woman in dress
Personal shoppers make sure your wardrobe’s sending the right message.
By Susan Caba
Photographs By Frank Di Piazza
I’ve got a quirky pair of glasses—cheaters, really. They’re spotted like a white leopard. (I got them for $12, I think, at The Designing Block in Clayton.) My 14-year-old son begs me not to wear them in public, but I’ve used them as kind of a litmus test on first dates—if the guy laughs the wrong way when I put them on or makes a pained face, he’s outta there.
The glasses are me, an expression of who I am. I knew I’d met a man who understood me when he bought me a pair of pink sunglasses with rhinestones at the temples, trashy yet tasteful.
In her 1981 book The Language of Clothes, Alison Lurie wrote that our clothing conveys important information—or misinformation— about us long before we speak to someone at a party, on the street or in a meeting. The Englishman’s tightly furled umbrella, carried even on sunny days? Lurie pronounced it a signal of sexual potency. Clothes are a universal language that telegraphs personality, opinions, tastes, class and even occupation before we ever open our mouths.
Teenagers know this in their bones. Why else spend hours deciding how low to belt the cargo shorts, whether a particular shirt is preppy, how much slouch is acceptable in a pair of jeans? Adults aren’t immune, either. We pore over best-dressed lists, decoding the messages of a particular look.
Celebrities have stylists. Teenagers have peer review. How do the rest of us know we’re sending the right message with our clothes? How do we use our clothing and accessories to communicate who we are?
We get help.
Forget your mother, or even your best friend. Professional help is at hand, and it’s surprisingly affordable, even free. Large department stores—Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, Nordstrom— have personal shoppers who work with customers one on one by appointment. You can also hire an individual consultant to shop with or for you. And there’s always the old standby, the capable sales assistant who gets to know you and your taste.
“So many people tend to buy the same things over and over,” says Melodie Tauben, owner of Vie boutique in Ladue. “A shopper or a good sales assistant can help people break that cycle.”
I check with Jerry Talamantes, St. Louis fashion guru and personal shopper par excellence (but only for a select few of his friends). He handled a list of 150-or-so individuals at Neiman Marcus for 10 years. “I talked people out of more things than I talked them into,” he says. (My son would argue that this is exactly what I need.)
Wardrobe consultant Nancy Compass, of How do we use our clothing and accessories Nordstrom’s Personal Touch, says that the typical client is an executive too busy to shop or someone who wants advice on how to build up—or simply refresh—a wardrobe. Nordstrom, she adds, gets about as many men using the Personal Touch services as women.
She remembers a business owner who asked her to evaluate his wardrobe. “He basically didn’t have any garments that fit him,” she says. “Now all he has to do is walk in and his clothes are tailored, pressed, dry-cleaned and delivered. Guys like to get a message that says, ‘I’ve got your look pulled together for you head to toe.’”
Many people look for wardrobe help when something big has happened in their life, she adds, such as a career change or even a weight loss or gain.
Isis Jones was in just that position. An assistant producer and on-air personality at radio stations KMJM and KATZ, she hangs out mostly in sweats and T-shirts. Short dreadlocks frame a heart-shaped face that ordinarily shows no trace of makeup. But Jones, 34, just released a CD, Woman Child. She needed to amp up her wardrobe for public appearances.
“I’m very much a no-frills girl,” she says. “My father raised me. He used to take me shopping and we would spend all of about 15 or 20 minutes in the store. He gave up on my hair and my wardrobe at an early age—he just wanted me to be well-adjusted, not necessarily well-dressed.”
Jones hired a freelance personal shopping consultant, to sharpen her visual message. “I wanted to look like myself,” Jones says. She had no desire to go “girly-girl,” just “sassy, sexy, street, sophisticated.”
