Style Personalities and Trend Adoption
Where are you on the timeline of style? In episode 23 of the Signature Style Systems podcast I break down how style personalities, the curve of trend adoption, and your Myers-Briggs type are all related.
The style personalities adopt new styles in a predictable order. In this episode, I’ll share that order and explain how it relates to my style personality quiz, which you can take here.
The following is adapted from a post on betweenmypeers.com: (January 29, 2006)Â . I’ve updated the style types to reflect the names in my style personality quiz.
What’s your position on the style train? A few years ago I had a lovely lady, whom I always thought of as well-dressed, tell me that she considered herself the caboose. Adjusting to new styles just takes her longer.
The Engine, Edgy, is not usually in style, only because she (or he) is way out ahead of it. Dramatic is next, although she will compromise on currentness in order to look great. Contemporary won’t. Traditional follows, the Caboose, and Romantic is tossing flower petals off the rear platform, while waving her hanky.
What about Natural, you ask? Not even on the train. This person is on a horse galloping alongside. (Whether just for fun or because she missed the train, I can’t say.)
Timelines and Perceiving Functions
What it relates to: the perceiving cognitive functions.
Perceiving basically means taking in new information. Learning. People do that through one of two channels: sensing and intuition. (Actually everyone uses both and ideally together, but you will enjoy one more than the other.) That is the S or N in your Myers-Briggs four letter code. (N for intuition, because I is already taken by introversion.
What most people miss, if they only focus on the dichotomies, introversion vs extraversion, sensing vs intuitive, etc, is that there are actually two different types of each of the judging and perceiving functions and they work differently.
The perceiving functions connect to the element in my style personality quiz that has to do with timelines and how people go about adopting trends.
Introverted sensing – Si: traditional/nostalgic
Extraverted sensing – Se: current/contemporary
Introverted intuition – Ni: futuristic/imaginative
Extraverted intuition – Ne: atemporal, it can be all over the place and take in alot of ideas, These are people who can even wear looks that have nothing to do with their ethnic heritage and look normal in them.
Style Personalities and How to Discover Your Type
Two more things I want to say about the style personalities:
- About the perceiving functions. Everyone uses two, one introverted and one extraverted, one sensing and one intuition. Did one or two of the styles resonate with you when I went through them?
- People close to you can have an influence on how you like to show up: your mom, your husband, your community. The personality type is just one node in the system.
Here’s what’s new: I am now offering conversational personality profiling. Learn more or purchase here: Personality Profile & Palette. As with everything I do, it is a collaborative experience of self-discovery. Because the world needs to know who you are!
