even if you don’t have any Dramatic essence, tilting your head far down can be imposing, like you’re literally and maybe figuratively “looking down on someone” with disdain.

Yvonne’s ability to appear intimidating in this hair and makeup, despite her very soft beauty, might also reflect the intensity of Romantic beauty.

Romantic Intensity

I’d say Romantic pretty easily wins the status of second most intense essence, surpassed only by Dramatic.

Of all the essences, these two tend to exude the highest amounts of emotion that is both strong and serious.

Romantics’ resting faces sometimes communicate intense emotions, like love, passion, desire, and yearning.

And because the Romantic essence conveys deep emotion, highly Romantic faces can look intimidating by projecting an intense, passionate, unsmiling facial expression.

Yvonne de Carlo, with a piercing gaze that shows the intimidating side of Romantic beauty.

The ability of Romantic to convey intense emotions, and a wide range of emotion, might also partly explain why so many actresses past and present have a lot of Romantic essence.

Romantic can be confusing in that it’s characterized by soft shapes that don’t necessarily read as geometrically imposing but that nevertheless can have an intimidating, extremely passionate and intense aura.

Why are Romantic Classic Ingenues so Rare?

It’s possible that there are many modern Romantic Classic Ingenue celebrities, and that I’ve just yet to type them.

I’m always typing new celebrities, so soon I may come across large swathes of RCIs.

And it’s possible that they genuinely are just a very rare type. We’ll discuss a couple theories on why this might be below.

First, a crucial point is that RCIs being rare definitely doesn’t make them unbeautiful.

This is true for any type—rarity doesn’t mean unbeautiful.

For instance, pure Romantic faces are very rare (so far I’ve yet to encounter any, in Hollywood or anywhere else). But I don’t think anyone would argue that just because Hollywood doesn’t have many purely Romantic celebrities, therefore pure Romantic faces are unbeautiful.

RCIs might be rare simply because it’s relatively rare for adult human faces to have such soft, curving, compact shapes.

I covered a related topic in this loosely Halloween-themed post about how skulls can help us better understand style essences, and why most people (though certainly not all people) have at least a little angular (a.k.a., “yang”) essence in their bone structure.

Weird Theory?

One kind of odd theory I have: maybe angular faces are increasingly common today because we overall have better nutrition, which enables people to grow taller. And so all our bones, including the ones in our faces, on average grow a bit larger.

I don’t have evidence for this, and it also really doesn’t seem supported by RCI Ingrid Bergman, who apparently was 5 feet 9 inches. And Lana Turner apparently was only slightly short at 5 foot 3, and Yvonne De Carlo was about average height at 5 foot 4.

So—I don’t know. Probably not the best theory, although I do think it’s true that people are a bit taller nowadays, so maybe there could be some small truth in it. Or not—I don’t know!

Angularity Bias?

Previously, I discussed how Dramatic’s and Gamine’s angular beauty seems to have increased across time in Hollywood.

And it’s not a secret that sculpted jawlines are a popular modern beauty trait, with an alarming rise of buccal fat surgeries.

So it might simply be that in addition to being rare in the general population, RCIs are not quite as in-demand as they once were as movie stars, simply because modern Hollywood prefers faces with more obvious angularity.

A counterargument to this point is that Classic can sometimes give a face some angular-appearing features, including sharpness in the jawline. So I don’t think the trendiness of chiseled bone structure fully accounts for RCI rarity.

Still, it may be fair to say that the RCIs I’ve found so far don’t quite have the level of angular bone structure that is trendy today.

Again, the crucial point: this doesn’t make RCIs less beautiful than faces with sharp geometry.

Angularity is beautiful, and softness is beautiful. Facial features don’t magically become less beautiful simply because Hollywood decides they aren’t as trendy.

And no matter how many celebrities carve away the youthful fat from their faces, angular jawlines aren’t more aesthetically pleasing than soft and curving ones.

Plus, full lips are also popular, and RCIs do tend to have this trait. Their faces blend some more popular, trendy features with more timeless ones.

Smartphone Face?

What is a “Smartphone Face?”

Basically it’s the idea that certain celebrities wouldn’t be convincing if they played historical characters in movies, because these celebrities’ faces appear too modern (too much obvious filler, plastic surgery, angular filled-in brows, etc.). Kylie Jenner might be a stereotypical example of a “smartphone face.”

I don’t know that there is official criteria for what exactly what makes a face look like a “smartphone face.” But from my perspective, I’d argue that Romantic Classic Ingenues don’t fit this category.

As noted, RCI’s very soft beauty seems to be more frequently portrayed in Old Hollywood, as opposed to modern Hollywood—modern day celebrities commonly have marked facial angularity.

This doesn’t make Romantic Classic Ingenues unbeautiful—clearly they are extremely beautiful, with beauty that many view as timeless. And if you styled them in trendy hair and makeup, I’m sure they could be popular modern day actresses.

It’s just that because of the extreme softness in their faces, they also very much fit the standards of Old Hollywood, which seemed to strongly favor delicate beauty.

Ahead of Curves

RCIs embody the timeless beauty of symmetry, balance, glamour, delicacy, and roundness.

They are the PSA that not every face needs razor-sharp angles to be beautiful, and that there is so much beauty in softness and curves.

Romantic Classic Ingenue