Men Used to Have Wives. Now They Have Stylists.

Jay Buys’s wife changed his life with 10 words: “You know, you don’t have to just wear band T-shirts.”

Shirts from Nine Inch Nails and Thrice—for years, this was the bulk of Buys’s wardrobe. Were they awesome ? Yes. Did they make him look like the CEO of a successful web design firm? Not quite. “If I looked better, I would’ve felt better,” said Buys, 44, of San Diego. So he hired someone to teach him to look better.

For most, the term “stylist” brings to mind a celebrity dresser putting Timothée Chalamet in a bombastic red carpet outfit. But there is also an industry of white-collar stylists helping hapless corporate types find the right shirts and trousers for their daily lives.

For Buys, that guy was Patrick Kenger.

Kenger runs Pivot, a personal styling service, charging as much as $5,000 to remake your wardrobe. Kenger’s job is part Marie Kondo, part therapist and large part a personal shopper. He helped Buys retire the band tees at work, subbing them with Suitsupply blazers and Bonobos trousers.

The switch had a Superman-bursting-out-of-the-phone-booth effect on Buys. “I look like I know what I’m doing.” Strangers seem to think so, too. He was startled when a random 20-something at the grocery store saw his leather John Varvatos jacket and chirped, “I like your drip, bro!”

Today, strivers in tech, law and finance are wealthier than ever, but corporate dress codes have collapsed. The hoodie-clad billionaire has become a cliché. In the C-suite, Loro Piana sneakers have trounced dress shoes. Fleece vests have vanquished ties. At the same time, we’re in a new era of boardroom boasting.

Executives crow about their pay packages, their workout routines (looking at you Mark Zuckerberg!) and the rarity of their sneakers. To look like you haven’t bought new clothes since we all clutched BlackBerrys is to risk being lapped on the corporate ladder.

So, if you’re sitting there confidently dressed and accepting compliments on how well your pants fit, congrats! But there are many men who lack the skills to piece an outfit together. Stylists say their work has ballooned in the past decade as the range of options on what’s office “appropriate” has waylaid even confident corporate leaders.

“Men are very confused right now with the dress codes that have blurred the lines of formality,” said Jacci Jaye, a white-collar stylist in New York City for two decades, whose services start at $3,800 plus expenses. Jaye, who works solely with executives, said that many of her roughly 50 clients knew what they liked in terms of style, but had no idea how to achieve that look.

“I looked sloppy and I didn’t want to look sloppy,” said Raj Nangunoori, 36, a neurosurgeon in Austin. He spent working hours in scrubs, but out of them, he was adrift. “Even shorts, like I was never great at picking out shorts,” Nangunoori said.

Around a year ago, he googled in search of a stylist and hired Peter Nguyen, a former menswear designer turned $10,000 stylist. Nguyen’s entrepreneur- and tech-type clients are long on money, short on time and scant on clothing knowledge.

Nguyen’s first step is a lengthy questionnaire: What music do you listen to, what are your hobbies, where do you vacation? “I view my clients like they’re characters in a movie,” he said. They give him their background and Nguyen’s job is to outfit that character.

The pair landed on a neat framework for Nangunoori’s new look: What would Ryan Reynolds wear? Prosaic tees were swapped for polo-neck sweaters and James Perse chinos were tailored to fit properly. Nguyen got Nangunoori into a pair of Common Projects minimalist $500-ish sneakers. Most importantly, he convinced him to ditch his shopping mistake paint-splattered jeans.

“I can’t pull off what Travis Scott’s wearing,” said Nangunoori, relaying all his hard-bought wisdom.

Like working with a trainer, some clients are wary of admitting they enlisted a fashion guru. One CEO I spoke with who hired a stylist told his business partner he had done so, only to be mocked. After that, he decided “I’m not talking to anyone.”

“I never had my own confidence in going shopping and buying suits or dress clothes or even my weekend stuff,” said Nate Dudek, 42, an executive at a software company living in East Hampton, Conn. A “technology nerd,” Dudek wasn’t born with a strong visual sense. “That goes from everything from picking a wall color in my house to the way I dress.” His tees-and-jeans wardrobe was as spicy as a glass of milk.

In 2022, about one year before co-founding his own company, Dudek “set out to invest in myself” by hiring Cassandra Sethi, a New York stylist behind the company Next Level Wardrobe whose services currently start at $5,500. Dudek’s wife, who has “killer style” and occasionally shopped for him, took some warming up to the idea. “She was like, ‘Why? I’m so good at buying you clothes!’”

But Dudek wanted an objective outside advisor—someone who didn’t know him as intimately as his wife—to overhaul his closet. (His wife has come around, and is relieved to not be his unpaid personal shopper.)

He never even had to meet her in person. Sethi shipped him boxes of clothes and over a three-hour Zoom session they deduced what suited him best. The transformation, Dudek said, “was fairly obvious.” Colleagues commented that he was carrying himself differently in his new gray Ted Baker blazer, and Save Khaki United’s trim tees. “I felt it too,” he said.

