Spotlight on Our Graduates

Fashion Design | DEC

President, Les Effrontés

Describe your position and key responsibilities?
I founded Montreal's first style and image agency. I have a team of fourteen stylists whom I represent to private clients, corporate clients and advertising agencies. I also own a styling school where I train individuals who wish to become professional stylists.

What is a typical workday in your professional life?
There is no such thing as a typical day. Depending on the season, I give lectures, provide trainings or promote my agency's stylists.

Outline your career path?
After having obtained my Bachelor's degree in Literature, I made a radical change and registered in Men's Fashion Design at LaSalle College. I later did an internship at Turbulence where I became an assistant-designer. After four years of assisting others, I decided to start my own company. I built a team that today includes fourteen professional stylists.

What is your best memory of the time spent at LaSalle College?
At the very end, after the fashion show was over, I seriously felt like I had really accomplished something.

What was your favorite subject, while in the program?
I loved everything. In fact, I was surprised by the many teachers who were still very passionate about their jobs after so many years.

Describe your general feeling during your first day, week or month of school?
My first day, as soon as I came out of the metro, I was following another student on the street - tall, thin with bleached hair wearing jean hotpants, a cropped T-shirt and powder blue hockey socks... I was seriously wondering what I had gotten myself into!

What advice would you give a student presently enrolled in the fashion program?
There is no right way; in fact our own way is what really counts. If we keep looking at what others are doing, we will always be behind. We should rather be attuned to the needs of the targeted clientele all the while following our instinct and intuition.

What surprised you most when you entered the job market?
We study in centimetres and then work in inches. There is often a difference between studies and reality, but with time I understood that the academic training provides the necessary tools to perform better, but it is the experience that adds dimension to the proficiency.

What are the essential qualities required to succeed in the fashion world?
Perseverance. Without it, many talented individuals miss out on success.