Evonne is a freelance fashion stylist. Prior to that, she was a freelance model who was active in the Malaysian modeling industry. Regardless of her position, Evonne believes in being determined and resilient in pursuing what she truly loves.
How did you get into styling and modeling?
When I came back from America last year, I was supposed to pursue my Certificate in Legal Practice - a professional exam for all foreign law graduates who intend to practice law in Malaysia. However, I wanted to take a break from law after studying it for the past few years. That was when I decided to try something new.
I first started out with modelling gigs. It didn’t matter if the pay was low as I wanted to gain as much exposure and connections within the industry. As I slowly did more modelling jobs, I managed to network with people within the industry and worked my way to where I am now.
How do you define your style?
I don't really have my own style. It is more like a dress code that I imposed on myself. If I had to pick a starting point, I would say I just wanted to wear something different than my peers in law school and I did not want to stick to the classic ‘sweater and hoodie’ look. Since then, it was more of letting the creative personality within me flow and the ideas naturally came.
Where do you find your inspiration for your make up?
I draw inspiration from the details of my everyday life. I don’t purposely seek to be inspired as it is always on the back of my mind to be looking for things. I mostly find my references from social media and I would use that as a starting point. Sometimes, I would look at a few of my favorites and try to emulate the best of bits out of everything that I find.
In order to do that, I had to consume a significant amount of content for me to know what I liked and disliked. As such, you can only know what’s best when you see the best at work. So, you can say that an important part of my creative process is research.
I knew that my look would be a problem to certain people but I went into the industry knowing that it would be just another challenge I needed to overcome.
What were some of your favourite projects that you worked on?
On the top of my head, I can think of a few. My favourite project that I am currently working on is for Moevir and PAP Magazine. For PAP, I assisted another stylist (Sasha) and it was quite a heavy shoot with 10 outfits but I really enjoyed it. Another one of my favourites would be a Music Video I worked on with Def Jam Asia for their artist, Sya. They are my favourites because these projects really taught me a lot about the process of things.
What were some of the challenges you faced in your journey as a stylist and model?
At the end of the day, the reality is that it is a struggle to achieve financial stability by solely being a fashion stylist. On top of being a freelance stylist, I have a corporate job in Human Resource. With that, time management can be an issue as it is a constant balancing act between my corporate job on the weekdays and my freelance job on the weekends.
Creatively speaking, I struggle sometimes in conceptualizing the ideas I have inside my head. Luckily, I work with a bunch of artistic people who tend to understand things more visually and they help to bridge that communication gap in realizing my ideas. Aside from that, I also failed to meet certain height requirements when I modelled and that would rob me opportunities from getting better freelancing gigs.
What do you hope to achieve with your work?
I want people to know that all things are possible so long as you put your mind to it. For me, I knew that my look would be a problem to certain people but I went into the industry knowing that it would be just another challenge I needed to overcome. I also hope that I will be able to execute bigger and better ideas but that depends on the amount of budget I am allocated with each project.