The Baby Stylist Starter Kit
My set-tested essentials for last-minute fixes that don’t look it
Forget the CVS travel sewing kit. If you don’t know how to seriously stitch, you’ll look even worse for wear after fumbling around with dull needles and low-quality thread. My stylist kit has been meticulously composed over countless girls’ trips, nights out, and even a time or two on set working for some of pop culture’s brightest stars. This is my collection of easy-to-source items that you need to start carrying in your purse today to become everyone’s wardrobe savior.
Lash Glue
Lash adhesive is a quiet little power move: skin-safe, invisible, and far more useful than it gets credit for. That curly fringe that needs to behave? A cowl neck threatening to betray you? Sunglasses sliding down your nose like they have somewhere else to be? A pendant that won’t stay lay forward? A few strategic dots, and suddenly everyone knows their place.
Lint Roller
There’s nothing chic about pet hair or lint on your clothing. It takes two seconds, babe. Get it together. They make ones small enough to fit in a clutch, so there’s no excuse for pulling up to the venue with someone’s dog on your outfit after a suspiciously fuzzy Uber ride. And no, they’re not just for hair. Lint rollers are also perfect for picking up fine powder spills—setting powder, I mean.
Stitch Gun
The coolest wardrobe tool that no one knows about: it’s like the fashion version of an office stapler. One click, and it fires a tiny plastic ‘stitch’ perfect for cuffing, tacking, hemming, locking things exactly where you want them. Where lash glue sticks clothes to your body, the stitch gun connects fabric to fabric. It’s for anything you’d trust to a safety pin, but better: pinning and draping up a long skirt, securing a blouse inside a waistband, anchoring a scarf so it doesn’t take flight in the breeze. Clean, fast, no fuss.
Micellar Water
Super easy to keep on hand, micellar water is the key for stain removal. Makeup, deodorant, pasta sauce, you name it: if you can spill it on your clothes, Ms. Micellar can get it out. Keep it on you with some cotton rounds or q-tips and you’re good to go.
Tampons
Because the supermodels on the front covers bleed just like us! On set, in the club, at the office - there’s always someone who needs one.
Embroidery Scissors
I recently found myself working last-minute wardrobe for a certain miniskirt-loving African pop princess…chopping a skirt with her hairstylist’s shears. Not my finest moment, but how I got there is a story for another time. My point is: I really really wished I had my ultra-sharp, fine-point scissors. It was technically a job for fabric shears, but in a pinch, embroidery scissors can get you through almost anything: snipping threads, removing tags, opening vents. Getting them through security? Questionable. But everything I’ve mentioned so far fits inside a manicure travel case. Try your luck.
Travel Steamer
The first and most important thing you learn how to do as a baby stylist is garment steaming. It’s easier and faster than a clothing iron, and it makes any outfit ultra fresh and crisp. Don’t let the runways fool you, the wrinkled clothes ‘trend’ is cute for them, not for you.
Emergency Earrings
Something about naked ears completely ruins a fit for me no matter how good everything else looks. It just gives unfinished. Set some spare neutral studs in your wallet or slide some baby hoops in your card holder. No earrings, no outfit!
Hem Tape
This is the emergency service no tailor wants you to know about. Too-long trousers dragging on pavement? A dress that gave “elegant floor length” in the mirror but “tripping hazard” in real life? Sorted. No sewing, no drama. Just peel, press, and pretend it was always meant to be that way. It won’t judge your decisions, and it definitely won’t ask questions about how last-minute they were.
Bandaids
We all fall for it at least a couple times - the shoe that is too cute to say no to, but diabolically uncomfortable to actually exist in for more than 15 minutes. Bandaids are too easy and too important not to have in your kit. Beyond blister-rescue, I’ve found quite a few ways to use them: in lieu of eyeliner tape to create the perfect black wing, as fingertip armour while handsewing, as lobe support for heavy earrings…the use case honestly might be endless.
A sewing kit is standard. A stylist kit is selective. If yours starts to feel like a junk drawer, you’ve missed the point.
There you have it: my secrets to keeping everyone around me looking polished and feeling confident. Proven useful for both high-pressure celebrity shoots and the mishaps of the quotidian.
Ready to build yours? I’ve done all the hard work for you: shop my faves here.