INTERVIEW with Liz Golding || Fashion Stylist

Photo: Liz Golding

SD: Hi Liz. Can you introduce yourself to my readers who don't know you yet?

LG: HI! My name is Liz Golding, I have a long history as a fashion stylist in Brisbane. It is about 33 years since my first styling job. I started off in the fashion industry as a model and very soon started helping on shoots and clients started booking me. I did hair and makeup for many years as well. 

These days I run an agency for photographers and creatives. Hair and makeup artist, stylists, retouchers and crew. Soon this business will be 10 years old. It has been a great business and I really enjoy putting shoots and fashion shows together. 

I was the Styling Director of Mercedes Benz Fashion Festival for the first 10 years, and I worked on Brisbane Fashion Month for 2018-2019 pulling in sponsors, building the program and running the shows. I have been a Fashion Editor for 5 years at Q Weekend magazine and U on Sunday magazine 2011-2016, back when the readership was close to 900 000 a week.

I have just finished almost three years as Ambassador and stylist at Indooroopilly Shopping Centre, which I loved. They are going in a different direction with their marketing now. 

SD: How would you describe your creative process?

LG: I am a very creative person, my mind is spinning with ideas most of the time. I love a challenge and like to push myself out of my comfort zone. I am always ready to have a go at something new. Obviously I am a very visual person, who’s natural skill for pattern recognition and colour recognition is different to many others. Both my daughters have been assessed and they have this skill as well. 

I have big folders on my computer and Pinterest folders with images that inspire me. It may be a colour or a model pose, hairstyle or outfit that is the trigger for a shoot idea. Or a magazine spread idea. I don’t copy, I get the vibe of the shoot and then curate all the elements together. I am by nature a maximalist and have to push myself to style anything minimalist. I stay on top of designer collections and memorize them so I can pull outfits for shoots. Over the years I have become friends with the designers because we communicate so much.

SD: What does a work day look like for you? 

LG: It is varied with no day the same as the next. Now that I have finished at Indooroopilly I will spend more time at my home office instead of working on the run and popping up to my car and sending quotes and invoices from the laptop. It has been quite challenging doing that. 

I usually start work very early because I have many USA and international clients. So, the emails between photographers and clients are going all night. I keep an eye on them and respond in the morning about 5am if I need to. 

At the moment I am working on building e-commerce stores/websites for a couple of clients and I quietly work away on that before the flurry of emails increases about 8am. I respond to these and work out any issues. I find creatives to help the clients and organise the jobs. I invoice, I quote, I communicate for the rest of the day until about 4pm. The day goes very fast.

Often I have meetings with clients to see how I can help them and quote or send proposals for the job at hand. I do a styling/modelling LIVE video for one of my clients once a week. 

Over the last two years I have had four interns at once for each semester, that has been great but a lot of work for me. They had problems getting internships over Covid and so I took more than one on at once. I am having a break now for a semester to have a bit more peace to myself and slow down a little. Teaching them is a joy but takes some effort. 

Often I am on a shoot helping out, it may be my client that needs the whole crew and I am producing the shoot and styling. Sometimes there are no stylists available and I go to help the client. Recently I did some food styling for Top Golf, which was extremely challenging for me, I have only done a little bit of food styling in the past. The shoot went well but I was styling with the photographers, the marketing teams kit and that was hard. I got it done but it was a big lesson in the use of texture, space filling and placement of product. If I hadn’t done the job, they wouldn’t have been able to produce the food images. 

Photo by Ian Golding

SD: Can you share any memorable moments from working in fashion?

There are so many. 

LG: Some of my favourite memories are of my modelling career. I did a show at hair expo early 90’s with Bennie Tognini and I had my body plaster cast to make crazy silver fibreglass molds and shapes that covered bits of my body, like a space age outfit. Then Bennie made a sugar glass wig that I detonated on stage and it exploded. I then took off the skull cap and shook out my hair. I was there every step of the collaboration process and it was fantastic. People still talk about it. 

I was lead model for a Zandra Rhodes show, lead model for a huge Trent Nathan show. I also modelled in a show for Karl Lagerfeld in Kuala Lumpur. I modelled for campaign shoots in Italy and London. 

Styling memorable moments.

Having a documentary made of the behind the scenes of Mercedes Benz Fashion Festival for a couple of years was memorable. Styling the first show for Easton Pearson for the first Sydney Fashion Week was a pretty full on experience. Masses of memories of other shows, at one stage I was putting on 45 fashion parades a year. I would like to think that the best is yet to come, I have some really exciting plans coming to fruition in the next two years. 

