“Playful and Polished Aphrodite”

“Preppy Goddess”

Romantic Ethereal Classic Gamine (RECG) Mikey Madison

RECG style combines two very different aesthetics:

1) Glam goddess fashion (Romantic Ethereal)

2) Playful preppy fashion (Classic Gamine)

These seem like two aesthetics that wouldn’t ever merge.

But the magic of RECGs is that they wear both kinds of fashion simultaneously, in the exact same outfit—and make preppy and goddess style coexist beautifully.

Romantic Ethereal Classic Gamine Celebrities

RECG celebrities are on Pinterest here and listed below:

Aly Yarushina (Aly Art)
Beabadoobee
Elisha Cuthbert
Hayley Williams
Helena Bonham Carter
Kate Bush
Margot Robbie
Mikey Madison
Nazanin Boniadi
Robin Givens

Romantic Ethereal Classic Gamine Faces

The theme of RECG is goddess-meets-prep—even in their faces:

Here RECG Elisha Cuthbert’s styling—the striped top and simple makeup—overall emphasize her playful Gamine and her balanced Classic beauty.
In a striped crew neck, she could easily star in an ad campaign for Ralph Lauren or another preppy fashion empire.

But Elisha Cuthbert’s face also has inherent sensuality and dreaminess. So if she ditches the graphic stripes, she can embody a soft, alluring goddess:

Here her come-hither expression, plus her long lashes and tapered brows, enhance her sensual, dreamy vibe.

Depending on her styling and facial expression, Elisha can visually embody a posh prep or a love goddess—or both.

We see this “preppy love goddess,” “playful-meets-serious” feel with other REGCs, too:

On this album cover, singer Kate Bush exudes dreamy vibes.

Yet she also has a strongly youthful, rather spunky quality, and her tousled baby bangs reflect her Gamine.

As an RECG, you have the miraculous ability to dramatically change your vibe just by changing your hair, outfit, or makeup:

Kate Bush’s goddess vibe is underscored with smokey and frosty makeup, plus a narrow chain necklace. Compared to the above pic, we can see her glamorous vibe more here.

Her playful bangs again highlight her preppy side, but here they’re more subtle—this look feels more goddess than preppy.
The magic of RECG is that you can often pull off both aesthetics and exude both vibes.

Romantic Ethereal Classic Gamine Makeup

Romantic Ethereal Classic Gamine makeup is sensual, dreamy, polished, and playful—all at once.

RECG Nazanin Boniadi

This makeup has some of everything, even just on the eyes: Romantic smokiness, Ethereal shimmer, and tightlining that suits Classic and Gamine.

The glowy cheeks and glossy lips flatter Romantic Ethereal, too.

Here’s less successful RECG makeup:

RECG Margot Robbie

Margot Robbie is so gorgeous, but here the very heavy makeup application feels a little mask-like.

Especially because Margot has primarily Ethereal (and Romantic is her least significant essence), this makeup feels overpowering.

Here she is in more harmonious makeup:

In a gentler makeup application, Margot Robbie exudes dreamy Ethereal beauty.

Here’s a celebrity whose strongest essence is Romantic:

RECG Elisha Cuthbert

Having primarily Romantic means that Elisha pulls off makeup that feels highly contrasting, like eyeliner that’s very dark (relative to her coloring) paired with a pale Ethereal lip.

And while these ultra-thin brows probably don’t have many modern fans, she pulls them off better than most would. Ethereals can sometimes handle very delicate brows.

Finally, here’s an RECG celebrity who seems to prefer a punk aesthetic over a preppy or glam one:

RECG Hayley Williams

Hayley William’s aesthetic doesn’t scream “delicate” or “Classicly understated.” But her signature vibrant hair colors are awesome for bold Gamine. Of all her essences, that seems to be the one she most consistently emphasizes.

Hayley’s makeup sometimes also has smokey Romantic or dreamy Ethereal, too (though it too often seems very Gamine, with punchy colors and graphic applications).

Overall, Hayley is an RECG who doesn’t pay much attention to her Classic—and that’s ok! I think it’s her least significant essence, so omitting it can work for her.

RECG Hair

As Hayley Williams illustrates, RECGs have tons of hair options:

Classics and Gamines are flattered by straight hair around shoulder-length or chin-length.
Romantics and Ethereals are flattered by longer hair (typically at least several inches past the shoulders) with curls or waves.

Depending on your ratio of essences (and on your face shape), any of these hairstyles can work for RECG.

Doing narrow waves around collar-bone length can be a good compromise—not especially long or short, and in between a curly and straight cut:

Margot Robbie is mesmerizing in narrow mermaid waves—an especially good hairstyle for a highly Ethereal face.

Overall, your best hair as an RECG will depend on your unique beauty.

Since you have so many options—straight, wavy, curly, long, short, medium—you might also try experimenting with your real hair texture.

For instance, if you’re an RECG with primarily Gamine but have naturally full and curly (Romantic) hair, you could potentially wear your hair long and curly. Then your makeup and outfit could primarily contain your other essences (especially Gamine).

