As a stylist with clients that include Cover Girl, Molson and Levi’s, and with work published in Vanity Fair and Interview magazine, Lu holds the coveted position of deciding what looks, labels and designers gain entry into the public arena.
It is a job that demands a keen understanding of marketing and fashion. “If you’re styling an advertisement for Nike that the whole creative at the ad agency has been working on for several months, you have to make sure that everything they could possibly need is there, and that’s your job; you can’t really screw up,” says Lu. “There is a lot of responsibility because productions cost so much money, so you have to be on all the time. There’s not too much room for error.”
Lu was born in Edmonton, the middle child of a communications expert mother and ski-industry father. She spent her childhood in Kamloops, Penticton and Victoria, and now divides her time evenly between Vancouver, where she shares a South Granville loft with her boyfriend, and Toronto, where she has an apartment in Queen West. In seven years of styling, Lu has become one of the shmatte trade’s dominant players and has since worked with the likes of Russell Crowe, Terrence Howard, K-OS and Markus Naslund.
“It was a long road to get up, but it is a lucrative industry, and you can do well,” she says, adding that day rates for fashion styling in Canada range from $600 to $1,200, but increase dramatically south of the border.
When she’s not styling campaigns, Lu works as fashion editor for Toronto’s Donato magazine and writes for the Globe and Mail, Fashion magazine and the Georgia Straight. “It’s very demanding and stressful . . . but I love clothes so much and I still get excited; I can’t wait to pull all the clothes out of the boxes and put all the stories together.”