You may not know Molly Dickson by her photo, but you definitely know her work. The celebrity stylist counts Bella Hadid, Lana Del Rey, Sydney Sweeney, Sadie Sink, and Kaia Gerber among her top-tier clientele, helping orchestrate looks like Hadid’s showstopping Saint Laurent naked dress at the Cannes Film Festival and Sweeney’s fashion-forward Anyone But You press tour.
Even though Dickson has been working in the fashion industry since she cut her teeth as a fashion intern at Marie Claire in 2009, she didn’t feel as though she’d “made it” until April 2024. “I knew the moment I felt it,” Dickson says. “It was Lana at Coachella.”
While she and her team were on the ground to facilitate Del Rey’s sparkly light blue custom Dolce Gabbana look (plus her team of backup dancers), Dickson was also overseeing three other clients from afar. “Coachella was a beast in and of itself," she says. "There were two weekends and it was just really long hours, and we were very exhausted. But when she got on stage, I started crying. It was so beautiful. All of this hard work, all of these sleepless nights, all of the anxiety and stress—it all was worth it because she looked so beautiful. We created art.”
When Dickson entered the job market in 2009, the country was still in the throes of a recession. A recent advertising graduate from the University of Minnesota, she was struck with the realization that she wanted to work in fashion. But she had to be a student in order to secure an internship at Marie Claire. “I actually enrolled back into college to get the internship at Hearst [Magazines, Marie Claire’s parent company] because you have to be able to receive credit. I was essentially paying to intern for free,” she says. “We started off with 23 interns, and by the end of it, there were maybe eight. All these young girls think that fashion is so glamorous, but I was taking out the trash and doing pickups. Interning is a very good filter process for who’s really serious about it.”
From there, Dickson did a stint in Gucci’s public relations department, returned to Marie Claire for two years assisting the fashion market director, and then moved onto assisting stylist Leslie Fremar, where she remained for eight years. Even though her dance card is filled up with the best and brightest actors, models, and singers, “I still feel, somehow, like I’m still an assistant stylist,” she says. “I don’t know if that’s a good mentality to keep me humble and keep me hungry and working hard, but I just keep feeling like there’s more, and I keep eating to strive to work harder and do more.”
Dickson was finally able to strike out on her own when she began styling 13 Reasons Why star Katherine Langford. “I told Leslie, ‘I can’t give you 110% anymore. It is too much for me to do her and you, and I feel like I’m going to fail you,’” she recalls. “That was when I left her and I started doing it on my own, which was scary.” She would launch herself into public consciousness when she added Sweeney, Sink, Lucy Hale, and Camila Mendes to her roster.
A major career milestone came in 2022 when Sink was promoting her film The Whale on the festival circuit. Dickson used it as an opportunity to usher her from a Stranger Things kid to a young auteur. “I first started working with [Sink] when she was 14, so we had to keep her fairly conservative and not sexy at all. I remember being on set and the strap of her dress fell down. I was like, Oh my God, your dad is going to kill me,” Dickson says. “She’s really nurtured my relationship with fashion and my knowledge of this industry, so I trust she knows my style and could probably read my mind at this point,” Sink says. “As I’ve grown older, we’ve had fun pushing the boundaries of my younger, adolescent self and stepping into more mature looks. She never rushed me into that though, which I’m so grateful for.”
When Sink reached adulthood around the time of The Whale, Dickson sat down with the actor and her manager and talked about their sartorial approach. “She’s now a woman, she’s taking more mature roles; The styling now can be a little bit more sexy,” she told them. “When she was doing press for The Whale, that’s when we showcased her turning into a woman. She wore that McQueen gown that had cutouts, and it was kind of sheer. That was probably the sexiest look that she’d ever done.”
In late 2023, Sweeney, with her hit show Euphoria and her rom-com tour for Anyone But You, gave her stylist an opportunity to flex her muscles. Dickson dressed the star in looks from Bottega Veneta, Miu Miu, Schiaparelli, and Versace (among many, many others).
Beyond Dickson’s fashion prowess, her personality helps differentiate her from other stylists. “Molly’s passion, creativity, and energy is what sets her apart from everyone else,” Sweeney tells Vogue. “She has an incredible ability to enhance her clients’ unique styles, transforming them from T-shirt and jeans to fashion icons.” Del Rey concurs: “Molly is one of those people that you meet and you just hope she’s gonna be in your life forever. She is the embodiment of sunshine and laughter which is incredibly rare in fashion,” she says. “She could literally be in any profession and I would put money on it that she would be at the top of whatever field she was in because of her dedication and because she just wants to do things right by people.” Dickson’s clients, it seems, value her beyond the clothing. “Molly feels like a sister and is a true friend. I trust her explicitly, and I’m instantly comfortable around her,” Sink says. “I’m lucky to have her on my team, and just in my life in general.”
Dickson open to learning from her clients, too. “Sydney, for example, loves to try different things,” she says of Sweeney. She recalls one fitting together, early in their collaboration, when the actor gravitated toward a variety of looks. When Dickson noted that the looks were “all over the place,” Sweeney told her, “Molly, that’s why I’m an actress. I want to play different roles, and I want to have fun with fashion. I don’t want to be put in one box. Some days I want to be girly, some days I want to be sexy,” Dickson remembers. “I was like, Wow, I’ve never looked at it that way. I always just thought you’re going to be the cool girl, or you’re going to be the cute girl. But Sydney taught me that it doesn’t need to be stagnant—that you can have different aesthetics and different roles in your fashion.”
Whether they’re wearing a vintage keffiyeh dress or an avant garde premiere look, Dickson wants to ensure that her clients feel their best when she dresses them. Getting there starts during fittings. “I want to create an environment where fashion is meant to be fun. When we do fittings, I want it to be girlfriends hanging out, having fun, picking out cute clothes,” she says. “At the end of the day, my main goal is for them to go to the event or the red carpet or performance feeling the most confident.”
