Oh, to be fashionable...

I don't like to break the illusion of fashion. It's beautiful, fun, even unobtainable; it's the dream. I love fashion and everything about it. I'm not the kind of girl who skims a magazine - I read magazines cover to cover. I like things that are aspirational. It might be a beautiful photo shoot, or an image that's so raw it makes you shudder.  Like many jobs, the secret of fashion is to make it look easy - you don't see the effort. Lots of jobs are like this. A while ago I did a shoot with gymnast Beth Tweddle. Watching her work is amazing, it looks so effortless and beautiful - I told her that and she said it's not true, there's lots of effort and hard work, and she told me that she had metal pins in her ankle. Most athletes have survived so many injuries but you probably won't get injured working in fashion.

Whenever I've attended lectures about fashion, the speaker always mentions how hard fashion can be and how competitive it is. I've always thought the playing field was even, so if everything is hard what's the difference? I've come to realize that there is a difference. It's very fashionable to work in fashion. It looks easy: anyone can do it. Whoo, the digital camera - anyone can be a photographer...ya right.... what's difficult about our jobs, at least for me, is that it's hard to explain what I do and what my skill set really is. I'm often asked how I became a stylist. It's a normal question but it doesn't have a straightforward answer, and it's the same with most creative jobs. So finding a job in fashion and trying to figure out what all the jobs are in fashion is actually quite a challenge...