Do you have the same style type as your celebrity lookalike? Why people who look alike may have no essences in common

style analysis theorylookalikes
Written By Liz .

Do you know what you look like? Maybe none of us do. A person can only view their visual self indirectly, through mirrors, photos, film. The simple experience of standing across from another person and having a face-to-face interaction with them is something we’ll never have with ourselves.

Our excessive familiarity with our own faces also produces biases, whether positive, negative, or both. So maybe we really are ignorant of the true nature of our looks.

Celebrity lookalikes

At one event, Keira Knightley and Natalie Portman’s own families apparently couldn’t tell them apart; before fame, Katy Perry pretended to be Zooey Deschanel to get into clubs; Isla Fisher replaced herself with Amy Adams in her Christmas card and no one noticed.  

Maybe part of our fascination with lookalikes is that if someone tells us we look like someone else, this seems like an opportunity to view ourselves, or at least a proxy for ourselves, in a more objective way.

So a natural question for people interested in style analysis is whether each celebrity in the above pairs shares the exact same style essences with their alleged doppelganger. Another question is whether learning your celebrity lookalikes can help you to determine your own essences, and to better understand what you really look like.

In my view, one of those above pairs of celebrity lookalikes shares the same style type. And one of the pairs shares a similar though not identical type. But the remaining pair actually shares none of the same essences.

Keira Knightley and Natalie Portman

"Natalie Portman" by SoletronFresh is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Keira Knightley (left) and Natalie Portman (right) to me have marked facial differences, but they actually do share all the same essences—Romantic Dramatic Gamine. Neither has Classic, but there’s a regularity to both of their faces that may also contribute to their similar looks (see “Classic—the chameleon essence?” below for thoughts on why many people who don’t have Classic still kind of look like they have Classic). 

Many other celebrities would fall into this category of looking alike and having the same style type. Critically, though, just because popular opinion suggests that two people look alike doesn't necessarily mean that those two people objectively look alike.

That’s one reason why it's not a perfect method to use your celebrity lookalikes to determine your own style type—people don’t always agree on who truly resembles who.

Katy Perry and Zooey Deschanel

"Katy Perry" by ellasportfolio is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped image available under same terms.

"Zooey Deschanel" by rocor is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Sometimes two people are even deemed doppelgangers despite sharing none of the same style essences.

This is true of Katy Perry (left) and Zooey Deschanel (right). According to Google, many people think they look highly similar. But Katy’s an Ethereal Dramatic Gamine, and Zooey’s an Ingenue Natural Classic.

How can this be when they allegedly look so alike? We’ll explore several possible reasons, leaving off the obvious that they have similar coloring, though that likely does contribute to their perceived similarity.

1) Natural and Dramatic can appear similar

Katy has Dramatic and Zooey has Natural, and both essences are elongated and straight. The difference is that Dramatic has sharp edges and Natural has blunted edges. The two essences have different vibes, but they can appear literally similar, which may partly explain Katy and Zooey’s alleged similarity.

2) Ethereal and Ingenue can appear similar

Katy is a dominant Ethereal, and Zooey is a dominant Ingenue, and those two essences are often confused because they're both curving and have conceptual overlap in that both can appear gentle and kind.

3) Classic—the chameleon essence?

Highly Classic faces tend to have features of average shapes, sizes, and locations. So many people who don’t have significant Classic still have facial features that resemble Classic’s average ones, because many people by definition are close to the average.

An analogy: the average height for women in the U.S. is 5 feet, 4 inches. Many women also appear similar in height to the average—many women are 5’3’’ or 5’5’’.

Most women in the U.S. aren’t 4’8’’ inches tall—this height deviates a lot from the average. There’s also not a ton of women who appear similar in height to women who are 4’8’’ inches tall—women who are 4’ 7’’ or 4’9’’.

We can think of the average sizes and locations of Classic features as analogous to the average height of 5’4’’. Many people who don’t themselves have significant Classic (e.g., they aren’t exactly 5’4’’) still have facial features that are similar in size and position to Classic features (e.g., they’re 5’3’’ or 5’5’’). It’s less common for people to have features that greatly deviate from the locations of Classic features (e.g., to be 4’7’’ or 4’8’’ or 4’9’’).

