Personal shopper is also one of the young fashion professions. Compared to an image consultant and a personal stylist, this profession is more practical. After all, it is not enough for a client to find just a photo of images and things that suit him: he needs to find specific things that can be purchased here and now.
There is no profession just a “shopper”, there is only a “personal shopper”. This means that a personal shopper deals specifically with you and your companion or companion, and not with a group of tourists that he brings to a warehouse, factory or outlet.
As in all creative professions, an innate sense of taste and good imagination, as well as professional education and training, are important for the personal shopper.
After all, it is not enough to turn a simple passion for fashion and shopping into a profession. The personal shopper also needs other qualities: great patience and diplomacy, the ability to listen to people, analyze and understand. For example, it is important to prioritize customer needs while avoiding imposing personal taste and pressure when shopping.
The key to successful shopping with a personal shopper is that only the necessary things will be bought, which the client will be happy to wear, and not store in the closet. A personal shopper needs to understand what the client is ready for, and what is too bold for him, in what clothes he will be comfortable, what he will wear with pleasure. Skills like this come with experience.
A good personal shopper knows how to choose the best items for every budget. And for this you need to understand the quality of goods, that is, not only in fashion, but also in commodity science, art and design. And also – be able to plan.
Good shopping requires good preparation. The personal shopper does not take the customer to random or to all successive stores. A good shopper does pre-shopping in which he must identify the most suitable shops to shop in order to optimize time and energy.
A personal shopper in a foreign city is also the best shopping guide. Nowadays, modern trendy concept stores, vintage and grocery stores, artisan workshops are part of the modern culture of any city.
Personal shopper – where do they teach in Italy?
In Italy it is not necessary to have a license from an educational institution in order to organize personal shopper courses. This is one of the newfangled professions, and it is not even included in the register of professions of the tax service, and even more so it is not certified. Personal shopper courses are rather short and in Italy they are more often taught in workshop format by experienced personal shoppers and personal stylists.
Nevertheless, the Milan Marangoni Institute has a Fashion shopping course. In my experience, Italian teachers, with little experience of working with Russian clients, do not quite understand all our specifics, mentality and needs. But on the other hand, they have an excellent command of the methodology for analyzing fashion trends and assortment of stores.
An experience
In creative professions, which, for example, include stylists, vast experience is far from always an indicator that a specialist is better than others and that the result will please you. I often see image makers and image consultants with over 10 years of experience stuck in the past. As they learned the postulates from the 90s and 2000s in the courses, they continue to practice them. And people who have been styling for only a couple of years still keep up with fashion and do an amazing job.
Portfolio
First, it takes time and money to create a portfolio and update it. The constantly practicing shoppers and image consultants have very little time to organize a photo shoot. Another thing is fashion stylists, whose main job is fashion shooting. But novice personal stylists and image makers almost always have a portfolio, who have just finished their courses, but have hardly practiced yet.
Do you think that the portfolio of a stylist or image maker really represents real clients and the things they have purchased? Things are usually rented in a store (this is a common practice for photography), and, as a rule, they worked with clients for free, or (for beautiful photos) they are completely novice models. And the work of a hair or make up-artist and a photographer is also free, because it goes to them in the portfolio.
So how to choose a shopper or a stylist without making a mistake?
As in many other professions, in the work of a stylist, shopper, image consultant, a personal view of things and a competent approach to work are important. It is not so important what, for example, color typing methods the stylist uses, but how he uses them. Does he have a categorical approach – should the client unquestioningly obey his recommendations, or does the stylist primarily focus on the tastes and self-awareness of the client, and not fashion trends.
So, as corny as it may seem, your aesthetic tastes should be similar. After all, taste is a very subjective thing. A stylist can be at the forefront of fashion, but if your tastes don’t match, he won’t find the perfect wardrobe for you.
It is also important, paradoxically, that the stylist has his own view of things, and not blindly following the replicated recommendations of the “guru”, fashion magazines and cheat sheets from the courses of image makers. Do you need an individual approach, and not a hackneyed list of 10-25 things that are necessary in any woman’s wardrobe?
Clothing is a rather intimate thing. We wear it every day. Sometimes our success and our well-being depend on it. Therefore, working with your clothes and style cannot be trusted to someone you do not trust.
