Shine 101: Shiona Turini Talks Side Hustles, Styling Solange, and Embracing the Public Eye

Shiona Turini learned to hustle in Bermuda. Here's how she used that and her editorial eye to become a visual storyteller for Solange and Dior.

Shiona Turini wears a pink pantsuit for Complex in New York, NY. August 2016.
Complex Original

Shiona Turini wears a pink pantsuit for Complex in New York, NY. August 2016.

Shiona Turini wears a pink pantsuit for Complex in New York, NY. August 2016.

Clad in a pale pink pantsuit and a demure crop top—a perennial wardrobe staple—Shiona Turini lingers over an Apple monitor making preemptive selects from the day’s shoot. “Delete the rest,” she calls out—half-joking but mostly serious—to no one in particular. Turini is as present in front of the camera as she is behind the scenes: self-styling her look, sneaking glances at the live feed of shots in between poses. This momentary snapshot illuminates much about Turini’s work ethic; a meticulous attention to detail that makes her a keen editor even when she herself is the subject.

This same drive has come to mark Turini’s work across the fashion industry. She began her career in public relations for YSL, then moved into editorial as an Accessories Editor for WMagazine and Teen Vogue. She went on to work for Carine Roitfeld’s luxury tome, CR Fashion Book, with the dual titles of Fashion Market and Beauty Director. Then, she decided to go mass market when she joined the team at Cosmopolitan, the world’s largest women’s magazine.

Turini learned the importance of juggling multiple gigs from her parents who held down day and night jobs to provide for the family, as a young schoolgirl in her native Bermuda. The self-sufficient streak ultimately pushed Turini to strike out on her own as a brand consultant, stylist, and freelance editor.

Today, Turini’s portfolio features some of the world’s top luxury brands—like Dior, Fendi, and Salvatore Ferragamo. Her styling work spans contributions to Beyoncé’s “Formation” video, styling Tinashe for Nylon Magazine, and working with Solange Knowles, to name a few.

Complex spoke with Turini about the nuts and bolts of how she’s moved her successful career along, why her small island homeland is present as ever in her big city fashionable life, and how she marries the spirit of a hustler with the refinement of an editor’s eye.

Shiona Turini wears a green beaded jacket for Complex in New York, NY. August 2016.

What initially spurred your decision to step away from a full-time editorial job to working for yourself?
I have always been a hustler, so I've had a side business my entire career. A lot of them were not based in America. I always kept a business in Bermuda. I'd do seminars on how to work in fashion. I'd bring some of my friends that I was meeting in the fashion industry. I'd say to the PR director at Christian Dior, "Come to Bermuda we'll have a little seminar." I always had that entrepreneurial spirit. But, that doesn't mean that I always knew I'd work for myself.

I started in PR and moved my way over to editorial. I made my way up through some of the most prestigious publications. I worked for W and Carine Roitfeld's CR Fashion Book. I worked at the top magazines in style and luxury, and then I went to the most mass market magazine, Cosmopolitan, which has the biggest readership of any other magazine in the world. And then, where do you go after that? When Cosmopolitan and Seventeen merged, I knew it was time for me to make that shift. I thought that it was just as good a time as any and started to work for myself. 

Did leaving the security of a salaried position make you nervous?
Leaving the security of knowing where my next paycheck was coming from, and the ease of an expense account, an assistant, and insurance being deducted [directly from my pay] was a struggle. And I'm still struggling with it, but I work really, really hard. I was able to get the work and the projects and figure it out as I went along.

As internet savvy as some might think I am, I had no idea how to set up a website. I had no idea what a deck should look like when I'm pitching an idea or project to a brand. Like, how do I pitch an idea to a brand so they will pay me and not just go ahead and use it? There was a bit of a learning curve. I had to not be afraid to ask other women in similar situations for advice. Everyone is in their own lane, and there's space for all of us. So I never felt like, 'This person is my competition and I can't ask them." I think that's where a lot of people screw themselves over, because they're scared to have open conversations with their friends that work in the industry.

Shiona Turini wears a pink pantsuit for Complex in New York, NY. August 2016.

Now that you're consulting and choosing the projects that you're taking on, how do you decide which ones are worthwhile?