Stated simply: many people who aren’t truly average height still look similar to the average height. Similarly, many people who don’t truly have the averageness of the Classic essence still have facial similarities to the Classic essence.

While Katy’s face isn’t quite average enough to have Classic, her face may be average enough to have similarity in the sizes, shapes, and positions of the features to Classic Zooey.

Literally similar and figuratively distinct

So Katy and Zooey share some literal visual similarity; yet they have completely different style essences. Is this really possible?

Yes—because literal features that are subtly different can produce huge differences in faces’ vibes.

Katy and Zooey illustrate this principle. Katy’s face has a much edgier and more mischevious vibe than Zooey’s, which enables Katy to pull off more avant-garde and humorous fashion, hair, and makeup. In contrast, Zooey typically chooses styles that are overall more understated, casual, and sweet. (Zooey does sometimes wear heavily Gamine styles, but in my view they aren’t especially harmonious on her. And Katy sometimes seems to wear every type of style that’s ever existed but looks most harmonious in her own essences.)

Zooey wouldn’t be as harmonious in Katy’s wild, avant-garde fashion, and Katy wouldn’t be as harmonious in more demure classic fashion. Despite appearing literally similar, their faces have extremely different vibes.

Can knowing your celebrity lookalikes help you find your style essences?

Knowing your celebrity lookalikes may sometimes provide clues to your own essences. But in my experience, the celebrities who I think resemble one another frequently have at least one distinct essence from one another, and sometimes more.

As illustrated by Katy and Zooey, typing yourself based on your lookalikes isn’t a foolproof method.

Are Katy and Zooey just an isolated case?

The phenomenon of looking allegedly similar but having a somewhat or very different style type seems extremely common. Here’s just a few other celebrity examples:

Penelope Cruz (left) and Paz Vega (right) have been deemed lookalikes, but Penelope is a Romantic Ethereal Gamine and Paz is Romantic Dramatic. At first glance, Penelope looks like she may have Dramatic, but you can see her bone structure is fairly short and wide (whereas Dramatic shapes are elongated and narrow), and none of her other features are both sharp and elongated. In contrast, Paz Vega has very striking Dramatic bone structure.

Mila Kunis (left) and Sarah Hyland (right) have also been deemed lookalikes, but Mila is a dominant Romantic (with Ethereal and Gamine), and Sarah has no significant Romantic (she’s an Ethereal Dramatic Gamine). So from a style analysis perspective, Mila actually has greater similarity to Penelope Cruz than she does to Sarah Hyland.

"Emma Stone Deauville 2011" by Georges Biard is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Another example is Natural Classic Michelle Monaghan (left) and Ethereal Classic Gamine Emma Stone (right)—according to Google, some people think they really look alike, but the only essence they have in common is Classic.

I could go on, but the point is—knowing your celebrity lookalikes isn’t sufficient to accurately determine your own style type.

Amy Adams and Isla Fisher

"File:Isla Fisher 2013.jpg" by Georges Biard is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

A final interesting case is of Amy Adams and Isla Fisher, whom I've seen referenced as looking highly similar. They do both have Natural and Classic, and as noted, Classic has a chameleon quality that may sometimes make people high in Classic look similar to other people.

Critically, though, Amy has dominant Ethereal, and Isla has dominant Romantic. So Amy and Isla overall have markedly different vibes. This suggests that at least some people really struggle to distinguish between Ethereal and Romantic. The two essences are fairly similar in their literal shapes, which may partly explain the confusion.

In my view, the best way to discern your essences is to use a systematic typing method. And the way to be accurate in that method is to practice, because it may take time to train the brain to recognize the sometimes extremely subtle differences between the essences. It may be analogous to how people who work in paint stores can discern differences in colors that to most of us appear identical.  

Liz .
Previous

Why there aren’t “masculine” and “feminine” style essences, part 2: a rigorous experiment
Next

List of Celebrity Style Types