Face shape, measured.

One ratio, three families

When you choose a photo, a face landmark model runs in your browser and finds the outline of your face: the top of the forehead, the chin, the cheekbones, the jaw. The read divides the length of the face, forehead to chin, by its width at the cheekbones. A face as wide as it is long scores 1; a face half again as long as it is wide scores 1.5. That one number places you in a family:

Family	Length over cheekbone width	What the number says
Soft square	under 1.2	Width and length close to equal: the jaw and the brow carry similar weight.
Balanced oval	1.2 to 1.42	Noticeably longer than wide, with neither dimension dominating.
Oblong oval	above 1.42	Length clearly leads: the face reads long before it reads anything else.

Why three families, not seven

The seven-shape systems (oval, round, square, heart, diamond, oblong, triangle) need the width of the forehead, the cheekbones and the jaw measured separately. The browser check does measure them now, and uses one of them: a jaw nearly as wide as the cheekbones reads as a soft square whatever the length says. But the lines between a heart, a diamond and a triangle are a matter of a few hundredths, and setting them honestly needs a large set of measured faces that we do not keep (photos are deleted after 14 days). Three families is what the numbers support without guessing.

The families are also what clothes respond to. Whether a collar should be wide or narrow, whether a lapel should curve or cut, comes down to length against width far more than to the exact line of a jaw.

What each family changes

These are the lines the free result prints for each family, word for word, with the formula it hands you to start dressing to.

What the free read gives you, and what the system adds

Free, on screen in about a minute: your face shape family with its formula, your colour direction, and the first four shades of your palette. No account and no card.

Your Style System, $9 once: the fit, hair and eyewear guidance that builds on the family, all twelve shades shown against your own photo, and a capsule of twelve pieces and four accessories with up to ten shops that stock each one. Yours as a page and a PDF, with no subscription. The free read is complete on its own; the system is there if you want it.

Take a photo the ratio works from

• Head level, facing the camera. Any tilt, up or down, foreshortens the face and moves the ratio toward square. Level is the only honest angle.
• Arm's length or further. A phone held close stretches the middle of the face; the ratio is truest from a step back.
• Hair off the face where you can. The box follows the face, but a heavy fringe or hair across the cheeks can move its edges.
• One face, no filter. Filters reshape exactly the thing being measured.

Questions people ask

Is this AI?

The face check is a small on-device detection model that finds a face and draws its box; it runs in your browser and the photo does not leave it for this step. No language model is involved in the free read. The paid system uses one to write the brief from these measurements.

What if I sit near a cut?

Then two families are both close to true, and the formula for either will serve. The free read reports a family, not how close to the line you sit. If your ratio is within a few hundredths of 1.2 or 1.42, read the family on both sides of the line and keep what works in the mirror.

Where do the cuts come from?

1.2 and 1.42 are the thresholds in the code that writes your result, printed here from that same code, so this page and your result cannot disagree.

What happens to my photo?

The face check runs in your browser. When you continue, the photo is uploaded so your result can be built, and it is deleted after 14 days unless you unlock the full system, which keeps it 120 days for a re-style. It is never used to train anything. Details are in the privacy policy.

Read next: Colour analysis, measured, the other half of the same free read. Then What colours suit you, the shades each direction starts with.