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Fashion Stylist Commissioning letters, Fashion Stylist Pull Out Letters, Writing Commissioning Letters
As a freelance stylist I have styled editorials for both established and new magazines. The tips I am about to share are for the fashion magazines that have just started, and the stylists they have been commissioned to style a shoot for their issue.
I decided to do this post because in the past when I would submit my commissioning letter from a new magazine to a selection of PR’s, I would get a string of questions back from the PR Account Executive and this was mainly due to the lack of information that was on the commissioning letter.
Like I’ve said, PR’s work from a more business angle than say an in-house emerging designer, so when one submits a letter, it can’t simply say, ‘ We(X) have commissioned Stylist (Y) to do an editorial for us. We would be grateful for your support.’ Ultimately the PR’s are less interested in your ‘creatively, weirdly, fabulous fashion editorial theme/brief’ and are more interested in whether the loaning of their client’s pieces will benefit their client in terms of exposure, positive product placement and sales.
Also, the more established a magazine is, the less likely they will have to follow all of the protocol below.
So when a new magazine is drafting a Commissioning Letter for a Stylist, the following details should be included-
- The full address or/and website of the magazine as well as all the contact details of the person who is authorizing the commissioning. PR’s always want to see the website of a magazine, as the visual and content display gives them a good idea as to whether they want to work with the magazine or not.
- The website links for the stylist and photographer involved in the shoot– this is particularly important for a new magazine, as often I have found that when the magazine is unknown, the PR will then turn to view the work of the team involved as that helps to determine or show the quality the magazine is aiming for.
- The season the editorial is for and the issue date of the editorial.
- The creative brief of the story– for e.g. is the shoot a ‘black and white’ story, it has a ‘romantic’ theme etc.
- The ethos of the magazine and who their target audience is- PR’s especially want to know this from a new magazine, as that will determine if they feel their clients/designers have the same target.
- If the magazine is in print, the countries the magazine will be sold in should be listed– for e.g. some London PR’s will not lend their pieces to magazines that are not sold in their country.
- There should be a statement that states who is responsible for any loss or damage to the clothes.
I hope you find these tips useful. I’d also like to hear from stylists who are pulling pieces for various shoots. Have you found that it is now harder to do so and are PR’s requiring more information from you before they lend? Are you finding it easier to pull from established magazines as opposed to newer ones?
Thanks from Paris!
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Thanks for writing this post! I’m finding that it is very difficult to pull from PR reps unless you have prior relationships if you are a new magazine. I just began transitioning my blog to an online lifestyle magazine and only about 2 companies have shown interest in allowing me to pull for shoots.
Also my business partner & I just started working on a digital and social media campaign and one of the components is digital fashion editorials. In essence, we are looking for clothes for this project. This has also been challenging because most designers and PR reps still don’t understand the digital/social media world so when asking to pull clothes for a digital editorial to be published across a range of sites, they usually just don’t get it. But my thing is this exposure is immediate and instant and all the content can be linked to a designer’s site to drive sales and help increase the designer’s twitter, FB, and IG numbers.
In fact this got me thinking of new ideas for my commissioning letter, etc. I should use the last part of my comment in my pitch to PR reps. Thanks for everything!
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Thanks for your great, interesting reply. Its responses like this that drive me to write my blog. You have raised several interesting points, the most being the r/ship between PR’s and digital press. It makes me want to interview PR’s to see what their perspective is on this. Its so interesting on one hand everyone says fashion has got digital, and in many regards, it has. Buuuut in my opinion, print still holds the power in terms of prestige and regard. I have done one or two online shoots and I remember no matter how many times I told the PR it was for an online mag, they would still ask- when can we get a copy!!!!???!!!!…
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Thank you for this post. I do have additional questions. I work with a lot of independent artist (solo and groups) and it’s always a struggle to get wardrobe for photo shoots. I have two album covers coming up and have been doing a lot of research on pull letters. The problem I’m having is finding out what angle to come from when you’re not commissioned by a print magazine or any magazine in my case. How do I go about getting clothing in this way? Should I write up my own pull letter as the stylist? Or should I have the artist write up a pull letter?
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Hello, I loved this question, and so answered it on this blog post, hope it helps somewhat!:
https://myfashionslashlife.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/ask-biki-how-do-i-pull-clothes-from-press-offices-for-music-shoots-without-an-official-commissioning-letter/
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Great advice! Have you ever had an incident where something is damaged on a shoot? Is the client responsible? Or are you responsible? And do you get models/clients to sign anything on a shoot to say that they are liable?
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You’ve asked a great question! I will answer it in my, ‘Blog Comment Of The Week’ and it should be up by this Friday, so stop by again! Thanks, Biki
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