Tralee native models at Paris Fashion Week after a chance encounter in café
TRALEE native Jasmine Ryle may yet look back on the weekend just gone and realise that it was the moment where her entire life changed forever after the 22-year-old Interior Architecture student suddenly found herself modelling in a Paris Fashion Week event.
It was all thanks to a chance encounter while out at dinner that the former Mercy Mounthawk student, who had never previously done or seriously thought about modelling prior to this, found herself front and centre at the event at the famous Pont Bir Hakeim bridge in Paris right on the River Seine.
Speaking to The Kerryman following a whirlwind weekend, Jasmine explained how she went from just being a second-year college student doing a two-year internship with a French architecture company in Paris, to modelling for the famous Sergio Davila Design company from Peru.
“I was out for dinner with one of my friends. He works in the modelling world and there just happened to be this group of Spanish speaking people sitting at the table beside us and they were from Peru and because I lived in Seville in
Spain for three months, I can speak Spanish so we all just started talking,” she said.
“The designer then came up to me and said that he really liked my look and told me that he was looking for another model to walk in his show on Sunday. Now, this was on Thursday so everything was happening very quickly. He asked if I was with an agency and I told him that I wasn’t with any and he told me that he’d love to be able to help with that and that his show could be the first show that I do,” she continued.
“He told me that the fitting was on Saturday and that I had to be there for 3pm and that the show then would be on Sunday at 7am. It was all surreal, I was thrilled,” Jasmine added.
After the show, Jasmine said that she and the models were taken out to lunch and to an after-party by the team which was full to the brim with young and talented creatives.
It’s here, Jasmine said that she made so many more contacts that have made her seriously consider doing more modelling work in the future.
“This was the first big thing that I’d done in Paris. I’ve been living here for like two years now but I’ve just been working so much and I’m in school as well that I never even thought about doing modelling at all,” she said.
“Paris Fashion Week just ended yesterday (Monday) so there’s been lots of events going on and I’ve made loads more contacts and I was invited to go to so many shows later during the week so I’ve just been going and going and trying to balance all that with work and school,” she continued.
“I’d never really thought about pursuing modelling but now after this week, I’ve got so many contacts. There’s a lot of photographers too that want to shoot me so it got me thinking ‘why not?’ It’s something exciting. It’s something that one day, I’ll write in my diary and look back on,” she said.