I was invited to shadow a stylist named Louise Familetti for my senior project. I met her at a shoot for Hawkins PR, a company looking to shoot portraits of their employees. They were going for a look based off of Theory's ad campaign. Her assistant named Zak gave me some helpful tips on how to become a stylist and the different types of stylists there are.
As a stylist, you have to go out and buy clothing that matches the theme of the shoot. We had clothes from Zara, Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, etc. When you buy clothes for a shoot you return them after you use them, so you have to keep the tags on them or else have a tagging gun handy so you can retag them. Certain stores flag you if they find out you're "borrowing" clothes. They end up charging you a percentage of what you buy on top of the price of the clothing.
As an assistant you need to be prepared to go out and find any sort of prop that is needed for the shoot. Louise needed a stool that looked exactly like the one in a photo that Arianna Grande modeled in. I was sent out with her credit card to find this stool. I ran around to every furniture store in the area. I went to Home Depot, Lowes, the Container Store, World Market and Bed Bath & Beyond. None of those stores had the right stool, it amazed me. I ended up at West Elm where they had one left in stock. It was $90 and was to be returned.
We worked on a Thursday and a Friday. We tried to shoot fifteen people each day, but things took longer than planned. There was a makeup artist, fitting and a photographer with a set. Louise tried to take the employees out of their comfort zone since many were nervous about shooting and weren't sure how to pose.