This dress features sheer, gently-draped fabric and flutter sleeves that add Ethereal, creating a light-as-air quality. The butterflies underscore the theme of flight but also add Ingenue, because the print is pretty literal (literal prints tend to be Ingenue, because they feel youthful, while more stylized or abstract prints feel more grown-up and read as more Romantic and Ethereal). The waist, demarcated with a thin band, also adds some Ingenue, as does the flared skirt. And the thin-strapped sweetheart neckline, high slit, and cold-shoulder introduce Romantic, with conventionally sexy elements that create very curvy shapes.

Romantic Ethereal Ingenue subtypes

To look your best as an REI, you’ll also want to consider the essence ratio of your face.

If you have primarily Romantic and Ethereal, you can dress like a glamorous goddess in Grecian-inspired fashion, and add Ingenue in smaller details, like small circular jewelry or accessories (e.g., small circular bag, small bows on your shoes). In general, if you have only a small amount of an essence, you may find your look your best when you incorporate that essence mostly in detail rather than as a central part of your look.

If you have primarily Ethereal and Ingenue, your overall aesthetic will be extremely gentle and sweet. Your best colors will be rather light, and your silhouettes will flow gently away from your body or be flared, rather than fitted throughout. You can then add details that flatter your intense, conventionally sexy Romantic essence, like a large elaborate peplum on an otherwise demure dress or a blingy bracelet with generously curving shapes.

If you have primarily Romantic and Ingenue, you’re looking to create a highly feminine aesthetic that combines extremely sexy and extremely sweet elements. Think mixing silhouettes like deep scoop necklines with circle skirts, or dainty puff sleeves with slit skirts. The extreme femininity and rounded shapes of your best fashion can give off a princess-like or barbie-doll type vibe.

See what to wear for Romantic, Ethereal, and Ingenue for more about the fashions that most flatter these essences, as well as how to distinguish the style elements that define them.

Can Romantic Ethereal Ingenues wear pants?

Yes! Romantic Ethereal Ingenues have many pant options. The key is to choose relatively soft fabrics that allow for draping and movement, and to avoid fabric that’s highly stiff or structured.

One example is various styles of palazzo pants, which often have a lot of Ethereal and sometimes Romantic, because they tend to be made from very soft, drapey, flowy fabric. Cropped palazzo pants can work for Ingenue.

You can use the principle of “soft, flowy fabric” to make more traditionally “yang” pants work for the yin essences. For instance, flared jeans are often Ethereal Natural or Ethereal Natural Gamine, because the flare silhouette creates a long Ethereal-shaped curve, and denim fabric is iconically stiff and casual (which works for the casual and straight-lined Natural and Gamine essences).

But if you find flared style pants in a much softer fabric, these pants can often be fully Ethereal.

The fact that the yin essences are much more flattered by soft versus stiff fabrics also creates the paradox that, despite that these essences tend to appear dressed up, Romantics, Ethereals and Ingenues actually tend to be more flattered by sweatpants and yoga pants than jeans. This is because jeans tend to be stiff and sturdy, whereas sweatpants, while often not perfectly ideal for the yin essences, tend to be inherently softer and less structured than jeans.

So, if you can find relatively narrow sweatpants in a soft fabric that appear drapey, perhaps with gentle gathers at the waistband, they can actually read as fully Ethereal, Romantic, and/or Ingenue.

Romantic Ethereal Ingenue faces

One surprising thing about REI faces is that it isn’t more obvious who is REI.

What I mean: because REIs lack any significant yang essence, we might assume that they’ll really stand out from other faces, by projecting intensely feminine beauty.

And REIs do tend to have conventionally feminine-appearing faces. But I don’t think it’s necessarily easy to distinguish REI from faces with yang essence.

For instance, in my view, many Romantic Ethereal Gamines could easily be mistaken for being Romantic Ethereal Ingenues, and vice versa.

Why? Because, while style essences are to some extent about the literal shapes of our features, they’re more about the figurative vibes of our features. And while Romantic Ethereal Ingenues tend to have mostly curving shapes in their faces, a face can be REI even if it doesn’t appear to the naked eye to have completely curving shapes.

In fact, sometimes REIs can appear to have some angularity in their jawline. What’s most important to determine your style essences isn’t your faces literal shapes but the moods, feelings, and auras those shapes evoke.

Why do I think this? Because it’s what I’ve observed. People can be harmonious in straight-lined, striking Dramatic fashion even if their face doesn’t have literally perfectly straight shapes, and people can have the Romantic essence even if their face doesn’t have literally circular shapes—in fact, most people’s faces don’t have literally circular shapes or perfectly straight lines. It seems that when people have features that are “close enough” to these shapes, they read to our eyes as having the vibe of Romantic—glamorous, passionate—and the vibe of Dramatic—striking, intimidating—and we oversimplify and call these shapes “circles” and “straight lines.” But in reality, the literal shapes that characterize the essences aren’t necessarily reflected perfectly in people’s faces.

So, it’s not always obvious who has a purely “curving” or yin face—meaning some combination of Romantic, Ethereal, and/or Ingenue—and who doesn’t.

That said, it is true that Romantic Ethereal Ingenues tend to have very curving face shapes and features. They tend to have uniquely rounded chins and jaws, full or semi-full lips, somewhat fleshy (as opposed to pointy or sharp) nose tips, and curvy as opposed to narrow eyes.

Romantic Ethereal Ingenue rarity

I’ve speculated that one reason pure REIs seem rare is because most people have some degree of straight or angular shapes in their bone structure.

I think this might also explain why so far about half of the REIs I’ve found also have a small amount of a fourth essence—the fourth essence likely reflects that they have a bit of “yang” essence in their bone structure, or perhaps some Classic essence there.

Are you a Romantic Ethereal Ingenue?

It’s definitely possible that your top three essences are REI, and it’s entirely possible that you’re purely REI.

I do think pure Romantic Ethereal Ingenues are rare in the sense of being less common than many of the other essence blends—but even if only, say, 1% of the population has a certain style essence combination, 1% is still a lot of people in a world of 7 billion.

So even though REIs do seem rare, there very well may be thousands or millions of REIs out there.

From the celebrities I’ve found so far, it also seems that if you’re REI, you may want to consider if you have a small but significant amount of a fourth essence. The more I type different celebrities and clients, the more I’m realizing that fourth essences appear more common than I once thought.