Personal Shoppers Share Their Weirdest Stories

Lauren Bart, a Sydney-based personal shopper, had a few wild requests during her days at Threads Styling, the largest indie fashion concierge service in Europe. Bart spoke to Vogue and recounted an incident in which a toddler needed a coveted luxury item to carry around her stuff: 

Recently we bought the most beautiful pink velvet micro Chanel bag for a 2-year-old. It was her birthday and she needed something for her Crayolas and Play-Doh. It was priced at well over $2,000. At the time it seemed pretty extravagant until we bought a 5-year-old his first Cartier watch.

Michelle Liberman, head stylist at The Shopping Friend, told Who What Wear about a woman who needed serious shopping therapy after she discovered her extraordinarily wealthy husband was cheating on her. While the budget had no constraints, the woman's life certainly did.

She refused to wear off-the-rack clothing (i.e., she wouldn't try on fancy clothes unless they were custom-made). She also insisted on stylists with good breath and etiquette training. Things got even weirder from there, according to Liberman:

She also wanted to rent dogs for our shopping excursions. I asked her why and she said she was just used to that as part of her image. Next, she requested that each showroom we were to visit set up a private place for her to nibble on snacks - preferably tabbouleh and falafel. Her coffee also had to be served at 165 degrees every time.

Liberman ended up not working with the woman after 10 days of struggling to meet her lengthy list of requirements.

Personal shoppers can put in such long hours that sometimes the stores they're shopping in close while they're dutifully at work. Joan Kaufman told Who What Wear about an unexpected lock-in at Bergdorf's when a client couldn't make up her mind:

She was taking so long making selections one day that I was going to miss picking up my son from school. The solution? I asked if she would send her limousine to pick him up and bring him to us, which she did. 

We ended up being in Bergdorf's for so long that the store actually closed while we were still inside, and we couldn't get out - my son was crying out of fear and we had to have a guard come let us out.

Sometimes, packing a suitcase is too much trouble. Joan Kaufman, a luxury personal shopper based in New York City, told Who What Wear about a sick client who fled to New York City with only the clothes on her back. She met the woman in an extremely hot room at a posh hotel.

The client was lying down and coughing - apparently, she had the flu - but that wasn't the least of the woman's problems. Kaufman recalled:

She literally came to New York in a muumuu and brought nothing else, so I was hired to buy her everything she needed - socks, panties, outfits, etc. I never like to pry or ask too many questions of my clients, but I realized quite quickly that there was something other than the flu going on.

Valerie Halfon, owner of New York City-based personal shopping service Shop With Val, had an uncanny experience while searching for cheese. According to Halfon, a woman from Saudi Arabia messaged Shop With Val because she had trouble finding Formaggio, a certain kind of fresh mozzarella, in her home country. Halfon took on the task, thinking it would be no problem.

After striking out at every grocery store, Halfon learned that the specific cheese was on backorder through a grocery delivery service, so she waited two weeks for it to arrive. One of the delivered boxes had a cracked container that leaked oil everywhere, including on Halfon's fancy blouse before a night out. She had to leave a fancy fashion show to buy 10 pounds of dry ice that would preserve the cheese and prevent it from spoiling.

She spent more than $500 - between mailing costs and the actual cheese - to get it to Saudi Arabia. But only two of the boxes arrived in good condition; the rest of the cheese was inedible.

"Now I know to stick to fashion - I love my cheese, but I'll never look at mozzarella balls the same way again," Halfon said.

Sometimes the people who hire personal shoppers are so wealthy they have more stuff than they know what to do with - meaning a lot of newly purchased items remain untouched. Alarna Hope, a Sydney-based personal shopper, claimed that she has cleared out closets stuffed with never-worn clothing that are worth enough to make a down payment on a house.

"I cleaned out $150,000 worth of stuff still with the tags on it," she told News.com.au.

Apparently, the spend-happy client loved glamorous going-out outfits, but she never had time to go out due to her 90-hour work weeks.