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Do You Tip Your Stylist, or Is This Just Included? You've just gotten your custom picks, the ones you asked for after a week of school pickups and one m...
You've just gotten your custom picks, the ones you asked for after a week of school pickups and one meeting that ran long, and three of the four fit like they were made for you. Your first instinct is gratitude. Your second, right behind it, is a little awkward pause: is there a tip line here somewhere? Did I miss it? Am I supposed to?
Short and honest: no, you don't tip your RubyClaire stylist, and nothing about the styling is a hidden add-on tacked to your bill. The personalized help, the outfit picks, the sizing notes, the back-and-forth over text, all of it comes with shopping the way we do it. There's no gratuity line, no service fee stacked on at checkout, no tier where you pay extra to have a real person actually pay attention to you.
But that answer usually leads to a better question, which is the one worth spending a few minutes on: if I'm not tipping, what am I actually paying for, and how do I make the most of it?
Tipping shows up in industries where the service and the product are billed separately. You pay for the haircut, then you tip the person who cut it, because their labor is its own line item. That's not how a full-service boutique works.
When you shop with us, the styling is baked into the price of the pieces, not bolted on after. You're not paying a stylist by the hour and then deciding whether they earned a little extra on top. You're buying clothes from a family-run shop where hand-selecting the right things for you is simply how the shop runs. The person reading your notes about what you need for a work trip, or which colors keep washing you out, or how you want something soft enough for a long car ride but pulled-together enough for lunch after, is doing the actual job the boutique exists to do. There's nothing to tip because there's no separate service being sold.
It's closer to how a good local shop has always worked. Someone who knows the inventory helps you find what fits your life, and that help is the whole point, not an upsell.
This is where it's worth being specific, because "included" can sound vague and you deserve to know what you're actually getting.
When you share the details, your sizes, your routine, the event or trip you're dressing for, a color you love, a budget you'd like to stay inside, the styling that comes back to you covers all of it at no extra cost. That means the outfit combinations, the mix-and-match notes so one top earns its keep three different ways, the honest heads-up when something runs snug or the fabric is thinner than you'd expect, and the care instructions so the piece lasts past its first wash. None of that is a premium version. It's just how the order works.
You also get the honesty, which is the part people don't always expect to be free. If a stylist thinks two of the four things you're eyeing will do the job and the other two are redundant, you'll hear that. Good styling sometimes means talking you out of a purchase, and that's included too.
Here's the thing, though. Just because there's no tip line doesn't mean there's nowhere to put your appreciation. There absolutely is, and it matters more to a small family shop than a few dollars ever would.
The most useful thank-you is feedback. When you tell your stylist that the second outfit was exactly right and here's why, or that the pants fit perfectly but you'd have loved them in a warmer neutral, you're handing them the exact information that makes your next set of picks sharper. You're teaching the person who dresses you how you actually live. That compounds. Over a few orders, a stylist who knows you can pull together something that fits your week before you've finished describing it.
The other real thank-you is the kind small businesses quietly live and die on: an honest review, a word to a friend who's drowning in the "I have nothing to wear" spiral, coming back when the seasons turn. For a family-run boutique, a returning customer who refers a neighbor is worth more than any gratuity, and it costs you nothing but a minute.
You might, and that's a kind instinct, not a wrong one. It usually means someone did a genuinely thoughtful job and you want to close the loop. So close it with words. Reply to the message. Name the specific thing that worked. Tell them the dress got a compliment at the thing you were nervous about. That lands harder than money in this kind of business, and it makes the relationship better on both ends.
And if you're ever unsure whether a service anywhere carries a hidden fee or an expected gratuity, you're allowed to just ask before you buy. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has plenty on understanding fees and what you're actually being charged for, and asking upfront is always fair game. With us, the answer stays the same: what you see is what you pay, and the personal attention is part of the deal, not an extra.
So no, you're not missing a tip line, and you didn't underpay. You got a real person who looked at your real life and picked accordingly, and that was always what you signed up for. If it worked, tell them. That's the tip that counts here.