Slide courtesy of (Wong, 2018)
As seen above are the key areas that the author realizes that she needs to improve on for her future career planning. Here are the following areas:
Digital Platform
The digital platform plays a huge role in the fashion industry, whether is it for businesses, retailers, consumer usage and services. The rise of social media platforms have revolutionize the career path of a fashion stylist (Yu, 2018). Assisting in magazine editorial photo shoots, competitively building up one's portfolio used to be the way to become a traditional fashion stylist in the fashion industry (Yu, 2018). However, with the rise of digital platform, social media influencers with huge followings can be a stylist as well if they want to (Yu, 2018) With a huge online presence, influencer stylists nowadays usually work as a freelance stylist where brands contact them through their social media portfolio for a campaign, a collaboration and so on (Yu, 2018).
Action: Hence, the key takeaways that the author could get is to build a online presence using her social media platform. To standout among the crowd, a distinctive personality or style needs to be built to define the author as a creative individual. For example, constantly wearing a bold lip colour or a statement sunglasses could be the signature style that the author could develop.
Accessibility
Fashion consumers nowadays are able to get styling advices online without hiring a fashion stylist. Amazon have launched a personal stylist feature where users are able to upload 2 outfit photos for Amazon personal stylist to compare and identify which looks better on the user (Vest, 2017). Other than that, Zalora, Farfetch and Lazada are collaborating with an app called SuitApp where users are able to virtually see how different clothing fits them through the app's virtual fitting room and simply click buy to purchase (Kandasivam, 2017) . This shows that the advancement of technology not only changed the career scope of a fashion stylist but also opens tons of opportunity for fashion stylist to collaborate with different brands for a virtual user experience which is the next big thing in the fashion industry in 10 years.
Action: As an aspiring fashion stylist, the author could research on the opportunities available in major cities such as the UK, US and Paris and seek inspiration to create unique contents or prepare herself ahead of time to explore on opportunities in Malaysia since Malaysia's fashion industry is currently still developing, rising and development is slowly than the major cities.
Future Office
Action: The author thought of having a room or studio unless you're a freelance stylist. However, heading out to source for clothing within the budget and collecting or returning loans makes 'working from home' difficult. However, co working spaces are getting more and more popular within the younger generation. The benefit of a co working space is the freedom and flexibility. In Colorado, there is a co working salon suits with a build in studio and a 24 hour accessible feature (SPERR, 2018).
Action: The author thought of having a studio as her work space specifically for styling, fitting and photo shoots purposes to reduce the fuss of searching for available studios nearby and clients can easily come up to the work space for a fitting session.
Future Competitors
The competition of being a fashion stylist in Malaysia is not as tight as the competition from the major fashion cities. However, in Malaysia, magazines, celebrities and influencers are normally hiring the same stylist for shoots, events and so on. This shows that it might be hard for a young fashion stylist to have a breakthrough and get magazines to hire them for shoots. Hence, the author needs to be fully prepared and have a strong portfolio in order to break through the industry.
To face future competitors, the author needs to educate herself with advance Adobe skills especially in editing photos and videos as its beneficial for a fashion stylist. With such skills, the author could easily generate and create individual creative content of her own as well without collaborating or finding another partner to achieve that.
Value
Adding value to your service could be a selling point or a business opportunity for a fashion stylist. For example, creating originality and creative concepts can be the value for a fashion stylist where the clients know that they will be styled differently and be one of a kind instead of blending in with other people. Other than that, creating original creative concepts would increase the job opportunities as a fashion stylist, especially for magazine editorial photo shoots. As a fashion stylist, being able to deliver a message, emotion, concept through various styling techniques within a short amount of time and yet following the brand guidelines and restrictions are difficult but, once you're able to achieve it, you will be considered as a successful fashion stylist.
Action: The author have started to surround herself with photo shoots images from different magazines to study the style, target audience of each magazine and determine how different clothes were styled to suit the magazine, brand and communicate with the reader. Other than that, the author watches a lot more music videos to study the difference of music video styling and photo shoot styling. She further realizes that styling for a music video have different considerations and aspects to pay attention to. For example, the clothing couldn't be dragging the artist or making any inconvenience if the artist is required to dance in the music video.
These are the key areas that the author is currently improving to build her future career path.
Thank You,
Renee Wong
Bibliograhy:
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Vest, L. (2017). 'I Tried Amazon's New Personal Stylist Feature -- Here's What I Learned'. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2017/03/31/i-tried-amazons-new-personal-stylist-feature-heres-what-i-learned/#67d119d93924 [Accessed 29 Jan. 2019].
Yu, A. (2018). Streaming services and social media's effect on the career of fashion stylists. [online] Fashion United. Available at: https://fashionunited.uk/news/fashion/streaming-services-and-social-media-s-effect-on-the-career-of-fashion-stylists/2018101839522 [Accessed 29 Jan. 2019].
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