I Used This Styling Service to Help Me Pack for Paris — Here's What It Was Like

Stitch Fix and Tripadvisor recently partnered to help travelers dress for any destination, myself included.

A Google search of “Paris street style” results in a whole cache of chic looks like tailored jackets, sleek boots, and elegant wide-leg denim. But when it came to actually packing for a recent trip to the iconic city, I couldn’t decide which direction to go in.

Enter Stitch Fix, the company which sends you styled clothes based on your requests. And to make the selection even more customized for traveling, the brand recently partnered with Tripadvisor to offer customers a style quiz aimed at helping them back for their next big trip.

The idea for the quiz came after Stitch Fix discovered more than 90 percent of its customers planned to travel this summer, the company shared with Travel + Leisure. And more than 80 percent admitted to overpacking (guilty as charged).

"At Stitch Fix we rely on our clients’ feedback to identify ways we can better serve them,” Jenny Herr, the company’s head of fashion and trends, told T+L. “After discovering that nearly 100 percent of our clients plan to travel this summer, we were thrilled to leverage our expertise in personalization and trend forecasting with Tripadvisor’s rich travel insights to help travelers achieve their dream vacation looks."t

And it turns out, I’m also not the only Stitch Fix customer headed to Paris this summer. In fact, nearly one in five Stitch Fix customers asked for "Parisian style" for their summer outfits, the company told T+L. Other European cities like London, Rome, and Barcelona are also high on customers’ wish lists even as flight costs to Europe are as high as they’ve been in five years.

The quiz is available for a limited time and asks questions about your travel preferences (dream destination, favorite vacation activity) as well as personal style. I recently took the quiz (picking big cities over beach locales and describing my personal style as heavy on patterns and textures) and got “sophisticated city slicker” with a look that “emulates Parisian style” — perfect for my upcoming trip.

Armed with that description, I headed over to the Stitch Fix website where I input the quiz results in the notes to the stylist and ordered my first-ever box of items, or a Fix, as the company calls it. A few days later, it arrived and I couldn’t wait to unwrap it.

Inside, my stylist, Ray, had placed a collection of items in neutral tones. Ray had even taken the extra step of looking at my Instagram profile and recommended a favorite restaurant to visit while in Paris.

The more you use Stitch Fix, the more your stylist gets to know you. I fell in love with a fabulous halter-style forest green and cream striped shirt on the first try, but decided to send back the rest of the items and give it another go. When using Stitch Fix, customers pay a $20 styling fee, which is then applied to any item they decide to keep. Customers can exchange sizes for free or send back anything they don’t love. But if they keep the entire box, they receive a 25 percent discount on the total.

In my second Fix, every single item was a hit as if Ray had read my mind. The first thing I pulled out was a pair of white woven slides, which I couldn’t wait to wear and donned that night to see a Broadway show in New York even before I left for my trip.

Once in Paris, I put on a pastel floral dress with puffed sleeves, which Ray paired with a white twist-handle bag for Sunday brunch at The Peninsula hotel, an opulent affair complete with an overflowing buffet set in the gorgeous Le Lobby restaurant. My dress even matched the delicate petals of the hydrangeas sitting underneath the palatial chandelier and soaring ceilings.

The Fix was full of classic pieces like a black strappy knit maxi dress that was easy to pull on and dress up or down, and a pair of cream-colored pleated shorts that hit at the ideal length.

As I traveled around the city, I knew I had the perfect outfits for each occasion: a lavish and delicious lunch at the two-Michelin starred L'Oiseau Blanc overlooking the Eiffel Tower, shopping at the classic Printemps department store, dinner underneath the Palais Garnier, and just meandering around the city admiring the Haussmann buildings with their iconic iron balconies. And having the outfits delivered to me already styled made packing that much easier — no Google search required. 

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