Mirror Images : The moment you enter a store, salespeople are sizing you up. Should they try to make you into a sartorial success or let you commit a fashion felony?
That dress! It was made for you. It goes with your hair, enhances your eyes. You look so tiny in it--is that the size 6 or the 4? Men are suckers for a woman in spandex, you know, and for some strange reason, animal prints just drive them wild.
Any woman who has ever fallen for a salesperson’s flattery, then asked the oddly dressed figure in the bathroom mirror, “What were you thinking?” knows the perils of accepting shopping advice. The seemingly simple act of buying stuff to wear is often a complex endeavor fraught with subtext; described in the jargon of self-help literature, the relationship between a clothing salesperson and a shopper may range from blissful codependence to love-hate ambivalence.
We don’t know their last names, but they see us in our underwear, listen to us complain about premenstrual bloat, remember our favorite colors and are among the first to be informed when we receive an invitation to the party of the year. The best of the breed, those with an eye for fashion and scruples to boot, can be as cherished as trusted friends. But no less a shopping authority than Joan Rivers has joked about the mendacious ones: “They say, ‘You look fabulous--it’s you, it’s you.’ And you’ve got the dress on backward.”
Unless hand-me-downs, gifts and clothes ordered from catalogs fill a woman’s closet, she goes shopping. Even those who are overwhelmed by mall glut or dread the fluorescent-lit moment of truth in an overheated dressing room know the thrill of bagging a treasure. In stores that pride themselves on customer service, the intrepid shopper has a potential ally. But what do salespeople have to offer besides a device that takes your credit card imprint? We asked them about the strategies of their trade, persuaded them to share secrets about value, and learned why some of them steer us into disasters while others save our sartorial lives.
Above all, getting the best out of a good salesperson requires surrender, they told us. Of course, you’ve been living in your body a long time. You know it’s short-waisted and experience has taught you that dolman sleeves make your breasts look too big. Far be it for anyone to disabuse you of a loathing for chartreuse. But the mental list of self-imposed limitations most women tote with them is as long as it is often inaccurate: “I can’t wear pastels. I’m too old to carry a backpack. I hate my hips, neck, thighs, arms” (pick at least one).
“The hardest customer to help is the person who is not very confident,” says Roberta Ross, a salesperson at Shauna Stein, the Beverly Center boutique. “We encourage people not to have preconceived notions, to have an open mind, but women who have problems with their self-image or think they know better than you do are tough to deal with.”
Barbara Weiser, executive vice president of the three Charivari stores in New York, known for championing avant-garde designers, sums it up: “Selling is a very sensitive psychological experience. You’re dealing not just with someone’s response to an Ann Demeulemeester jacket, but with their sense of themselves, which often bears no relationship to reality. You have people who seem to have wonderful bodies, who should be extremely comfortable about the way they look and what they can wear, and, in fact, they are obsessed by the smallest detail you would never imagine or see.”
Like hairdressers and trainers who function as unlicensed therapists, successful salespeople learn to listen and ask questions, and are better equipped to assist a client having gathered some intelligence.
“You size a person up when they first come to you,” says Michael Sharkey, one of the selling stars of Barneys New York in Beverly Hills. “You can see how people carry themselves. Are they withdrawn, or timid or aggressive? Do they stand up straight? Do they stand up too straight? They carry their self-esteem around with them all the time. They don’t suddenly come in to try on clothes and realize, ‘My nose is too big’ or ‘My stomach bulges.’ ”
In the time it takes to walk from the store’s entrance to the dressing room, Ross of Shauna Stein says she can learn the following: “What this woman wants to look like, what her lifestyle is, who her husband or boyfriend is, where she goes and that she feels uncomfortable because she’s up five pounds. You’re like a detective. Those are your facts, now you go solve the case.”
With a handle on a customer’s insecurities, real needs and the fantasy self she dreams of presenting, the salesperson can sift through the stock and choose styles that will most likely incite a shopper’s lust. In stores that sell designer clothes, the salesperson has been preparing for this moment. (Most department stores hold style seminars for their staff, and chains such as the Gap, Banana Republic, Ann Taylor and Express, all of which declined to make their salespeople available for interviews, communicate a season’s looks to employees via picture books.)
The education at such high-end stores as Barneys, Charivari and Shauna Stein begins with the twice-yearly designer shows in Milan, Paris, London and New York. Buyers bring back videos and photographs to show their staffs. At least once a week, before the store opens, the sales staff spends hours trying on clothes from the latest shipments, experimenting with accessories, combining pieces from various collections and developing a point of view that stems from, but doesn’t slavishly imitate, hot designers’ visions.
