When stylist Molly Dickson says she’ll do anything for her clients, she isn’t exaggerating.
The Herculean feats Dickson has pulled off to dress the likes of Sydney Sweeney, Bella Hadid, Camila Mendes, and Lana del Rey make coordinating three outfit changes in one day look like an entry-level task. She’s chased down FedEx trucks to guarantee a dress is delivered in time for a red carpet. She hired a motorcycle driver to shuttle her between four clients’ getting-ready hotels for the Met Gala, zipping in between NYC taxis to reach each star for final touch-ups and a hug before they ascended the famed museum steps. When the gold metal bra coated in flowers for Camila Mendes’s Vanity Fair Academy Awards after party didn’t quite fit, Dickson bent metal to her will.
That kind of 24/7 pressure to make everyone around her look good could cause even the most composed person to sweat or snap. Not Dickson. When she dials in to our interview from a bench on Los Angeles's Rodeo Drive, she's as cheerful as the sliver of blue sky over her shoulder in the phone-sized frame. She's wearing a white T-shirt and swirling a Starbucks coffee in one hand, completely at ease in spite of technically being on yet another big deadline. She timed our interview exactly between appointments along the famed shopping strip, where she was pulling clothes for a client's upcoming ad campaign. (She couldn't say which one.)
Between her constant Instagram Stories—filled with trunks en route to awards shows, assistants steaming clothes, and piles (and piles) of shoes—and a growing roster of cool-girl clients, you could guess Dickson is one of the industry's most in-demand stylists. You'd be correct. Dickson works seven days a week, across time zones, for her "girls," as she calls them. In six years of styling, she's expanded from a one-woman show to a team of multiple assistants, interns, and agents. In preparation to speak with her, my editor asked me to consider finding out when, exactly, Dickson finds time to sleep. It's a valid question.
“I tell my family and my friends back home: Imagine picking out your wedding dress, but doing that essentially almost every day—the amount of work and time and the money that goes into that, I'm doing that for every look," Dickson, 37, says with a megawatt smile.
With that wedding dress metaphor, Dickson unintentionally explains why clients trust her above their dozens of other options. There's an emotional weight to a garment you pick out with your closest friends and family, (ideally) wear once, that's intended to capture your entire essence in front of the most important people you know. Dickson's clients trust her to make these considerations with them in each and every fitting, but for the red carpet instead of an aisle. And while Dickson has a sizable following—more than 350,000 followers on Instagram—she posts far more about her clients' wins than herself. She's as much a stand-in big sister as she is their image-maker; she's raised her roster's profiles in the public eye with strategically chosen designers as she's built deeper relationships with each of them. Every day is her client's biggest day; she's humbly working from the wings to let them shine.
Talking to Dickson and a few of her A-list clients, it’s clear that she's in the business more for lifting up her clients than for herself—even with her name attached to every look.
I trust that she'll do everything it takes to make sure that I feel good.
Camila Mendes
Some fashion types have to cultivate an air of approachability. Dickson, who tells me the "last thing on my mind is what I'm wearing," and has shown up to photoshoots in fuzzy pink slippers with a rider for Red Bull and Skittles, doesn't have to try. “Back home” for her is North Dakota, where she was raised on a farm, the middle sibling with two sisters and a brother. Growing up, she knew “zero” about the fashion industry; “stylist” wasn’t a job on her radar. “I didn't even know how to pronounce any of the designers,” she laughs.
Dickson initially left home to study advertising at the University of Minnesota. By graduation, she worked up the courage to tell her parents she wouldn’t be going into business; the big photoshoots and glossy pages of fashion magazines were calling her name. After a few unpaid internships in Los Angeles, she landed her first compensated break in the form of an internship at early-2000s Marie Claire. She returned to the magazine for a full-time assistant role after a second internship in PR at Gucci.
