A Williams & Yates staff member in a branded polo shirt using a tablet in a warehouse

Couture Wardrobe Management Across Your Homes

Couture wardrobe management is a service from Williams & Yates that photographs and catalogues the clothing, shoes and handbags in each of your homes, holds that record in our online client portal, and moves any piece you choose to wherever you need it.

When your year is divided between several homes, your wardrobe ends up divided between them too. Knowing which house a particular gown is in usually means asking someone at each one to go and look. Williams & Yates replace that with one record of what you own and where each piece is kept, and a dedicated coordinator who can bring it to you. The service sits within our specialist items work, alongside the other collections we handle with particular care.

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What Is Couture Wardrobe Management?
Couture wardrobe management is the Williams & Yates Digital Collection Management service applied to the pieces you wear. Your wardrobe sits in the same portal as the rest of your collection, so there is no separate system to keep track of.

How Does the Catalogue Work?

A Williams & Yates team attends each of your properties in person, photographs and records each piece, and loads the record into our client portal. You can then look through your wardrobe across every home and request any piece from it.

Before anyone visits, your coordinator agrees the scope with you: which homes are included and which parts of the wardrobe are recorded.

Each record shows the piece and the property it is kept in, so you can choose from photographs rather than from memory. When a piece moves with Williams & Yates, we update the record to show where it now is.

Access works the same way as the rest of our portal. Only you and the people you choose, whether a PA, household manager or stylist, can see the catalogue, and you can withdraw access at any time. Williams & Yates treat a record of what you own, and which house it is in, as private.
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I have used Williams & Yates for the last 18 months and the service has always been excellent. I felt compelled to leave a review after with the last delivery the extra levels that they went to to get my paintings in Paris at such short notice. Its nice to deal with a business that cares. Pierre Boucher

Does My Wardrobe Have to Be Stored With Williams & Yates?
No. The catalogue records your clothing, shoes and handbags where they already are, in your own dressing rooms, so storage with us is optional. If you would rather hold some pieces with us between wears, those pieces appear in the same catalogue and can be delivered to any of your homes in the same way.

Storage tends to suit pieces worn rarely, seasonal clothing you would rather not keep in every house, or a collection that has outgrown the space available. Our temperature-controlled storage facilities have climate and humidity control, CCTV, and 24/7 remotely monitored intruder and fire alarms. All garments are hung in wardrobe boxes with protective covers so they’re always ready to be worn.

How Quickly Can a Piece Reach Me?

How quickly a piece reaches you depends on the route, the destination and any paperwork it needs. Your Williams & Yates coordinator will advise on timing before anything is booked. When the date is close and the distance is long, Williams & Yates can move a single piece by air freight.

Picture the dress you have in mind for an evening in London hanging in your home in Miami. You or your PA find it in the catalogue and request it, and your coordinator takes it from there.

The piece is collected from the house and packed for the journey it is making. It travels with our carefully selected international freight partners and destination handlers, with import documentation prepared in advance. Delivery is to the house in London rather than to an airport.

Closer to home, road is often the better option. Williams & Yates run regular part-load routes serving Paris and the South of France, so a piece moving between London and a home in France may travel that way.

Every journey between homes in different countries crosses a border. That matters most for handbags and shoes in exotic leathers such as crocodile, which can fall under CITES. GOV.UK guidance on CITES imports and exports says a permit is needed to move a CITES specimen into or out of Great Britain, and describes allowances for certain items carried in your personal luggage for personal use. In the US, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s guidance on international permits states that its personal and household effects exemption covers items accompanying the owner or forming part of a household move, not specimens sent separately.

Rules like these are written around travel and house moves, so we’ll check a piece travelling on its own between two homes you continue to live in well before the date. Williams & Yates handle CITES documentation for items made from protected species.

We also check customs. When belongings come back into the UK, GOV.UK guidance on Returned Goods Relief explains that relief from import duty and VAT depends on conditions, including the goods returning within three years in an unaltered state, and that goods arriving as freight need evidence of the original export. Your coordinator will talk you through what applies to your homes.

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Who Uses Couture Wardrobe Management?

Couture wardrobe management from Williams & Yates suits anyone whose wardrobe needs to follow them between homes, most often homes in more than one country.

The day-to-day work often falls to a PA or household manager rather than the principal. They need to know where a piece is without calling each house in turn, and they want one person to hand the request to. Williams & Yates already work alongside household staff on moves for private clients. With one coordinator and one catalogue, a request is made once and followed through to the receiving home.

Arranging a Wardrobe Survey

Couture wardrobe management begins with a conversation about your homes, your wardrobe and whether anything should be stored. From there, Williams & Yates will propose a scope and arrange the visits.

Get in touch to talk it through, or call us on 0208 081 0188, and we will introduce you to the coordinator who would look after your wardrobe.

Williams & Yates are FIDI/FAIM accredited, members of BAR and IAM, and Which? accredited.

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