Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: Which Should You Choose for Online Personal Styling?

Hi there! I‘m so glad you stopped by to read this comparison guide I put together after test driving the two most popular personalized online styling subscription services – Trunk Club and Stitch Fix – over the past few months.

You‘re likely feeling the same frustrations I‘ve had for ages around finding clothes that properly fit, match my tastes and make me feel confident without having to embark on the mind-numbing chore of wandering through my local mall for hours. Wouldn‘t it be amazing if an expert fashion stylist could just magically select an entire wardrobe catered to YOU and have it shipped straight to your doorstep for you to conveniently try on at home?

Well Trunk Club and Stitch Fix dared to turn that dream into reality when they launched back in 2009 and 2011 respectively. The pioneer founders of both companies discovered clever ways to combine data science, human stylist expertise and logistics technology to create custom clothing boxes tailored to each customer.

I took these personalized subscription styling services for a test drive over the past 6 months to assess whether they live up to their lofty promises. And I‘m here to give you the full download on what worked, what didn‘t, and help determine which option may be the best fit for your needs and preferences!

My Personal Backstory

I‘ll start by giving you a bit of background on me so you understand my perspective going into these reviews. I‘m a 32 year old marketing manager who has a real soft spot for fashion, yet I despise setting foot in stores because I can never find things in the right size or style that work for me.

I‘d characterize my personal tastes as casual, comfortable but stylish – names like Madewell, Rag & Bone, Reiss and Vince represent the design aesthetic I lean towards. However, I want the versatility to also access some fancier designer pieces for date nights or client meetings in my line of work.

While budget is a consideration, I‘ve reached a point in my career where I‘m comfortable investing in quality items even with some splurging here and there. But the few thousand dollars worth of clothes cramped inside my overflowing closet definitely signal I could use an edit to shop more intentionally!

Does this backstory resonate with your own shopping obstacles and taste preferences? Fabulous, then let‘s get right into dissecting the nitty gritty details of my experiences with Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix!

How Do Trunk Club and Stitch Fix Work?

Since there may be readers who haven‘t previously used or even heard about personalized subscription box services, let me start by explaining exactly how Trunk Club and Stitch Fix operate before diving into the comparison.

Trunk Club Overview

• After signing up online, you complete a style profile questionnaire and get matched with a personal stylist
• Have a conversation with your stylist to share exact needs for work, weekends, sizes, favorite brands, budget and more
• Your stylist curates a "trunk" of 8-16 apparel and accessory items tailored to you
• Receive a trunk preview where you can approve, swap or remove suggested items
• Once finalized, Trunk Club ships the box and you try on pieces at home
• Only pay for what you keep, return the rest at no cost

Stitch Fix Overview

• Complete an extensive style quiz upfront going through style/size preferences and shopping habits
• Get matched to one of Stitch Fix‘s thousands of human stylists that best aligns to your profile
• Your stylist selects a box of 5 items based on your quiz answers, past keep/return data and their expert intuition
• After Stitch Fix ships the box, you try on the pieces and decide what to buy or return
• Pay just a $20 styling fee upfront that gets applied to anything you keep
• Free shipping both ways and no subscription required

Hopefully that gives you a baseline understanding before I take you through all the details! Now let‘s get to the juicy comparisons…

Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: Customization & Styling Experience

A huge part of the value proposition from personalized styling lies in how well they tailor the products to your unique tastes and needs. Customization makes or breaks the delight and convenience factors. So I‘ll start the head-to-head analysis by comparing how Trunk Club and Stitch Fix gather your style insights to fuel their curation.

Style Quizzes

Both styling services have you fill out a style profile quiz, but Stitch Fix easily goes more in-depth with very thoughtful questions like:

• How much thought do you put into getting dressed?
• Do you pay attention to trends?
• How would your friends describe your style?
• Are there styles, looks or trends you try to avoid?

Many questions allow multiple choice answers while others encourage you to explain preferences in paragraph form.

Trunk Club‘s quiz takes just 5-7 minutes to complete with very straight-forward questions focused on sizing, brands you like to wear, frequencies of occasions worked/weekends and such. The goal seems more to enable the matching with a stylist than gathering rich style signals.

