Improvability Blog

Yesterday in Part 1, Petalburga described when a style consultation is about as much use as a chocolate teapot!

Part 2

What is Petalburga looking for from her style consultation?

Using informative, useful and personalised advice, hints and tips from a consultant who actually puts the client before her own agenda, Petalburga should be able to look in the mirror every time she dresses, and say YES to every one of these questions:

• Am I wearing my most flattering colours?
• Are these clothes in keeping with my body shape and scale?
• Do they reflect my personality?
• Are they appropriate for the occasion?
• Do I look terrific?
• Do I feel comfortable?

If Petalburga can answer a resounding, confident YES to all of them, only then will a style consultant have done as good a job for her client as a china teapot does for a darned good cup of tea!

Dear Petalburga,

If you don’t discover how to do this for yourself and for your clients from my Ladies’ Style in a Box training course when it arrives, then feel free to slap me very hard!

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?