How to succeed as a fashion stylist? Your ultimate guide to handling PR
Taking styling courses, working as an assistant or intern and building a portfolio with your own projects are great ways to start your journey to becoming a fashion stylist. But what when you need to interact with showrooms and press officers? You cannot miss out, as your dream job is all about networking, networking, networking! Since you need to connect with the industry’s PR teams and attend their events and fashion shows whenever possible, here is the ultimate guide to handling PR.
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Istituto Marangoni Milano’s Fashion Styling and Creative Direction class attending the Barrow press day
How did I figure out how to navigate a showroom and connect with the PR team who coordinates the press product samples for stylists and photographers to work with? Attending the Barrow press day with my Istituto Marangoni’s Fashion Styling and Creative Direction class. A common industry strategy to promote a collection through the fashion press and editors, press days are also a key tool for emerging fashion stylists to take the first decisive step towards building a loyal relationship with showrooms.
There, we physically saw and experienced the latest Barrow collection and talked and asked questions to the brand team and their PR agents from AFF Comunicazione. They kindly answered our questions about the brand’s history and explained how stylists interact with brands through public relations agencies.
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Looks from one of the latest Barrow collections
An ambitious and emerging brand from Southern Italy, Barrow embodies the rebellious spirit of youth and digital natives, using a unique and artistic approach to design. Launched in 2020, the brand is still quite new but has already shown remarkable resilience. Thanks to the team’s determination, the company survived the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic while emerging as a promising label. Recently, they even opened a Barrow showroom in Paris.
Barrow’s collections are always vibrant and modern and target young creatives, as the brand stands for quality design and self-expression. They describe themselves as “an anonymous team of creative talents, with international experiences in fashion and digital behind them, team up to share a precise message: conscious design, cooperation between like minds, eclecticism and freedom of thought are the pillars of the Barrow project.”
The experimental design that impressed me the most in the showroom was the famous Trolley Crash Baggage x Barrow: the first luggage with a pre-dented appearance to be handled without care. But since the B2C magazine editorials are now all focused on the spring-summer 2023 collections, let’s delve into their wardrobe for the next hot season: they were inspired by a colourful palette and the mushroom motif, merging acid colours with the macro-trend of nature and escapism.
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Looks from one of the latest Barrow collections
Discussing with PR managers how to maintain a close relationship with the fashion media and engage celebrities while producing press material, something crossed my mind. A showroom is an aspiring fashion stylist’s best friend, a store where the collections from one or more brands are displayed and promoted to publications, buyers and industry players. More specifically, press days organised by the brand’s press office are key to creating connections, fostering professional ties, and showing the latest collections to the industry.
But what comes after the press day? If you have a good network, your job as a stylist will be easier than ever when you interact with the showroom looking for garments and outfits for celebrity styling, a fashion editorial or a particular project. Since you will have to contact the brand’s PR agency to request pieces or runway looks, something magical may happen if you have good connections: they might come to you with an extra look, an outfit the designers decided not to show and, therefore, that no one has ever seen yet. Of course, looks like these will incredibly help you stand out from the crowd and trigger more interest from the public, but first and foremost, from the magazines you work with.
Viktoriia Valeriivna Stanieva
Third-year Fashion Styling & Creative Direction student, Milan