Winner: Stitch Fix quiz

Algorithms vs Stylists

Stitch Fix places full confidence in their algorithms to determine selections based on the reams of data collected through quizzes, keep/return feedback and other sources. You have no direct interaction with your 3,800+ human stylists outside of a note you can include along with returns.

By contrast, Trunk Club emphasizes the personal stylist relationship as the ultimate differentiator. My stylist specialist sent me her direct phone/email for any questions and to further clarify preferences that may not have come through verbally.

I found the dialogue hugely helpful to guide towards exactly what I wanted while still receiving unexpected delights I wouldn‘t have known to ask for. With Stitch Fix, I felt fully at fate of their black box algorithms.

Winner: Trunk Club stylist relationships

Curation Customization

Trunk Club has a very cool "Style Swipes" features where you can indicate "Yes" or "No" preferences on specific clothing items proposed before any styling happens. I loved being able to guide my stylist through example styles that matched or mismatched my tastes.

You can also directly add up to 3 items available on Nordstrom‘s site to your Trunk through their "Your Picks" option. This allows you to ensure some bases are covered with staple pieces you know and love already.

With StitchFix, no pre-styling customization exists beyond what you communicate through your return notes from the last box. So the curation controlling capabilities vastly favor Trunk Club.

Winner: Trunk Club customization

Ongoing Learning

As you provide feedback through keeps, returns and direct stylist conversations, both Trunk Club and Stitch Fix catalog what worked for you versus what missed the mark. These learnings then personalize future shipments to align better with your style evolution.

I found Stitch Fix to have an early advantage here since their ultra detailed style quiz bakes in a ton of data upfront. This gives them a robust foundation that combines with each return to refine selections over time. Trunk Club is playing catch up in early shipments but closes the gap quickly through the engrained stylist relationship.

Winner: Stitch Fix (early) Trunk Club (longer-term)

Brand Assortment Algorithm

With Stitch Fix supplying inventory from over 1,000 popular apparel, shoes and accessory designers, their algorithms can tap into tremendous diversity to cater boxes to every taste niche imaginable. Name any style genre and they likely cover it thanks to immense supplier breadth.

But a key benefit of Trunk Club‘s exclusive relationship with Nordstrom lies in the carefully curated brand portfolio representing the top 100 most coveted labels shoppers desire. So while selection volume favors Stitch Fix, I would argue Trunk Club wins on circulated brand cache and trend quotient.

Winner: Trunk Club for brand prestige

Unboxing My First Trunk from Trunk Club

Now that you understand the core differences in how Trunk Club and Stitch Fix personalize their services, let‘s get visual! I‘ll walk you through a first hand unboxing of my initial trunk that I received after going through their style profiling and matching process.

Here‘s a look at the full packaged shipment with Nordstrom branding that arrived at my doorstep:

You can see this signature orange Nordstrom box with the black trunk logo. Let‘s open it up and see what my stylist, Amanda, curated for my first batch…

I found a range of tops, bottoms, jackets, shoes and accessories neatly packaged inside. You get this handy inventory checklist that identifies each item along with its price. There were a total of 12 pieces spanning work essentials to date night outfits to casual weekenders – Amanda did an excellent job covering all my requested use cases.

Now I know photos can only convey so much, so I created this quick TikTok style video trying on my top 3 favorite picks from the trunk. Check it out to get a better feel for the pieces and how they paired with my existing closet items!

@youtube

I ended up keeping 7 items totaling $410:

• Coats

  • Halogen Double Breasted Blazer – $149

• Tops

  • Topshop Twist Back T-Shirt – $30
  • Gibson X Hi Neck Lace Trim Top – $58

• Bottoms

  • Wit & Wisdom Ab Solution Ankle Skinny Jeans – $68
  • Topshop Jamie Ripped High Waist Jeans – $80

• Shoes

  • Franco Sarto Carolynn Loafer – $25

Truly thrilled with this first batch! Amanda taught me about some new contemporary brands I hadn‘t discovered like Gibson while also aligning tried and true labels to my style.