The consultant shopped, everyplace from thrift shops to department stores, looking for unusual items that would telegraph her personality—Isis to the maximum. When she was finished, she brought Jones a suitcase full of purchases: Capri-cut jeans, open-toed shoes, a lace bustier, a fuchsia halter top with a plunging neckline, earrings, a black leather jacket.
The overall look is sexy and seductive, but not trashy. And it takes advantage of Jones’ curves, which were generally muffled under her habitual sweats. It’s a look Jones is comfortable with, but wouldn’t have known how to achieve on her own.
“She kind of took me to the next level,” says Jones. “I clean up pretty well.”
Fans were—well, not stunned, but enthusiastic—when Jones took off the leather jacket and revealed the fuchsia halter. “I like the shock value,” says Jones. “I’m radio. When they do see me, I want to make a good impression. It’s nice to be the plain Jane and then come out and be the swan.”
Basically that’s the process at Saks Fifth Avenue, too. The store’s Fifth Avenue Club is one of St. Louis’ best-kept secrets. Make an appointment, and one of the personal shoppers there will pull the items you need, then meet you in a dressing room with moiré silk walls to help you pull together your wardrobe—for free. Sure, they like the high-spending customers, but Debbie Derrick tells me that many of her customers started out buying only sale items.
“It’s got to start somewhere,” says Derrick with a grin, wearing a clean-lined black knit suit featuring a jacket zipped over a red tank top and a Burberry-plaid flower pinned to her shoulder. “A lot of women find that if they concentrate their buying at one store, the experience is more enjoyable. They are spending the same amount of money in a year’s time, and they get that much more satisfaction.”
Dorothy Porporis has been shopping with Fifth Avenue Club consultant Gina Weinberg for 25 years. “I don’t go to anyone else,” Porporis says firmly. “She knows my size; she knows my taste. I don’t think she’s ever been wrong, not once.”
Now that Porporis has back problems, she says, she relies even more on Weinberg, murmuring, “Oh my goodness, I wouldn’t be able to shop at all without her.”
Personal assistants meet clients in a room stocked with the shoes, jewelry and clothing they’ve asked to see. “You’re calling your personal assistant and saying, ‘This is what I need.’ Your shopper is intimately familiar with you, your work, your family, your lifestyle,” says Derrick, “and we always put a few things in there you might not have anticipated.”
As we talk, a sales associate walks by with a young woman wearing newly purchased jeans. “That looks awesome,” Derrick says to the customer. “Make sure the alterations are the right length,” she adds to the sales associate—who says that the pair has just come from picking out shoes and are headed off to have alterations made.
“Technically, we should all be personal shoppers,” Derrick says. “You want a sales associate who will develop a relationship with you, who will call you when she sees something you might like or when something goes on sale.”
That’s how Porporis and Weinberg met— Weinberg was a sales associate at Montaldo’s, a small store where Porporis often shopped. When Weinberg moved to Saks, Porporis followed.
The personal relationship is the key to success, says Talamantes. He had a client who lives on the West Coast but came through St. Louis frequently enough that she developed a shopping relationship with him.
“She called one day and said, ‘I’m selling a multimillion-dollar resort in Florida. I want to get on the plane with my briefcase and my cosmetics bag to go down there for two weeks to close the deal. I want you to get me everything I need and send it to the Breakers Hotel.’ She was hyperventilating.”
He assembled $24,000 worth of wardrobe and arranged to have it unpacked, steamed and hung in the woman’s suite before she arrived. “I’m talking about shoes, bras, panties, business outfits, dinner outfits, leather gloves,” he recalls. “She kept it all; nothing was returned.”
Hmmm. I wonder whether he approves of leopard-spotted glasses? together for you head to toe.’” but enthusiastic—when Jones took off the leather jacket and revealed the fuchsia halter. “I like the shock value,” says Jones. “I’m radio. When they do see me, I want to make a good impression. It’s nice to be the plain Jane and then come out and be the swan.” “She knows my size; she knows my TASTE. I don’t think she’s ever been wrong, not once.”
