FB Guides Update: COLOR!

In response to requests for more information on each of the 9 Fantastical Beauty Archetypes and the unique ways each of the types approach color, I've greatly expanded the color sections in the type guides. There are now three pages of color information in each guide.

The first page is a longer discussion of the type's color scheme (is it bold or blended or contrasted? are there specific colors to focus on?), with a few notes on subtypes (more extensive discussion on subtype or leanings impact on color schemes and choices will be addressed in their own specific guides or blog posts). 

The second page shows sample palettes for each of four seasonal bases (Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter coloring), with four sample palettes shown for each seasonal base (16 total sample palettes). 

The third page shows sample color combinations with two sample outfit color combinations shown for each of the four seasons (8 total sample color combinations shown). 

With these suggestions, you have a lot of guidance to use in application of color to your own wardrobe. As added fun, you can customize and apply color to the ensemble illustrations in each guide for your type. You can print out the pages and try your hand at coloring in the outfits using your own best versions of the colors to see how it might look. You can add in your own best prints if you're feeling artistic.

 

 

Other updates: For now I've removed the Paypal buttons. You can still use Paypal, but rather than a button, email me with what you'd like to order (products/services), and I will create an invoice and send it to you. Checkout using a card is still available site-wide.  

If you previously purchased a guide and are itching to get your hands on the updated version with detailed color ideas, for a limited time only I’ll update yours for $5 per guide. Email me with your details to take advantage while you can.

 

 

Fantastical Beauty Archetype Guides

Archetype Guides for all 9 of the Fantastical Beauty style types are now available. If you're ready for a deeper understanding of a type through specific recommendations, you will find it in a 10 page pdf detailing tops, bottoms, accessories, mood, keywords, color scheme, and more. Each guide has a few line drawings to help illustrate the ideas, as well as a description of a possible life vignette or two. 

 

Step into a type and see how it fits. If you're still unsure of your type, consider being typed. The guide for your type will be sent to you free with purchase of any of the typing services. *If you already have the guide for the type you turn out to be, you may choose another.  

Fantastical Beauty Quadrants and Subtypes (In-Type Variants)

In determining your Fantastical Beauty style archetype (or having it determined for you), you're likely to come to a square of possibility. A person's face is often between full and balanced or full and linear; and it's common for a woman's s-curve to be in between subtle and moderate or moderate and major s-curve types as well. While some people will have a clear best type, and others will be between two, the most common is to be in a square of four possibilities (a few rare people span a possibility of six). 

Once you narrow it down to your four, personality, energy, outer perception, and even coloring can come into play and aid you in narrowing it down from there.

One of the six possible type squares.

Even after you've come to your true type, knowing your location relative to neighboring types can be useful in personalizing the type recommendations. 

If this is your four, but in the end you were able to confidently claim a linear face, but lean in personality/coloring/vibe and other tertiary considerations toward nymph, your placement might look like this, and you may have fun pulling some Nymph elements into your Fae look.

In this possibility, you are Fae, but due to tertiary considerations, you were able to completely eliminate Valkyrie and Nymph, while there was still something right to be found in Maenad, and you can now draw to a small degree from that type.

Your location on the Fantastical Beauty map will never be directly on a line. You will always be located as one of the nine types. That said, whatever your type, there IS a way to borrow an element from any of the other eight types, while staying true to your Fantastical Beauty archetype.

Valkyrie contains Glamazons, Were, Huntress, Godiva, Raven Riders, and Valkyrie-as-subtype.

Fae contains Elf, Dark Pixie, Garden Fairy, PixiePuck, Brownie, and Fae-as-subtype.   

Magic Queens contains Sorceress, Spirit Healer, Imp, Enchantress, Necromancer, and Magic Queen-as-subtype.  

Maenads contains Gorgon, Vampire, Succubus, Jinn, Satyress, and Maenad-as-subtype..

Nymphs contains Woodland Puck, Kitsune, Heket, Centaur, Nyx, and Nymph-as-subtype..

Angels contains Star Woman, Fallen Angel, Iris, Soul Guardian, Pegasus, and Angel-as-subtype. 

Dragon Princesses contains Cupcake Princess, Harpy, Phoenix, Mother of Dragons, Lucky Water Dragons, and Dragon Princess-as-subtype.

Mermaids contains Sea Witch, Selkie, Seapuck, Lamia, Kelpie, and Mermaid-as-subtype.

Seers contains Banshee, Lady Luck, Ghost, Reaper, Siren, and Seer-as-subtype.

 

Fantastical Beauty Personal Color Analysis

Fantastical Beauty takes your most flattering personal colors and applies them to your Archetype in very specific mini palettes in order to enhance the mood of your type while still enhancing your personal coloring. Each of the guides has descriptions of type coloring as well as specific sample palettes as well as visual examples of how to use the palette for the particular type, based on the four seasons color approach. 

