Stitch Fix is an online clothing shop designed to provide personal styling services for women at an affordable cost. It was specifically created for women who need to wear nicer clothes for events/work but who don’t want to spend hours and hours combing through clothing stores to put together outfits.
How Stitch Fix works:
1. Sign up for a Stitch Fix account.
2. Fill out your style profile. You’ll give very specific details on sizes you wear, styles you like, colors you like, types of clothes you like, and what types of clothing you are specifically looking for (more casual, all business, a mix of both, etc.) You can be very detailed in your descriptions and even share a Pinterest board with them to give Stitch Fix some ideas of your tastes in clothing.
3. Go to checkout and pay a $20 styling fee (this is reimbursed if you choose to keep any of the clothes).
4. One of the Stitch Fix stylists will take your style profile, sizes, and preferences and put together a box of clothing based upon what they think you’ll like and what they think will work well for you.
5. They’ll send you this box in the mail. You’ll have a few days to go through the box, try on the clothes, and then choose to keep any that you liked and ship back any that didn’t work (they provide a postage-paid envelope for you to use).
Back when Stitch Fix first launched, a few of my friends signed up for it and loved it. Based upon their recommendation and my husband’s encouragement, I tried it out. That was around a year ago and I wasn’t thrilled with what I got in my box.
In fact, I sent half of it back, and I wish I wouldn’t have kept two of the items I did because as much as I thought I could convince myself to love them, I just couldn’t.
I did get a pair of earrings in the box that I love and have worn countless times since then. So that was the one redeeming part of my first Stitch Fix experience.
I decided that Stitch Fix just wasn’t for me and was happy to leave it at that. However, a few months ago, a friend here invited me to go with her to a Stitch Fix Influencer’s Dinner here in Nashville. I decided to go — mostly because I was honored to be asked and I was hopeful that I’d meet some other local bloggers at the event.
While at the Stitch Fix event, I had a long talk with the Stitch Fix folks. I was quite cynical about things and they patiently answered all my questions. They encouraged me to give Stitch Fix another try. They gave me some pointers on how to get a box that’s according to your style (they encouraged me to be really, really specific in what I asked for and also encouraged me to set up a Pinterest board with wardrobe ideas).
And then, they gave me a $20 Stitch Fix credit coupon so I could try the service without having to pay the $20 stylist fee. I debated whether or not I was brave enough to try again. I finally decided that it was worth a shot since it was so risk-free. Even if I sent everything back, I’d not be out anything out of pocket.
So I really put some time and effort into making sure my profile had very specific directives on it and I set up a Pinterest board with some outfit ideas. I was so excited to get my box in the mail. Here’s what it had inside of it:
This jacket was not my style at all — too clunky and masculine. It also said it was a small, but it was every bit of two sizes too big for me. Verdict: Sent back.
I loved the color of this dress and it fit me well, too, but I didn’t love the material. It seems like it would wrinkle really easily (it came pretty wrinkly) and not travel well — something that’s important to me for all dressier/business clothes I own. Verdict: Sent back.
This blouse was WAY too big for me. I liked the colors, the style was okay, but it was huge on me. Again, this was small, but it fit like a large on me. Verdict: sent back.
I was really hoping to love these pants. They looked so cute in the box and I really need another pair of jeans that can be dressed up or dressed down. They seemed a tad big on me, a little long, and just overall the fit wasn’t my thing.
They weren’t petite, so in order to get them to fit right in the length and hips, I basically had to pull them up past my belly button. And um, I do not wear pants that must be pulled up high. Verdict: sent back. Ahem.
This was my favorite thing from the fix. I almost kept it, but I didn’t LOVE it and wasn’t sure I would wear it because of the color. Also, the price tag was really steep for what would amount to glorified t-shirt to me. Verdict: sent back.
Here are my overall thoughts on my Stitch Fix experience:
PROS
- I honestly had a lot of fun filling out my style profile. It really helped me to think through what I love and what I don’t love. Since I’m not a fashionista, this isn’t something I’ve spent much time considering. So I thought that was a very valuable exercise.
- I also loved the anticipation of getting a box in the mail that you didn’t know what would be in it. It’s fairly rare that I get to open and go through a mystery box, so looking forward to the box made the experience more fun!
- Since I don’t enjoy shopping, it was really fun to get a box of clothes in the mail — SO much easier than going shopping! Plus, I loved being able to try them on my own bathroom and try them on with items already in my closet to help me decide whether I should keep or send each item back.
- I love the styling cards they gave you with each of the items to give you ideas of how to accessories a piece/what to wear it with. These are great especially for someone like me who has no idea how to put outfits together.
- I also found it great to be challenged to try new things. I would never have picked almost any of these items off of a rack at the store, so it was great to have the opportunity to try on new and different styles. It helped me further define my style.
