If there was ever any doubt in the value of a strong digital presence in the fashion industry, these last two years proved such doubt wrong. Fashion was severely hit by the fallout from the pandemic. Events, shows, and photoshoots were indefinitely put on hold, leaving a large number of creatives out of work.

Fashion stylists Ade Samuel, Nicole Chavez, and Erin Walsh were no exception. With cutbacks from studios and no foreseeable jobs in the future, each got creative to bring in new forms of income. With help from Squarespace, the stylists each utilized their time at home to build their digital platforms. As part of the company’s ‘Fashionably Late’ campaign, Samuel, Walsh, and Chavez worked to curate their digital footprint and unveil a website that speaks to their personal brand and style as a tool to scale their business.

“Ade, Erin and Nicole have built incredible careers working with A-List clients over the years. Given the high-pressure timelines and the demands of their role, they hadn’t had time to prioritize their own personal brands until the pandemic,” Squarespace CMO Kinjil Mathur said. “We worked with each stylist to help them translate their unique brand and passion into websites that captured their philosophies on style, and allowed them to explore new directions in their careers.”

We chatted with each of the stylists to hear how they built their digital footprint in today’s increasingly digital age.

ADE SAMUEL

adesamuel.com

For the stylist – known for her work with Khalid and Michael B. Jordan – the project was a long time coming. “When Squarespace came to me with the opportunity, I was so excited and I even expressed to them how it was so perfect because I had been wanting to build this,” she said. “A lot of my peers and creative friends had been looking at their digital presence and restructuring their websites or their Instagram. I honestly was like, ‘thank God,’ because it was necessary. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we know that trying to speak to people who have followed me, supported me, and seen my growth online was important. So I was just happy to align with them, to create a seamless way of ramping up and creating a new space for my brand digitally.”

Since launching, Samuel has seen an influx of user engagement with her suggestion box feature and a streamlined form of requests through her contact page. “Sometimes people try to DM me, but DMs can be tricky,” she said.

The page serves as a foundation for her work, which is key as she expands into new arenas including producing. Her first project in this capacity is a beautiful short film inspired by her Nigerian heritage titled ‘A Love Letter to Africa,’ shot for Essence with an all-African team and featuring all African designers.

To Samuel, the importance of digital channels signifies a larger shift towards a more inclusive future. “I think that people are now paying attention to the diaspora of creatives within this industry and it’s not so one-dimensional,” she said. “So to see how open people have been with making sure that they hire people of all different backgrounds and races. I think it’s really important. It’s allowed for so many people to have the opportunity to sell to clients that we thought at one point was unreachable. With social media, we’ve been able to be in such close connection with artists and celebrities, and I think that’s what’s changed the game.”

Erin Walsh

hemlinesbyerinwalsh.com

Walsh has years of experience working with major celebrities – think Anne Hathaway, Timothée Chalamet, and Sarah Jessica Parker – for moments on and off the red carpet. Now, her website serves as a central hub to combine her various ventures into a cohesive narrative to empower women through her own perspective.

From her online magazine SBJCT Journal to the launch of her upcoming book, Walsh was in need of one singular destination to streamline her projects. “The idea of creating a platform in this way was so exciting because I see all these things as extensions of myself as a stylist, as all these arms to these different projects I’m working on,” she said. “I needed some kind of hub for things to exist together, to tell a cohesive story, because I think to be most effective you need an actual platform to share all this information in one place that’s separate from just social media.”

The site includes articles on ‘Crafting Style with Intention’, building a spiritual style guide, and how to build wardrobe essentials, alongside BTS content called #EWstylefiles.

“I basically wanted to use all the access and work that I do to share a larger message of empowerment for women,” Walsh said. “How being more conscious about all these things, and essentially the way we wear them, can help us to live as the best version of ourselves. I want to spread that message of living more in alignment by being thoughtful about what you wear.”

Walsh also managed to build out the site all while pregnant with her third child. For Walsh, there has never been much separation between work and her family – who often takes her kids along for the ride for much of her work. If you’re wondering what this looks like, you’ll have to check her website. “I’ll have a section on the site with some behind-the-scenes fittings, because there are so many funny moments,” said Walsh. “They’ll just take over a fitting.”

A child taking over a fitting with A-list actors? Who wouldn’t love to see that!

Nicole Chavez

nicolechavezstyle.com/

After months of reflection and a self-care journey at home, Nicole Chavez felt ready to finally make some changes in her business. “I drank all the cocktails I could drink, you know?” she said jokingly.

The break was well-deserved for the stylist who has been going nonstop for over 20 years, working Rachel Bilson and Kristen Bell among others. Finally ready to focus on building her own brand, it was only after she purchased her own domain with Squarespace that the company reached out. “I thought, ‘ok, this is so serendipitous. This is exactly where I want to be. This is who I want to partner with.’ And then hearing it was myself with Erin and Ade, people that I respected in my field, I was so excited for this opportunity,” said Chavez. “Honestly, I probably would have done it on my own, but it would’ve taken me much longer. Having the experienced team working with me, it was just, it just all came together so seamlessly.”

It was a big shift for a woman that has built her career cultivating the look and image for others to focus on herself. “I’d always been working with my clients, building their brand,” she said. “So it was fun to be on the other side of that. And to try to figure out what my brand was. What was I going to say? What was my logo going to be? What were the colors? I didn’t know I enjoyed doing this so much until I started.”

It’s a far cry from her early days as a stylist, where the goal was to remain anonymous. “It was the complete polar opposite,” said Chavez. “I was very behind-the-scenes and a lot of the clients that I was working with were very private. So I remember just being really respectful of that and making sure that I was very much in the background and not making noise. It was very subtle, and as social media has grown we’ve had to really brand ourselves to protect our jobs. It was a real turn.”

In order to survive, Chavez believes it remains a necessity to build your digital footprint. “When I started, the budgets at the studios were much higher. Even pre-pandemic, they just felt like ‘oh the client can dress themselves. The client will have to pay for that out of pocket,’” she added. “So when that shifted for us, it really made a huge impact on our business. And I think that’s really, when I saw stylists doing the side hustle. You find other ways to make money and we have to be creative about that.”

Chavez’s site encompasses a wide range of features, from editorial stories to a ‘Shop’ section – allowing her to work with brands she has long-standing relationships with in an entirely new capacity.

“I really wanted people to gain access to the things that I loved. I found during the pandemic, I was posting things that made more sense to me and people really responding to it,” she said. “So I thought, ‘well, this is interesting.’ People obviously love what my clients wear, but it was a shift to have it be my voice. It’s so great to broaden that, to tell more of a story and have a space to do that in.”