By Colleen Marasigan
For third-year fashion communications student Kate O’Reilly, fashion has always been a constant.
Growing up with a trunk full of Salvation Army costumes, O’Reilly was known to play dress-up every day, alternating between 20 or more outfits.
Years later she transformed her hobby into a career.
As a stylist, O’Reilly is busy balancing her school work, along with her involvement in this year’s Mass Exodus, and creative photo shoots. While it seems she may always be on her feet, her hard work has evidently paid off.
“Fashion is based on what your medium is and how you’re able to challenge yourself through that, and I feel that fashion styling is an art form because every stylist is channelling themselves through the clothes that they put on the model,” she says.
“The clothes are really my medium to build a form of self-expression and that’s exactly what any artist does, or actor does, or photographer does.”
For O’Reilly, her canvas is one that reflects the world of theatrics and movies.
Through her work, she hopes to elicit a “gasp” moment, with outfits that boast the imagery of an “epic-movie moment.”
“Basically what I want is a reaction. I want that when you see that the clothes that I put together, you’re caught in the moment, that I’ve built a character, drawn from theatre, from movies, from theatrics of fashion film,” she says. “Unless I achieve that I’m less than satisfied.”
It’s that same self-expression that has landed O’Reilly a summer job in Vienna, Austria.
During the summer she’ll be participating in various photo shoots throughout Austria and neighbouring countries.
However, despite her over-the-seas trip, O’Reilly hopes that one day she’ll have a closer-to-home opportunity in Montreal.
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