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Word Order in the Combination Style Types

12/3/2018

In my style system, there are seven main types and 56 two-way or three-way type blends. Some of you have written me to ask what it signifies that I call a woman, for example, Natural-Classic-Gamine and not Gamine-Natural-Classic or CLassic-Natural-Gamine. What does the order of the words mean?

When I named each of the blended types, I wanted to come up with a consistent set of rules for word order -- in other words, either a woman with Ethereal and Romantic would be an Ethereal Romantic or a Romantic Ethereal, consistently.

I did consider, but eventually reject, the idea of switching the word orders around based on the relative amounts of each essence in an individual woman. (In other words, calling a woman Romantic Ethereal if she's predominantly Romantic, and Ethereal Romantic if she's predominantly Ethereal.) I realize that many of you use this system among yourselves, and I'm all for that use! But it doesn't work when I'm writing about the types theoretically, without regard to a particular woman. I need something more consistent.

I also considered but discarded the idea of beginning each combination with feminine type words first. "Ingenue Natural," for example, didn't sound as good to me as "Natural Ingenue."

The fact that "Ingenue Natural" sounded weird to me, but "Natural Ingenue" did not, led me to consider the "adjectivity" or "noun-ness" of each word -- in other words, whether the word makes more sense used as an adjective or as a noun. This quality, in the end, is what drove my decision.

I basically decided which of the seven words (Natural, Ethereal, etc.) worked best as an adjective, and which worked least well, and made rules for the word order based on that decision. For example, "Romantic" is easily understood as an adjective, so I made the rule that, in any combination type that features the word "Romantic," that word would appear first. The remaining six words always appear in this order:

Ethereal Dramatic Natural Classic Gamine Ingenue

The order reflects my subjective judgment about whether each word works better as an adjective or a noun.

As I use it, the word order doesn't imply anything about the balance of essences for any person. For example, some Romantic Gamines might be 70 Romantic and 30 Gamine, while other RGs might have the reverse balance.

As I mentioned above, if you prefer to refer to yourselves by listing your essences in order from greatest to least, I think that's awesome. I just thought it would be useful to you to understand why I put my essence words in a particular order.

:-)

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13 Comments

12/3/2018 12:11:08 pm

That's really interesting. It definitely reads better when you have the adjective first.

12/3/2018 06:06:52 pm

Your logic makes sense, but I believe Romantic is misplaced on your list.

We've all probably heard a phrase to the effect of "so-and-so is a romantic at heart," in which "romantic" is used as a noun, so it struck me as odd that Romantic should be treated as the "adjectiviest" of the essence names. I decided to consult Merriam-Webster.com to check which parts of speech the essence names are officially recognized as, and the results were quite interesting: Ethereal and Dramatic were listed as adjectives only (which I think makes a lot of sense for the abstract essences); Romantic, Natural, and Classic could be either adjectives or nouns, but the adjective definitions were listed first; Gamine could also be either a noun or an adjective, but the noun definitions were listed first; and Ingenue, as you suspected, was listed as a noun only. So according to their dictionary definitions, the list should read as follows:

Ethereal Dramatic Romantic Natural Classic Gamine Ingenue

There's also a logical progression to this iteration of the list--we start with the abstract essences, move to what we might term the "mature" essences in the middle, and end with the youthful essences! What do you think?

Megan

12/3/2018 09:22:24 pm

Not Rachel but this is interesting! I do like the logical progression of your list.

However, I think Ethereal is a much less common word than Romantic, so even if Ethereal is never used as a noun, it might make sense that we think of Romantic as being more of an adjective, simply because we hear the word "Romantic" used as an adjective way more often than "Ethereal"... though I suppose you could argue that we also hear the word "Classic" more than "Ethereal," and that Classic can be an adjective...

But I think it makes sense that the more "concrete," "literal" essences--Classic, Gamine, Ingenue, and somewhat Natural--are recognized as nouns, and the more abstract essences are recognized more as adjectives. So I think if anything, I would change Rachel's order to "Dramatic Romantic Ethereal" etc... I don't know. Interesting to think about!

