Call-ins

Call-ins are an essential part of the stylist’s job. You need to know who represents each fashion label and house – for example, you may be asked to call in four dresses from the internationally renowned fashion designer Simone Rocha, so you would need to know that her PR is Karla Otto. You may also need to call in accessories, jewellery, hats, shoes, bags, gloves, hosiery or underwear, so you would have to know which PRs to approach for those.

Each designer the PR represents will have lookbooks of the whole collection. Whether the PR holds the whole collection depends on whether the designer has one or more PRs in other cities. You will pick out online which pieces or looks you would like from each designer chosen for the shoot, for example Looks 8, 13 and 23 of Stella McCartney’s AW20 collection. Sometimes you will not have the actual lookbook to hand; you can check if the current collections are up on the individual designers’ websites, or alternatively Vogue.co.uk has all the most up-to-date catwalk images of current and past seasons.

OR… TagWalk - The Fashion Search Engine — Find any look, accessory or models from the shows for free - Type a keyword, say red dress, and every single sample image, that has red dresses will come up. It is that simple and cuts research time from hours to mins.

Once you have the information you need, call up the PR, tell them about the story you are doing and request your chosen samples. The PR will ask you to email your request. When doing so, you must specify which lookbook or website you have sourced the look numbers from – otherwise you will waste your valuable time, and the PR’s, calling in the wrong samples.

N.B You will need a commissioning letter from a magazine to borrow samples.