Inside Out Style

360: Why You May Be Confused by Your Kitchener Essence, Finding Colours For Your Palette, Expressing Your Style

00:00 / 00:20:08

In This Episode

0.07 My challenge is finding the right colours for my summer wardrobe when they aren’t current fashions

2.34 How do I incorporate my essence by John Kitchener into my style relating to my 8 shape body? When I do personality quizzes I get more Classic than what I got with Kitchener which was YIN styles of Ingenue and Romantic?

10.30 How do I express a style that is functional, genuine, and unique?

Finding Colours That Fit Your Palette

What Do You Do When You Can’t Find Your Colours in Stores?

How to Determine the Best Colours that Match Your Colour Palette

Mastering Undertones: Choosing Colours and Patterns That Work With Your Palette

How to Use a Colour Swatch When Shopping and Match Colours to Your Palette

Yin and Yang and Your Style

Body Shape Calculator

Creating Harmony with Your Personality

How to Understand the Yin and Yang of Clothing

Using Yin and Yang in Clothing Design to Balance Your Appearance

Ways to Balance Your Yin and Yang

How to Find a Functional and Genuine Style?

Visualise Your Style

If You’d Like to Define Your Style and Discover Your Colours

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This is an important conversation you’ve opened up. Even though John Kitchener catapulted me over the top insofar as my essences, I agree that his system (like all systems) is limited. Systems give you objective harmony, but it may have nothing to do with your taste or lifetsyle. Additionally, language and image may come out so differently from one another even though both purportedly express the same idea. You give the example of “Classic.” If I am understanding you correctly from a previous email exchange with you, the classics in fashion are timeless pieces, but they can be tweaked (pattern, line, color, fabric) to accommodate individual differences.

As to personality, it’s impossible to feel at home in nothing but objective recommendations. You’re right that there are so many other factors as well like geography, culture, etc. One thing that has helped me is not really the broad category of “lifestyle,” but of time–because I start imagining (and locking myself into) the lifestyle I have and fantasizing about the lifestyle I WISHI had. Instead, I ask myself how do I spend my time, how would I rather spend my time, and how can I create a bridge between how I have to spend it and where I would rather spend it? Can I make my shoes do double duty? My skirt? My pants? Should I accommodate society more or should I make society bend to me as in, “There’s old so-and-so. It’s just the way she is.”

I’ve had to take a break from personal style for a time in order to let some of these things settle. I was never satisfied chasing all the answers, even though I learned a lot. What I discovered was that a lot of the dissatisfaction I had with my style was not the material aspect of it. The problem was ME. I wanted others to affirm me in a fantasy about a world I didn’t really live in, but imagined I’d like to live in. I had to center down more into what do I actually like about MYSELF (even secretly)? I came to see that personality is more important than being affirmed for perfection of beauty. In fact, when you dress for personality you are automatically more beautiful, because personality is also what our real friends admire in us–not our objective beauty.

We have so many choices nowadays, too, and that is much of the problem. We can do whatever we please, but what is it that pleases us? Then there is the consumer culture. Much as I love unique touches, I no longer spend as much time sewing things as I used to. Even though I live in this decade, my heart often yearns for a different decade. Adaptation is an art I am slowly developing in order to express my aesthetics and personality in the time in which I live and the way I have to spend that time. It is a very personal process and ever changing. But one does uncover several cores to these things so that, even though the particulars on a given day may change, the long term satisfiers bring stability.

Thank you for this honest video.

2 Comments

Kathryn says:

April 20, 2025 at 4:55 am

This is an important conversation you’ve opened up. Even though John Kitchener catapulted me over the top insofar as my essences, I agree that his system (like all systems) is limited. Systems give you objective harmony, but it may have nothing to do with your taste or lifetsyle. Additionally, language and image may come out so differently from one another even though both purportedly express the same idea. You give the example of “Classic.” If I am understanding you correctly from a previous email exchange with you, the classics in fashion are timeless pieces, but they can be tweaked (pattern, line, color, fabric) to accommodate individual differences.

As to personality, it’s impossible to feel at home in nothing but objective recommendations. You’re right that there are so many other factors as well like geography, culture, etc. One thing that has helped me is not really the broad category of “lifestyle,” but of time–because I start imagining (and locking myself into) the lifestyle I have and fantasizing about the lifestyle I WISHI had. Instead, I ask myself how do I spend my time, how would I rather spend my time, and how can I create a bridge between how I have to spend it and where I would rather spend it? Can I make my shoes do double duty? My skirt? My pants? Should I accommodate society more or should I make society bend to me as in, “There’s old so-and-so. It’s just the way she is.”

I’ve had to take a break from personal style for a time in order to let some of these things settle. I was never satisfied chasing all the answers, even though I learned a lot. What I discovered was that a lot of the dissatisfaction I had with my style was not the material aspect of it. The problem was ME. I wanted others to affirm me in a fantasy about a world I didn’t really live in, but imagined I’d like to live in. I had to center down more into what do I actually like about MYSELF (even secretly)? I came to see that personality is more important than being affirmed for perfection of beauty. In fact, when you dress for personality you are automatically more beautiful, because personality is also what our real friends admire in us–not our objective beauty.

We have so many choices nowadays, too, and that is much of the problem. We can do whatever we please, but what is it that pleases us? Then there is the consumer culture. Much as I love unique touches, I no longer spend as much time sewing things as I used to. Even though I live in this decade, my heart often yearns for a different decade. Adaptation is an art I am slowly developing in order to express my aesthetics and personality in the time in which I live and the way I have to spend that time. It is a very personal process and ever changing. But one does uncover several cores to these things so that, even though the particulars on a given day may change, the long term satisfiers bring stability.

Thank you for this honest video.

- Imogen Lamport says:
  
  April 21, 2025 at 6:03 pm
  
  Thanks for sharing your thoughts Kathryn! So many of us have clothes in our wardrobe for some sort of imagined ideal fantasy lifestyle that isn’t, sadly, in line with what our actual lifestyle needs!