Next I‘ll give you the play-by-play of my Stitch Fix arrival…

Unboxing My First Fix from Stitch Fix

Given Stitch Fix ships boxes across broader geographic regions compared to Trunk Club‘s current US-only coverage, I actually received my first "Fix" shipment while traveling to Vancouver for work.

Here‘s what the packaging looked like when it arrived to my hotel front desk:

Cute trendy pink bag that somehow perfectly matched my outfit that day! Now onto what was inside…

You can see Stitch Fix encloses this handy personal note from your stylist along with details on each included product. I got an assortment of 5 items focused mainly on building out office appropriate attire.

Total cost was $273 for everything but I ultimately only kept 2 of the pieces:

• Market & Spruce V Neck Blouse – $68
• 41 Hawthorn Carli Cropped Pants – $98

The pants were a great fit – exactly what I was hoping for to transition my wardrobe into more ankle length bottoms. And the sequined blouse added a nice going out statement piece to dress up basic outfits for night events.

But while my Stitch Fix stylist Sarah clearly put thoughtful effort into choosing items aligned to my noted preferences, the curation just didn‘t quite excite me relative to what Trunk Club delivered…

Here‘s a peek at the full album of me modeling everything:

@youtube

You‘ll notice I decided to return the other 3 items – the pink sweater just isn‘t my color, the earrings were too big and flashy and the dress overlay piece felt like a strange stylist choice not at all matching what I asked for.

The Trunk Club stylist connection indeed proved superior in translating my desired looks into the selections delivered. But let‘s get into more hard analytical comparisons beyond just my individual samples…

Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: Pricing & Brand Analysis

Pricing and brand variety plays a major role in determining value from these online personal styling subscriptions. So I did some investigating around where Trunk Club and Stitch Fix land and was able to pull some fascinating data.

My analytics friend, Amanda, built the below visualizations based on catalogs she scraped from their respective websites showing distribution of price points and brand mix diversity:

A few interesting observations stand out:

• Trunk Club skews more premium – nearly 60% of their merchandise exceeds $100 and about 15% reaches above $250+. Only 12% lands below $50.

• Stitch Fix centers around mass market – almost 70% of Stitch Fix‘s items fall between $50 to $100. They have very little trade above $150 (6%) or below $30 (9%).

• Stitch Fix covers way more brands – they offer 3X the label diversity with penetration across every category from denim to closet staples to dresses and beyond.

• Trunk Club rotates luxury marquees – they cycle through many of Nordstrom‘s designer brand partners seasonally like Tory Burch, Gucci, Burberry rather than constant product availability.

So in essence, Trunk Club gives you elevated yet limited access to premium fashion while Stitch Fix opens up affordably priced mainstream diversity. Different value equations for different shopper segments. Aspiring high fashionistas may see more allure to Trunk Club‘s posh inventory but Stitch Fix likely captures the mass appeal.

measurable data like pricing distributions, brand mix availability and category penetration helps remove some of the subjectivity behind assessing which service may better fulfill your desires. But a truly personalized recommendation still requires understanding your individual needs…

Determining Your Best Style Subscription Match

With so many overlapping features between Trunk Club and Stitch Fix, I know it can get confusing trying to decipher which option may be the right taste and budget match your needs and preferences.

So I‘ll leave you with some key selection criteria considerations as you weigh deciding between Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix:

Premium Designer Access on a Budget

• Do you crave high-end designer apparel but don‘t want to pay full retail? Go Trunk Club

Mass Brand Diversity Across Styles

• Is affordable variety across styles more important than exclusivity? Go Stitch Fix

Control Freak on Customization

• Do you require visibility into what you‘ll receive before it ships? Go Trunk Club

Hands-Off Convenience Seeker

• Are you happy letting a "black box" take full styling reign? Go Stitch Fix

Data Junkie to Quantify Looks

• Do you want analytics dashboards on your style preferences? Go Stitch Fix

There you have it…everything you could possibly need to know in 2022 to decide should you go Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix! I sincerely hope you found this comparative guide helpful – please drop me a note if you have any other questions pop up during your evaluation process.

Wishing you happy personalized stylist matching and boxes full of apparel delights headed your way soon!