9 Years of The Style Academy International: From One Program to a Global Styling Education Brand
Nine years.
It is hard to believe that September 2026 marks nine years since I opened the virtual doors to The Style Academy International®.
When I look back at where we started in 2017 and where we are today, I feel an enormous sense of pride — but perhaps even more than that, I feel grateful.
Grateful for every student who trusted us with their education. Grateful for every graduate who has gone on to build a career in styling. Grateful for the people who have shared our work, recommended us to others, reviewed our programs, invited us into conversations about the industry, and helped us grow.
And, of course, grateful that an idea I had nine years ago has evolved into an international education business serving aspiring and professional personal stylists, virtual stylists, image consultants, and color analysts around the world.
When I launched The Style Academy International in 2017, we had one program.
Today, we have grown into a much broader styling education platform, with four core programs and additional coaching, resources, and professional development opportunities for people at different stages of their styling careers.
We have had students and graduates from more than 100 countries.
Today, we have business operations in both the United States and the United Kingdom, supporting a student community spanning more than 100 countries.
Our certificate programs are CPD accredited.
We have received an award for Best Personal Styling School Online 2025.
We have built a community of thousands of students and graduates.
We have received nothing but five-star reviews from students on Google and Trustpilot.
In 2020, we launched The Business of Style, our podcast dedicated to the business side of building a career in styling, which Feedspot has since recognized as a top fashion podcast.
But numbers and milestones tell only part of the story.
From One Personal Styling Program to a Global Academy
When I first launched The Style Academy International, my goal was relatively simple: I wanted to create an accessible way for people to learn the skills they needed to become professional personal stylists.
I knew from my own experience that there was a huge difference between loving fashion and knowing how to work professionally with clients.
Being a good stylist requires much more than having a great eye for clothes.
You need to understand body shape, color, proportion, style-personality, wardrobe planning, client communication, shopping, outfit coordination, and the psychology of working with people.
And if you want to build your own styling business, you also need to understand marketing, pricing, branding, sales, client experience, business development, and everything else that comes with being an entrepreneur.
That philosophy has remained at the heart of our education.
What has changed is the breadth of what we offer.
What began with one program has developed into a comprehensive education platform covering personal styling, virtual styling, color analysis, and the business of building a successful styling career.
Our certificate programs are now CPD accredited through The CPD Group, giving students the added reassurance that the individual programs they complete have been independently assessed against professional development standards.
For me, that is one of the most important developments in our nine-year history.
It represents the evolution of the styling industry itself.
A Global Community of Stylists
One of the things I find most remarkable about The Style Academy International is just how far-reaching our community has become.
Over the past nine years, we have welcomed students and graduates from more than 100 countries.
That was never something I could have imagined when I started.
We are an online academy, but I have never wanted the experience to feel impersonal.
Behind every enrollment is a person with their own reason for being here.
Some students have always dreamed of becoming a personal stylist.
Some have spent years working in another career and are ready for a change.
Some are already stylists and want formal training to strengthen their skills and credibility.
Others discover color analysis, virtual styling, or image consulting and realize that these skills could become the foundation for an entirely new career.
Our students come from different backgrounds, different countries, and different stages of life.
But they share one important thing: they see the potential for a career in styling and want to learn how to turn that potential into something real.
That global community is one of the things I am most proud of.
Growing With Our Global Community
From the beginning, The Style Academy International has been an international business.
Although the Academy was founded in the United States in 2017, our students have always come from different parts of the world.
Over the years, as our community grew, we began welcoming more students from Europe and Africa, alongside the students we were already serving across North America and other parts of the world.
As that international community developed, it made sense for us to have a physical business presence closer to more of the students we were serving.
This next chapter also had a very personal reason.
After living and building the Academy in the United States, I moved home to the United Kingdom. With the Academy already serving a genuinely global audience, establishing the UK as our new operational hub in 2024 felt like a natural evolution.
Today, The Style Academy International has operations in both the United States and the United Kingdom, while continuing to serve students and graduates around the world.
For me, this isn't about choosing between the US and the UK. It is about recognizing that our business has always been international — and creating an infrastructure that reflects that.
Our students are in more than 100 countries. They don't all live in one market, and they don't all have the same career goals, cultural influences, or client demographics. That diversity is what makes our community so interesting.
The move to establish the UK as our operational hub was therefore less about where we were leaving and more about where the business was going.
It marked another stage in the evolution of The Style Academy International: from a US-founded online training program into a truly international styling education business with a global student community and operations on both sides of the Atlantic.
Recognition for the Work We've Built
I have always believed that recognition should be earned rather than chased.
That is why being named Best Personal Styling School Online 2025 by Best of Best Review was such a meaningful milestone for our team and for me.
It recognized something we had spent years building: an online education business focused not simply on teaching people how to style, but on helping them develop practical skills they can use in the real world.
The recognition also meant a great deal because it came after years of continually developing and improving our programs.
We have never believed that creating a course once means the work is finished.
The styling industry changes.
Technology changes.
The way clients shop changes.
Social media changes.
The way people build businesses changes.
So our education has to evolve too.
We continually review and update our programs to ensure students learn skills and strategies that stay relevant to today's styling industry.
Building Trust Through Accreditation and Reviews
Choosing a professional training program is a big decision.
If you are considering becoming a personal stylist, virtual stylist, or color consultant, you are not simply investing money in a course.
You are investing your time, your energy, and often your hopes for a completely new career.
