Inside a Department Store's Secret Shopping Service (from WSJ)

• ON STYLE
• AUGUST 11, 2011

• By CHRISTINA BINKLEY
  

Mimi Ritzen Crawford for The Wall Street Journal

 

Personal shopper Fay Ricotta in her office at Saks with clothes pulled for a client.

The New York flagship of Saks Fifth Avenue doesn't carry Lanvin. But Fay Ricotta does.

In a closet-sized office within the section known as the Fifth Avenue Club, Ms. Ricotta, a personal shopper, runs what amounts to an exclusive boutique with some of fashion's most sought-after labels, from Haider Ackerman to Azzedine Alaïa. Her clients, many of them women with image-conscious jobs, seek clothing that is chosen for them, often without being filtered through Saks's merchandisers.

Ms. Ricotta's services are about as elite as personal shopping gets. Many department stores employ personal shoppers—Saks has 18 in womenswear—to help clients select, fit and style their clothes. But few personal shoppers have their own budgets to shop for clients. 

Ms. Ricotta says she interviews prospective clients, who often come by referral. She notes that her clients need to share her aesthetic, which revolves around simple, chic pieces like a crisp white blouse or a figure-flattering dress. "I think a woman should be dressed like a lady," she said recently, wearing a leopard-print wool-jersey "Audrey" dress by Samantha Sung, a Los Angeles-based designer.

Mimi Ritzen Crawford for The Wall Street Journal

Ms. Ricotta goes to fashion shows to shop for her clients and provides access to clothing that isn't available on Saks floors.

Her 27 clients tend to be trim and big-spending. She estimates 90% of them wear a size 4. As for the rest, there are "two sixes, one 10, one 12." Ms. Ricotta, who works on commission only, says she doesn't turn away people for not spending enough. As with other Saks personal shoppers, there's no charge for her service. But her average client spends of $150,000 to $200,000 per year with her, she estimates, though she's had clients spend as little as $1,000. 

Ms. Ricotta, who is 49 years old, has built a network of access to designer labels, after years of working at fashion brands such as Céline and Calvin Klein and at stores such as Jeffrey and Bergdorf Goodman. She was lured away from Bergdorf in 2005, bringing a string of clients along with her. She says she was tapped by Ron Frasch, Saks's vice chairman, who was formerly Bergdorf's chairman.

Employing Ms. Ricotta gives Saks access, too—not just to her clients but to exclusive clothes that the store doesn't carry on its floors. High-fashion clothing brands limit their purveyors to keep up the luxury quotient of their labels. Lanvin is available at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, and won't sell to Saks there. (The only Saks to carry Lanvin is in Chicago).

When Nancy Novogrod, editor in chief of Travel + Leisure magazine, found one of her most versatile pieces of clothing—a black cashmere Azzedine Alaïa sweater—"Saks didn't have them. Fay had them."

"We don't carry Thom Browne" at Saks, Ms. Ricotta says of the menswear designer's new women's label. "But I'm going to carry it."

Mimi Ritzen Crawford for The WSJ

Ms. Ricotta tries to make sure her clients don't get the same looks that other clients are buying. 

Designer labels respond to her sales power as well. Brant Cryder, president of Yves Saint Laurent North America, says, "You need to jump on whatever Fay may need." He adds that he listens when she says that a fabric is too stiff or a client needs a coat in a different color.

Gucci last season sent over two runway samples for one of her clients. Once, when an investment banker client was set on a Chanel suit but found the skirt too short, Ms. Ricotta dialed up Chanel's New York offices. She requested extra fabric and trim so that she could have Saks's seamstresses add four inches to the length. Chanel obliged.

Ms. Ricotta travels to Paris fashion week twice a year. This fall, she expects to attend 20 shows there and to place orders directly with brands including Stella McCartney, Céline, Dries Van Noten, Nina Ricci and Chloé. She is keenly aware she must sell what she buys. "If I don't sell that $500,000 worth of clothes, I have to face Mr. Frasch," she says. "And he makes me nervous."

"Good," responds Mr. Frasch. "A good merchant is paranoid and insecure." But he adds that he often refers influential new clients to Ms. Ricotta and that she is one of a very few Saks personal shoppers entrusted with a clothing-buying budget. He declines to divulge its size, but notes, "It's a meaningful amount of money. And if she needs more because she needs something for a client, we give it to her."

Ms. Ricotta offers clients more than access to labels. After pulling clothes for clients, she often tries them on herself to assemble a whole look. Clients try on the clothes in front of mirrors in her office with her by their side. 

When one client was delivered a $7,000 sequined gown with the security tag still attached just hours before an event, Ms. Ricotta leapt up from the table at her acupuncture appointment, raced to the store to get the right tool, and met the client's limo at the curb to remove the tag.

She works hard to make sure her clients don't get the same looks that other clients are buying. She has been careful since two clients who are editors at Condé Nast wound up at a meeting in the same Giambattista Valli jacket. "It's actually my biggest fear. I'd rather lose the sale and not sell it to anyone," she says.

CNN correspondent Alina Cho, who reports on topics including fashion, displays Ms. Ricotta's work in some of the clothes she wears on and off camera. She says, "I've got her on speed dial."

Close relationships can involve honesty and abuse, and Ms. Ricotta, who hasn't lost the accent of the Bronx, where she was raised, provides both. She once pointed to a shiny dress that one first-time client wore and announced, "You know that tech look has been out for about five years."

"She's brutally honest," says Ms. Cho, citing a time when Ms. Ricotta told her a dress made her look like "a little old lady." She adds, "There is no editor in her brain."

Ms. Ricotta has rules: She doesn't dress clients in Oscar de la Renta. "Everybody's wearing Oscar," she says. Once a proponent of Christian Louboutin, she has moved on to the next new thing: Brian Atwood's sexy heels. On the forefront of labels that aren't yet household names, she currently favors Haider Ackerman, Erdem and Sophie Theallet.

Ms. Novogrod calls Ms. Ricotta the "Delphic oracle of fashion." "If I took you on a tour of my closet, you'd see the full extent of what knowing Fay has done for me," she says, "not to mention how it's affected the inheritance my children will receive."

—Contact Christina.Binkley@wsj.com or twitter.com/BinkleyOnStyle.