To be a stylist encompasses quite a lot of different areas; each new job brings up new problems and pleasures. Ireland is a luxury: there is such a small pool that you get to try a lot of different areas rather than specialise in one. I am costume-designing for a movie, have done fashion shoots for magazines, television commercials, pop videos. It's so broad - it's an amazing job. There is a constant buzz no matter what you are doing.
The beginning for a pop video starts about a week before the actual shoot. You meet with the record company and director and sit down and go through the treatment of the video. I prefer to meet with the band also at this time, to sit down and go through what people want and don't want, what they are used to. Then you do a fitting session, which is great. For the band it's like: "`Here's a shop with all your favourite things - pick your very favourites and go and be in a movie." I have them bring along their favourite clothes to the shoot - it helps, if they feel really uncomfortable, they know they can put those on. It acts as a bit of a safety net, but it's never been resorted to.
You can start at any time and end at any time with a shoot. You have a mobile phone surgically attached to your ear and you are on call 72 hours a day. I've done a 24-hour stretch before. There is a huge amount of standing around.
You can find yourself doing thing at odd seasons. One time I was involved in shooting a bathing suit spread in February. While all the crew were wearing every scrap of clothes they could find, the model was wearing nothing and next to pneumonia.
I have been passive in what has happened to me, but my career happened very naturally, organically. I started in retail, working in two top-end designer shops. Through that I built up contacts with photographers, who mainly used me as a stylist for shoots. I did that on weekends and at night - of course with no pay - to gather together a portfolio of work.
The jobs in retail gave me the courage to make my own way, but it does take a while to get yourself established. I was lucky to secure a job with d'SIDE magazine before leaving my retail job. To have your name appear in a magazine every month is a great advertisement.
It's amazing the amount of girls who ring me up and ask how to become a fashion stylist and it's really hard to explain. You have to have an eye, an indefinable thing. It's more than being into clothes. Being a fashion victim doesn't make you a stylist. In fact, some shoots I've done that were more classic I look back on two or three years later and say "that was a good shoot". I get more pleasure out of those than from those that shocked people. I look after image. My job amounts to choosing clothes for a person, but you have to have a good sense of the human mind and a caring attitude. You have to be aware that the person you are working with is a real person that has hang-ups just like everyone else.
With a video shoot, there are no unknowns - you're working with someone else's concept. With a fashion shoot, most of the time I would work from the beginning, conceptualising the shoot. I would choose the model, stand over hair and makeup. It's like my mini-production. Between the two, it's a shift in creative input.
In conversation with Katy Sinclair.
