In the words of Meghan Trainer, “You got that nine to five, but, baby, so do I.” This July, Trunk Club demonstrated that they heard the pleas of working women who don’t have time to shop: They announced that they are extending their personal stylist services to female clients for the first time.
Trunk Club has been dressing dapper men for the past six years, delivering trunks of hand-picked apparel to the doorsteps of gentlemen across the nation. DC is one of just five cities to have a Trunk Club showroom, so the brand’s space in Chinatown also provides a venue for one-on-one consultations for gentlemen to try on stylist-recommended outfits, taking and paying for what they like, and leaving the rest.
In a town as career-driven as Washington, it’s surprising that Trunk Club hasn’t been made available to all of DC’s female nine to fivers before now. But that’s all going to change–Trunk Club for women is currently on a trial with the brand’s “friends and family” network, and it will open to the public come this fall.
The addition of women’s apparel is in part prompted by Trunk Club’s acquisition by Nordstrom in August 2014, explains Andrea Zacharias, head of sales for Trunk Club DC. Trunk Club’s access to Nordstrom’s women’s apparel has been instrumental in starting their women’s services.
“Nordstrom provides us with the operational tools–whether that’s streamlining our shipping process or helping us get programs in place or access to women’s inventory– that we wouldn’t have had if we hadn’t been acquired,” says Zacharias.
Though Zacharias could not comment on whether or not Trunk Club will work to create their own inventory of women’s apparel, Nordstrom’s inventory has given them a head start to offer their female clients access to brands such as Vince, Theory, Rag & Bone, and Equipment.
The women’s service is primarily Trunks-based–boxes filled with clothing and accessories that are shipped directly to the client’s home, at which point she can choose to keep and pay for the contents, or ship it back–but Zacharias says that the DC showroom has also hosted around four in-person consultations per week. Based on the data that Trunk Club has seen since initiating their trial with women clients, Zacharias thinks it’s going to be a successful new venture.
“I feel like this is just such an intelligent city with people who are living for work a lot of the time,” says Zacharias. “If we can provide the convenience and give our female clients the same value that we’re giving our male clients, then I think it’s going to go over great. So many women in this town are working all the time too, and sometimes the last thing you want to do is drive out to Virginia or Maryland to take care of shopping on the weekends.”
Ladies who are ready to let a stylist take the lead on their wardrobe can sign up for the waiting list on Trunk Club’s website.
Caroline Cunningham joined Washingtonian in 2014 after moving to the DC area from Cincinnati, where she interned and freelanced for Cincinnati Magazine and worked in content marketing. She currently resides in College Park.
