So today in class we had a guest speaker, Siobhan Lyons who is a freelance stylist. Living in East London she studied Fashion at Leeds getting 3 jobs while she studied so that she could move to London and get herself an internship. Starting her career as a Fashion Assistant for Jefferson Hack's Another Magazine, Siobhan worked closely with some of the most influential people in the fashion industry including Katy England, Karen Langley, Mattias Karisson, David St John James, Cathy Edwards and Nicola Formichetti.
After a year of building her knowledge and skills, Siobhan went on to assist the eminent stylist Jacob K, acting as his First Assistant for two and a half years. During this time Siobhan worked with the crème de la crème of fashion creatives, with editorials such as V Magazine, I-D, Numero, 10, Harpers Bazaar, Dazed, Vogue Italia,Working regularly with the photographer Tim Walker, Siobhan gained an unbeatable education as an assistant whilst developing her own distinctive style.
Further assisting work saw Siobhan work closely with Claire Richardson, Carlyn Cerf de Duzelle and Kate Pelan, on advertising campaigns including: United colours of Benetton, Louis Vuitton and Topshop.
During the talk Siobhan told us some of her stories about working in the industry as a stylist. Giving us a truthful insight into what we as budding stylist could expect. Although her talk initially scared some of us a bit I think it also did a great deal to inspire us.
My favourite editorial that Siobhan has worked on was the Tim Walker shoot for Harpers Bazaar based on Tim Burton's characters, it has always been one of my favourites due to my love for Tim Burton's films and the fact we got to hear the inspiration and the work behind each image was very motivational to myself and got me inspired to get myself into gear.
Looking at her own work Siobhan has a very 'East London' style. It's raw, it's grunge and it's real. She would rather shoot a street cast model with bags under eyes and clothes she's 'borrowed' from various vintage shops. Talking about her own work Siobhan told us how yes she has her style but to be successful you need to be able to appeal to lots of clients, she has found through assisting on advertisements she manages to get work on others but the work she would rather be doing is editorials but it's much harder to get pages in a magazine than to do online work.
Overall Siobhan gave a real insight into the Fashion styling world and has given me a lot to think about.
If you want to have a look at her work click
'here'
Poppy Eliza x