Two years of joining editors on trips to Paris and Milan and coordinating shoots were Dickson’s crash course in fashion: how to differentiate between each market segment, how to tell a person’s story through their style, and finally how to pronounce all those French and Italian designers. "I owe a lot to them for taking a chance on a little farm girl from North Dakota," she says. But eventually, she felt she could do her job with her eyes closed—and that the job of “stylist” more closely aligned with her passions than “editor.”
Connecting with stylist Leslie Fremar, whose clients include Charlize Theron and Julianne Moore, changed everything for Dickson a second time. She signed on as Fremar's assistant and stayed for seven years. The job brought her even closer to what would become her ultimate calling: helping clients find the exact pieces to express themselves on some of fashion’s biggest stages. Witnessing how Fremar built connections with clients and designers informed Dickson’s eventual approach to styling—like getting ready with friends more than meticulously preparing for a stuffy red carpet.
But she needed to build confidence to leap out on her own. As a relative fashion outsider, “My own insecurities held me back for a few years. I was scared of losing the salary, I was scared that I wouldn't have clients, I was scared that I wouldn't get work," Dickson says.
Today’s street style will tell you the opposite happened. In 2017, Dickson linked up with 13 Reasons Why star Katherine Langford, just before the Netflix series became a phenomenon, as her first solo client. As the show took off, so did Dickson’s career. “Overnight, [Katherine] went from 1,000 Instagram followers to over a million," Dickson says. "That show had an amazing effect on everyone…and then transferred to the designers who wanted to lend to her.”
Dickson secured an Alexander McQueen look for the premiere and the likes of Chanel, Givenchy, and Prada for Langford's carpets and awards shows afterward. Each look opened the door for the next, and perked up ears in the industry regarding a promising new stylist. Landing a client right before her career took off might have been luck, but Dickson wasn't going to let the momentum end with just one. She would hustle to build a formidable client list of her own.
At first, the roster primarily included rising Gen Z stars (like Sadie Sink, a lead in Stranger Things, who she's worked with since her first season on the show at 15)—emerging talent whose designer deals can make or break their careers. As Dickson finessed impressive credits and best-dressed rankings for her up-and-comers, she attracted seasoned clients with a few more years of Hollywood experience under their belts. The vibe, she says, is the same regardless of age. “I want to surround myself and work with the girls that everyone looks up to. I want to work with the girls that I would want to be friends with—they're cool, they're smart.”
Styling them is a game of organization and unsexy logistics: emails, dashes to and from fittings, shuttling trunks through DHL. Fittings can last hours; some dresses need three or four to finish alterations. But Dickson's bubbly energy make hers feel less like a work obligation and more like a sleepover or a very glamorous session in the Clueless closet, with some light organization tasks on the side. As her clients try on dresses and she snaps photos, "We're also talking about our lives and dating and boyfriends. I try to make the energy very fun."
The same goes for her photoshoots and day-of red carpets: Dickson will often share behind-the-scenes glimpses of her team in action, wolfing down pizza while packing up returns or playfully trying on heels the client didn't ultimately wear.
We put so much work into it. When I see the excitement on their faces, I feel like a proud mama bear.
Molly Dickson
Dickson’s approachable nature immediately struck a chord with White Lotus star Sydney Sweeney. “Right when I met Molly, I knew I wanted to work with her,” Sweeney writes in an email. “She showed up to our meeting in overalls and sneakers. My type of girl.”
When actress and producer Camila Mendes signed with Dickson, she was as excited to get to know her as she was to get dressed with her. “She felt like someone I'd wanna hang out with and be around all the time—because you do spend so much time together,” Mendes tells me on a Monday evening phone call. These days, they do hang out beyond the fitting room: Dickson attended Mendes's thirtieth birthday party last month, dressing her in an angelic white Guizio sundress and pink hair ribbon for the occasion. That celebration outfit captured what Mendes loves about Dickson's taste. “She was really good at striking the balance between making people look young and cool, but also elevated and timeless," she says.
