u/DefaultCalibration

The system is not about literal shapes. It's not about roundness – it's about concentricity. It's not about straightness – it's about vertical continuity. If you evoke outwardness, you just do, no matter what gender you will be presenting yourself as.

Fashion sense itself indeed is constantly being recultivated by what happens in our society, but the intuition behind the Kibbe system is not subject to it.

I'm not saying that the system is objective and that it exists outside of our shared subconscious… I'm just saying that the intuition behind it seems to be cultivated in a very intricate way and that it might be intertwined with many things that don't change easily because they're essential to the way we think even outside of fashion/art.

By the way, I've noticed that many people in this sub don't treat the long vertical like a distinguishable feature. They're only willing to talk about it through the automatic vertical, which is however only an indicator, not a feature itself…

EDIT:

It is indeed unlikely for a male body to be able to create a double curve - but this in fact makes the double curve a mere indicator. Its reliability could be 100% in women and it would still be just an indicator (cause it doesn't carry the essence of the ID).

Now to the automatic vertical. Have you ever asked youself what this "automatic vertical" thing actually is and how it works? There seem to be different limits to how big certain male and female bones can be (I don't know where these limits lie and what accounts for them, but they do seem to exist). There are many different configurations that can make one ID and in many cases it seems that the size of some bones can make up for the size of different bones (and for the overall height of the individual), BUT: since there are different limits to different bones (and since the limits vary for males and females) there seems to be only so much height in females and only so much height in males that can be made up for by something else. To make it short: the automatic vertical is also only an indicator (no matter how reliable for each respective sex).

How many times have we heard that someone is only conventionally curvy, but not curve dominant? Doesn't that basically mean that a very curvy body can still "evoke vertical continuity"?

How many times have we heard that weight change doesn't affect one's ID? Hormone therapy might activate some new genes, but in effect we're still mostly talking about fat, muscles, skin, and bone density. I know there might be some greater structural changes too, but firstly, I don't think they change your ID, and secondly, most people here seem to think that mere social transitioning changes one's ID – and that's what I wanted to discuss primarily.

The way I think of the system, it's not necessarily about the shapes and features that can be easily outlined – it's about all the types of motions our bodies and faces might be implying. The sequence of IDs is a continuous chain of one type of motion transitioning into another.

(The illustrations of individual faces are from a site called OURFASHIONGARDEN. All credits to them.)

The order is as follows:

SG implies compression, the body can be divided into concentrically compressed articles;

SN fights with compression, indiviual articles are trying to fuse together, but the body is still compressed as a whole;

R breaks free, it implies expansion (it needs frills and ruffles);

SC starts focusing the outward forces into one direction;

SD is almost focused into verticality, but the remaining "outwardness" retains mass at certain places (= the implied flow creates mighty meanders and reaches the ground in full strength);

TR has lost all sense of outwardness, the flow is emptying itself (= the meanders are getting smaller and the flow can't even reach the ground anymore, it's too delicate);

DC reframes the straightening process as empowering, it feels like solidification;

D is perfectly straight by now, but just not solid yet (stiff fabrics are okay, but they should hang down from the shoulders);

FG gets full-on solid and breaks into fragments (the horizontal cracks start hinting a sense of width);

and in FN, the width is explicit – the advancing fragmentation has made the body so articulate that it can even handle unshapely oversized clothes.

Going all the way from SG to FN is like going from micro to macro. It's a full circle, but not really, if you know what I mean… An upward spiral (a single-coil spring).

It's important to understand that I'm only talking about the continuity of the SENSE that we make (or should make) of individual IDs – I'm not implying any real chronological development! To connect it all in any other way, so that it doesn't feel like an accidental sequence of shapes, would mean to compromise on how tight one's grasp is on individual IDs.

People often mistake soft naturals for romantics. They say that some FGs are influenced by dramatics and some by flamboyant naturals. This might be the reason – they lie next to each other.

I'm not sure what David Kibbe's opinion is, but it caught my attention that he assigned the same attribute (flamboyant) to gamines and naturals. Flamboyant naturals might have a long vertical, but it is manifested differently in them than in dramatics. They do look like they're somewhat bound to the ground, but the vertical fluidity is not there. They're quite static, actually, just like the gamines, and thus just as easily accessorizable (except only the accessories need to be bigger).

By the way, you may have noticed that the four main principles resemble the four natural elements:

compression represents the air – its dimensionless particles;

expansion represents fire – a spontaneous spark coming out of nowhere creating a sense of spatiality;

continuity represents water – the intuition diverting fire's energy in search of meaning;

and fragmentation represents the earth – the sense of congestion emerging as all the connections fill up the space.

I don't think transitioning changes your ID