Fall 2012
Audrey Kitching for Noctis Magazine
Note: I adore Miss. Audrey Kitching. The interviews we have done together have truly been some of my favorite. She is a light hearted, kind soul. Gorgeous? Yes. Sharp as a whip? Also, yes. Most importantly, she is a very nice woman. Who has really cool hair. Here is part one of two in a collection of interviews I have done with the model, fashion journalist and all around guru.

Her multicolored hair is reminiscent of the My Little Pony’s many of us collected in our younger years. She is as bubbly as you’d imagine Barbie might be and cites both pop culture references as huge influences. Audrey Kitching, 27, covers major Internet real estate as a designer, stylist, model, fashion journalist and style editor at Buzznet.

When not she’s jamming out to the Ravonette’s or Marianna and the Diamonds (mixed in with healthy doses of Spice Girls, of course), she’s usually working on either her fashion lines, her writing or on bettering herself. Not to mention Audrey Kitching is obsessed with sipping Earl Grey tea, the Queen’s favorite export, to get the job, or various jobs in her case, done.

“I just kind of focus on the moment,” says Kitching in a telephone interview from New York City with Noctis magazine. “I try not to worry about tomorrow or next week or what I have to do in the distant future.”

Obsessed with movies, Kitching says she learned to be more ‘in the now’ from Kirsten Dunst’s role in the film Melancholia.

“I just watched it and it’s a very depressing movie about the end of the world – a doom and gloom movie,” says Kitching. “I grew up with anxiety and her character is so depressed. The end of the world comes and everyone around her is freaking out about it but she has this calm sense like ‘Oh, I’ve been depressed my whole life and now something depressing is actually happening and it’s comforting.’”

Kitching says she realized you can not worry something bad is going to happen, you just have to embrace what is. Which is kind of like how Kitching is embracing 90’s girl pop and women performers in music, in general right now.

“I’ve been on a weird girl power kick recently,” she says.  But the real question is: does it cross over into her street style?

“It might be the style which makes me drawn to the music or the music makes me drawn to the style,” says Kitching. “I haven’t figured out which comes first but my style is more feminine recently, girly with flowers, more summery that kind of stuff and I’ve been less edgy, and the music’s been more pop.  So, it goes one-in-one.”

Kitching is known for blogging her street style and about her designer or vintage finds. With her very unique taste she can often be found decked out in her favorite fashion obsessions: bubble glasses, carrying multiple bags, in platform shoes and adorned in rings while running to and from her home office, sample shopping, and headed to shoots.

Recently she`s also running to attend her newest fitness obsession, mat Pilates, a mix between yoga and Pilates.

“I’ve been doing it three mornings a week and it is pretty rough. It’s only an hour and a half but from the moment you walk in the door they work you until you leave,” says Kitching. As winter settles in she’ll mix things up with a more low-key meditation class.

Another one of the things Kitching could be called obsessed with, as evidenced by her dedication to regular exercise, is taking care of herself – body, spirit and mind. From her head to her toes Kitching tries to keep it clean, at least when she’s not covered in make-up.

“I try to avoid sugar, gluten and dairy and I don’t eat any meat or fish, but it’s hard to definitively not eat those,” she says. When traveling she sometimes allows some sugar added, but notes it does strange things to her body.

“I go back and forth between Asian cuisine and Mexican, depending on my work schedule and if I’m going to be wearing something tight or if I’m just lounging around with friends,” she says about eating habits. “If it’s more me time, I’ll eat a ton of tacos, nachos, or burritos.”

She tries to buy only organic and eat a clean vegan diet. She also goes to great lengths to protect her trademark locks.

“I was trained in an institute and I was trained by Aveda,” Kitching says about her expertise on the subject. “I would say the key to good hair is oil treatments, taking good care of it, not double processing the growth, letting it grow out a bit and extensions.”

Kitching grew her roots out for a few weeks to allow more experimentation with color overall as well as utilizes extensions, micro beads and clip-in hair pieces to add a dramatic effect to her look. Ultimately, this allows her to change her look more often without damaging it.  Constantly embracing change? Just another thing Kitching is obsessed with.

Her multiple lines, Tokyolux and Coco de Coeur, currently under the Audrey Kitching Los Angeles title, are undergoing a major re-branding as she shifts focus from North America, where the lines have exploded over the past two years, to Japanese markets. For the next little while Kitching will be strictly focusing on her showroom in Japan.

“I’ve been designing my own clothes my whole life. I just kind of jumped into design without really understanding the business side of it,” says Kitching of her early years. “It’s not so glamorous but it’s so fun and rewarding it’s worth it.”

“Now it’s actually to the point that my lines have become very successful over the past two years and I have to scale back and go back to the business side,” she says.  Part of this process involves merging her multiple lines and putting the spotlight on Japan by doing collaborations and exclusives within the Japanese market.

Kitching’s team just wrapped up some work for spring 2013, and says she thinks when these items come out in March it will showcase all the hard work going into the current process.

Generally, in terms of fashion direction, Kitching knows what her audiences like and dislike. “My brand is so strong and it’s always in line with things like bright colors, so I like to mix a sense of class or a high-end piece to mix with the clothes so it’s not too childish,” she says. “Or it’s the other way around, where the location is very girly and fun and the clothes are very sophisticated.”

“I like to mix the classic with the fun and young and to me that’s my brand,” she sums up.

Many fans don’t realize the extent to which Kitching is involved in shoots as well as in overall look and design. In addition to modeling, she often works as a stylist and fashion director. In fact, it’s something Kitching hopes to continue doing long after her modeling and designing days are over.

“I don’t think people realize from my clothing lines to my editorials everything down to the hair, the make-up, the location, the mood, the feel, is what I come up with,” says Kitching.

Preferring Marilyn Monroe to Jackie O, Kitching is definitely a girl’s girl. When she’s designing she tries to keep in mind a broad audience, but admits to knowing what she is drawn too. Jeremy Scott and Christopher Kane are her current fashion obsessions.

“I browse my top ten and then branch out and keep an eye for any newcomers I might find interesting or unexpected,” says Kitching on how she tries to keep an open mind.

Ultimately, you are bound to find the fashion muse doing something low-key rather than ultra-diva.

”My gay friend Bret and I have a girl’s night at least once a week,” she says. “We wear really comfy clothes. We go shopping with sunglasses on and our shopping bags. Then, we eat really junky food like French fries or onion rings. Then, we come back to my house and watch DVDs and dye my hair or do different colors. We do face masks and stay up really late.”

Then as if to prove she’s as down to earth as the girl next door she says her ideal date is a movie night, because she’s a huge movie nerd. Reminded this small girl in her over-sized burn-out tee, platforms and ballerina bun is just as likeable as Teddy Ruxpin. There’s not a Naomi Campbell ‘tude to be found for miles as Kitching is just as bubbly and pink in manner as she is in hair color, all the while sipping Perrier.

Kitching urges fans to keep an eye on collection websites for major blow out sales before the 2013 collections begin their launch. This real life Malibu Barbie can also be found and followed at Buzznet as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Featured on: http://noctismag.com/issue-v/