Kristine Kilty: BY INSTINCT, NOT PERMISSION

SøEdited Team
SøEditor-in-Chief / Interview: Chris Saint Sims 
​SøFashion Director: Savannah Barthorpe

​With the release of her new book, Fashion Stylist, Kristine Kilty opens up a world that has long operated behind closed doors. 

Built from years of experience across luxury fashion, image-making, and education, the book reads less like instruction and more like access, a direct, practical insight into an industry often defined by opacity.

“I wanted to create something honest and useful,” she says. “Something that actually helps people move forward.”

There is a particular kind of clarity that comes not from certainty, but from movement, from stepping forward without a defined map and allowing instinct to take over. Kilty speaks from within that space, where direction is not always planned, but gradually revealed through experience, resistance, and persistence.

Her beginnings were not linear. A BA in Textile Design followed by an MA in Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins placed her firmly within the system, yet something didn’t sit quite right. Designing, confined to the studio, felt disconnected from what drew her to fashion in the first place.

“I didn’t want to spend my career in a design studio,” she says. “I was always more interested in the end result — the image, the show, the feeling around it.”

​The shift came quietly, almost accidentally. Working within Vivienne Westwood’s couture world, styling clients without formal training, Kilty found herself closer to the outcome she had always been drawn to. A passing moment with Gwen Stefani,  a simple affirmation where she advised Kilty to contact her stylist, Andrea Lieberman.

“I had no portfolio, no contacts. I just decided to go for it,” she recalls. “Ignorance was bliss.”

What follows is not a story of sudden recognition, but of gradual construction. Rejection, she notes, was formative, something that redirected her inward rather than outward.

“The no’s helped me more than anything, I built my own circle, stayed in the studio, and just kept making work. I never really compared myself to anyone.”

There is a sense that Kilty’s work has always been informed by a deeply personal archive. Music, in particular, runs through it, the residue of London nights, of subcultures experienced firsthand rather than observed.

“Music shaped everything. Rock, rave, drum and bass, being in those spaces, feeling that energy, it all fed into how I see things.”

​The visual language of glamour also remains present, sharpened through an early fascination with Dita Von Teese. 

“I studied how she put everything together, the detail, the precision. That stayed with me.” 

Alongside this sits the enduring influence of Jean Paul Gaultier, whom she describes simply as “my true north.”

Yet what feels most distinct now is a shift inward. After decades spent moving between cities, London, New York, Paris, her practice has recalibrated. The pace has softened. Nature has entered the frame.

“Style goes beyond what you wear, It’s about the energy you bring.”

Her jewellery project, Frequency Paris–Ibiza, reflects this change, a move away from overt maximalism toward something quieter, more grounded. A different kind of expression, but one that feels continuous rather than separate.

This perspective extends into her reading of the industry itself. Social media, once a space of connection, is now something she approaches with caution.

“There’s a lot of noise and not much substance. Follower count doesn’t equal talent. You have to stay grounded and trust your own direction.”

​There is also a clarity in her ethics. A lifelong commitment to veganism informs her work without compromise.

“I don’t work with fur or exotic skins. It’s an immediate no,” she says. “Staying aligned matters more than being seen.”

In many ways, her book sits naturally within this trajectory, not as a separate project, but as an extension of it. A sharing of knowledge that resists closing inwards and instead opens the door.

“There’s space for everyone, I’m not into gatekeeping.”

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​What becomes evident, in speaking with Kilty, is that her work has never been about arriving at a fixed point. It is about maintaining alignment — with instinct, with values, with curiosity.

“There’s no one path. You just keep going.”
​
There is no singular moment of transformation here. Instead, something quieter, more sustained: a continual process of becoming. ​

Book available at: Fashion Stylist:
KRISTINE KILTY