Career Path- Freelance Fashion Stylist

“Beneath the froth, in a great stylist, is a deep pool of memory and longing. It’s down there that the extraordinary images swim from”- Anna Wintour

While most girls aspire to the coveted role of Fashion Director for a major fashion magazine (working with celebrities, traveling to all fashion shows, and standing in as the face of the magazine) it is the Fashion Stylist that appeals most to me. The Fashion Stylist seems to be the guts of the magazine, while the Fashion Market Director gets the public glory. I would much rather be a little more private with my publicity and work freelance for different publications, designers, musical artists, etc. More importantly though, it is the Fashion Stylist’s every day tasks that appeal most to me; working with photographers, contributing to the themes of photographs, managing the budgets of a shoot, traveling to different places for photo shoots, and as a freelance stylist I would be able to work on my own schedule a little more, having longer days at times, but not always having to be at the same place at the same time everyday.
As a sales manager and a visual arts major, I am capable of either position, however, it is the artistic quality of the stylist that is most intriguing. A stylist tells a story with images. I have lots of experience with this. I have taken several classes on modern art and have worked in several mediums including painting, photography, photography enhancement, video, drawing, sculpture, and others to create an idea through an image or object. I even studied dance, ballet, modern, and jazz and can wrap my mind around the complex idea of choreographing a person to tell a story. I performed alot of the photography tasks on my own in my college courses, and feel that I can connect clothing to a theme and properly fit a person into an ensemble that is provocative, yet classy. As a sales manager, I have managed my own finances as well as accounting for all payments of my clients, and could easily manage the budgets for a photoshoot. I also have become accustomed to getting my work done on my own time. I am pretty much given a deadline, and that is the only timeline I really have to work with. I feel that no matter how much preparation goes into the clothes for a photo shoot, the best stylists can improvise as well. I have performed in theatre improvistion all throughout high school, and I believe this is a very important trait that will help me in my future endeavors.
But before I jump in with both feet to start this career path, there are a few skills I would like to learn. I want to work for a photographer, performing various styling tasks including clothing and accessory choices. It would be wonderful to travel a bit with him for certain jobs, just to learn what is available to me by way of landscape, cityscape, and gain more knowledge on the femme de la mode movement. I also would like to know what is available to me as far as short term clothing and accessories- for instance, what can be rented for quality items that are too expensive to buy for a photo shoot, or if there is opportunity to have items donated for freelance photo shoots that are not directly correlated to a publication. I would love to begin this now and hopefully continue it after moving to a more metropolitan area and into a styling assistant position at a publication. It should encourage my stylistic side, help build my work experience, and teach me how certain types of clothing should be photographed to present a spectacular image. I then would like to work with a designer, learning more about the apparel aspect so that I can better understand how a certain material will move, where the underground jewels to find certain types of costumes or clothing are, and how much I can expect to spend on certain types of outfits. After a short time of working for various artists, I would also like to work for a publication for a time so that I can better understand how the fast paced industry of a fashion magazine works as I will undoubtedly be working for them on a freelance basis in the future. The best way to put yourself in the position of receiving work as a freelance artist is to network. I will perform well in every job so that I can build a name for myself and hopefully receive work from previous publications I have worked for.
I would also love to work with someone like Andrea Lieberman for a time. I think it would be interesting to see how she makes decisions about some of the clothes she chooses, what the thought process is, if every photograph has a theme, and how she is able to keep her clientele in order to stay in business.