Becky

12/4/2018 01:13:09 pm

I appreciate you clarifying this! I have wondered whether there is any significance to the order, good to know. :)

Claire

12/6/2018 06:14:07 am

I think it's interesting that you considered listing the dominant essence first or that some people prefer to do it that way, because I always read it the exact opposite.
To me, the style essence placed last is the noun, therefore the most fundamental part of the description.
I would understand "Romantic Ethereal" to mean someone who is either equally both or Ethereal with a touch of Romantic, I had never even considered that anyone might be putting Romantic first because they felt that essence was stronger.
I guess this is why having a consistent word order regardless of relative strengtg makes the best sense as it's possible to interpret word order in two opposite ways!!

Jonna

12/6/2018 09:12:48 am

I have pondered this often.
I think it matters to me because the percentage of each type within yourself definitely alters the final effect, allowing for lots of diverse looks within one type. Sort of like baking cookies with all the same ingredients but everyone using different amounts, which means within the same trio of types, one person might end up being a bit sweeter ( ingenue) or a bit more decadent ( romantic). Some people would argue it’s still a cookie, so just enjoy it:)
This is where it’s easy to see the benefit of a custom analysis, after we’ve done the legwork of discerning our “ ingredients”, to have help teasing out the proportions of each type we have. That way we can give proper emphasis to each type.
I think I’m an Ethereal Ingenue Gamine ( but not sure if the order), but before finding Truth is Besuty, Kibbe only allowed for Soft Gamine, because he didn’t have an Ingenue type, nor an Ethereal. So according to him, Soft Gamine translates to “Romantic” Gamine, right? Soft Gamine versus ingenue is very blurry for me, and people often see Gamine in me, while totally ignoring the obvious softness that comes from ethereal and ingenue ( or romantic, maybe). This is why I think amounts of each are important; because using scant amounts of one type over-emphasize the others. But, I also realize it’s not practical for delivering to an online audience, it’s more realistic for personal consultations. So don’t feel bad for not being able to cater to everyone.
If anyone has insight on the Soft Gamine vs Ingenue Gamine differences, please share. I think romantic often has a softening effect on a tri-type that would benefit from not being labeled as sexy, because romantic ( at least to me), doesn’t always equal sexy, more like a maternal, womanliness or decadence, not in a vulgar way. Perhaps Im just sensitive to the association with how many people dress and perceive sexiness, though. The names given can throw people off, as it seems a lot to live up to.
I just had an idea: maybe sharing lists ( like your word clouds) of descriptive words for each type would better connect people to their type. While I might not feel “spunky”, I can relate and own the identity of “Pert” or “Quirky”. I’d *love* to see that. Thanks for all you’ve already done, it’s been incredibly helpful! I always look forward to your posts, this one was so timely!

Nicole

12/6/2018 04:58:48 pm

I agree with you, Jonna! I’m extremely youthful looking and many of my favorite looks from my Style ID board are the predominantly Gamine ones. Honestly I’m prob the worst person to try and answer your question... I’m confident I’m RNG (written in no specific order) but I’ve always wondered if I have a dash of Ingenue. So I’m either Romantic Natural with G or with IG- but I’m in the same boat of trying to differentiate between the 2 youth essences.

I might not be the best person to help you, as I can’t speak directly for RGs (Soft Gamine). But as an RG with Natural, when I look back at my best photos and clothing there was always: red, bright flirty colors, jewels, a crown, fur/fuzzy/touchable material, florals, dresses/skirts, or my hair was made clearly visible (i.e., my hair was down or a ponytail was pulled to the front). But think of that list as “including but not limited to”- that’s just a few common themes I picked up on while looking at old photos.

For myself, compiling my favorite photos of myself (childhood + current) helped me get a better sense of my Style ID. It also helped to think back on some of my favorite outfits/items. Remembering my most heavily complimented outfits/items also helped. Once I compiled my “best of the best”, it really helped me to a uickly find the common denominator and overall look of the styles.