In a perfect world, the shopper becomes the beneficiary of the salesperson’s advanced studies. By the time she has stripped to her Calvin Klein briefs and wriggled into a dress she thinks just might change her life, an array of shoes, hosiery and accessories await her approval.
“They are food for thought,” Ross explains. “We suggest you buy them, because we believe in them. But if you don’t, at least you’ll know that this is what we think is the right way to wear that dress.”
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Having examined, assessed and interpreted the latest looks, salespeople deserve your trust, don’t they? Only if they are as honest as they are fashion savvy. Because if you were absent the day good taste was handed out, some salespeople don’t have the heart to save you from yourself.
Oscar Falcon, a darkly handsome Cuban American, has reigned over the Chanel boutique at Bloomingdale’s flagship Lexington Avenue store for eight years. When he attends the runway shows in March and October, he selects pieces based on the needs of his two dozen best customers. For that core of devotees, “Dr. Falcon” (a nickname given by colleagues in recognition of his psychiatric skills), is more than a salesperson.
Carol, one of the faithful, drifts into his third-floor domain straight from a Herve Leger luncheon at Saks, eager to share that Bergdorf’s is full of new merchandise, everything at Saks is marked down. Carol is a fashion addict, sad sister to “AbFab’s” Edina and Patsy, wearing an extremely tight, short excuse for a skirt and a garish leopard-print top that probably looked stunning when Helena Christensen glided down a runway in it. She is unsure about the purchase of the day: “I bought a Saint Laurent raincoat at Saks,” she tells Falcon. “It’s black and I don’t love belted coats. Does Chanel do raincoats? Do you have any pictures? Because I’m not really married to this thing.”
When a customer like Carol commits a fashion felony, Falcon confesses that he may be guilty of aiding and abetting her error. “When a woman looks in the mirror and thinks she looks good, she feels good,” he says. “If I think she doesn’t look good, that’s one of the hardest parts of my job. I’ll try to tell the customer I think she should try something else, but if she’s happy, I pretty much let her make the decision.”
Another of Falcon’s regulars, a chic former buyer named Gail, projects more confidence than the fragile Carol. “Oscar is 99% sincere and he’s usually right,” she says. “If you look terrible, he won’t let you walk out. He’ll say, ‘I’ve seen you look better.’ ”
The salesperson’s defense for not diplomatically telling a customer the awful truth is grounded in a distaste for bubble-bursting. “If somebody looks in the mirror and says, ‘I look fabulous in this outfit,’ I think it is wrong to say, ‘You don’t look fabulous, you look terrible,’ ” says Cleo Gilmer-Goncalves, who shepherds a loyal clientele at Charivari’s Madison Avenue store.
“Fabulous” and “terrible” are relative terms, depending on a woman’s desired effect.
“You are dealing with some kind of fantasy, to some extent,” says Charivari’s Weiser. “This is the way some people want to look. It may not be the way you ever would have chosen, but in that case, you kind of have to let it be.”
It isn’t unusual for Sharkey to help a customer find $20,000 worth of new duds, including shoes and accessories, at Barneys in an afternoon. Nevertheless, he swears to unwavering honesty. He tells women what they most dread hearing: that they should try a larger size. He lectures on subtraction, counseling them to leave most of their jewelry in the vault.
“I don’t think it’s fair for a customer to walk out of the store feeling so great and then to be so let down, eventually. So I’d rather let them know what I think, before they buy. And then if they still want it, I’d feel I’d made a choice to tell them the truth and I wouldn’t have any guilt feelings,” he says.
The more consistently a shopper consults a particular salesperson, the more room there is for candor. “Build a relationship with a salesperson,” Sharkey suggests. “I know this may sound a little bit airy, but until you’ve done that, believe in your intuitiveness. Trust your gut about people who just want to make a sale.”
Good clothing is expensive, and drawing from their knowledge of what can make high ticket items worth the price, smart salespeople are masters at helping shoppers rationalize buyer’s guilt:
You can wear that suit 10 months of the year. You’ll have it forever. That will take you from day into evening. It’s a classic. The fabric is imported, the workmanship is extraordinary, that’s why it’s so costly. That piece will go with everything you own.
Their reasoning is often sound. In the glaring absence of need, in the enveloping shadow of want, we are grateful for every justification.
