Please introduce yourself, what you do, why you do it, and what you want people to know about you.
My name is Franzy Staedter and I’m a Celebrity Stylist and Image Consultant. As a celebrity stylist, I help actors, musicians, and entertainers with their style. From appearances, to press tours, to photoshoots, and whatever else is needed.
I also have private clients and help them curate a look and wardrobe that works best for their life and lifestyle. I work with them remotely, as I developed a virtual styling program.
Although those two worlds may appear to be very different, there is something uniting in the fact that everybody wants to look authentic and unique.
I chose my career because I really love fashion and helping others. It’s an amazing feeling to see each client look and feel good about their clothes and appearance. With each client, whether celebrity or private, the goal is to bring about more confidence within them.
What qualities makes you different and unique from everyone else in the industry?
To be very honest, it seems to be a combination of things. Being from Germany, as a culture, we seem to be a bit more organized and systematic innately. Which fostered a sense for business overall, and consequently being able to develop a virtual styling program that is now successfully being applied to all of my private clients.
Being raised in Europe by very unconventional parents supported the idea of being an artist and that allowed me to explore fashion and self-expression from an early age.
The virtual styling program I developed is based on all of my experience and successful actions throughout my career as a celebrity stylist. I wanted to make the option of styling accessible to anyone interested in improving their appearance, no matter their location.
Describe THAT moment when you realized you wanted to do what you do now. Who did you tell first? What has it been like since that moment?
I was searching for a lifelong career and after trying out a couple of different ones, I circled back to fashion when the idea of styling was brought up to me. At that moment, a light bulb went off and everything just sort of clicked.
That’s when I dove in, and it felt so right that the idea of not making it didn’t even cross my mind. Since that moment, I’ve experienced happiness, faced challenges, yes, shed a couple of tears but shared a lot of laughter, too.
It made me grow as a person and a companion, and really helped me understand how to become a true team player. It always takes a village to make it in life, personally or professionally; you can’t do it alone.
What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to face and how did you overcome it?
One of my early challenges was that I was trying to make a career out of a relatively new and unknown profession – styling. As a profession, it only gained popularity in the 90s, so the concept of a stylist for many is nebulous.
Additionally, I had to grow into the role of a successful entrepreneur and successful artist at the same time. As an artist, we sometimes struggle with the idea of running a business, and many entrepreneurs don’t consider themselves artists. Bringing those two pieces of the puzzle to fit together took me some time.
If you had to pick the TOP 3 people you’d want to meet that could take your career (or business) to the next level…who would those 3 people be?
In order to take things to the next level, I think for many businesses hiring an experienced CEO is a sensible thing to do, in my case, running a business is different than creating art. Bringing in more structure that way would enable growth.
With that, bringing a private investor on board would also make sense. And… as the third person, I would choose a dog of course; nothing better than having a work environment with a friendly sweet dog around. (laughing)