It is a cliché—but a factual one—that in many relationships, the wife or better-dressed husband is the begrudging fashion consultant. Supreet Chahal, a personal stylist in Oakland specialising in tech guys, says many clients come in saying “my girlfriend tried to help me, my wife tried out on me, but she keeps dressing me the way she wants me to look.”

Marco Rodriguez’s former girlfriend didn’t shop for him, but did steer him towards Nguyen a few years ago. “She was like, ‘Hey listen, I know you hate shopping,” said the 39-year-old musician and entrepreneur in Austin.

And oh, he did. Rodriguez could never find pants that fit his “interesting physique.” When he needed new clothes, he had to force himself to buy them. His style was directionless. “ I knew what I wanted but I just didn’t know how to get there.”

With Nguyen’s assistance, Rodriguez landed on a sort of “Soho boho, I hate to say rockstar” look of low-key Justin Theroux-style leather jackets, Chelsea boots and pieces from Parisian label Officine Générale. The experience “got me out of my comfort zone,” Rodriguez said.

The mindlessness that comes from working with a stylist is enticing to efficiency-obsessed tech workers. “I don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking in the morning,” said Michael Peter, 53, a principal architect at Google in cloud technology. Previously, he dressed like your standard tech worker—jeans, tennis shoes, the odd Batman tee—but a lightbulb went off during one meeting when he watched a better-dressed colleague take charge.

“He walked in the room, he had gravitas,” said Peter. Striving for that same effect, he hired Sethi of Next Level Wardrobe. She directed him toward a “refined elevated casual look” of slender-but-stretchy Vuori pants (which accommodate his gym-rat legs) and James Perse polos. Rather than his girlfriend telling him what to buy, he says, she’s stealing his clothes “all the time.”

To be sure, all of this comes at a cost. Businessmen I spoke with view the hefty fees as an investment, like renting a well-appointed office.

“The cost didn’t faze me a bit,” said Aaron Preman, 48, who owns a roofing company in San Diego, and hired Kenger at around $3,500.

“He taught me a lot in a short amount of time,” Preman said. He discovered that wintery colours suit his olive complexion and that he really likes Theory suits and Zegna ’s $990 triple-stitch sneakers—he now owns several pairs. The cost of everything—the guidance, the clothes—has been worth it to Preman. “He could’ve told me $10,000 and I would’ve said, ‘Okay, when are you coming over?’”

Reporting season has once again reminded investors that a strong profit does not guarantee a rising share price, and a large loss does not always trigger a sell-off. What matters most is how each result compares with expectations and, increasingly, what management says about the year ahead. During the August 2026 season, companies offering credible turnarounds or unexpectedly strong guidance were rewarded handsomely, while those flagging weaker margins, slowing demand or greater uncertainty were punished.

The following ranking draws on Morningstar’s review of 164 ASX-listed companies and measures each company’s share-price movement on the day it reported. This captures the market’s immediate response to the earnings announcement, before subsequent economic developments, dividends and company-specific news cloud the picture. Here are the five biggest winners, and the five hardest-hit losers, of the season so far.

The five winners

1. Bapcor (ASX:BAP): +41.0%

Bapcor delivered reporting season’s largest relief rally after presenting early evidence that its troubled automotive-parts business was stabilising. Although underlying revenue fell 1.8% to $1.92 billion and underlying NPAT collapsed 85% to $10.8 million, underlying EBITDA of $152.5 million exceeded guidance.

More importantly, working-capital initiatives released $68.5 million in the second half, lifting cash conversion to 109.4% and reducing net debt by 63% to $135 million. The statutory loss was $431.6 million, largely because of non-cash impairments. Investors focused on improving operational momentum, stronger liquidity and management’s expectation of modest FY27 revenue growth.

2. Zip Co (ASX:ZIP): +18.2%

Zip comfortably surpassed its FY26 targets, sending the buy-now-pay-later provider’s shares sharply higher. Transaction volume rose 23% to $16.7 billion, while cash earnings before tax, depreciation and amortisation jumped 58% to a record $268.9 million. Statutory profit climbed 46% to $116.4 million, and the cash operating margin expanded by 4.2 percentage points to 20%.

The strongest signal was guidance for FY27 cash earnings of $340 million—around 26% growth and above analysts’ forecasts. US transaction volume increased 42.5% and now represents three-quarters of group volume, offsetting weaker customer activity in Australia.

3. CSL (ASX:CSL): +17.3%

CSL’s result was hardly spectacular in isolation, but it cleared a market bar that had fallen dramatically following earlier downgrades and restructuring announcements. Underlying NPATA was US$3.1 billion, down 2% in constant-currency terms, while operating cash flow reached US$3.51 billion.

