When you walk into Bergdorf’s for the first time, the first things you’ll see are the ostriches. Blue-tinted, and covered in sparkles, the large creatures are surrounded by similarly plumed mannequins standing guard by the 5th Avenue entrance.

Bergdorf Goodman is a New York landmark and one of the oldest department stores in the United States, founded in 1899 by tailors Herman Bergdorf and Andrew Goodman. It’s the home of elegant, classy, mature (read: older) women. It’s the peak of old New York. It’s a playground for your rich spinster aunt.

Caroline Elias, New York born and bred, is something different, though. She’s beautiful, of course, and she’s 24. In our first interview over Facetime, she’s wearing a thick silver chain, an oversized grey blazer, and a structured white top. Her long black hair is straight and glossy. She looks straight out of a New York Instagram dream. She’s one of the first Digital Stylists for Bergdorf’s, a position that didn’t exist until she created it amid the coronavirus pandemic, and she looks the part.

“Walking into Bergdorf’s feels like walking into true beauty”, she says, “it’s literally a sanctuary of fashion.”

As Caroline grew up on the Upper East Side, Bergdorf’s always existed on her radar. The Bergdorf’s restaurant became a staple of lunch dates with her mother, to the point where she ended up knowing the wait staff and felt connected to them when she started working at Bergdorf’s in 2019. As she explains, working at the store “just expanded my love for New York. It felt like a ‘this is fate’ moment when I started, like a New York love story.”

When Covid-19 hit the US in March, Bergdorf’s promptly closed its doors to the public. The role of department stores today, in a world where people do most of their shopping online, is to provide a high class, luxury experience to clients. The role of luxury department stores, in comparison, could be seen as becoming obsolete. In comparison, luxury brands have put less focus on online shopping. “No vendor is going to want someone clicking ‘add to bag’ on a $10,000 handbag” Caroline says, “it’s just not going to happen.”

Faced with a closed flagship location, Bergdorf stylists and associates needed to adjust: how could they move product, make commission, and continue their livelihood, while providing the Bergdorf’s service that clients had come to expect?

“When quarantine first started, I needed something creative to focus on,” Caroline explains, “so I started my own fashion blog and started putting together look books for myself and my friends. That gave me the idea that Bergdorf’s could be putting out something similar for our clients while they weren’t able to come in to the store.”

Before Covid-19, she had been working as an Assistant Stylist for the Chanel boutique at Bergdorf’s, with four years of fashion industry experience before joining the Bergdorf’s brand. Throughout her college years as a sociology major at George Washington University, she interned with American Eagle, and after graduation worked for the company again as an Associate Designer. She spent a year at an active wear start-up, Acabada, as Director of Creative Content before applying to Bergdorf’s. At the beginning of quarantine, Caroline took these experiences, as well as her own styling concepts, and translated it for Bergdorf’s and began to curate client content on Bergdorf’s Instagram and website. Finally, she launched her look book-based digital styling program in May for bergdorfgoodman.com.

Sociology might not be what people think of when thinking about luxury fashion, but Caroline sees the connection. “I didn’t expect to go into sociology to get into fashion, but it helps to understand what people want and what they’re drawn to. It helps me understand how society evolves, how technology is affecting us as a society, and therefore how technology is impacting fashion. Technology has changed what different demographics want, and sociology has helped me understand why that is.”

The job of a stylist is simple in theory: listen to a client’s wishes for an event, a party, a fall wardrobe, etc., pull together pieces that the client might like, and showcase them. When people either cannot or do not want to shop in-store and try on clothes, that job becomes much harder to do. “It’s a certain type of person, a certain group of people, that are able to continue buying luxury handbags during a pandemic” Caroline admits, “but the market is still there. People want something to look forward to, people are still celebrating Mother’s Day, graduations.” Fashion stops for no one, not even the coronavirus.

The look books were turned into a twice weekly project on Bergdorf’s online store. The concept was similar to what an in-store stylist would do: clients would be matched with an associate, the associate would send them virtual look books based on their wants and needs, the client would pick pieces, and the associate could still make commission. The program was an instant success; in the first two months the service was offered, customers spent more than half a million dollars in sales, and the online phenomenon has a permanent role within the store.

Caroline’s look books are filled with braided black leather bags, lamb-soft looking sweaters, perfectly tailored coats, and coiling strappy sandals. The best part about the books is, not only do they showcase exceptional pieces, when the pieces are put together on the page, you can imagine a real person. Specifically, the kind of real person that walks by, and you think: they look good.

