How To Find A Good Fashion Stylist
The Prelude
Hiring a fashion stylist is something that a lot of people are itching to do now days (and I’m not just talking about celebrities). Because of this excitement, they end up rushing into the process and hiring people blindly. This leaves them feeling scammed, poorly dressed, and unsatisfied. Hiring a fashion stylist isn’t physics but you definitely need to prepare before hand if you want to work with someone that’s talented, professional, and addresses all of your needs. Below I walk you through how to find what could potentially be your lifelong friend and the person behind some of your most creative looks. By the end of this article you should have all the knowledge and tools you need to make an informed hiring decision. Let’s get started!
How To Find A Good Fashion Stylist
Understand why you want to work with a stylist in the first place. Everyone’s reasoning for working with a stylist is different. Your reason may be because you want to experience what it’s like to work with one or it could be that you are looking for change. There are countless reasons one might turn to a stylist, but the key is to narrow it down to one or two reasons before you begin your search. Keeping one or two reasons at the forefront of your mind will help keep you grounded when you start to look at pricing and services.
Assess your lifestyle, finances, wants, and needs. Assessing your lifestyle, finances, wants, and needs are extremely important before you book your first style consultation. You want to be able to maximize the time you have with your stylist as best as possible — especially if its a paid consultation. The best way to do that is by knowing what you can and cannot afford, how much time you can invest, and what you really want and need from the stylist. This will set the tone and create boundaries for the business relationship, ensure that you are satisfied and getting the most out of your service, and it’s also a way to confirm that you’ve selected a good match. Once you have assessed and identified your lifestyle, finances, wants, and needs I highly recommend writing them down so you can refer back to them throughout the consultation.
Find a stylist that you instantly connect with. Now that you have identified your why and have assessed the important things, it’s time to look at some candidates! When choosing a fashion stylist, handle the process like you would if you were choosing a husband (or a wife for the guys).
You want to look for someone who is trustworthy, reliable, credible, and fits seamlessly into your already established lifestyle. Similar to dating, you will be able to feel when you’ve found the right person to handle your image.
This step can be a bit tricky to figure out if you haven’t met or spoken in person. However, there is one way to find out if there’s a spark even if you haven’t formally met. What is it you ask? It’s by visiting their social media profile. Doing this will give you a feel for how they style and what their personality is like. If it aligns with your personality or sense of style then there’s your first green light. If it doesn’t align with your personality or style, but you still like that person, then keep them in mind as you continue to look through other stylist’s profiles.
Narrow down your list and choose your ideal stylist. At this point you’ve probably went through a good amount of profiles. Hopefully as you were conducting your search you were writing down the names or handles of these stylist so you can refer back to them at a later time. Well….now is the time to refer back to them.
What you will want to do is choose your top four candidates. Next, you will want to conduct a quick background check to see if they are legitimate. Checking for things such as reviews, analyzing the presentation of their website, scrolling through social media comments, and checking to see if they have more than one active contact method is super important! There are a lot of scammer “fashion stylist” out there (see my blog post How To Identify A Counterfeit Fashion Stylist to learn more about how to identify red flags and how to prevent yourself from being scammed) and the last thing you want to do is lose your hard earned money.
As an extra layer of protection, make sure run a google search on them to see if they have had any issues with the BBB and to see if there are any bad reviews that you may have missed. If nothing comes up then I recommend proceeding with this candidate. On the other hand, if one or more red flags pop up, then I highly suggest that you refrain from working with them — they are most likely a scammer or they lack good business etiquette.
Book your consultation and pay close attention to how you feel during the process. Okay so you’ve narrowed down your list, did a quick background check on each of the candidates, and now you’re ready to schedule some consultations.
When scheduling and attending your consultation(s) I want you to pay close attention to how you feel and take everything in. I want you to take in this persons website (Does it make you feel good as a client, is it easy to use, does it cater to your needs?), the booking process (Is it simple or is it complicated?), the style consultation (Does the stylist live up to your expectations? Are they addressing your needs? Is there chemistry?).
If you answered positively to all or majority of these questions then congratulations you have found your new stylist! You can either talk about the next steps with them or you can hold out and check out the other candidates on your list. If you didn’t answer positively to these questions, then cross that stylist out and continue trying out the other professionals on your list.
What if I told you that a good fashion stylist was right here all along?
I’m not one to toot my own horn, but I’ve helped plenty of clients build a look and wardrobe that they love. So it goes without saying that I would love to assist you in building a look and wardrobe that you will love as well. If you feel like we would be an ideal match then let’s make things official by scheduling a style consultation. During this consultation we can set aside an hour to get to know each other better, create a customized style plan that aligns with your goals, and address all the questions and concerns you have about the styling process. I look forward to meeting you!