CSL maintained its full-year dividend at US$2.92 per share and completed a A$1 billion buyback. The real catalyst was FY27 guidance for approximately 5% underlying profit growth, compared with market expectations closer to 2%. After an extended period of earnings disappointments, investors interpreted the outlook as evidence that CSL’s core plasma business was approaching a sustainable recovery.

4. Judo Capital (ASX:JDO): +16.9%

Judo Capital demonstrated strong operating leverage as its specialist business-lending franchise expanded. Full-year profit before tax rose 34% to $168.1 million, while pre-provision profit increased 42%. Gross loans and advances grew 18% to $14.7 billion, reaching the top of the bank’s guidance range and comfortably exceeding broader system growth.

Deposits increased 24% to $12.2 billion, return on equity improved by 1.1 percentage points to 6.4%, and earnings per share rose 29% to 9.9 cents. Reaffirmation of the FY27 outlook gave investors confidence that loan growth could continue without sacrificing margins or credit quality.

5. Super Retail Group (ASX:SUL): +15.8%

The owner of Supercheap Auto, rebel, BCF and Macpac reported record sales of $4.2 billion, up 3.2%, despite cautious discretionary spending. Profitability went backwards: normalised profit before tax fell 7% to $306 million and normalised NPAT declined 2.8% to $226 million as transformation spending weighed on margins. Nevertheless, the result exceeded subdued expectations, online sales grew 5.3% and membership across the group’s loyalty programs reached 13.1 million. Investors were also encouraged by positive early FY27 trading, stable gross margins and continued market-share gains. A fully franked 33-cent final dividend added to the appeal.

The five losers

1. Hansen Technologies (ASX:HSN): –21.2%

Hansen’s historic result met expectations, but investors recoiled from its outlook. The utility and communications software provider achieved an underlying EBITDA margin of 31%, exceeding its 30% target, while generating strong cash flow. However, management designated FY27 an “investment and transition year”, signalling a roughly five-percentage-point margin contraction as spending on products, sales capabilities and organisational changes increased.

Revenue had already been broadly flat, leaving investors concerned that the investment program would depress earnings before new growth appeared. Leadership changes, including the chief executive’s departure, added uncertainty. Management expects revenue growth and margins above 30% to return in FY28, but the market was unwilling to wait.

2. Life360 (ASX:360): –19.4%

Life360’s headline growth was impressive: quarterly revenue rose 38% to US$159 million, subscription revenue increased 31%, and adjusted EBITDA climbed 53% to US$31.1 million. Monthly active users reached 102.4 million and paying circles grew 27% to 3.2 million. The sell-off reflected expectations rather than a collapsing business.

Net income fell 18%, the net margin contracted from 6% to 3%, hardware shipments dropped 18%, and full-year EBITDA guidance was merely maintained. After a strong valuation run, investors wanted a larger upgrade and clearer evidence that heavy investment in advertising, international expansion and artificial intelligence would generate additional earnings.

3. PEXA Group (ASX:PXA): –17.0%

PEXA reported a 7% increase in continuing-operations revenue and 12% EBITDA growth to $152 million, accompanied by a two-percentage-point margin expansion. Free cash flow increased 39%, suggesting the core Australian electronic-conveyancing platform remained highly profitable. Investors instead concentrated on management’s warning that property-transfer volumes could decline, alongside regulatory uncertainty surrounding the fees PEXA can charge.

The company is also continuing to invest heavily in its loss-making international expansion. Morningstar considered the market reaction excessive, arguing that structural transfer-volume assumptions had not materially changed, but the combination of softer near-term activity and regulatory risk overwhelmed the respectable headline numbers.

4. SEEK (ASX:SEK): –14.3%

SEEK produced solid FY26 figures, including 10% revenue growth to $1.20 billion, a 15% rise in EBITDA and 28% growth in adjusted earnings per share. It also lifted its fully franked annual dividend by 13% to a record 52 cents. Those achievements were overshadowed by falling paid job-ad volumes and cautious FY27 assumptions.

The statutory accounts included a $201 million loss from the SEEK Growth Fund and $377 million of significant items, making the headline result considerably less attractive. Investors were particularly concerned that economic weakness could limit volumes while the company continued investing in platform integration and artificial-intelligence products.

5. JB Hi-Fi (ASX:JBH): –12.3%

JB Hi-Fi’s full-year result was broadly respectable, with group sales rising 5% to $11.1 billion and underlying earnings per share increasing 6% to $4.48. The damage came from its current-trading update. Australian sales were almost flat during the June quarter and deteriorated further in July, while earnings in the core Australian electronics business fell 3.6%.

Housing-related categories were particularly weak as higher living costs and interest rates constrained household budgets. With JB Hi-Fi entering the season on a demanding valuation, an in-line historic result was not sufficient: the loss of sales momentum prompted investors to rapidly reduce their expectations for FY27.

Overall, the season showed that share prices react less to whether profits rose or fell than to the gap between results and expectations. Bapcor was rewarded for being less troubled than feared, while several fundamentally profitable companies were punished because their outlooks failed to justify elevated valuations.