Once your promotional tools are completed and your portfolio looks great, you need a plan. Determine what your career goals are. Do you want to work in retail, with private clients, or for commercial clients in print or in film and television? You might end up with a combination of work, but maintaining a focus is important. It will determine whether you spend more time developing your book or your reel. In either case, you will need to identify a group of potential clients and contact them Follow these guidelines:
SHOW YOUR WORK
Develop a mailing list, and send out your portfolio and/or resume. Sending promotional cards and your resume is a quick way to remind possible employers of your work.
FOLLOW UP
Call within a week of leaving or mailing your materials.
THANK POTENTIAL CLIENTS
by sending a card thanking them for their time and advice. Ask them if there are any available opportunities.
Fashion stylists or editors are often the key to being hired on a high profile shoot. The bigger
the stylist, the better the artist has to be.
Commit your goals to paper. Learn as much as you can about photographers who work in the industry, as they often decide which stylists to hire. To get print work, start bringing your portfolio to magazine editors, photographers, and other potential employers. The only way to do this is to have an appointment, so be prepared to spend lots of time on the phone. You can look on the mastheads of magazines to find the fashion and beauty editors and art directors to call. Find out the drop-off days specified by the agencies. These are the specific days and times set up for portfolio reviews. A publication called The Black Book lists everyone in the print world and is an invaluable resource for contact information (see Resource Guide).
Don’t be afraid to explore several avenues of employment at once. Saturate the market with your card, sending it to not only magazine editors, photographers, and agents but also to local stores and salons. Contact department stores about doing fashion shows or other promotional events. Volunteer to do the makeup for fund-raising fashion shows or productions at local theaters. To help break into the more prestigious and higher paying areas of makeup artistry, do whatever you can to meet the top players in the field. Call or send a friendly personal note along with your promotional card. It will help if you keep up to date on the industry—read all the fashion and entertainment magazines to keep track of the top photographers, models, designers, and makeup artists. Know who does which advertising campaigns, study photographers’ and makeup artists’ styles, and be able to recognize their work.
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Remember that in the fashion industry—like any other business—people hire people. So always be nice, smile, and say thank you. Potential clients will remember you for it next time, when you come back with more experience and more photographs in your portfolio. Also, when you’re just starting out, don’t think too much about what you’ll get out of a makeup job. Take all the jobs you can, because you never know what you might learn or what contacts you might make.
It’s also worth noting that when you are getting started and looking for freelance work, there are going to be dry spells. It’s important to be frugal with your money, to learn how to budget when you do get paying freelance work, and to have another source of income to fall back on (waiting tables, working retail, dog walking, etc.). And when you do have downtime between assignments, use it constructively—make calls, send out your resume and promotional card, and do more test shoots to build your portfolio.