I've been pretty good about trusting my gut for my entire career. I've obviously made some mistakes and missteps. Working for myself is push and pull. Sometimes it's an immediate reaction like, "I don't want to do that." I was fortunate that when I decided to go freelance, I was booked immediately, and there were never any lulls. I've been consistently busy. So sometimes I have to say no because I physically cannot squeeze something else in. As my friends say, it's just not humanly possible for a one-woman show to say yes to everything. So I have had to get more selective about the projects that I'm working on.​

 

A lot of people want to be stylists and brand consultants, but they actually don't know what the backend of that job looks like.  Logistically, do you have a team that helps you manage your workload?
That's a good question. I'm not a pinball machine but I also did not pre-plan anything in my career. I think that spontaneity has made me really diverse and able to work in different facets of fashion. With that being said, I don't really need anyone else to help. Obviously, no man is an island. I need support, but as far as managing me, I don't have a formal manager. I did a project with a girl, who's also a friend, and I watched her negotiate her ass off. I asked if she would do that for me, because it got to a point where I had the clients, but I, like most people, and—unfortunately I hate to generalize and say like most women—I was trying not to be too aggressive when talking about money. I’m at the point where I don't want to talk about money at all with the client. I just want to talk about the creative aspects of the project. To be able to hand that conversation off to someone else alleviated a lot. It let me be more creative and focus my efforts on what I was really passionate about, instead of these tiny, little logistic bits.

I am a micromanager to say the least. I'm not going to let someone lead me down a path blindly. With my schedule, I have my assistant doing that. But again, she's not putting things on the schedule that I'm not aware of. I'm still a one woman show, but I do have supporting partners. 

What advice would you give to stylists coming up in the game?
Well, the complicated thing is that I don't actually consider myself a stylist. This comes up all the time, because I do have styling projects. My background was not in styling, it was in market editing: finding the best products in the market, looking at what's on the runway, and seeing how that's going to translate and trickle down into mass markets. I was thrown into styling when I went to work for a smaller publication. That helped to refine my taste and my stylistic eye. I think I'm more of a story teller, in whatever capacity that is. So if it's an ad campaign, I can tell the visual story that you want your brand to tell. If I'm freelancing for a publication and I need to do a shopping spread, that's a different story. Or if I'm working with a celebrity and it's a video or a red carpet, that's a story too. But I never really pigeonholed myself as a stylist, because most of my work has come from brand partnerships and creating content.

The advice that comes out of that is, there will always be work for a stylist out there, but you have to be able to do other jobs, have other versions of yourself, and use your talents in other ways. If your sole source of income is just dressing someone, I don't know how much longer that will be a career. There's so much information out there, people can dress themselves. You, as a stylist, might have stronger relationships, but the landscape has changed. So I guess: make yourself easily adaptable, resilient, and able to channel that into other projects.

For anyone that follows you on SnapChat or Instagram, they can see that you're working on something with Solange. The two of you seem to have a friendship and creative partnership. What's it like working with her?
It's amazing working with her, because Solange, out of anyone I've ever worked with, has a really distinctive point of view. There will never be a case where I'm like, "Put this on," and she puts it on. That's not what the relationship is. She comes to me most of the time like, "This is my idea. These are the outfits that I like. Please make sure to get me this top." And then I supplement it, and I build off of that story that she started. It works really well for us. I am able to use my market editor background to present her things that she likes. It's fun because we have different styles, but I'm not trying to project my love of crop tops and and cut-outs when I'm working for her. [Laughs] I don't feel a type of way when she's like, “No, that's an outfit that you would wear.” I still need to give her what I call her "shape shifters," she loves a boxy shape. She doesn't really like a high heel. I make sure that I'm going to have stuff that makes her—not just as a client, but as my friend—happy.

Shiona Turini wears a green beaded jacket for Complex in New York, NY. August 2016.

Career and personal goal shifts can bring out different aspects of one's self that surprise us. What surprised you most about the shift from editorial to freelance?
What was a little eye opening was that a lot of peers and coworkers, so to speak, immediately started to loop me into this group of influencers. I had spent so much of my time and so much of my career as an editor with very valid publications. So in the beginning, I was very fast to be like, "I'm not a blogger. I don't have a blog." But I think because I was super active on Instagram with my outfits, that sometimes people would get it confused. Even editors that I'd worked with for years would say, "Just letting you know, I sat you in the influencer's section of this show and not the editor's section." And I would be like, "No, but I'm an editor, I want to sit with my fellow editors." That's not a problem, but I would say that it's something that I didn't expect. I went into freelance thinking that I would be the person creating these opportunities for others, and then suddenly I became the talent.

As many pictures as there are of me on my Instagram, it's still something that I'm not used to. I'm not a model. I'm not an actress. I feel like I'm always an editor, and I'll always have that editor's sensibility. Being a hybrid, that was a new concept that I didn't expect. It threw me for a loop in the beginning, but I now I realize that it's just another career path for me.

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