A sleeveless mock-neck crop top has an iconically Gamine silhouette, while the partly sheer, minutely detailed knit fabric adds Ethereal. An understated color scheme helps communicate Classic. This could be an especially Classic look if the pants are a straight-leg, tailored Classic silhouette.

Ethereal Classic Gamine hair

Returning to the “elongation” stereotype, Ethereals are supposed to be flattered by very long hair—but you might notice that this isn’t the hairstyle of choice for many Ethereal Classic Gamine celebrities.

Why? Probably because ECG’s overall face shape is often heavily influenced by Classic moderation, Gamine shortening, or both. With strong Classic and Gamine influence, long hair doesn’t tend to be ideal.

Long hair as an ECG?

But if you’re an ECG with a ton of Ethereal, you might be gorgeous in very long hair. Especially if your Ethereal is in your bone structure and the overall shape of your face.

One example—ECG Jessica Biel. She’s highly Ethereal and also seems to have a slightly longer face than the majority of ECG celebrities. To me she’s really flattered by hair with Ethereal length, meaning hair that extends at least several inches past her shoulders.

Traditional face shape advice—advice based on whether you have an oval, round, square, rectangular, or heart-shaped face—tends to be reductive.

But many people may find that their most flattering haircut is heavily dependent on the overall shape of their face’s perimeter.

So an Ethereal Classic Gamine with a more elongated or oval Ethereal face shape might observe that they can pull off hair several inches below the shoulders, whereas an Ethereal Classic Gamine with a shorter Gamine face shape may find that a chin-length bob is most flattering.

Short hair as an ECG?

If you’re highly Gamine, you might even be able to rock a pixie or other very short cut.

But this likely isn’t the perfect cut for most ECGs, since elongated Ethereal and moderate Classic aren’t flattered by extremely short hair.

ECG Michelle Williams has a ton of Gamine, so despite that she and Jessica Biel share the same style type, their best hair is very different. Jessica seems best in longer cuts, whereas Michelle is gorgeous in shoulder-length hair and above.

So two people who share the exact same style type will potentially do their hair (and makeup) very differently, depending on their ratio of essences.

What if you have a more balanced amount of Ethereal, Classic, and Gamine? Your best hair may be a Classic length, hitting at the shoulders or slightly above or below. You can also add piecey layers for Gamine, or mermaid waves for Ethereal.

Lindsay Lohan

I remember being excited when I found an article about how ECG Lindsay Lohan had a sequin phase (with many photo examples), because sequins often create an Ethereal Gamine effect—they reflect light in a diffuse Ethereal way but have an evident high-spirited Gamine quality. So I searched through the article’s images, optimistic that I’d find a photo of Lindsay in Ethereal Classic Gamine style.

But to be honest, even though the article had like 20 photos of her in various sequined outfits, she wasn’t styled completely based on her style essences in any of them.

This is part of why I don’t post more photos of celebrities in harmonious outfits on Pinterest (though I do want to do more of that in the future): it can be really, really, really hard to find celebrities styled in a way that’s fully harmonious with their style type.

And even if you do find a picture of celebrity in an outfit that fully reflects their essences, sometimes the ratio is off, like they have primarily Ethereal but their outfit is primarily Gamine, with only a small amount of their Ethereal and Classic essences.

Or their outfit will really work for them, but their makeup clashes with their style type. And since makeup (obviously) goes on top of your face, when a celebrity wears makeup that doesn’t work, it can make it extremely hard to tell that the outfit does work. So this kind of photo often won’t be useful for demonstrating what style essences a celebrity has.

The makeup paradox

The idea that if you’re not wearing harmonious makeup, it’s really hard to know your style type, is also useful info when you’re trying to find your own style essences.

It’s a little bit like the “You need work experience to get a job, but you can’t get work experience without a job” dilemma.

Meaning, in order to find your style essences, you need to know what fashion flatters your face—but it can be really hard to know what fashion flatters your face if you’re wearing unflattering makeup.

So you need to know your style type in order to determine your most harmonious makeup—but in can be extremely hard to determine your style type if you’re not already wearing flattering makeup.

So that’s a big reason why style analysis is so hard.

It might seem like a good solution is to study how you look in different outfits with a makeup-less face, but the issue with that is that some style types actually don’t look their most harmonious without makeup.

For example, it can be hard to tell if someone’s Romantic when they’re wearing no makeup, because the Romantic essence is so characterized by glamour and a put-together look. So when a Romantic wears no makeup, it’s often harder to tell that their face fits Romantic fashion—a low-key, no or minimal makeup look actually isn’t ideally harmonious with elabroate Romantic style.

So the best solution is probably to do some experimenting to find makeup that you think really flatters you, and then when you’re trying to determine your essences, to study how you look in different outfits only when you’re wearing flattering makeup.

Commonly confused with?

As noted, Ethereal Classic Gamines often don’t look stereotypically Ethereal, because they often don’t have obvious facial elongation.

ECGs might be assumed to have Ingenue (as is the case with Emma Stone), because they have gentle yin essence and short, youthful Gamine, which when combined can mimic the feel of Ingenue.

Some people also think Emma Stone looks like Michelle Monaghan, who I’ve typed as Natural Classic. So maybe elongated, carefree, “yang” Natural can sometimes mimic the look of Ethereal + Gamine (emphasis on sometimes; this isn’t necessarily always or even often true). So maybe Ethereal Classic Gamines in general are often mistaken for having Natural, too.

ECGs are a great example of how helpful it is, when you’re trying to determine a person’s style essences, to consider patterns in faces of the same type. While not every ECG will fit the most typical patterns—which is good! It’s great to have variety in beauty—you might find that their gorgeous beauty sometimes has a very specific, recognizable aesthetic.