Become Peter Keating for $150/hour?

While researching another topic, I chanced upon an article that caused me to laugh out loud at first, and which elicited the same question I asked in my title. Upon further delving, I revised my opinion of the subject matter and decided that, ironically, it was the method of presentation that elicited this reaction from me. Bear with me. I'll explain myself shortly. And have no fear, Gus Van Horn is not morphing into a metrosexual. (And the near-certainty that the term is completely out of date by now will probably vouch for me on that score.)

They're called lifestyle consultants, the latest offshoot of the booming market of upscale personal services, and they promise to overhaul your wardrobe, arrange for sessions with hair and make-up professionals, give advice on what type of car to buy, what music to listen to, even what plastic surgeon to use.

The first thing that got me going was the bit about "what music to listen to". And then it got even worse.

Less than five minutes after meeting face to face, he was knee-deep in my overcrowded closet while I was trying on a grey wool suit for his inspection. Biondo took one look and said "it wasn't doing anything" for me. Meanwhile, he encouraged me to rediscover a forgotten blazer and paired an old cable knit sweater with a pencil skirt.

A little more than two hours later, there was a pile of unloved items on the floor, my clothing was neatly organized and I felt liberated.

After spending the morning together, not only did I have a renewed sense of calm when I looked at my closet, but I felt like I had a new best friend.

A new best friend? Oh, Christ! The article discusses two lifestyle consulting firms, and this was near the end of the first part. The second part of the article, about another such firm, is sub-headed, "Image is everything". I read on.

Lifestyle consultants are filling the void left by the dissolution of close familial relationships and neighborhoods, explained Robert Thompson, professor of pop culture at Syracuse University. The "things that were supplied by communities has been commodified," he said.

Increasingly, people are hiring stylists, decorators, personal assistants and party planners to keep up with the latest trends, according to Thompson.

Boy! We're really going down the tubes! This is pathetic! But wait! There's more.

"Image is everything. It helps build confidence and provides the first and most enduring impression," Lupo and co-founder Jesse Garza proclaim.

But a whole new you comes at a hefty price. Visual Therapy's initial "wardrobe clarification" is $3,600 and the stylist fee is $450 per hour or 20 percent of the retail price of the clothing purchases, whichever is greater.

There's a sucker born every minute, eh? I decided to check out the sites of the two firms. Surely no one is so foolish as to waste that kind of money and not get results.

And besides, I was the beneficiary of a little free image consulting of my own back in grad school after my divorce. For reasons I will not get into here, I had never been particularly confident about how my appearance registered with women and I'd been out of the market for quite some time besides. I wanted to have whatever edge I could get. A very good female friend of mine got me up to speed on a few wardrobe issues. She also suggested I go with a beard after recalling a picture of me from my submarine days after we'd had a beard growing contest on deployment.

And then there's music. Who doesn't take suggestions from others about music from time to time? Suppose you're in some kind of 80 hour per week pressure-cooker of a job and haven't had much chance to listen to new music in awhile. And what if your friends are all in the same boat? If you had the money, you might consider paying someone for a few suggestions, provided you thought they might know what they were talking about.

So despite what I initially took to be a somewhat second-handed presentation of the topic (more on that in a bit), I saw that these image consultants could indeed fulfill an actual need. While image certainly isn't everything, one's personal appearance can be a form of communication. Adolescent fads might be an extreme example, but they make the point. One thing you communicate is your general acceptance or rejection of the values of those around you by the way you dress and groom yourself.

People will often attempt to estimate your intelligence based on aspects of your appearance that you control. If your attire is sufficiently different from everyone else's, but conveys nothing in particular about your fundamental beliefs, people might simply think you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer. For example, if you grew up in a rural area and moved to a city, people might think you're not terribly astute if you insisted on wearing Western-styled attire most of the time. Now, this is a matter of personal choice, but the fact is that this is the impression, correct or not, many might get. If you like that style enough, you might need to take that into account under those circumstances.

There is also the additional issue of how well one's appearance can accurately project the person inside. Consider these before-and-after images from one of the image consultants. This is a beautiful woman, but she -- ahem -- plainly just did not know a good way to show herself off before her makeover.

And the site of the second firm, despite the sloppy expression that "image is everything" I cited above, puts this very well, once you get past the marketing buzzwords.

... VT's luxury lifestyle consultants work with women and men to create a confident self and public image by creating a new awareness of Image (the external, what others see), and Identity (the internal, who you truly are) to provide Clarity (a consistent image and identity). The end result is a realization of a refined personal image, a lasting lifestyle change. [bold added]

During an interview and analysis of a client's lifestyle and wardrobe, Visual Therapy consultants discover their subject's essential unique qualities before the creative process begins. VT provides clients with options so they can make their own choices. In the process, clients re-discover and redefine who they are and how they would like to be perceived.

In other words, these consultants can, if used properly, help people project their personalities more effectively through the nonverbal medium of fashion.

And while I take Robert Thompson's quote above to mean that such services exist to replace advice one might get from a closer-knit community than many live in these days, he misses a major point. Capitalism has brought a high degree of sophistication to the average consumer, so much so that making intelligent choices can be intimidating. As with any other kind of expertise, these fashion consultants are saving their customers time: be that the time of having to learn all about fashion themselves or lost time, such as missed career or romantic opportunities. (And on the former subject, Visual Therapy, according to the article, has published a do-it-yourself guide for those without the bucketloads of cash to be -- and this word seems especially apt here -- their patrons.)

So despite my initial impulse to ridicule the whole idea of fashion consulting, it serves a need, as so loudly proclaimed by the free market. I have one last matter to address: the writing style of the piece. A woman wrote this. Women often bond over fashion matters and shopping. I don't know why, only that it is so. So the experience is like renting a friend, at least to the author.

As a "High Life Man", I have to admit that I am getting a bit edgy.... I seem to be catching on to female humor! Yikes!

-- CAV