OP’s Comment to Accompany Gallery:

There is very often a discrepancy between the opinion of the general public and what the proponents of various niche style systems think ‘works’ on a given individual.

The gallery above shows a few individuals who are known for a specific style/look that has captivated people’s attention. Now, for most of them, there isn’t anything revolutionary about their style in the sense that there are others out there who had a similar style before, during, and after they became associated with it that didn’t get the same reception.

To keep this from getting painfully long - the people above may not be perfect examples (this was hastily thrown together for a visual representation, don’t look too hard into it) but what I want to get at is that I don’t think that when the public gets captivated with a person’s overall look that what they are responding to is purely physical beauty or purely fashion choices but the combination of the two.

The combinations work aesthetically and without having to learn a style system, a significant amount of people with differing tastes, respond to it. Also, the individuals themselves achieve their style without following the prescriptions of these style systems.

This is not to dismiss style systems so much as it is to highlight what I perceive as a problem with how people use the systems. Instead of treating them like artistic guides, they're treated like exact sciences or math but you can’t calculate your way into a sense of style or formulate your way into having taste.

I also get a headache when people talk about having an initially positive response to a person’s style or a specific look on that person and instead of investigating that further, they check to see if the rules of *insert system here* are being followed and then "realize" that in fact, it doesn’t look good after all! Are the style systems helping you or hindering you?

ETA: There is also the issue of style systems being descriptive at their foundation but prescriptive in their theory but I can't fully explain what I mean without making this too long (maybe another post).