If you're not yet familiar with seasonal color analysis, the basic four seasons color system goes thusly:

Winter: Cool and Saturated and Deeper
Spring: Warm and Saturated and Lighter
Summer: Cool and Muted and Lighter
Autumn: Warm and Muted and Deeper

 

This is pretty good. It allows us shorthand labels, while providing a lot of give and room to play. The colors attributed provide a sense of mood as well (to be covered in a future post).

While most people can find a color base from the four, human coloring is sometimes more complicated. For example, let’s say that your best neutrals are definitively warm, muted, and deeper (Autumn), but your best colors are sea-green, storm-green, and a slightly warmed mauve (Summer). Here is what that could look like (right).

In some systems, this exact palette would not be encompassed by a seasonal title, and this person would be given a palette that either had overly warm variations of their best colors, or overly cool variations of their best neutrals. In Fantastical Beauty, you come to your few absolute best colors and best neutrals (and their slight variations), and the seasonal title is a best fit depending on the vibe of the person (including their fantastical beauty archetype) and the mood of their unique palette. 

Let’s say our Summer-Autumn person is SJPish in coloring (this palette was not made with her in mind, so it’s not perfect, but it will do for our purposes here). Our pretend person is Fae in fantastical beauty archetype, and she could go earthy brownie fae or she could go more sparkle pixie. While she has a bit of earthy sensuality that she could channel, she seems to really shine in sparkle pixie. We’ll use the bit of earthiness as accent touches.

To play up the sparkle pixie vibe, we’ll focus on her rich cream as neutral, her sea-green, and her storm green as main color blocks. We’ll leave the mauve for her best lip color, and we’ll use the two browns as accents, finding ways of using them that are true to Fae (sparkly, diaphanous, ethereal, spunky) while hinting at earthy sensuality (Nymph). Let’s see if tigers eye will do this well.

 

 

Now that we have a full visual for this person, we see color from Summer, color from Autumn, and a spritely feeling (generally attributed to Spring). I’m dubbing it Sea Tiger Summer (fit for a Fae!), as Summer colors are our larger blocks. If we had found a shimmery, floaty bronze top and almond crop pants, and chosen pops of teal or rose, it would work, but the feeling of autumn (even a floaty, shimmery autumn) wouldn’t enhance her energy quite as well. 

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Special Challenge:

If you can find a celebrity who might work with a Sea Tiger Autumn palette, I’ll create a Fantastical Beauty capsule for them and we can see how emphasizing the inverse of the palette works on another FB type.

 

If you’re ready to learn your Fantastical Beauty and Animal Familiar types and have a custom palette and capsule made special for you, select a style service today.

 

An Overview of and the Role of Yin/Yang in Fantastical Beauty

An Overview of Yin/Yang Style Systems

In the tradition of Belle Northrup, Harriet McJimsey, David Kibbe, John Kitchener, and others; we have a very different system to draw on, using style concepts of Yin and Yang.

While the specifics vary by author, in this tradition:

  • Yin is generally described as: small, delicate, round, soft, flowing, light, low-contrast, gentle/yielding.
  • Yang is described as: large, long, angular, striking, dark, high contrast, strong/firm.

These terms are used to describe physical features of people, personality features, mannerisms, fabrics, patterns, shapes, and more.  

These ideas of Yin and Yang are then categorized into 5-7 style types/identities for women and their best and most authentic personal aesthetics.

The consistently used types are:

Dramatic - Extreme Yang

Natural - Soft Yang

Classic - Balanced

Gamine - Combination of Yang and Yin

Romantic - Extreme Yin

The variously used types are:

Angelic/Ethereal - Yang (in size) that has yin features (light, flowy) and is not overtly sexy

Ingenue/Youthful - Yin that is not overtly sexy, and has an innocence

Style theorists use these concepts and types in differing ways, either seeing people as a blend of types, or a discrete type. They also have different (sometimes completely opposite) ideas about who (celebrities, for example) belongs in which type.

The Role of Yin/Yang In Fantastical Beauty

Yin/Yang style systems were not a part of the development of Fantastical Beauty, and are not a part of the Fantastical Beauty typing process. This was done explicitly. Having studied Yin/Yang style systems in depth, I saw both their strengths and their weaknesses, and felt a dire need for an alternative tradition.

That said, if yin/yang were considered in Fantastical Beauty, each of the Fantastical Beauty types would be Yin. The personalization of type includes visually incorporating the particulars of the small amount of Yang in each woman. In the Taoist understanding of Yin and Yang, Yin is inherently female, and Yang is inherently male. The Yin/Yang symbol shows how they are interconnected, with one incorporating a small amount of the other, and the two nestling together. This is how Yin/Yang would be considered in Fantastical Beauty. Each Fantastical Beauty type elevates the type of Yin in each woman, and personalizes and integrates the bit of yang in each woman. For typing of men, it would be reversed.

Yin yang

The Role of Yin/Yang Systems In Fantastical Beauty

 

Visit the pinboards to see examples, and consider being typed today!