Improvability Blog

Part 1 – In the Ladies’ Style (LSL) forum recently I posed this question to style consultants:

If you get a moment, watch the introductory video on the Ladies’ Style in a Box website. It’s straight from the actual training course when 10 real consultants who actually care about their clients (plus me, of course) get down to discussing:

What is the point of a style consultation?

Watch it, muse on our ideas, and then please let me know what YOU think the point of a style consultation is. You’ll also get to hear what happened when I first had my own style analysed, way back when, about three thousand years ago. Horrid, horrid, horrid!

And that’s one of the main reasons I started offering training courses because I never want this kind of thing to happen to anyone else, ever! If you think the same way, then watch this short video, and let us all know how you feel! Kim

Petalburga’s reply sums up beautifully what I was blethering on about:

“Hi Kim. I have my opinion of what style consultation should be like and know definitely it will not be like the one I had a couple of years ago.

My visit started with being measured from top to toe, height, weight, bust, hips, inner leg, neck, shoulders (you get my point).

The consultant then went to her computer punched in all this information and started printing out my handbook, telling me I have a lovely hourglass figure but am a pear because my ‘boobs’ aren’t big enough to be hourglass shape.

She then went through her 84-page collection of clothing styles, double ticking, ticking and crossing which styles would definitely suit my balanced pear shape, which would be okay and which would not.

Information handed and off I was sent. End of consult. Did I learn anything? “No”. Well, yes – that this was not how I would do it.

So I am looking forward to your training method as I so loved your approach in the colour training.” Petalburga, Australia

What’s the point of a style consultation for THIS consultant?

• to follow her notes or manual religiously, without consideration of whether they were relevant or appropriate for the unique human being in front of her
• to measure poor Petalburga to within an inch of her life, purely to provide the data to make her computer program work – I fail to see how this information is going to help Petalburga one little bit!
• to tick madly at an overwhelming list of information that Petalburga hadn’t a cat in hell’s chance of absorbing right there and then

And the outcome of this attitude for the client?

Petalburga learned very little that was useful to help her dress to enhance her style personality, her body shape and her lifestyle.

In fact, as she said herself, the only thing Petalburga learned was never to do that to one of her own clients!

So, for the client, this consultation was about as much use as a chocolate teapot!

Read Part 2 -
What is Petalburga looking for from her style consultation?

I just love this fabulous guest article from image consultant Sari Nieminen in Finland:

We are going to make you look 10 years younger!

This is what they claim on TV shows and sometimes do achieve the goal and go even further than just ten years. But I’d have to say it is mostly because of the TV presenter asking you to evaluate a person obviously dressed in her most ugliest clothes and sporting even dirty hair. How can you look under 100 styled that way?

Then when she is brought back, again obviously done up, people are bound to crack under pressure and guess her age much lower than what they honestly think. I have seen people looking so 50 been said to look 25 years old. I would suggest to the evaluator to get some prescription glasses, and fast!

Anyway, the most that has bothered me is the fact that the subject of this huge change has not been very happy about it. I have seen 2 shows this week and in both cases the lady was not very happy with the colours she was put into. To my opinion her change was too drastic and too fast. You cannot expect a person to digest that much information in such a short time.

In the first program the lady just hated colour, absolutely hated brights and prints. Yet these “experts” insisted she must have some. I could see in her eyes, “Just wait until this is over and I get home…” She will NEVER wear them. She will never do shopping according to their advice (good or bad). So, what was the use of the whole exercise? Just to make her feel uncomfortable and ridicule her on TV?

The other lady in New Zealand got so drastic a makeover that she was crying out of desperation. Again you could see in her eyes the cry for help and rebellion.This lady too will not ever put the information she received in use and I bet she has dyed her hair blonde once more and thrown away the hideous prints she hated.

Maybe in both cases though the ladies DID actually LOOK better to the viewer but THEY DID NOT LIKE THE RESULTS THEMSELVES!

My point is that all the makeovers, colours, style evaluations, hair cuttings etc. MUST be done so that the customer FEELS COMFORTABLE. She has to understand why this is good or better than the old one. She must be able to live with the new self. She must love the results. And most importantly she needs to do the changes in her own good time. Otherwise it is going to end up being “the fakeover”

Sari Nieminen
Finland

Join Sari’s colour and style club (in both English and Finnish) at http://www.fiiniks.net/fakeover/ for fantastic information about colour and style plus updates on current fashions and how to avoid fashion mistakes.