Every look Dickson styles is technically a collaboration between her and her client. “What I'm pulling and the style [I'm channeling] for all these girls, it all depends on many factors, the movie, what mood they're in,” she says. Mood boards are a big part of the process. Take Bella Hadid’s Cannes Film Festival looks, comprising at least nine on-camera moments over three days. “Bella Hadid really wanted vintage, and her mood board was all vintage. I don't even think we requested current runway," Dickson says. She ended up wearing Saint Laurent’s Fall 2024 pantyhose dress and an unreleased Jacquemus dress, but she also dipped into the archives of DSquared and Versace.
Even if the behind-the-scenes logistics are anxiety-inducing—see: chasing down a FedEx truck or a jeweler—Mendes says her stylist never shows her stress. “I just have that trust in Molly because she's such a hard worker that even when we're doing something that's a bit out of my comfort zone, I know she's not gonna rest until I feel good and I feel confident,” Mendes says. “I trust that she'll do everything it takes to make sure that I feel good.”
She also doesn’t put her clients into boxes. While they’ll reference a mood board or a visual story for a press tour, the looks are never prescriptive. “Molly has always been a huge believer in confidence—she doesn’t try to force me to wear anything because it’s a [certain] designer,” Sweeney says. “She will look at me and can tell if I’m happy and confident or not.”
Molly has always been a huge believer in confidence—she doesn’t try to force me to wear anything because it’s a [certain] designer.
Sydney Sweeney
When the outfit is a hit, Dickson knows instantly: the energy in the final fitting changes; her clients have an extra spark in their eyes; they stand up a little straighter. “We put so much work into it. When I see the excitement on their faces, I feel like a proud mama bear.”
She can only think of one time, at a past Venice Film Festival, when a client didn’t feel completely satisfied with her outfit. “She literally goes, ‘This dress isn't my favorite, but you can't win them all.’ And I was like, 'Oh God, I failed her.’”
The hours spent in fittings, bonding with clients and finding the one outfit transcends just “work.” For Dickson, it’s an emotional investment with an even bigger payoff when her client looks her best. When Lana del Rey got onstage at Coachella for her headlining slot, in the custom Dolce & Gabbana Dickson had coordinated after shadowing the singer’s rehearsals, the stylist burst into tears. She says exhaustion from a hectic schedule could only count for part of her reaction. The rest was pride in seeing the work they’d done together finally come to life.
“I looked at my assistant and she said, ‘Are you crying?’ I’m like, ‘I can, because she looks so good.'”
While luxury houses close up shop for the summer and red carpets dry up until fashion month in September, Dickson isn’t exactly taking time off. Hadid, her newest client, spent the New York City July heat wave hitting the sidewalks in head-to-toe Saint Laurent and vintage Gucci, while Sweeney took over Paris in archival Ralph Lauren. Back in Los Angeles, Dickson is busy prepping a new client, joining her roster around this month’s Olympics, and getting ready for the Venice Film Festival shortly after.
This is as close to a quiet season as it gets in Dickson’s world. After this spring's ceaseless stream of red carpets, she realized she needed more breathing room, which meant turning down jobs. Dickson was working so much then that she didn’t have time to do laundry or wash her car. She didn't take a day off for four straight months.
When she finds time, going home to North Dakota is how she feels grounded amid the chaos. "At the end of the day, this is just fashion. I tend to forget that sometimes," she admits. "And when I do go back home, they remind me that there is more to life than just designer clothes."
That doesn’t mean she’s setting her ambitions aside. Dickson still wants to keep reaching—to architect more looks that will have people stopping mid-phone scroll—while making her clients feel their absolute best. “I always feel like, you want to get to this level, and then I get there, and I'm like okay, there has to be another level. I feel like I keep continuing to want more, which is probably not a good thing,” she says. “I love work, and I think I devote all of my time and energy to it because I love it.”
There’s a summer class of interns reporting to Dickson now, just like she did for the editors in the Marie Claire fashion closet all those years ago. She can already tell they have a few lessons to learn. “On the second day, one girl was like, ‘Am I gonna be styling stuff?’” Dickson laughs. “And I'm like, ‘Oh no, honey, it took me ten years in this industry to get to the styling part.”
