When he started writing about his Elves (1917-ish) she would have been young, but in any case I think he would have based his ideal on recollections of his wife when she was young.

And the second thing is, I'm sure he didn't base the entire elf race around her looks. Although they probably all had characteristics...there had to be a defining feature so that the Wood elves, Noldar High Elves and Sindarian High elves could be told apart. Otherwise they would all look like his wife and no one would be able to tell which race they were without asking.

If you come across a "generic" elf, or a man with elven ancestry, in Tolkien's books his appearance is generally dark haired with grey eyes (eg Aragorn, Elladan, Elrohir, Imrahil). The Sindar and Noldor were of similar appearance, the Sindar being a sub-group of the Teleri, from what we can glean from Tolkien's writings. The primary difference was one of language. Also High Elves who had lived in the Undying Lands had an aura about them (eg Glorfindel and Galadriel) which was perceptible to other elves - though this wasn't a racial characteristic, Thingol, who was king of the Sindar, would have had it (he had lived in Valinor).

Though the Noldor and Sindar were largely characterised as dark haired and grey eyed, Tolkien introduced some slight variations over time - some of the Sindarin nobility had a tendency to silver hair (as a result of ageing???), Maeglin as I said earlier had dark eyes, and the Noldorin family of Feanor had a tendency to red-ish hair (chestnut rather than carrot).

So in order to separate them wouldn't they have to have a defining characteristic such as different shades of hair color, eye color, and height? And if that would be correct, perhaps was Glorfindel or maybe Galadriel made exactly like his wife, and although other elves may look the same or have some of the same characteristics as Edith, perhaps they, maybe even Legolas had lighter hair so you could tell him apart from the character Glorfindel? He's a very intellegent man from what I rea, Tolkein is. I'm sure he knows that he can mold the elves into a vision of his beloved wife, but that the different races and classes of elves can't all look identical.

There is no great need for the various branches of the elves to be characterised by colouration differences (other than the specifically stated Vanyar blondism). Differences were readily perceivable to the elves themselves, and consisted in the most part in variations in their linguistic, cultural and innate moral/creative qualities.

The background writers for RPG and allied products like to codify these sort of variations in their background descriptions, where they find none or only subtle differences they frankly make them up. Do not believe them ;)

: But as I am pretty new and only have the movie and what I have read so far to go on... I still can't come to a firm conclusion on that.