That is why I believe transparency matters.
Our certificate programs are now CPD accredited, and we have built our education around practical, career-focused learning rather than simply providing information for students to consume.
We also believe that our students should be able to hear directly from the people who have taken our programs.
Our five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot mean a lot to me because they come from people who have experienced the Academy for themselves.
Reviews cannot tell the entire story of an education business, of course.
But they provide something incredibly valuable: an independent perspective from the people we are here to serve.
And ultimately, that is what matters most to me.
The Business of Style Podcast
Another major milestone came in 2020 when I launched The Business of Style podcast.
I wanted to create something to fill a gap I saw in the industry.
Plenty of information is available about fashion and styling.
There is far less practical conversation about what it actually takes to build a business as a stylist.
How do you find clients?
How do you price your services?
How do you communicate your value?
How do you build a personal brand?
How do you create a signature service?
How do you market yourself without feeling like you are constantly selling?
And, perhaps most importantly, how do you build a styling business that is actually sustainable?
Those are the conversations I wanted to have.
Since launching in 2020, The Business of Style has grown into an important extension of what we do at The Style Academy International and has been recognized by Feedspot as a top fashion podcast.
For me, the podcast represents something bigger than another piece of content.
It is another way of educating stylists.
Because becoming a successful stylist isn't just about knowing how to put an outfit together. It is about understanding how to turn your expertise into a viable business.
Nine Years of Sharing Our Expertise
Over the years, The Style Academy International and I have also had the opportunity to share our expertise through media and industry publications.
Our press and media coverage has included features and contributions connected with organizations and publications including Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, Boston Herald, Fashion Week Online, Digital Journal, Thrive Global, Boston Life Magazine, and others.
I am particularly proud of this aspect of our growth because it demonstrates that our expertise extends beyond our own website.
As a founder and educator, I believe part of my responsibility is to contribute to conversations about the styling industry — not simply promote our own courses.
The personal styling profession continues to evolve, and I want The Style Academy International to be part of that conversation.
What Nine Years Have Taught Me
If there is one thing I have learned over the past nine years, it is that building a career in styling requires far more than talent.
Talent helps.
A good eye helps.
Creativity helps.
But professional success comes from combining those qualities with education, business knowledge, consistency, confidence, adaptability, and a willingness to keep learning.
I know this because I have lived it myself.
When I started my own personal styling business, I didn't have a ready-made client list or a roadmap telling me exactly what to do.
I had to learn.
I had to experiment.
I made mistakes.
I figured out what worked and what didn't.
Eventually, I built my own successful six-figure styling business — and that experience has influenced the way I teach ever since.
That is one reason I don't believe in separating styling education from business education.
If your goal is to become a professional stylist, learning how to style is only the beginning.
You also need to learn how to communicate your expertise, attract the right clients, create compelling services, market your business, and build a reputation that gives people a reason to trust you.
That is the bigger picture I want our students to understand.
Nine Years Later, We're Still Growing
Perhaps what makes me proudest about reaching nine years is not simply what we have achieved.
It is the fact that we are still growing.
We are still creating new educational resources.
We are still updating our programs and developing new ones.
We are still having conversations about where the styling industry is going.
We are still welcoming students from around the world.
And we are still thinking about what we can do better.
The fact that The Style Academy International has been operating since 2017 gives us something that cannot be manufactured overnight: experience.
Nine years means thousands of students, countless conversations, hundreds of lessons, continually evolving programs, business challenges, industry changes, successes, mistakes, and lessons learned.
That experience informs everything we do today.
And I believe that matters when you are choosing where to train.
Looking Toward the Next Chapter
So, what comes next?
I don't have a nine-year plan written on a whiteboard somewhere!
But I do know that I want The Style Academy International to continue evolving alongside the styling profession.
I want us to continue creating education that is practical, relevant, accessible, and genuinely useful.
I want us to keep supporting aspiring stylists starting from scratch, as well as experienced professionals who want to expand their services and grow their businesses.
And I want us to keep building a community where stylists can learn, develop, ask questions, share experiences, and feel part of something bigger than themselves.
The world of personal styling looks very different today than it did in 2017.
And I am excited to see where it goes next.
Nine Years. Thousands of Students. More Than 100 Countries.
When I think about the past nine years, I don't really think about the website, the courses, the awards, or even the business itself.
I think about the people.
The person who finally decided it was time to change careers.
The stylist who gained the confidence to start charging what they were worth.
The student who discovered that color analysis was the career they had been looking for.
The graduate who launched their own business.
The person who joined us from the other side of the world and became part of our community.
Those are the moments that make nine years worthwhile.
The Style Academy International® started with one program and a vision to make professional styling education more accessible.
Nine years later, that vision has grown into an international education business with students and graduates in more than 100 countries, operations in the US and UK, CPD-accredited certificate programs, award recognition, thousands of students, five-star reviews, an internationally recognized podcast, and a growing community of style professionals.
And we are not finished yet.
To every student, graduate, client, colleague, supporter, and team member who has been part of this journey: thank you.
You have made the last nine years possible.
And to anyone reading this who is considering becoming a personal stylist, virtual stylist, color consultant, or image professional, I hope our story encourages you.
You don't have to have everything figured out before you begin.
I certainly didn't.
Sometimes you just need to take the first step — and be willing to keep taking the next one.
Here's to the first nine years.
And to everything still to come.
Louisa 💕