The Kibbe System (A Bit of my Journey and 3 Unconventional Tips for Determining Your Type)

We are taking a little diversion from makeup and skincare here today on La Petite Rose and instead exploring some fashion topics today, as I have been recently learning about a way of dressing (or rather finding one's most flattering clothes) that has totally changed my perspective on style and myself. The Kibbe Body Typing System. The system was created originally in the late 1980s by fashion consultant David Kibbe, who's ethos typifies matching the ideal lines and characters of clothes with someone's natural body shape and lines and energetic vibe to bring about the best and most emphasized version of beauty for every man and woman out there, celebrity and not. Basically, it is a way of analyzing both clothes and one's own physicality to find out what kinds of clothes look best on you and why what doesn't work, doesn't work.

It is important to know that Kibbe's system does not discriminate against any age, race, gender, body shape, or weight. Everyone will fall into some version of a type, and you don't need to have the conventionally ideal celebrity body to find your type and have the tips work for you. And like all typing systems, you can choose how much or how little you want to follow the advice ascribed to your type and how to fit the tips into your own personal aesthetic. It is not a streamlined prescription In fact, it is the complete opposite of that. It truly shows there are clothes out in all sorts of style presences out there for everyone to look their best, and they will wear those kinds of pieces in away no other type could do and it arms you with information as to ways you can accentuate your body lines and features in the ways that you want to and perhaps compensate for other aspects that you want to downplay But as David himself has said, "People don't have flaws, only unique characteristics!" And this is a means to discover (and show of) your unique characteristics!

'

On the most general level, there are five different body types in the Kibbe system Dramatics (characterized by narrow, straight body lines, and sharper angles) Naturals ( characterized broader straight body lines with sharp angels with blunt edges, and defined muscles, even without necessarily working out or being athletic) Classics (characterized by even body proportions and having a mix of both straight lines and curve) Romantics (characterized by curvy bodies and soft and usually smallish and fleshy and rounded (though not fat) features, and Gamines ( characterized by usually compact bodies and mix of sharper and rounder features unique in proportion and to that individual). From there, each type is further subdivided into sharper (called Flamboyant, Dramatic, or Theatrical) or rounder ones (called Soft).

In learning more about this system and trying to find out my own type, I have to say I was met with more than a few surprises, and the same was also true of my best friend and sister who was also on a journey in finding her own type.

I myself, have found out that I am a Natural,. This means, in brief, that I have a straighter figure but with some slight curves with broader shoulders and a wider top half than bottom in terms of bone structure. My bones and relative body line is straight and relatively sharp but with edges that are slightly more blunt than pointed. I also have a decent presence of muscle, even though I do not work out, typical of a Natural's (both Soft and Flamboyant) build that is often termed "athletic" Finding all of this out was a shock for me at first because Naturals are classified as almost always being moderately to often very tall, and i don't even make it to five feet. To add to that, I also was born prematurely and have Cerebral Palsy, which leaves me, among many things with smaller, shorter limbs and more bent legs than I would likely have if not for the disability.

That said, clothes with long, structured, unencumbered lines look best on me, much more so than the compact silhouettes with more flouncey , cutsey details in the clothes of the Gamine. However, I thought that because of my extremely short height I could be nothing except some type of Gamine (who are usually thought to be the shortest type in the Kibbe system). But Gamines do not have the broad top half and shoulders or as much of the amount of visible muscles that I do. In fact, when I wear more Gamine-esque clothes, I often would feel that while the compact and overall shorter, more petite nature of the garments was appropriate for my height, that my broader, wider shoulders and just general muscle presence made me feel bigger than the clothes and like my body wanted to tear out of them, Now, dressing my type, I feel more confident and mature and a bit less like, I am dressing "younger" or younger-looking than I should be. The free-flowing yet regal style of the Natural suits me and my body and makes me feel stronger and more womanly now, and as someone who's been told she's cute and little all her life but left feeling there was something not quite right about that, this is a fantastic thing.

By contrast, my best friend and sister always believed herself to be a Romantic type, as though she is fairly short (5'3) she always seemed to have a curvier, hourglass figure. After having her first baby and then seeing some of the baby weight coming off, she realized her figure was much straighter than she thought and that the softer fabrics and more rounded lines of the Romantic-style of clothing she used to wear didn't suit her. She also discovered that she had a hormone imbalance that had affected her probably since her early teenage years that caused her to have and hold more weight on her hips, making her form appear curvier than it naturally was. Addressing the hormonal issues and continuing to lose and keep off the baby and hormone imbalance-driven weight has enabled her to see and reveal her true shape and that, in fact, she has the compact proportions and jaunty, angular lines and mixed features attributed to the Gamine. She now wears dresses and pants of straighter edges and cleaner and lines and more playful, bolder colors with sharper contrasts, which aesthetically highlight the potpourri of opposites that make up the Gamine type.

The journey into Kibbe body typing-- both for me and my best friend-- has been not only one of fashion analysis but also rediscovering and redefining and finding new ways to express who we are, and that is always the biggest and best gift anything related to beauty and fashion can give anyone. So to close, I thought I'd put down the list of my three best tips I've gleaned from my friend's and my Kibbe journeys if you are looking to start yours or you might be stuck in deciding your type along the way.

Remember It is More About Proportions Than Definite Measurements: When trying to decide whether you are narrow or broad or if you have a long vertical line, or small shoulders or not, it is important to evaluate how your features look in comparison to those of the rest of your body and not always to look at, for example, if your shoulders as wide or as narrow as someone else's. If they look broad compared to the other features of your own body, it is safe to say that you can consider yourself to have broad or broader shoulders.

Look at Your Face For More Definitive Clues: If you are having a difficult time assessing the lines or amount of sharpness versus fleshiness in your body, it might help you to instead look at the facial attributes of each time and assess the features of your own face to gain some comparisons. Our faces are great places to asses width and length and angles and the size and sharpness of features. They also don't tend to change as much as we may gain or lose weight or muscle throughout our lives whereas the fleshiness versus muscle vs shape of our bones could be distorted by being under or overweight or even building concentrated muscle in specific areas of the body, especially the biceps for women, which can often make women appear broader than she might be overall.

Consider Any Genetic or Other Health Issues that Might be Interfering With the True Picture of Your Shape: Both in the case of my disability and my friend's former hormonal imbalance, both of our states of health led us to having unclear views as to how our bodies were versus how they were impacted by other, outlying factors concerning our health that changed the way we look. This does not mean that these health concerns made us "not our Kibbe type" , it just made our harder to see. In a way, this points not only to more careful exploration of each type when analyzing yourself and your clothing choices but that each type could have more variance within itself than we see online or in print through quizzes or the few celebrity examples frequently ascribed to each type. It is so much more about finding the types of clothes that look good on you overall rather than trying to pinpoint and assess every feature and seeing if they all follow a description to the letter. Keeping this in mind will better lead you to your type no matter your circumstances, even if it seems untrue on the surface.

Discovering more about my body type (and what clothes work for me) has led me to not only learn more about myself, but also open a new door into fashion and aesthetics that I never expected but that I am truly loving. To start discovering your Kibbe type, I highly recommend checking out the YouTube Channel Aly Art and her amazing videos on all things aesthetics related for each and every type and also for the articles on cozyrebekah.com This is another great, comprehensive Kibbe resource that has been instrumental to my process and also contains a really thorough, easy-to-do quiz to find your type and get started.