Trends come and go, but personal style is an ever-evolving relationship you have with yourself and your wardrobe. Sometimes that relationship blossoms naturally, but for others, it can take an outside perspective to move things in the right direction. In many cases, a personal stylist provides that nudge.
If you have a reputation among your friends as a sartorial cupid, if you see the world through the lens of color theory, if the language of structure and drape is music to your ears, you may have a future in the personal styling industry. Here’s how to become a personal stylist.
What does a personal stylist do?
A personal stylist helps people discover and express their personality through clothing. A stylist can support their clients for a specific occasion or event, like a wedding or a transition into a new job, or they might provide guidance in a more general sense, like helping clients shop more sustainably. You might focus on a niche style, like unisex dressing, but you’ll need to understand what looks good on various body types in order to be successful, regardless of the aesthetic.
Some of the professional and interpersonal skills personal styling requires include:
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Knowledge of fashion trends, influences, and styling best practices
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Ability to work with a diverse range of body types and preferences
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Empathetic communication and deep listening
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Working within a budget
Mastery of these skills is key to making clients feel comfortable and confident about trying new things. Fashion and style mean different things to different people, and your first meetings with a client may entail some vulnerability.
Personal stylist vs. personal shopper
The difference between a personal stylist and a personal shopper is the discovery process. A stylist works with a client to help them understand what they’re looking for and how to create looks with what they have. A personal shopper works within existing preferences or parameters, doing the legwork to find requested items and sometimes helping to pair them together.
3 ways to work as a personal stylist
There are a few different professional avenues you might consider when starting a business as a personal stylist:
Working for yourself
While working as a self-employed stylist requires a little more emphasis on marketing your skills and unique outlook to cultivate a customer base, it also means more flexibility to work with clients you’re passionate about helping. You’ll be able to set your own rates and schedule, and you’ll have the opportunity to build a multifaceted business that could include courses, exclusive content, or even your own product lines that tie into your personal brand as a stylist.
On the flipside, you’ll be solely responsible for building your client base. You might need to deploy a digital marketing strategy along with an outbound outreach strategy to build awareness of your services and drum up demand.
Working at an agency
If the structure of an established consulting practice appeals to you, you may look for agencies built around personal style. Some agencies, like editorially forward The Only Agency, combine personal stylist services with styling, hair, and makeup, and creative direction services for photo shoots, production, and more. Others, like Glamhive or Wishi, help pair stylists with clients for a membership fee or percentage of your rate.
There are many benefits of working for an agency: opportunities to learn and compare notes with colleagues, more predictable income, and a collaborative approach to business development that places less pressure on your own personal marketing strategy. A strong portfolio and some previous experience, either through apprenticeships, courses, or freelance jobs, can be beneficial when interviewing with agencies; they’ll need ways to decide if you’ll be a good fit for the overall approach and balance of the team.
Working for a store
Many larger retailers, like Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, make personal stylists (and personal shoppers) available to customers for free. While previous experience as a stylist is not always required to secure one of these positions, a demonstrated love and understanding of fashion paired with a sense of salesmanship is, since stylists sell merchandise directly to customers and often make a commission on what they sell.
These positions are limited to in-store items, which can either be a fun challenge or an unwelcome constraint depending on your outlook, but you’ll receive a steady income without needing to rely on your own marketing to generate business.
How to become a personal stylist
- Find your niche
- Set business goals
- Make a business plan
- Build a portfolio
- Establish your online presence
- Build your clientele
- Nurture industry connections
Becoming a successful, self-employed personal stylist is part instinct and part strategy: Knowing how you fit into the market and what you want to accomplish goes hand-in-hand with an innate (and easily communicated) sense of style. Here’s how to start your own personal styling business.
1. Find your niche
You don’t have to be everything to everyone in order to be a successful personal stylist. It can be more useful, especially if you’re just starting out, to get specific about your passion or expertise and explore certain niches—and the audiences that come with them. Spend some time identifying your unique value proposition as a stylist: Are you a thrift whisperer? Inspired by high-fashion styling? Corporate power dresser or gender fluid champion? Find what you do best, and seek to own that space.
2. Set business goals
You may have an internal sense of your business goals, but it can be helpful to get them down on paper to more clearly build out your brand. These can be monetary, or more philosophical, such as the type of client base you want to build or the reputation you want to cultivate. You can also set intentions for the relationships you hope to build, whether with labels, shops, or fashion media.
Whatever your vision, it’s important to have some idea of where you’d like to end up, so you can outline actionable steps to get there. Consider using a SMART framework to create specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals to delineate the clients, connections, and job opportunities you seek.
3. Make a business plan
Once you have a sense of your business goals, use them as the foundation to your business plan, a strategic document that captures how you intend to achieve your goals and the time frame you anticipate it taking. You can use your business plan to direct your path, and to present to potential funders or other key stakeholders.
