How this works — and where it comes from

The Kibbe system

David Kibbe's work (Metamorphosis, 1987; The Power of Style, 2025) describes how the balance of yin and yang in a person's lines — length, frame, flesh, features — suggests clothing that sits in harmony with them. We credit his system as the conceptual origin of our typing. Every description we use is an original paraphrase written for this project; nothing is reproduced from his books or from fan wikis.

What we add

The postpartum phases and functional constraints in our guidance are this project's own extension. They are not part of Kibbe's system, and we don't claim his endorsement of them.

An honest limitation

Kibbe himself is skeptical that people can type themselves accurately — and we take that seriously. That's why any result here is a starting hypothesis, stated with ordinal confidence, and why you can override it everywhere it appears. Line is a lens, not a law: whenever comfort or function disagrees with a line recommendation, function wins.

What we never do

No medical claims, no timelines for how a body "should" change, no language that treats a postpartum body as a problem. Our copy is checked — mechanically, on every change — against a list of framings we refuse.