What is Fashion Consulting?
Also known as “Image Consulting,” or (more recently) “styling,” fashion consulting is the profession which develops and delivers practical instruction and tailored advice on personal appearance, especially as it pertains to professional life.
Why Become a Fashion Consultant?
In our current economy, deciding the terms and conditions of your career is more important than ever. Fashion consultants are independent business people who provide valuable goods and services to individuals, community groups, schools, and companies. These services include:
- Personal fashion consultations or “closet cleanings”
- Dress code or “corporate” consulting
- Celebrity or politician styling
- Writing for fashion publications and internet sites
Additionally, many woman who are trained as fashion consultants volunteer their skills to charities and educational non profits and most agree that skills in personal fashion improve self confidence in both their professional and personal lives.
How Does One Become Licensed to Be a Fashion Consultant?
In the United States, as in most other English-speaking countries, there is no legal-binding licensing or certification for the profession by an official body of peers, and university programs are extremely rare.
Most consultants have backgrounds in retail, fashion design, makeup/hair styling, or business marketing, and have gained skills more from experience than from classroom learning.
Therefore, fashion consultant training programs have become popular in recent years. Unfortunately, however, many suffer from some of the same quality control issues which gave rise to these programs in the first place.
The Elegance In Style training program provides a high-quality experience for four major reasons:
- It has been developed by professionals in fashion design, fashion and cosmetics consulting, fashion retail, corporate consulting, and education
- For ten years, it operated as an educational non profit with a Board performing regular review.
- It has over a decade of experience in graduating women who have successfully pursued fashion consulting and related fields.
- Instructors must prove complete mastery of the material to be authorized to train.
Classes are engaging and interactive, and are reinforced with text and written case studies. Students are also provided hands-on experiences with volunteer clients and are observed for target procedures and techniques.