And when I say “find your favorite old photos” I mean reallyyy try to look at your photos with a no-mercy eye and the least bias possible. If I had to think twice about a photo, I just skipped it (LOL)... Because even though there were some outfits I could pull off... there were some that I knew I just REALLY loved significantly more than the rest. There were even some photos that I instinctively knew were in-sync with my face even if I couldn’t explain it (which upon further inspection turned out to have roses or hearts in the background of the photo)! I prefer to use childhood photos because current photos have recent memories attached to them, which really affects how I feel about the photo. Plus, there’s less makeup, fake smiles, and fake friends to look past ;) So really try to hone in that gut feeling and follow it!

If that doesn’t help, I might consider making a list of style inspirations. Basically celebs who you’d feel the most happy swapping full outfits with AND the most comfortable walking out of the house wearing (with no additions or subtractions to the outfit)! Again, I believe the more realistic and truthful you make this list, the closer you’ll be to your style ID. Make your list for you and yourself only! I made my “would wear” style list and afterwards found out that the #1 celeb on my list had my exact SAME Style ID!!

I hope I didn’t make this more confusing LOL! Patience, tips from this blog, and honesty with myself are what helped me the most! It’s definitely a more personal and philosophical journey than you’d expect. But it’s so eye opening and so worth it! <3

12/6/2018 05:07:29 pm

Also, Rachel doesn’t have Word Clouds for the types but she does have Word Inspirations for Gamine (https://www.truth-is-beauty.com/blog/gamine-word-inspiration) and Ingenue (https://www.truth-is-beauty.com/blog/ingenue-word-inspiration)!

12/6/2018 05:34:16 pm

Totally agree about how the amount of "ingredients" matters in determining the final look!

One recent thing I've been doing when I use Rachel's style ID calculator is to be pretty "perfectionistic" when using the calculator.

Meaning, I've been very stringently following Rachel's guideline about rating a 2 as "she looks pretty good in most of these" and a 1 as "she looks good in some of these."

I've done this for a lot of different people, and honestly what I've found is that most people only get scores for an average of say, 4 or 5 boards, and some people only get scores for 2 or 3 boards.

I realize that this contradicts Rachel's instruction to rate scores for at least 7 boards, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

But if you think about it--if someone is an Ethereal Ingenue Gamine, it means that they don't look harmonious in the other 4 style IDs. So in theory, that means that they only have the possibility of looking "harmonious" or "good" in a maximum of 7 boards: they're going to potentially look good in Ethereal Ingenue Gamine, Ethereal Ingenue, Gamine Ingenue, Ethereal Gamine, and the pure boards for those three IDs.

And depending on their balance of those three essences, they might not actually look right in all of those boards (for example, if a person is 80% Ethereal, 20% Gamine, the pure Gamine board might not look right because it captures too few of their essences.)

So I kind of think that if you rate a person as looking good in more than 7 boards, you haven't been "perfectionistic" enough, because they probably don't truly look "good in some" of those clothes or "pretty good in most" of those clothes.

And if a person only has two essences, they probably only look "good" in a maximum of 3 boards.

I think if you're stuck typing, you might want to try to be more "perfectionistic." Only give scores to a board that you really feel looks "good" for some of the items (which I assume means at least three) or a board where "most" of the items (which I assume means more than half) looks good.

I'd also recommend trying to type other people in this manner, because it gives you a sense of what it means to truly look harmonious in a certain three-type combo. (For instance, I used to give myself a score of "1" on the Romantic Dramatic Gamine board ((I'm a Romantic Dramatic with a small bit of Ethereal)) because I thought this board was "good enough" on me. But recently I typed someone (a male, actually!) as a Romantic Dramatic Gamine, and it was incredible how right his face looked next to those clothes. And I realized that my face definitely didn't harmonize with those clothes in that way.)

I could be wrong about a lot of this. This is just a trend I've noticed as I try to type.

