Bonjour!
Image Consulting is a branch of the Marketing, Branding, and Communication industry that focuses on the areas of Appearance (including Attitude and Mindset), Behaviour (including Etiquette, Ethics, Protocol, and Personality), and Communication (Verbal and Nonverbal aspects as like Body Language). Image Consulting is about providing professional advice to enhance the overall look and feel of an individual, business, and Brand.
Image Consulting is a service industry that involves a consultant helping clients improve their APPEARANCE, advising on BEHAVIOUR, improving on COMMUNICATION skills, and boosting CONFIDENCE for personal or professional reasons.
If you want to be successful in life and business, you must ACT like one- in the way you THIN, LOOK, BEHAVE and how you PRESENT yourself to others
- The Image Factor
As an image consultant, you'll give clients makeovers, coach them on the right wardrobe style for the image they want to project, and even clean out/organize their closets or go shopping trips. You'll likely give hair and makeup advice, instructions on impactful body language, and tips on building self-confidence. You can teach tactics for better sales and customer relations, or you can work with clients facing media interviews to help them act and look their best. These days, you can include services on how to look your best online. You can work at home, or you work part-time and it's a creative and satisfying business, as you can help someone advance in their career or feel good about themselves in their personal life. As an image consultant, you need to have an innate sense of style and up-to-date knowledge of fashion, hair, and makeup trends in both personal and professional settings. Last, but not least, this is a practise-what-you-preach business- you'll have to look polished, professional, and dressed for success on all public occasions.
What skills do you need to be a good image consultant?
People skills are the most important experience someone would need to enter the industry, as you need to have the ability to deal with people on a personal level.
A woman needs drive, ambition, intelligence, and education to move up the executive ladder. Without those qualities, the best clothing in the world won't do anything for her. But even with them, if she doesn't have the right clothing, she won't get ahead.
John T. Malloy
The Woman's Dress for Success Book 1977
How image consulting started
1n 1975, Malloy's best-selling book on men's clothes, Dress for Success, was published, followed in 1977 by The Women's Dress for Success Book. In both books, Malloy emphasized that his advice was based not on personal opinion, but on years of research. While aspects of image management for women had been around for a long time - e.g., wardrobe planning, modeling, and finishing school courses - Malloy went a step further by addressing clothing requirements specifically for professional women who must compete with men for executive-level positions. He advocated a "business uniform" for women, consisting of a dark-coloured, skirted suit- preferably medium grey or medium blue -worn with a contrasting colour blouse, plain dark pumps, fleshed coloured hose, and understated make-up.
Time has changed the dress code in the business world today and Malloy's business uniform is considered outdated. However, his basic premise that certain industries require certain dress remains valid, as does his statement that if you want to succeed, you have to look like you want to succeed. "My advice to women is based on the same principle as my advice to men," Malloy wrote. "Your clothes should move you up socially and in business, not hold you back."
In 1970 Emily Cho was contemplating leaving the corporate fashion world and striking out on her own, and she founded her own consulting firm, New Image, in New York City.
"Somewhere along the way, we women have acquired the idea that we should have an instinctive sense of style, that it ought to be born in us as an integral part of our femininity, and that, if it is lacking, we are somehow unwomanly."
Emily Cho, wrote in her book, Looking Terrific, 1978
"It was not going to be just a shopping service, but also a way of helping a woman with her inner as well as her outer qualities. Often clients come to me when they want to find or strengthen their own identities, beginning with their clothing image and working inward from there."
Clothing is a terrific way to enjoy yourself and improve the quality of your life
Like Emily Cho, when I began my image consulting business, more than a decade ago, it was primarily to help individual clients develop workable wardrobes based on a capsule colour scheme of five or six colours. I evaluated the person's wardrobe and suggested how to create new looks with existing pieces and accessories, while gradually building a new wardrobe. I advised on hairstyle and makeup and did personal shopping as well.
Over the years, I began doing more and more corporate seminars, workshops and I was hired by hotels, retail brands, insurance companies, banks, academia, financial institutions, multinationals, Government-linked companies, government ministries, to architectural and designers' groups to help align their image with their corporate values and identities. Companies used this training to reward and motivate their employees and executives or as a tactful way to tell them to shape up. It was good for employee morale, good for business, and financially lucrative for image consultants.
Today, the market for corporate and individual image consultant services had grown to the point where I turned my expertise to provide certification training for other Image Consultants. I started my School of Image Consultants which is now rebranded as 'Refinement Institute' to train prospective image consultants and to provide continuing education for experienced consultants as well as providing finishing school programs from young ladies and men, society ladies and gentlemen.
Is Image Everything?
Image Consultants' business was booming as companies and individuals seek out image experts on how to look and dress, and were willing to buy expensive wardrobes. More and more corporations hired image consultants to conduct seminars on ways to project an image of success. By 1990 image consulting had become a USD 130 million a year industry, and more than tripled today.
At Refinement Institute, we offered image consulting services and learning beyond wardrobe and grooming advice. Services are divided into five (5) categories:
(1) Dress and Colour
(2) Speech/Public Appearance
(3) Personal/Public Image
(4) Personal Motivation, Coaching and Mentoring
(5) Personality Enhancement
The only constant is 'change'.
To be a successful image consultant requires staying abreast of trends, constantly ascertaining what needs in the business and society world are not being met, and adapting services to meet those needs. I make it part of my job as the school of refinement to facilitate the process of exploring ways in which image consultants can provide services that attract and benefit new clients.
Some Key INDIVIDUAL services: Women and Men
- Personal Image Assessment
- Personal and Professional Goals
- Vision Boards
- Personality Profiling on your UNIQUENESS
- Behaviour Analysis
- Communication Skills (includes Presentation and Conversation skills)
- Body Language
- Dress and Appearance
- Wardrobe Management based on Lifestyle
- Body Type
- Colours Analysis
- Knowing Your STYLE Personality
- Beauty Care Regimen
- Personal Grooming
- Social Graces and Etiquette
- Deportment and Elegance
- Life & Lifestyle Coaching
- Personal Development
- Mental Health Coaching
- Healthy Living (Nutrition & Healthy regimen)
- Pageantry Confidence
Believe in yourself. You are braver than you think, more talented than you know, and capable of more than you imagine
-Roy T. Bennett
The world will keep getting smaller, making cross-cultural communications and proper etiquette more important than ever in business and in the social environment. More and more people will understand that image matters. It's just pure wisdom for a person or a company to make the effort to create a favourable impression.
Image Consultant's reward is not only about financial remuneration but it is also in the personal satisfaction derived from helping people improve their appearance, presentation skills and on how to gain confidence in themselves.
In the first 7 seconds, your image influences the people you meet.
What we do.
Refinement Institute is the first of its kind famed elite Image Consulting University School that aims to teach the rules of classy etiquette, dress code, deportment, finesse, cultural refinement, royal protocol, and civility.
Are you seeking change?
Wish to make Image Consulting your future career, doing what you love and helping men women develop their unique personal styles, and support professionals, entrepreneurs, and others to build confidence and have more success? Consulting that's based on gut feeling only is not professional, which is why you need a certification education in image consulting to make your dreams come true.
Let's have a 30 minutes conversation with us and chat about your ambition and goals.
Stay Safe and let us help you explore your beautiful dream.