Romantic Ethereal Classic Gamine Fashion

For fashion, having a four essence blend can feel like a blessing and/or curse:

The pros: you get more fashion options than two- or three-essence blends
The cons: the more essences you have, the harder it can be to figure out how to combine them all in a single outfit
And to further complicate things: two RECGs might dress extremely differently from each other, depending on their ratio of essences

For instance, if you have more Classic and Gamine and a smaller amount of Romantic and Ethereal, you can lean into preppy style:

A Classic Gamine blazer, skirt, and boots get some Romantic sensuality from the plunging, curvy neckline lace top, with Ethereal dreaminess from the long narrow chain necklaces.

In contrast, if you’re a Romantic Ethereal Gamine Classic with primarily Romantic, you might ditch the preppy jacket and let the lacy camisole be the star of your outfit:

Camisoles often (though aren’t always) Romantic and Ethereal. Romantic comes from their inherent sensuality (and often from luxurious detail, like very curvy lace). Ethereal comes from their dreamy vibes (like a long and body-skimming but not skin-tight fit, very lightweight fabric, or sheer detail).

This look is completed by a Classic khaki skirt, which is so short it takes on Gamine, too. The ultra-fun neon nails also add Gamine.

Some Romantic Ethereal Classic Gamine celebrities seem to know that their beauty is godess-like. It was easy to find them photographed in Grecian-style drapy gowns:

I like a lot about this look for Mikey Madison—the gown reads as highly flowy and Ethereal with a mock-neck effect that ties in Gamine.

What’s not working is the very elongated matte eyeliner—Mikey really is gorgeous in anything, but the Dramatic makeup fights against her inherent beauty.

Another example of goddess-like styling that almost works for REGC, but has too much Dramatic:

As we saw earlier, Margot Robbie’s makeup is awesome here. But this plunging deep-V Dramatic neckline isn’t quite ideal, since it has a more severe vibe than anything in her face.

A shallower v-neck, a mock neck, a sweetheart neckline, a deep scoop-neck—even a very plunging neckline that had a narrow draped oval Ethereal shape would make this work better for RECG.

The dress is extremely mesmerizing, with Ethereal flow and a Romantic high slit. But because of the severe Dramatic neckline, Margot looks most harmonious in it when she tilts her head down so we can’t really see her face.

If you’re worried that wearing a white Grecian gown will make people wonder if you’re going to a wedding, you can take more subtle inspiration from these dresses, like by wearing a long Ethereal maxi skirt with a Romantic slit:

Pair with basic Classic flats and a simple largely Classic Tee with Gamine athletic piping.

Disclaimers on Four Essence Blends

For some people with a four essence blend, you might want to dress mostly (or even entirely) for only your top three essences.

Why?

When people get to the point of having four essences, it’s often true that one of your essences will be quite small in amount, such as 5% or less of your overall beauty.

At that point, the vibe of your fourth essence might be mostly overpowered by your top three essences.

So if you’re a Romantic Ethereal Classic Gamine with mostly REG, and just a tiny bit of Classic, you might actually find that your Classic is so subtle, you look amazing without wearing any Classic at all.

Alternately, you might find that you look your best when the amount of Classic in your styling is very small—like maybe the only Classic in your whole look is simple pearl earrings.

If this is true for you, it might even help to mostly pay attention to Romantic Ethereal Gamine fashion/makeup/hair guidelines, and then only add Classic as a final touch, like a single piece of jewelry or accessory.

But a second important disclaimer is that some RECGs do have a very meaningful amount of all four essences, and will want to incorporate all four in their styling.

You’ll want to experiment to determine which category you fall into.

Why RECGs are so Hard to Type

In general, it’s harder to identify four essence blends then two- or three- essence blends, because:

In a four essence blend, there’s a good chance that one or more of your essences will be (very) small in amount. And the smaller in amount an essence is, typically the subtler and harder it is to see
In a four essence blend, there’s more opportunity for combinations of different essences to be mistaken for one another
- For example, Romantic and Ethereal together can easily mimic the look of Ingenue; Ethereal and Gamine together sometimes look like Dramatic; Classic understatement combined with straight-edged Gamine can sometimes look like carefree Natural. In short, the more essences you have, the greater opportunity for your combinations of essences to be confused for essences you don’t actually have

If you suspect you have four essences but aren’t sure which ones, you might have better results first focusing on finding your top three essences, rather than trying to figure out all four at once.

Then, when you’ve found your best three essence blend, you can experiment with adding small amounts of the remaining essences to your style, to see which one completes your look.

Preppy Goddess

One thing to love about having a four essence blend is that you can be such a beauty chameleon.

This, as we’ve explored, is very true of RECG. You can be understated and preppy or glam and otherworldly, or a combination—or stretch the limits of your essences by emphasizing adventurous, rule-breaking Gamine so much that you venture into punk, like Hayley Williams.

And that brings up another thing to love about RECG, which is that while you can play around with many different vibes, you can also cultivate an aesthetic that is very consistent and very individual—you can really create a style that looks like you and captures your unique, preppy goddess beauty.

An amazing thing about style analysis is that it works as a metaphor for discovering and expressing yourself, including emphasizing the parts of yourself that you like most, and figuring out how to work with any parts that you aren’t as inherently drawn to. And sometimes you may end up finding that you like a lot of those other parts of yourself, too, after all.

Romantic Ethereal Classic Gamine