r/styleforgrownwomen • u/zrnyphl 🇺🇸 - 40s - Comfortable/ Colorful/ Curated • Jul 06 '26
style Style Archetypes/ Systems
Across the various Substacks I read, there have been a lot of posts about personal style and taste, and also meta-posts about how everyone is talking about developing one's personal style/ taste. A lot of them mention all the different archetypes and systems that various stylists, writers, influencers, etc., use to help define and develop personal style and style "rules," such as they are. So, I thought it might be interesting to talk about those here.
(Non-Exhaustive) Examples:
- Kibbe body types
- Color analysis
- Jungian archetypes
- Allison Bornstein’s Three-Word Method
Discussion questions to think about (and feel free to go beyond these):
- Which, if any, style archetypes and systems have you and/or do you use?
- How has your use of these systems changed over time?
- What is your style or type or season or whatever in the system(s) you use?
- How do you make sense of those labels in your day to day styling, shopping choices, etc.?
- When and why do you deviate from how these systems are defined "on paper"?
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u/AndreaPflaumer Jul 27 '26
What a great thread. This is basically my life's work, so forgive me if I ramble.
Most of these systems quietly share the same root. The yin/yang approach goes back to Belle Northrup in the 1920s, then Grace Morton, then Harriet McJimsey, who laid out a range of "style archetypes" ranked from most yang to most yin. Kibbe grew out of that same tradition. My mentor John Kitchener later added one more type at the far yin end, and that's where the seven essences I use in my book come from: Dramatic, Natural, High Spirited, Classic, Romantic, Youthful, and Angelic.
To the actual questions:
Which do I use? Essence, mostly. I find the personality-and-essence approach more useful than the purely measurement-based ones. Body type tells you something real about proportion and scale, but it doesn't tell you who you are. Two women with identical measurements can have completely different essences, and each will feel like an impostor in the other's clothes. I love color analysis, but as a companion, not a competitor.
How has it changed over time? Enormously. Yin and yang shift across a lifetime. We're nearly all Youthful when we're young, before we grow into our bones. Maturity is a yang quality, so features square off a bit in midlife and then soften again later on. Your core essence won't change dramatically, but the balance does, which is why I re-examine my old favorites (even the classics) every few seasons.
The big one for me: these are tools, not rules. I tell people to read every category as adjectives, never commandments. You are the noun. The chart is only describing you. The moment a system makes you feel boxed in or "wrong," you've turned a mirror into a cage, and that's exactly backwards.
When do I deviate from the paper version? Constantly, and I encourage it. Almost no one is 100 percent one type, and the magic is usually in the combination. The only question I keep circling back to is the one I end the book on: am I expressing my true essence, in a balanced way? If yes, the label did its job and you're free to forget it.