I admit I am not a fan of shopping. Part of the problem is I don’t enjoy spending my Sundays at the mall with the crowds or dealing with lines. These reasons led me to online shopping but then I found myself spending hours trolling the internet only to find I returned 99% of what I ordered which resulted in me spending my Sundays at the mall to do returns….:/
All this led me to my current mission, can I find an online styling service that helps me efficiently find new clothes that I love while avoiding the traditional shopping process that I hate?
What makes this mission even more complicated is that online styling services generally market to those who want to get out of their styling rut or sick of wearing the same thing everyday…..well that is exactly who I am not! Haha! So can I find an online styling service that satisfies my goal of wearing 3 colors and can find timeless quality pieces vs. fast fashion trends
How do online styling services generally work?
When you sign up, you fill out a Style Profile detailing your clothing sizes and style preferences.
Then, you receive a box of anywhere from five to 12 pieces and have a set amount of time to try them on and figure out whether you’d like to keep them.
All the services charge “styling fees” between $20-$40, these fees are waived if you ultimately buy something from your box.
It’s just as easy to return the pieces you don’t want. Your box typically contains a bag and free return shipping label, so you can simply drop off your return at your post office or local shipping center.
First styling service I tried - Trunk Club
Trunk Club sources all its styles from Nordstrom’s inventory and I absolutely love Nordstrom so I thought this was a great service for me to try out first!
Overall Impressions:
- Unique to the styling process at Trunk Club is the ability to live chat with your stylist. You can also talk to them on the phone and via email. Though Style Profiles do a good job of summarizing your style and preferences, talking to a real person helps fill in any gaps.
- Trunk Club lets you preview and approve your pieces before they’re shipped so you only try on everything that you want to try.
- Trunk Club sends more pieces than other services — 12 total, compared to the average of five.
- Prices of pieces that were in my box ranged from $50 – $200 which I thought was reasonable considering it was Nordstrom!
Result:
Trunk Club does allow me to stick to my color preferences for the most part and enables me to find timeless quality pieces because of their unique styling process to live chat with the stylist and approve the box before it ships. Of the 12 items I received, I kept two which for me is not bad. Now on to my next styling service to try to see if it can beat Trunk Club!
I think I’ll have to try this out!