A personal shopping concierge service that already has your sizes
Retail at the top end runs on appointments, client books and holds. That is the side of it we work.
The stock on the floor is not the stock. At the top end, much of what a house holds is in the back, in transit between doors, or already promised to somebody's client book. A personal shopping concierge service earns its keep in that half of the shop, the half you cannot see from the street.
Flagships run on client advisors. An advisor keeps a book of people they know, and that book is how a short allocation gets decided. Walk in on a Saturday and you get the floor. Arrive by appointment, with a brief the advisor had days in advance, and what is in the room has been pulled against it.
We write the brief, place it with the right advisor, and hold the schedule together around it. The house supplies the goods and bills you for them. Availability is confirmed request by request, because a piece that was there on Tuesday can be gone by Thursday.
What happens before you walk in
A private appointment is not a longer version of shopping. It is a shortlist. The advisor takes the brief — the occasion, the colours you wear, what is already in your wardrobe, the sizes — and pulls against it before you arrive. Pieces come out of the back, off a transfer from another door, or out of a hold placed earlier in the week.
Holds have a clock on them. A house will keep something aside as a courtesy, not indefinitely, and the courtesy runs on the advisor expecting to see you again. Part of our job is keeping that clock visible: what is being held, until when, and what happens to it if you pass.
Where a house allows it, appointments sit at the quiet end of the day, before opening or after the doors close. Which end depends on the city and the house, and some will only work inside trading hours. When there are two or three stops we put them in an order that survives the traffic and arrange the car between them. New York, Miami and Abu Dhabi are the cities we work in directly. Travelling elsewhere, we brief the house's own client team ahead of you.
What a personal shopping concierge service keeps on file
Sizes are not one number. A 40 in one house is a 50 in another, and neither of them tells a tailor anything useful. What removes the friction is the dull version: measurements, the size you actually take in the houses you actually wear, the shoes that fit and the ones that never do, the sleeve you always have shortened, the fabrics you will not put on.
Once that exists, a request stops being a conversation. "Something for Thursday, black tie" is enough to brief an advisor properly, because everything they need to pull against is already written down. The short request only works because of the long file behind it.
The file grows as we go. What you sent back tells us as much as what you kept, and both get written down, so the next pre-pull starts closer than the last.
Dressing for one specific trip
Most shopping requests have a date attached. Four days somewhere cold, one black-tie dinner, two days of meetings, a flight home on Sunday. That is a solvable problem, because it is a list and the list has gaps in it.
We work backwards from the calendar. What the events require, what is already hanging in your wardrobe, what has to be found, and what has to be altered. Alterations are usually the constraint rather than the buying. A hem is quick, a jacket is not, so if the trip is close we say so early and look at what can be worn off the rack.
Pieces can go ahead to the hotel rather than into the case, if the hotel will take the delivery and the timing allows, and returns go back the same way once you are home. Stock, holds and alteration slots are confirmed request by request. We would rather tell you on Monday that Friday is not realistic.