Look books are meant to catch the feeling of the collection for each designer. Caroline explains that the idea “is to bring fashion back into the mind of the client while in quarantine. With things being cancelled, like fashion week, look books can remind people of fashion still being here, and still changing.”  The outreach of the look books starts with something specific, like a fall essentials look book Caroline is currently working on, or a designers Fall/Winter collection. Afterwards, clients can communicate to their associate about those ideas and make that idea more applicable to themselves, which results in a curated look book based on their taste, wants or needs.

Caroline tries to show a range of the items available at Bergdorf’s. “I’m not going to start off a look book with a $7,000 necklace,” she says, “it’s about showing the range of items we have.” A recent jewellery look book showcased pieces in Bergdorf’s collection ranging from $400 to $8,000. “If you want to spend a lot of money here, you can spend it.” Caroline says, “We’re one of the most luxurious fashion houses in New York. If there’s a limited-edition Chanel bag that comes off the runway and there’s only 20 ever made, we have one. But we also have items at all different price points as well, and look books can show that off without being in-store.”

On Caroline’s personal blog, fitsonfifth.com, she emphasizes the important of a “high-low” fashion philosophy, especially for young people. “I’m 24, I can’t afford a million designer pieces. You don’t need to be in all designer pieces to be in style, but investment pieces, like good denim or good black boots, are things that last forever.”

Caroline lets me in on a secret as she shows me around the store: the walls of handbags are lit so that from every angle, the bags look perfect to the viewer. “This is like your candy store,” Caroline says, and even under her mask, she’s smiling widely. She’s in a dress I could’ve sworn was straight out of Bergdorf’s, and equally fashionable chunky black boots, but she tells me that the dress is $35 from Zara, while the boots are $400 from All Saints. “These are one of my investment pieces,” she says about her shoes, “I’ve had these for four years.”

She takes me from room to room throughout the building, first Noir, their all-black everything curated shop, then Linda’s, their mini-boutique filled with favorite pieces chosen by director of women’s fashion Linda Fargo. Then the Bridal salon, the contemporary floor, then children’s wear, housewares, evening gowns. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of luxury goods.

Visuals are very important to Bergdorf’s. If that wasn’t explicit with the ostriches at the front door, it’s implicit throughout the building. Each floor showcases distinctive nooks filled with the creations of individual designers. For Balenciaga, there’s a branded grey carpet that stretches the length of the room. In the Dries Van Noten room, there’s a couch and curtains designed to match the colours of their newest collection: yellows and blues and bright reds. Caroline points out that the average person wouldn’t see some of the smaller details that make each room beautiful and cohesive, but the work behind it is apparent when you look closer. “I like to think of it like a house”, she says, “how would each designer want their room to look?”

Caroline’s role is to take those rooms and make them as stunning online as they are in person. She takes the photos of all the garments to add into the look books themselves, a job that’s gotten slightly easier now that she’s allowed back in the store. It’s no easy task. “Of course, it’s intimidating”, she admits, but she’s up for the challenge because, as she tells me, online fashion isn’t going away any time soon.

“I think that there will always be a mix of in person and online in the future.” Caroline says, “There’s something about being front row at fashion week, at seeing it happen in front of you when you truly have a love for it, that’s chilling.” But that doesn’t mean, she clarifies, that online fashion can’t be as spectacular. “Younger clients get their style inspiration from social media already,” she says, “fashion has become a mixed media platform…virtual fashion, like digital styling, is going to continue to grow.”

Caroline’s boss, Selling Director of Non-Apparel Stacey Cohen, agrees. She explains that before the pandemic, “we knew the way people were shopping had changed…the younger demographic is using online shopping, and they’re using influencers for styling.” After the pandemic began, they knew “there were clients online that still wanted to shop, and we wanted to bring a personalized service program that the client knew in-store, in an online capacity.” It’s hard to predict where the Digital Styling program will be in the future, “because it’s brand new,” Stacey admits, however, “it’s going to be an extension of what Bergdorf Goodman already does: bringing service and client needs first.”

Part of Bergdorf’s charm is the appeal of something grand and classic: it comes from the designer carpets, curated rooms, and the sparking chandeliers. It makes you feel as though you’re an acolyte at the sanctuary of fashion, not just a stranger passing through. Caroline wants to translate that feeling into the online styling experience, to bring to people in the comfort of their own homes, especially for the younger clients who might be intimidated by a fashion institution like Bergdorf’s.

“When I wake up in the morning, I’m not trying to put as many brands on my body as possible.” she says, “It’s about the confidence. Am I wearing something that makes me feel confident? Do I feel like a boss? That’s what it’s about to me. That’s what a styled outfit can do. That’s the point of fashion.”

Special thanks to Caroline. Check out her blog at fitsonfifth.com