With the cooler weather really taking hold I’ve been busy doing shopping trips with my clients over the past few weeks. I absolutely love taking my clients shopping (or shopping for my super-busy ones), as it’s where all the elements of the backstory meet and make sense. It’s taking the colours that work, the styles that suit and the lifestyle needs of my clients and marrying these with the garments I’ve selected for them.
I absolutely love every single shopping trip and believe there’s one key element that makes shopping with a stylist so much better than shopping on your own, and that is quite simply, working to an outcome.
“I’m going to my son’s engagement party and my ex-husband and his new wife will be there – I want to look gorgeous.”
“I’ve risen through the ranks considerably in my workplace and I don’t think my current wardrobe reflects my new status.”
“I just want to take the guesswork out of what to wear each morning. I don’t have time to think about it.”
“I feel like I’m looking old – and I don’t want to look old!”
Although each of these true, direct from my client statements are different, they each have expressed a desired outcome which gives us a clear vision of what we’d like to achieve together. Each of those starting points have directly led to a successful end point. When you work with a stylist it forces you to focus on what you really want rather than take a scattered, ’just buying new clothes’ approach.
I was listening to a great podcast the other day and heard about a key difference between people who are wealthy and people who are not; that wealthy people look at what something is worth and those that don’t look at what it costs. The podcast author was saying that when money was tight he was always looking at the price tag, while now he is wealthy he evaluates everything on what it is worth to him. It’s much the same with my client shopping trips, when my clients have expressed their desired outcome, the prices on the garments are only a part of the decision (and yes, I believe in sticking to allocated budgets), as the focus on their relevance to the outcome is what is most important.
