Stylist in a Box: The Best Mail Order Styling Services

It is awards season. The Golden Globes were January 10, the Grammy Awards will be February 15, and then the granddaddy of them all, the Academy Awards, will be February 28. Chances are if you enjoy reading about celebrities at these awards shows, then you’ve read about their stylists and how they get them ready to walk the red carpet.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could all have stylists to help us get ready for big events or even just for everyday at the office? Truth is, there are affordable ways to get styled these days, and those services come right to your house, with stylist-in-a-box services that are mailed to your home.

I recently tried out three of these mail-order styling services. They are Stitch Fix, Dia&Co. and Trunk Club. None of these services cost more than $20 for the styling. One is completely free to use. This is amazing considering the $100-plus an hour I have paid a private stylist in the past, when my then-agent told me I needed to update my look for a book tour.

Of course, the clothes you receive are not free. However, a stylist in a box only sends you a set number of pieces so there is no binge shopping to worry about—something that could be a real concern if you have trouble saying “No” to things in the store. Conversely, if you hate shopping, hate dressing rooms, hate everything about buying clothes, you may want to consider using a stylist-in-a-box service. All of these services offer free shipping both ways and allow you to pick a price range for the clothing and accessories they send to you, ensuring that you stay on budget.

Stitch Fix
This was the first styling service I tried. Stitch Fix costs $20, and you receive five pieces with each shipment. Having worked with a personal stylist in the past, I knew that the way to find clothes you love is to create a style profile based on your likes and dislikes in fashion. Stitch Fix’s questionnaire is quite extensive, asking you to rate certain kinds of clothing, explain your lifestyle and the kinds of clothes you need (stay-at-home mom, business casual or sparkly, special occasion) and then adding in personal notes about you that the questionnaire didn’t cover. While the company uses real-life stylists to pull your clothing, it bases recommendations on an algorithm that doesn’t seem to understand negatives such as “I don’t like” or “No blouses.” The best way to get what you want is to tell Stitch Fix what you like and want only. Case in point: in my shipment, I asked only for stretchy, comfortable pullover tops and sweaters, and that’s exactly what I got. Every fix comes with a note from your stylist, and picture cards giving you styling suggestions for each of your pieces. You have three days to decide which pieces you want to keep from Stitch Fix. Keeping all five? You get 25% off your entire purchase. Whatever you don’t like you send back in a postage-paid package. You rate your feedback of what worked and didn’t work online. What I like best about Stitch Fix is I ended up keeping tops that I never would have picked out for myself in the store, likely the same experience if I had shopped with a personal stylist. (I did a more extensive review of Stitch Fix on my blog last month.)

Dia&Co.
I first learned about Dia&Co. after watching Stacy London’s TLC show Love, Lust or Run. Dia&Co.’s demographic is women size 14 and up. (Stitch Fix clothing, on the other hand, is XS to XL only.) It works very similarly to Stitch Fix, with its online questionnaire that helps to build your style profile and the fact that you get five pieces in each shipment. My 20-year-old daughter was my test subject for Dia&Co. We ordered her first Dia&Co. box right before she left for London, where she was studying abroad for her junior year in college. We figured spending a few months in Europe was a great reason to get new clothing via a stylist. Her styling fee was $20, which you pay after you receive your clothing, try everything on and decide which items you are keeping (and purchasing) and which you are sending back. Her experience with Dia&Co. was very similar to mine with Stitch Fix. When she first opened her box and pulled each piece out, she wasn’t sure she was going to like anything. But after trying them on, and then mixing and matching with items she already owned (shoes, scarves, pants, etc.), she determined three of the five items were keepers—a black maxi dress she could dress up or dress down, a pink party dress, and a black-and-white chevron-detailed blouse with orange accents. She sent back the remaining two items in the postage-paid package Dia&Co. provided. My daughter could easily imagine using the service again when she needs new clothes for job interviews.

Trunk Club
Originally started as a men’s styling mail-order service, Trunk Club recently expanded to styling women, soon after Nordstrom purchased the company. There is no cost to receive your styling session. With Trunk Club you are assigned a stylist who calls you on the phone to get to know you. After your initial call, your stylist emails you to follow up on your conversation and then sends you a preview of what will be in your shipment. Since you are getting 15 items (yes, three times as many as the other companies), you have a lot to look through and consider. Before the box is packaged up, you can provide feedback and swap items. (The other services currently do not offer this option of changing what the stylist picks for you.) One of the reasons I was interested in Trunk Club was because I’ve been a happy Nordstrom customer for years. I had a feeling that the clothes I would receive would be the brands I was familiar with at Nordstrom—Caslon, Classiques Entier—and I was right. I also received other well-known brands, including two bags from Kate Spade and Michael Kors. But an interesting thing happened as I tried each item on. Because these were brands I knew and already had an opinion about, it affected my ability to be truly objective about each piece. With the other stylist services, you are receiving less familiar brands so it was easier to take each piece from the other services at face value, if you will. With 15 pieces to choose from, it might have been easy to go over budget but in the end I chose just four—a pair of white jeans, a clutch with a neat zipper detail, and a top and a cardigan (which I’m requesting in bigger sizes).

Bottom line: We may never have the budget of Hollywood celebrities to hire our own stylists all the time, but these three services offer affordable ways to expand your style palette, in the comfort of your home, without leaving your broke.