Speaker
Shelly Vella
Shelly Vella is Cosmo’s former Fashion and Lifestyle Director and is a lover of all things Mulberry and a hippy at heart. You’re as likely to find her riding her horse in the deepest countryside as scouring vintage shops in New York in between shoots for Cosmo’s glossy fashion pages. She speaks on a variety of subjects connected with Fashion and beauty.
About Shelly Vella
Shelly Vella has experience in the fashion and magazine industry that spans over 25 years, starting at the newly launched ‘British Elle’ in the late 80’s and then culminating in a 15 year stint as Fashion & Style Director at ‘Cosmopolitan UK’. In this role she travelled the world extensively to create beautiful fashion, beauty and cover shoots for the magazine, worked with top International photographers and models and edited a standalone magazine, ‘Cosmopolitan Fashion’.
Shelly Vella has a creative career in the UK magazine industry firmly under her belt (this included The Daily Mail’s ‘YOU Magazine’, and now closed: ‘The Clothes Show Magazine’, ‘Marie Claire Health & Beauty’, ‘SHE’ and ‘Company’ magazines). She joined the freelance world, offering up her art direction, styling and production skills to a more varied clientele. Working with brands such as M&S, Debenhams, Pure Collection cashmere, John Lewis, Olympus and JD Sports.
Upon leaving ‘Cosmopolitan’, Shelly also launched her own business website, a blog that celebrates the very best of fashion, beauty and interiors. Loved by the industry and enjoying regular shoot sponsorship from key brands, the site is her passion and creative outlet when not working commercially.
Passionate about ‘real’ and affordable fashion and after years of sitting front row at the International catwalk shows, Shelly has honed her skills in identifying key high street must haves, and translating catwalk fashion into viable options for the shopping public.
She has also created a 25 piece festival collection for high street brand Miss Selfridge, designed four vegan bags and worked alongside Olympus to create Project Green – an exhibition of her photography featuring sustainable fashion and beauty. The event was sponsored by Burt’s Bees and enjoyed a packed out opening night in central London.
In her spare time (there isn’t much) she lives the dream in the countryside with partner Giorgio, her Burmese cats, lop-eared rabbits and beloved horse, Prophet. She is also known to run a marathon or two when she feels like she hasn’t got enough to keep her occupied.
