For as little as $50 an hour, regular people who aren't celebrities can hire stylists to clean out their closets, take them shopping, and make sure they wear Bad Outfits a lot less often.
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Image by John Gara/Buzzfeed
A few minutes before 6 on a recent Thursday evening, I open my Manhattan apartment door for a tall, thin, pretty woman with long blonde hair in a perfectly tousled side braid. She's wearing a gray maxi dress, flat black sandals, a black waist-belt, oversized black blazer, and big black floppy hat — and looks like she just walked off the Saint Laurent runway in Paris. (Or Pinterest.) Black floppy hats often victimize regular people, but this woman is clearly one of those not-average, blessed individuals with a sense of style so innate she could wear anything — gorilla arms, a Nicole Richie headband, a fedora — and make it look not just good, but necessary. She clearly knows how to dress herself — and I hope she can do the same for me. This is Natalie Decleve, my new stylist, who's going to try to turn me into someone who dresses with similar ease and considered sense of fashion.
Stylists are typically hired by celebrities to make them look their best on red carpets or at press junkets, but before you start thinking that I a) need to look fancy every day or b) have gobs of money to spend, let me disabuse you of both notions. I wanted to know if the services of a stylist could have value for normal people like me.
I found Natalie through a company called Style For Hire. Launched in 2009, it's backed by What Not to Wear's Stacy London, and acts as an agency for a roster of around 140 stylists ranging from around $50 to $300 an hour to dress not celebrities, but normal people. Such services are only proliferating: In 2013, the website Keaton Row will connect women with stylists virtually around the country. These companies show that styling is no longer a behind-the-scenes profession. Fashion-inclined women are hyper-aware of it, thanks to the work of women like London and Rachel Zoe — who are not just stylists, but also celebrities in their own right, with their own TV shows, product lines, and (perhaps less fortunately) catch phrases. The more consumers are attuned to such a service, the more likely that service could become as necessary for many as, say, a twice-yearly facial.
When Natalie breezes in, she plops her hat and bag on my couch. Things get a little weird after the exchange of pleasantries, since styling is frankly a more intimate process than you might imagine: As soon as you meet this person you don't know, you bring them into your bedroom and let them have at everything in your closet. They might sit on your bed. Who sits on your bed? Even your friends don't come over and sit on your bed. But whatever, you think. Clothes play awaits! Like a blind date slumber party for grown women.
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Before the closet gutting, she has questions. Most important, she wants to know if I have "separate workwear."
I don't. My workplace leaves me free from the sartorial confines of a formal — or even businesss casual — dress code. BuzzFeed celebrates animal tees. But I still like to look non-slovenly day-to-day, and don't want to go into the office dressed like I took a wrong turn on the way to Coachella.
"And how would you describe your body type?" she continues.
Another thing I don't really do with friends is discuss my "body type," and here is a stranger with a lovely side braid sitting on my bed wanting to know.
"Well, I'm tall..." I begin, unsure of the right answer here, because I hate the idea of dressing just so that one looks thin, and would never deprive myself a good muumuu to that end.
"More like, do you feel like you're bigger on the top, the bottom?" she presses.
"I'm not busty. I have hips," I say.
"What are your favorite parts of your body?"
I think for a minute and say I like my waist.
"I ask because when you're dressing, I want to know what parts of your body you want to highlight," she explains.
We then go over my style icons — Carine Roitfeld (whose style Natalie boiled down to: "easy... lots of dark eyeliner and bitch heels") and Rooney Mara — and favorite labels: Helmut Lang, Rick Owens, Haider Ackermann, Diane Von Furstenberg.
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