Photo by Russell Shakespeare and David Kelly for Q Weekend Magazine. Hair, makeup and styling by Liz Golding

SD: As consumers, what are the easiest ways that we can all be more sustainable in our approach to fashion?

LG: Clever shopping is the best way to go. Shop smart by buying garments that fit and flatter. Try them on, get some advice, watch influencers and take their lead to help you. Curate your wardrobe and tidy it so you know what you already have so you don’t buy duplicates. Put aside pieces that don’t fit and when your weight fluctuates, bring them into the wardrobe again. On sell your unwanted fashion or donate it to friends or charity. Look for businesses that recycle old fashion into new pieces. Mend pieces that can be fixed instead of throwing away. Use your own shopping bags instead of plastic. Remake pieces into something else, like a frill on the bottom of a skirt or dress into a scarf. Fabric pieces into scarves or belts. I still have pieces in my wardrobe from 38 years ago. Win!!

SD: What was your biggest motivation when times got hard throughout your journey towards your current role?

LG: Good question. 

My motivation is to help my industry, I have a heightened sense of responsibility, always have. Whether it is the fashion industry or the photographic industry. I am a firm believer that I should leave my industry in a better state than I found it. 

Also because it is my own business, I have a responsibility to my creatives to get them work and manage them well. 

There have been many hard times too. When I lose a client, or lose a creative that I have worked very hard for, it hurts. When Covid hit I lost 650% of my business overnight, built it up better than before but is was a huge job and I have worked every day for the majority of the last two years. 

It was a difficult time when I divorced from my first husband, apart from the emotional side of breaking up. We had a company together that was very busy and we worked together a great deal. It fell apart after divorce which was sad. I had to rebuild my whole life quickly because I had my daughters to look after and new clients to look after.

Other hard times are when a client is very toxic, this happens more than you would think. These days I tend to work only for clients that make it a joy. 

SD: What would you consider being one of the most exciting projects you’ve worked on to date? 

LG: Ha! Exciting and scary go hand in hand! I think the BrisAsia show this March was exciting, it was my show and that is always a thrill.

SD: Are there any style philosophies you live by? 

LG: When I am styling, it is all about what the client needs, not what I need. I can morph my styling to suit the client’s brief. I always have masses of options because sometimes the client doesn’t articulate well. It is often the pieces outside the brief that get used.

Personal style philosophy – Create a complete look. Don’t just plonk on a dress and shoes. The accessories help make the outfit. Your outfit says a lot about you. It is the fastest way to tell your story. It shows that you care, that you are creative, that you have your life together enough to make an effort with your appearance and outfit.

SD: What is your must-have fashion item?

LG: This time of year i.e. Winter. 

Knee high black flat boots, I am on my 5th pair in my life. I like to wear them with black leather look skinny jeans, so it is “rock chic” on the bottom and jacket or blouse on the top. I also love an embellished jacket, I have many from Rubyyaya. 

Also I have many maxi dresses, big full and lots of fabric. I like the swooshyness of all the fabric. Got to be tall for this look. Also I love mad glasses, I wear them because people are amused by them and it makes me look like I am in the fashion industry and fun and approachable. People call out to me everyday. “Love your glasses!” “Love your dress!” 

Mad about big earrings too!!

I started looking like this about 15-20 years ago, when I did all the catalogues for shopping centres. Where I had to pull stock (sign out stock) and shoot it and return it. Cold calling shops all day when all they had was a letter from marketing saying I would be around on this day, was challenging. It was a faster and easier experience if I looked the part. FASHION STYLIST in the house! Haha! Worked a treat. I only had one shop ring Centre Management at Robina to check on my, in all those years.

SD: If there was one piece of advice you would like to tell every student at a fashion school what would it be?

LG: Immerse yourself in your chosen industry. Get to know the creatives. Take ownership of your industry.

LG: Do you have any advice you’d like to give to your younger self?

Advice I did give my younger self.

One person’s perfume is another’s poison.

Not everyone is going to like you or what you do, do it anyway.

Have a go, be courageous.

Your skills are valuable, charge for what you do.

Don’t let other people push you around.

Leave everything better than you found it.

Always leave on a high.

Diversify or die.

How someone treats you, says a lot about them.

Keep learning.

Don’t let the turkey’s get you down.

Trust your gut instincts.

Always believe that the best is yet to come.

Liz Golding’s Social Media Presence:

Website: https://lizgolding.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liz.golding.353
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizgolding/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-golding-30195112/

Photo by David Kelly for Q Weekend Magazine. Hair, makeup and styling by Liz Golding