How to Get Away with Never Wearing Heels Again

Today I came across an article entitled “How to Get Away with Never Wearing Heels Again”. I was excited. I was thinking it would be an informative and illustrated article about types of flats with proportions of clothing lines, possibly even involving different body lines. Instead, it was photos of celebrities wearing flats, and then links to buy various flats. Disappointing! 

The article I was hoping to read, is one I could very well write- I just enjoy seeing the style aesthetics analysis of others as food for thought for me own. So my beauties, here is the first installment of How to Get Away with Never Wearing Heels Again, which focuses on flats with mini dresses. 

The key to successfully wearing flats with any outfit is to pick flats that echo the mood of your outfit. It would be bizarre to wear sneakers with the dress on the left or right as they are both somewhat dressy, but the shift in the middle has a funky print and could better pair with sneakers. 

Flats With Mini Dresses by inaglassforest featuring slip on boots

The dress on the left has a classic and soft vibe, which is what we look for in shoes- nearly any variation on a ballet flat should work, and the color of the shoe should continue the colors of the dress. I like the bows/buckles on both pair as a touch of round detailing to echo the round large floral print. I see this look as a possibility for spring-summer Classic Round, Gamine Round, and Angels. 

The middle dress is funky and high energy, so we find funky shoes with small, crisp details to echo this. A pop of color would be in line with the high energy look in a way that woudn't flow with the other two dresses. I see this look as a possibility for winter Fae.

The dress on the right is sexy in a cozy way, and fine suede-like texture is just the thing, with slightly pointed toes to continue the shape of the v-neck. A pair of leggings would emphasize cozy over sexy. I see this look as a possibility for autumn Romantic Valkyrie, and some Seers.

You can always play with juxtaposition and creating tension, but in this series we will continue exploring harmony. 

The post series on How To Get Away With Never Wearing Heels Again has concluded and you can find it all here:

Part One: Mini Dresses

Part Two: Mini Skirts

Part Three: Midi Dresses

Part Four: Maxi Dresses

Part Five: Pants

Part Six: Jeans

Summary and Type Specifics

Reality Wardrobe Versus Fantasy Life Wardrobe

Fantasy Vs. Reality by inaglassforest featuring a boatneck dress

Do you dream of wearing princess gowns but find yourself wearing leggings as pants with baggy tees instead? These two can be brought closer together with a little work.

Step One: Track what you actually wear each day.

This should be a judgement-free exercise. If you don’t like what you’ve been wearing (which is likely if you’re reading this), don’t worry, because we’re going to improve everything. Identifying what you actually reach to wear will provide us with very important information about what is working for your current life.

Tops, bottoms, one pieces, shoes, outerwear, and accessories- write it all down for one week.

What do you wear to work? To workout? When you’re home during the week? On the weekends? To go out?

Step Two: Identify what you dream of wearing

For this exercise, let your mind roam entirely free of reality. Consider movies, magazines, runway. Think of your favorite celebrities and what they wear. Spend a few hours on pinterest. What would you wear if you could wear anything?

*Side note: If what you most what to wear is not a look that enhances you, we need to have a special talk. 

Step Three: Working toward bridging the gap OR isolating the two categories

If you wear leggings all day and you dream of wearing leggings all day, kudos. You can just focus on your best colors and the best way of making the variations in line possibilities work for your living fantasy look.

For the rest of us, we have some merging or isolating to do. If you reality and fantasy aren't far apart, it is best to merge and blend the two. For merging: Starting with our reality wardrobe, how can we take a step toward our fantasy wardrobe? This can be done with each item (moving from a plain tee to an embellished tee with a flattering neckline), or it can be done as a percentage, letting fantasy items take up 10% of your wardrobe and if it goes well (i.e. if you actually end up wearing it regularly), swap another 10%. If you work with a Basic 10 capsule wardrobe, that means having one of your ten items be fantasy. If you do choose a purely fantasy item, try to consider how it will work with the rest of your wardrobe. 

If reality and fantasy are too far apart, the goal is to accept and limit the functional wardrobe. If reality is that you're a yoga teacher, but your lines look rather bad in knits and you'd rather be in perky woven dresses- don't try to merge them- you'll only drive yourself mad and end up wasting money. Instead, accept that your knits, while unflattering, are a functional necessity of your working wardrobe, and do your best to limit them. Yes, you need a certain number of items, but not beyond, and when you're not teaching, put on something fabulous instead. Isolating means not letting functional creep into your life when they aren't absolutely required. You will feel better if you switch to flattering the moment that you're able to in your day or week. Because functional is, well, functional, you will need to devote a little of your time and money to it, but limit this to what you can. Focus the bulk of your time and wardrobe budget on the flattering items and live your fantasy.  

How far apart are your reality and your fantasy? Can you bridge the gap or is it more useful to isolate them? At what ratio? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

If you're still struggling to improve your wardrobe, consider the style services available.

Black Jeans and White Tee for 9 Types of Fantastical Beauty

Can you spot all of the details that create the unique archetype for each Fantastical Beauty?

Click through the smaller images below the large one to see all 9 and leave a comment with your thoughts!

Black Jeans and White Tee for all 9 Fantastical Beauty Types by inaglassforest on polyvore.com

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.

Face Types in Fantastical Beauty

Face Types in Fantastical Beauty

Revisiting our 9 type chart here, we see that there are three face designations.

The face types in Fantastical Beauty are primarily derived from the scale of and distance between the main three facial features: eyes, nose, and mouth. Secondary factors can include the shape of the face, shape of the eyebrows, and the arrangement of the three main facial features within.

Frequently people fall in-between face types, or could equally fit two different face types. This is normal. Determining your type uses facial balance to whittle down options. In the next post we will see how body lines further whittle down typing options. Personality, mood, essence, and personal coloring are also used in determining type. Your correct Fantastical Beauty type will be a gestalt that takes facial balance into careful account. On to the facial types.

The different face types are categorized as: full, linear, and balanced.

Full faces tend to a combination of width (wide cheekbones, wide jaw lines, wide distance between the eyes, broad smile, softly wide nose) and fullness (full and broad lips, large eyes, soft cheeks).

Angelina Jolie is a beautiful example of a full face.

Narrow faces may be oval or long in face shape. The features might give the impression of narrowness by the eyes being spaced slightly closely or the eyes and lips being spaced slightly farther away. Any fullness or balance is secondary to the linearity of the features.

Jennifer Connely is a gorgeous example of a narrow face.

Balanced faces can be characterized by a balanced face shape and by the features being equidistant from each other. The sizings of the features are also often in equal balance.

Marion Cotillard is a lovely example of a balanced face.

Tip: If you are trying to find your own facial type, do not use selfies. Taking photos that close-up distorts your features.

QUIZ TIME

What Fantastical Beauty facial type do you think Marilyn Monroe is?