Throughout his time as a Hollywood agent, Andrew Weitz always turned heads with his fashion choices. Instead of wearing loose-fitting black, gray and blue suits — what he calls “the uniform” — inside the office, Weitz often walked into William Morris Endeavor with slim-fitting, tailored and double-breasted suits, adorning them with pocket squares, tie bars, lapel pins and pocket watches. On casual Fridays, when other agents usually left their ties at home, he mixed and matched pants and shirt colors and started rocking sneakers. “I was doing shit and people took notice,” Weitz tells InsideHook. “That’s what set me apart.”
Eventually, Weitz embraced that simmering passion. In 2014, after 11 years representing actors, he left his job to create The Weitz Effect, a style-consulting company, in Los Angeles. Later that year, he penned a Hollywood Reporter article that offered insight into red carpet fashion, instructing men to invest in sophisticated tuxedos with lighter-weight fabrics. “Our appearance is our visual business card,” he wrote. Soon, studio and network heads began flooding his inbox with requests for help. “I started meeting them and I realized this is my niche, this is my clientele,” Weitz says. “That’s how I move forward with it.”
Almost a decade later, Weitz has grown into one of Hollywood’s premier fashion advisors, guiding the leaders of the entertainment and corporate worlds with sartorial consultation and lifestyle guidance. That includes a variety of Los Angeles-based power players: tech CEOs, real estate brokers and film directors (his client list most prominently features Tom Brady and Ari Emanuel) who sometimes prefer to keep their requests for another man’s fashion advice quiet. At this point in his venture, “there are more stylists than I’ve ever seen in my life,” Weitz says, but he bristles at his own vocabulary. “I don’t call myself a stylist. I’m a strategist on how to build your personal brand through style.”
Because the executives he used to haggle with are now his clients, Weitz prides himself on having thorough knowledge of their specific industry. As an agent, he represented Rob Lowe and several British actors, including Ricky Gervais, James Corden and Stephen Merchant, but he noticed that the men on the top floors needed him more — in their wardrobes and at the tailor, curating the right cuts and styles. As the Academy Awards approach next week and red carpet season continues, Weitz remains dedicated to elevating the looks of his C-suite clientele. “Most men are great at their job but look terrible and it’s very difficult for people who work under them to go, ‘How is this guy our CEO? How is he running it when he looks like that?’” Weitz says. “I just want the best for them.”
Growing up just north of Philadelphia, Weitz had the same prerogative. As the popular class president of Cheltenham High School, he reached out “when I saw someone who was an outsider,” he says. “I felt for them and tried to do what I could to help.” Though Weitz originally pursued a path to teaching, “I knew I wanted to be rich,” he says with a laugh, and eventually he chose agency life, where he could merge those interests and help his clients succeed. “It goes beyond being a personal shopper,” he says. “I am educating these guys because you want them to graduate and do it on their own.” Of course, it helps that Weitz has carved out his own fashion-forward identity; his website boasts photos of him wearing colorful, casual sports blazers, more formal suit jackets and tuxedos, and his signature pocket squares. “I’m always about tailoring,” he says. “Am I going to take more risks than [my clients]? Probably. They just have to understand that they can do it.”
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Sam Spector, stylist to Neil Patrick Harris, Bowen Yang and Daniel Radcliffe, finds something for everybodyTo get started, he offers a few different programs based on the intensity of someone’s wardrobe goals. The premier retainer service, called “The Weitz Effect,” caters to both men and women always on the move — traveling for festivals, board meetings and vacations — and gives them priority access to Weitz, who suggests ongoing and seasonal clothing choices and provides in-home fittings. “I have to look through their closet to see what they own, what they wear, and how they wear it,” he says. “Then it’s an education process: ‘This is what I think you should be wearing and how you should be wearing it.’” His other programs take place in his Rodeo Drive office or virtually, where Weitz has consulting sessions and refreshes certain clients on how to make their fits pop. “When you work with one type of man who is super successful,” he says, “they all have a similar mindset.”
Over time, Weitz has developed a habit of working “from the inside out.” When he first meets with a potential client, he can spot their insecurities, “which is usually around the way they dress,” and slowly transitions them into their new look. “It’s baby steps,” he says. “You want to ease into everything. You don’t want to freak someone out and overwhelm them.” When he travels to Paris or Milan for fashion weeks, he pivots into a different kind of relationship building, working with brands and observing the presentation side of shows as inspiration. “I always have my clients in mind, especially the ones who are on my main retaining program,” Weitz says. But he’s also learned to trust his instincts. “I don’t do anything unless I have experienced it myself. I need to feel it, touch it, try it, and if it makes sense, then I will find the right people for that product.”
When we speak during the afternoon in late February, Weitz still has six clients he needs to call back. Though he boasts around 150 clients now (a fluid number that fluctuates based on the season), he makes sure, at 49, to balance his personal life with the same rigor, raising five-year-old twin boys with his wife, a Sony television executive, while finding time to work out and meditate before his day begins. In the next few months, he’s looking to ease some of his workload by expanding his exclusive virtual club membership, which provides a digital library of consulting videos and offers live sessions with recommendations, and building out a bigger team of consultants. “It’s kind of a talent agency approach,” he says, but cautions: “It’s hard to find good people who share the same values.”
The biggest change to menswear, Weitz has noticed, is a reversion to oversized cuts, a fashion faux pas when he started his agency. Back then, he’d get frustrated with clients who were only concerned with comfort in their wardrobe, but as the culture has shifted back two decades and the pandemic has subsided, he’s noticed his own craving for comfort. “We’re not trying to make them look like they’re 25 years old doing street style,” he says. “However, it is back to a more comfortable, looser-fitting tailoring.” Still, it’s all about the individual, and Weitz impresses that being a high-level executive today requires more than just business savvy. “We’re in a whole new generation, and if you don’t move along with us, you’re going to be left behind.”
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