12/7/2018 01:00:48 am

I've noticed that I get some strange 'outliers' for the style ID calculator, even as I have learned to see myself more objectively. Those outliers led me to other style IDs that felt more comfortable to me, because I was having a hard time parsing what I was seeing in myself.

For example, I seem to have a lot of classic and a lot of ingenue - but the ethereal dramatic board always looks pretty good. I liked the clothes so much, I figured I must BE an ethereal dramatic. But I think that's the combo of a highly feminine essence (ingenue/ethereal) being streamlined and simplified by a very minimal essence (classic/dramatic). If I was going for a 'striking' look, it's where I would shop. It doesn't quite fit, but it's not terrible. Sort of like thinking of myself as Tilda Swinton (which someone once told me I looked like? I think that was not accurate), when in reality, I'm probably more like a Claire Danes.

Or I also do well with EC. That's where I thought I must be for a while. EC worked, but in ENC, it all fell apart. I realize now the etheral brings the delicacy I need, but it is far too unconstructed. Ingenue has the right delicacy and the right level of tailoring. But because I really need a high level of tailoring + delicate, Ingenue-Dramatic blends look oddly good on me (that whole Lolita-goth board is weirdly Not Bad).

So while I agree that being picky about the boards is a good idea - your hint about 'being a perfectionist' helps if you're on the fence about something -- I also think that sometimes you will get these boards that just feel right, even when they go with *nothing* else in your style ID. I found that my outliers were telling me something important about what my masculine-feminine ratio was (balanced), the level of delicacy I needed, the level of tailoring I needed, etc.

12/8/2018 11:29:11 pm

W., that's interesting--now that you say it, I agree that often the boards we choose that don't contain our essences can hint about those we do have.

I still think the "perfectionism" technique may be worth trying if a person is stuck or wants a new approach, now I wonder if it might in some cases cause you to miss an essence that is rather minor (maybe only 15 or 20%).

Victoria

12/6/2018 05:56:04 pm

When I think about the difference between the youthful styles of Gamine and Ingenue the first thing that comes to mind...is that Ingenue is a feminine essence, while Gamine is masculine. That really makes a difference in my perception.
I think girly vs. boyish, sweet vs. mischievious, headbands vs. hats, long hair vs. short hair, converse vs. heeled mary janes, etc. I specifically think about the difference between how little boys dress and little girls dress, and also the difference in the levels of detail and polish in clothing, jewelry, makeup, and hair. Gamine gets more edgy styles, where Ingenue gets more cutesy stuff. That's just how I think of it in my mind...

12/9/2018 05:47:11 pm

I agree with what W. has said.
In the process of narrowing down which type I am, I paid attention to my instinct as if the yin/yang balance was a seesaw.
When presented with natural, the only way for me to possibly make it work was for it to be the yin-est type of natural or the scale would thud heavily yang. The only way I could pull off romantic is if some cleaner sharper yang elements were present or things tipped too yin for my features. Almost like an old fashioned balance scale at the doctor. So, I could see this trend in every type I tried on, for needing delicacy, youthfulness, and something dreamy to keep the scale in check.
If you notice yourself thinking you’d only be comfortable wearing natural clothing if there was a waist cinching belt and a more tidy hairstyle and you could only look right in classic if there was less structure, I think those are hints that you’ve tipped too far and all the modifications you make to each type indicate an important part of your essence.
I also think we have biases towards types based on the personality traits we assume come along with them. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were tendencies, but they are hardly concrete. Gamines being dubbed “spunky” and ethereals being “wise” and dramatics being “ black and white”.
There is also a school of thought that says each color season limited to which body type they can be, when I’ve always been under the impression that any color could be any type, or am I wrong? I.e. Cate Blanchet who is a light summer but soft dramatic and ethereal (if I recall rightly). Sometimes I think the color gives off a different impression too; romantic isn’t only for those in richer, darker palettes and if someone is a light spring romantic they could be mistaken for having ingenue, because the lightness makes them look youthful. Or do certain types tend to go with certain seasons?
My apologies for adding another thing to contemplate:)

Truth is Beauty

Word Order in the Combination Style Types

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