My Honest Review of Amazon Personal Shopper

My honest review of Amazon Personal Shopper – Amazon’s new personal styling service designed to compete with styling services like StitchFix. What is Amazon Personal Shopper? Amazon Personal Shopper is their new styling service, designed to help you find the best clothes on Amazon that are perfect for you. After you answer some questions, a human being (not a machine!) picks clothes they think you’ll like from Amazon’s vast selection. Here are the pros and cons of Amazon Personal Shopper and how it worked for me.

It’s no secret I’m kind of in love with Amazon. It’s actually a little embarrassing because now it’s the days I don’t get a package that are the exception. Just today, I opened the door to find a large package of dog food and a replacement for the whitehead remover I can’t live without.

So when I heard that Amazon was offering a personal styling service similar to StitchFix, I just had to try it out. I’ve been a StitchFix customer for years, but lately I’ve been feeling like our relationship was growing a little stale. StitchFix clothing is a little more expensive than clothes you can buy at the mall on sale and nothing they’ve sent me recently has seemed special enough to justify the extra expense.

So I wanted to see what Amazon could do.

Amazon Personal Shopper Review

What is a Personal Styling Service?

A personal styling service like StitchFix or Amazon Personal Shopper identifies your style profile, typically by having you answer some questions or items of clothing, and then helps you fill holes in your wardrobe by sending you a selection of pieces to choose from. You’ll typically send a note to your stylist when you schedule your styling explaining what you’re looking for (for example, I’ve asked for pieces for an upcoming vacation or when the seasons change) and then a short time later, you’ll receive a selection of items your stylist believes will fit your personal style and fill the need you have.

My reasons for using a personal styling service are to find unique pieces I wouldn’t otherwise try and to keep me out of the style rut of wearing the same types of things over and over again that I tend to find myself in. (Left to my own devices I would wear a V-Neck Sweater, Jeans and sneakers every day.)

How Does Amazon Personal Shopper Work?

Amazon Personal Shopper works with Amazon Prime Wardrobe, the service Amazon started a year ago that lets choose up to 8 pieces from a variety of clothing brands to be sent to your home without charge to try on. You can send back the items you don’t like and, of course, keep the items you do like, at which point your card is charged.

You must be an Amazon Prime member to use Amazon Prime Wardrobe and Amazon Personal Shopper.

Amazon Personal Shopper takes Amazon Prime Wardrobe one step further by helping to curate the vast amount of clothing that’s available through Amazon Prime Wardrobe. For a $4.99 styling fee, you tell your stylist what you’re looking for and they offer you a selection of clothes to choose from so you don’t have to search for the right item yourself.

At least, that’s how it works in theory. Here’s how my experience went.

How to Sign Up for Amazon Personal Shopper

Right now, Amazon Personal Shopper is only available through the mobile app so you sign up by selecting Amazon Personal Shopper from the menu. You start out by filling out a nicely comprehensive style quiz that really gets into your likes and dislikes, sizing information, and how much you want to spend.

How to Ask for A Styling

Once you’ve filled out your style profile, you can ask for a styling. Simply, choose what kind of clothing you’re wanting to receive – A wardrobe update, for a vacation or getaway, professional event, formal and semiformal events, or gym and workout clothing – and leave a note with more specific information for your stylist.

What Happens After You Request Your Styling?

This is where Amazon Personal Styling is really different from other styling services. A few days after you request your styling, you get a notification that you have items to review. That’s right, Amazon gives you a selection of pieces to review in advance and you can select up to 8 items from these pieces to be sent to your home to try on.

I really like this idea. So often, I’m really counting on receiving something special in from StitchFix for a particular event, only to be disappointed in what I get and caught scrambling at the last minute for a replacement item. This way I can see what’s available in advance and pick my favorites.

I asked for professional items to update my work wardrobe and to wear to upcoming interviews so I was really excited when I got a notification a few days after putting in my styling request that my selections were ready for review. I get a lot of work basics from Amazon so I couldn’t wait to see my choices.

Here’s what they selected for me.

After reviewing my options, I felt … disappointed. Nothing jumped out at me as a Wow! Most of the pieces looked pretty blah, to be honest. I loved the black heels, but unfortunately I think my days of wearing heels that high are over. You can’t expect a personal styling service to knock it out of the park on the first try, but Amazon has a lot of cute clothes so I was a little let down.

I went ahead and ordered six items to try. I’ve had other stylings where I’ve hated everything that came out of the box and then loved the clothes once I put them on so I was still cautiously optimistic.

The Amazon Personal Shopper Try On

You can see all the clothes in the video with this video but here’s a quick summary.

I actually liked these pants but, as you can oh so clearly see in the photo, they are too small for me. I ended up not keeping them, but I’ll bear them in mind for the future. I’ll just make sure to go up one size.

Fun fact! This dress has the worst reviews I’ve ever seen on a piece of clothing on Amazon. And it’s well deserved. This is a cheap polyester dress that has no business being $67.49, much less the $98.00 they wanted to charge me. It also looks like something my daughter would have worn in middle school.

I’ll follow up that bad review with this excellent one. I loved this shirt and most of the reviewers on Amazon did as well. It comes in a variety of colors and patterns and I anticipate adding one or two more of these shirts to my wardrobe.

I also loved this fresh eyelet coral shirt, which could be dressed up or down.

In the “Just OK” category, we’ve got these Riders by Lee pants which were … just ok.

Finally, we have these slim-fitting pants, which I liked, but just not enough to pull the trigger on.

Would I Use Amazon Personal Shopper Again?

I think my answer may surprise you because it’s … probably! I was disappointed in this round, for sure. I specifically asked for clothes to wear to an interview, for example, and nothing they presented to me was interview-worthy.

But I think the service is still worth keeping an eye for the following reasons:

• $4.99 is a really reasonable styling fee and I expect the service to get better over time.
• Amazon has some really cute clothes, particularly in their own store brands.
• I really like the idea of being able to select the clothes you receive in advance.

Because I was doing a review for this blog post, I went ahead and accepted some pieces even though nothing stood out for me when I reviewed the pieces selected for me. Amazon actually has a way to let them know if you don’t like any of the selections. I don’t know what will happen then, but I suspect they would redo the styling and try again so if I try the service again and once again find that I don’t really like any of the pieces, I’ll reach out to them and see what happens.

Next time I try the service, I’ll update this post – so watch this space! Also, I ordered a StitchFix fix with the same instructions so I could compare what I got from the two services so keep an eye out for that upcoming post.

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