CONS
- To be really honest, I was very disappointed that whoever styled my box didn’t seem to “get” my style at all. I’ve heard that this improves over time as you get to give very specific feedback on each piece they send you.
- I was also disappointed because I had been very detailed in exactly what I was looking for. While the stylist acknowledged this and gave me an explanation on the card as to why she couldn’t send what I was looking for (I specifically requested a blazer and she said they didn’t have any in at the time.), I felt like the clothes they sent did not hardly at all fit in line with the style profile I filled out.
- I was glad I hadn’t spent $20 for the styling fee as I think I would have felt more obligated to keep something. Not paying that fee freed me up from feeling any sort of obligation, but that is something to definitely keep in mind if you try this service.
- Also, the prices at Stitch Fix are going to be much more than you’re going to find at the thrift store or on the sales rack. This service is designed specifically for women aren’t on a extremely tight budget who want to dress fashionably without spending a lot of time shopping. For busy working women, it could be a lifesaver. However, I think you need to be somewhat adventurous for it to work well for you.
Believe it not, I am actually going to try Stitch Fix again… but only because I have a little bit of referral credit I earned from a few people signing up with my referral link when I shared this post. And I want to see if they do, indeed, improve in learning your tastes if you do more than one Stitch Fix shipment and give them really good feedback on what what they sent did or didn’t work.
When I sent the above items back to Stitch Fix, I was super, super forthright in my critique of the items they sent to me in hopes that my critique will help them do a better job of nailing my style in my next box. We’ll see!
Have you tried Stitch Fix before? If so, I’d love to hear what you thought of it.
P.S. If you click through any of the links in this post and end up deciding to try out Stitch Fix now that I’ve done a pretty good job of trying to let you know of all the risks and things to consider before doing so (!), know that if you sign up and order a fix, I’ll receive a $25 credit. If you don’t feel comfortable with that, please feel free to sign up directly on StitchFix.com. I figured that if anyone was brave enough to try it out after reading this post, I might as well include my referral link… and then if a few people end up signing up, I’ll donate the credit to someone who could use it more than me or give it away as a blog giveaway. Just wanted you to know in case you were wondering. 
If you’ve been reading here for any time at all, you know how much I love my Crock-Pot! It’s a life-saver on busy days when you don’t want to have to think about cooking dinner at 5 p.m.
In the video above, I share one of my favorite quick and easy Crock-Pot dinner recipes. I have detailed written instructions for the recipe I talk about on the video above here. This is so easy I’m almost not sure that it should even be called a “recipe”.
If you love your Crock-Pot, too, be sure to enter the annual Ultimate Crock-Pot #CrockStars contest. To enter:
- Visit CrockStars.com sometime between October 1-31, 2014 (site goes live October 1, 2014).
- Submit a 1-minute video of yourself prepping your favorite original slow cooker recipe using a Crock-Pot Slow Cooker.
- Text your recipe.
- Be sure to follow these and all contest rules noted on the site for eligibility.
The winner will earn the title of "2014 Ultimate Crock-Pot Crock-Star," plus $5,000 and be featured on Crock-Pot.com.
{This post and video were underwritten by Crock-Pot. All opinions are my own. Read our disclosure policy here.}
Readers who have been around here a long time will remember we used to live in the same town as Jessica Fisher from Life as Mom/Good Cheap Eats and her family. We loved getting to know the Fisher family during that year we were both in Kansas City together.
I especially enjoyed hanging out at their house! Not only because I learned so much from Jessica, but because she is an amazing cook. Every time we went to their house, she’d be whipping up some sort of magic in the kitchen. It’s her thing and she does it beautifully.
It was a sad day when their family moved back to California, but we will always be grateful for those many memories we have and for the gift of local friendship and community their family gave to us during a hard and lonely season of our lives. And I will always be thankful for all the recipe ideas, kitchen tips, and life hacks I’ve learned from Jessica.
Jessica, Silas as a baby, and me in 2010 when our family went to visit their family in California
I was excited to get this cookbook in the mail and even more excited to open it up and page through it. It’s packed with yummy, nutritious, and simple recipes — all that can be made on a dime. Not only that, but there are a lot of full color pictures throughout the book.
There are over 200 recipes in this book total, plus lots of great tips and tricks from Jessica. It’s one of those cookbooks you’ll want to read cover to cover and then hang onto to reference for great recipes again and again.
Would you like to win a FREE copy of Good Cheap Eats? I have 10 copies to give away this weekend. To enter to win, just click on the graphic below and type in your name and email address. This giveaway ends Monday, September 29, at 11:59 pm, CST. 10 winners will be chosen and posted early next week.
