Stylistic analysis of appearance from December 29, 2021
- Sophia Kathermes
- Oct 7
- 5 min read
Greetings, dear fellow travelers!
No matter the goal of your style search—whether you want to create your own vibrant character that reflects all facets of your soul or project an image that will foster career advancement—you'll need a solid foundation of facts about the potential of your appearance. Otherwise, you won't achieve a harmonious image, and that's precisely why we're all gathered here today.
In building this foundation, we are aided by a stylistic technical analysis—a derivation of those appearance characteristics that are difficult to ignore: color type, linearity, and image type. With this analysis of a bold and beautiful female volunteer, I would like to once again illustrate the importance and accessibility of defining these characteristics.
Let's start, traditionally, with the color type.
Color type is determined by key characteristics (warmth/coolness, lightness/darkness, brightness/softness) and further verified using collages. If you lack visual experience, you can check all color types using collages, but we'll stick with a few borderline ones. We'll also use a personalized palette based on your overall color palette to help you determine your color.
What are these colors? Let's use the process of elimination. They're not dark. They're unlikely to be light, but it's questionable. They're not extremely cold. They're not extremely bright. We'll test the temperature and color purity levels with collages:
Bright Spring - Warm Spring - Mild Summer - Mild Autumn - Warm Autumn
A test shows that our heroine's color scheme is still lacking: Springs look simple, too clean, and the girl herself looks sickly against them. The extreme warmth of Warm Autumn takes center stage, and the heroine feels distinctly stuffy in its surroundings. The air of Soft Summer and Soft Autumn looks much better, and here it remains to choose the temperature gradient. Considering the individual palette and the overall impression, Soft Autumn is the most harmonious setting—slightly warmer, richer, and earthier. As always, we're jotting down impressions that arise during the analysis.
A brief introduction. Everyone knows what a color type is and understands its purpose (or maybe they don't fully understand it, but take its significance for granted). The topic of linearity is touched upon much less frequently, but it's no less (if not more) important. Once you become familiar with it, you stop dividing passersby into attractive and unattractive—they've either managed to decorate themselves with the appropriate frame, or "something went wrong." And almost always, the "wrong" lies in incorrect linearity, because beauty, as we know, is in harmony, and for this, the lines of the image must echo the lines of the appearance.
Let's start looking for the lines that were meant to adorn our heroine. Let's engage our imagination and scan her face. What do we see? Do we see volume (that is, shapes) or just lines? Should we sculpt the face or draw it? Or maybe sketch it?
The first thing I'd like to clearly summarize is the weight and solidity of the features, as if carved from granite. A solid, streamlined base conveys a sense of calm, authority, and awe. A solid form will be the primary one. But the face also contains sensual lines that the eye easily glides along. Let's look for them among the rounded features, excluding the Sluggish, as there's no sign of weakness:
Flesible - Flowing - Soft - Solid - Elastic
The Solid foundation is perfectly confirmed by collages.
Let's look at the existing lines: lips, wings of the nose, eyes and eyebrows.
The way the eye glides over them and the combination with the collages suggests that the lines are Flowing. Strong, dense, they have movement, but there is no tension or descent. Beautiful, smooth, like waves or the surface of polished marble.
It's worth noting right away that some of our heroine's photos prominently feature rather bold and straight eyebrows. The fact that they've been artificially corrected may detract from the impression, but if you try to ignore them and look at the bone structure and soft tissue structure, it becomes clear that the smooth lines of her face clash with the shape of her eyebrows. On such a "landscape" face, slightly softer, more natural, and only lightly groomed eyebrows would look more harmonious.
This thought is a side note about how the topic of linearity is useful not only for stylists but also for beauty professionals, as eyelashes, eyebrows, and other permanent makeup can significantly alter the overall appearance of a face. To be fair, it's worth noting that it's not just linearity that influences such details, but also the individual's personality type. The very fact that we'd like to see more natural and soft eyebrows likely suggests this direction.
To summarize, our heroine will suit streamlined, smooth shapes and lines of varying density, large-scale accessories, stable and tightly enveloping silhouettes, straight or flared at the hem, as well as minimalism and solidity in prints and details. Conversely, anything small, harsh, or sharp should be avoided.
A personality type, to put it simply, is your attractiveness, your sex appeal, that vibrant image you project to the world with particular ease and can fully express by following these guidelines. This is your role in our life-theater.
How do we determine the role of our beautiful woman? We can base our analysis on the characteristics we've already identified, examining and correlating colors and lines with character types, but the simplest and most effective method is collages with a corresponding aesthetic. We examine and search for the "best role," first eliminating those that directly contradict the physical portrait:
Savage - Mystery - Influentinal - Manor - Sensual
First, we'll probably rule out the classic types—the Influential and the Local. Together with our beautiful, strong maiden, they appear a bit dry. Although the Influential type is slightly better, this perhaps suggests a touch of Drama. But why "perhaps"? The facial features are so majestic and expressive that the presence of a dramatic component is undeniable. But it's not the dominant element in this case—the scale of the linearity, the warmth of the color, and the overall impression of some earthly warmth, a maternal spirit, as well as freedom and fortitude, strongly suggest a natural component. Therefore, our heroine's Figurative type is Savage, but with a slight addition of the less aggressive and authoritarian Sensual.
Our heroine's characteristics don't allow her to completely embrace the image of a light nymph, but she would be a wonderful embodiment of a mother goddess, calming, wise, and protective:
Possible figurative reference
That's all for now, dear fellow travelers. I hope you found this analysis useful and inspiring. I'm also always happy to receive volunteers for a similar public analysis under special conditions.
Peace between the outer and inner to each and everyone!
Thank you for your trust, and until next time!
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