I believe every top stylist has a very special Secret Weapon. What is this secret weapon, you ask? An incredible first assistant. A brilliant lead assistant is one of the roles that holds the entire business together for the stylist. This week I am going to ramble a bit about how extremely important it is to have an incredible, reliable assistant and/or team of assistants.

A first assistant, FA for short, is a jack-of-all-trades. The responsibilities for a head assistant include every aspect of the stylist’s business. After sitting down and making a shortlist of what my assistant handles for me, I came up with these 13 fundamental responsibilities:

1. Research: FA can find the story styled by Grace Coddington and shot by Patrick Demarchelier for the first issue of Anna Wintour’s US Vogue without asking 500 questions or looking for five minutes and then telling you they can’t find it. An FA finds the story and creates the most fabulous scans of the story and also scans the rest of the main well from the issue, just to have on hand.

2. Prepping: A stylist doesn’t always have the time to go through every show on Style.com to choose looks for a story, so the FA steps in and makes a first edit. The FA can pull the best looks for the concept the stylist is creating, from designers the stylist loves and the credits the magazine needs. This saves the stylist hours of time.

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A couple of years ago, I began going to business school to learn the basics of how to run my styling business. After all, we stylists have to deal with cash flow statements and managing our money and assistants, even if we are just “creatives” who play with clothing. As I entered into the alien world of business 101, I was surrounded by corporate business people that didn’t have the slightest idea what a “fashion stylist” was or what could be expected of one. In most cases, I would anticipate the need to go into my 2 minute speech which explains my role, how it works, and with whom I work, whenever I met someone new. Even when I got my speech down to what I thought was a decent explanation, I still got blank stares back.

The uninitiated couldn’t seem to understand the gist of what a stylist did. In a nut shell, here was my speech: “stylists work with creative teams including photographers, design teams, or art directors to create a vision for an image or brand. At the same time, we also face the challenge of making the clothes look awesome (regardless of their quality).”

Due to the general lack of understanding regarding my role, I started to think more about what I really do as a stylist. I guess the reason that it is not easy to explain is because a stylists’ responsibilities change quite a bit depending on the kind of job or project we are working on that day. When I am shooting an editorial, I have the privilege of collaborating with some of the world’s best editor-in-chiefs (EIC’s for short) on creating stories for their magazines. With an editorial and the approval of the EIC, I get to choose the concept, photographer, hair and makeup teams, models, and of course the clothes.

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