Your business plan should include aspects like market analysis, financial projections, and organizational structure—even if that structure is just yourself and the occasional legal or financial consultant. Do you see your service as an on-call type of relationship with a recurring fee? Or a masterclass-style consult oriented around building capsule wardrobes?
Free: Business Plan Template
Business planning is often used to secure funding, but plenty of business owners find writing a plan valuable, even if they never work with an investor. That’s why we put together a free business plan template to help you get started.
4. Build a portfolio
A personal portfolio, either as a tangible lookbook or digital file (or both) that you can share with prospective clients, is an important asset for independent entrepreneurs and creatives. Done well, it captures where you’ve been and where you’re hoping to go, through a compilation of your past work and influences. It should give a prospective client a sense of what they’d achieve, sartorially speaking, if they work with you.
Aim to express your perspective, taste, and style in one place. If you don’t have high-quality photographs at the start, show what you would do with certain fabric swatches or patterns, incorporate sketches (if they’re a strong suit of yours), or include inspirational touch points from designer collections or cultural iconography. Focus on expressing your approach to style as visually as you can and highlight your complementary strengths in an About section.
If you have a few clients under your belt, ask for testimonials that you can include. If you don’t, see if any friends or family members will allow you to style and photograph them, then pair the images with context and short explanations of your client’s needs and your solutions. You can also write up mock case studies to show how you’d interpret client requests and the options you’d suggest—anything to give potential clients or employers an understanding of your process.
5. Establish your online presence
As an independent stylist, you are your best marketing strategy, and your online presence should feature, at the minimum, two branches: your website and your social media pages.
Website
Your website is where your clients can learn about you and your services, inquire about or book appointments, and make payments. Some stylists prefer to handle scheduling over email, while others might use a scheduling tool such as Bookeasy and Meety to add appointment-booking functionality into their site. As your career evolves, you might also sell downloadable content or classes on your site using an ecommerce platform like Shopify.
Social media
Your social media pages can be valuable spaces to build credibility and gain a following. Visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok are particularly useful for showcasing your style, personality, and work with your clients (if they consent). You can also use these forums to weigh in on trends, give advice, and engage in conversation with prospective clients. The #GRWM (get ready with me) format is ideal for this kind of personal brand building, but you might also incorporate vlog-style narration over day-in-the-life footage while you peruse thrift store racks or find inspiration in streetwear.
Your broader marketing strategy might also include additional components like search engine optimization (SEO) to help your website rank for relevant Google searches or developing an email newsletter. Veteran style consultant Camilla Nazeri’s Substack Ask a Stylist, for example, features advice for those hoping to revamp their wardrobes or solve specific styling challenges alongside insights and musings on seasonal trends.
6. Build your clientele
Building a quality client base requires a multi-pronged approach. Word-of-mouth marketing, advertising in local boutiques or publications, and cultivating an online audience will help get you in front of your target audience. If you have business cards, see if your favorite local spots would agree to leaving a stack by the register. Satisfied former clients may make the best referrals, but most people in your network likely know someone who’d be interested in your services, so don’t be shy about asking for their help.
If you’re struggling to find a steady stream of initial clients, you might consider a discounted rate for the first few clients, or work for trade if there’s potential for exposure and access to a wider audience as a result.
7. Nurture industry relationships
Concurrent with growing your client base and honing your marketing strategy, it’s important to continue nurturing relationships on the non-client side of your business as well. That might mean making connections with fellow business owners by buying from local boutique owners or clothing designers and engaging with them in person and online. Seek out industry events like conferences, trade shows, or design classes to support and broaden your personal styling business.
Keep tabs on events associated with Fashion Weeks near you, follow fellow stylists on social media, and check in frequently on sites like Eventbrite for local meet-ups or seminars.
How to become a personal stylist FAQ
Do you need qualifications to be a personal stylist?
No, you do not need specific qualifications to become a personal stylist, though having a fashion degree can boost your profile. What you do need is knowledge of the fashion business, tailoring techniques, and color theory, alongside strong communication and organizational skills.
What degree do you need to be a personal stylist?
While you do not need professional qualifications to become a personal stylist, a degree in fashion design or completing a personal styling course may be helpful and provide you with industry connections early on.
How much can you make being a personal stylist?
How much you’ll make as a personal stylist depends on the clients you’re serving, where you live, and the scope of your services. You can charge an hourly rate, a per-assignment fee (say for finding clothes for a wedding party), or even charge tuition for a series of classes. Recent estimates suggest a starting salary of around $50,000 a year.
How do I start my career as a stylist?
Start your stylist career by styling yourself, your friends, or your family and sharing the results. The easiest way to do this is through social media and/or an online portfolio, where you can showcase your unique approach—and client satisfaction.
How can I find clients as a personal stylist?
Word-of-mouth referrals are one of the best ways to build a client base. You can also reach out to boutiques and shops that you admire to see if they’d feature your services as a pop-up event, or rent space at a maker’s market offering style consultations. The more people you can interact with, the better.
