Style icon Zara Mirkin says moving overseas saved her career

A spur-of-the-moment decision to fly to New York proved a turning point in NZ fashion stylist Zara Mirkin’s career.

Zara Mirkin, 26, became an in-demand style icon while she worked in the NZ fashion industry for about six years, making overseas employment almost effortless.

But Mirkin booked a spontaneous flight to New York about two years ago because she said her styling, creative directing, and photography jobs became hard to handle and she needed a break.

She said working for a long list of clients – including Stolen Girlfriends Club, Lonely Hearts, Huffer, Max, Glassons, Hallenstines, Lower, Topshop, and Ruby Frost – made her “super money-hungry”.

“I felt like I was selling my soul to all this ad work.

“There was almost a stage that you could walk through a mall and every second picture is what I had done.”

Mirkin said she always wanted to move to New York because most of her family live there, but she found it hard to leave because she loved NZ.

“If I had stayed in New Zealand I honestly would have started losing my clients eventually because someone younger and cheaper would have come along,” she said.

When speaking to a crowd of about 160 during Spark, Mirkin discussed how her career progressed from store assistant to a sought-after freelance fashion stylist.

Mirkin was working for fashion designer Mala Brajkovic when she was asked to assist styling a fashion photo shoot for her favourite magazine, Russh.

She then worked as a clothing designer for Stolen Girlfriends Club, an Auckland-based fashion label now sold worldwide.

Mirkin left her job at the fashion label abruptly two years before moving overseas because she found it hard to handle.

She ended up getting into freelancing without realising it could be done.

“My phone kept ringing and I started getting all these great jobs,” she said.

The freelance stylist, who is a self-confessed print magazine addict, got a job at NO magazine as a fashion editor, and is a regular contributor to Oyster magazine.

Mirkin said she is now working on personal projects, including developing her own company to get back into making clothes.

She hopes to eventually become more recognised for her photography in the art world rather than the fashion world.