Dundalk stylist and influencer Caroline McElroy talks about her career

Back in April we spoke to Dundalk stylist and influencer Caroline McElroy for Louth Life magazine.

For nearly two decades, Caroline McElroy has been a force in the world of personal styling, helping women rediscover their confidence through fashion. With an impressive career spanning television, radio, and corporate styling, Caroline has built her reputation as a champion of everyday women who want to look and feel their best. From her early days as a nurse to becoming a recognised stylist and presenter, her journey has been anything but conventional.

Now, in a time when self-care is at the forefront of the fashion conversation, Caroline has become a huge advocate of the power of personal style. In her interview, she shares her path to becoming a stylist, her approach to working with clients, and how her career has evolved in the age of social media.

Growing up in Dundalk, Caroline’s first career path was far removed from fashion. After attending St. Bart’s in London to study nursing, she spent six years in the UK before returning home. Even then, fashion had been an underlying passion. “I was doing a bit of modelling here and there,” she recalls. “I always had that interest, but nothing too serious.”

“There was no social media, there was no online, there was nothing like that. It was admiration, you know? And there are various different admirations. I suppose my admiration was really looking at the old movie stars. I think that real glamour kind of catches your eye. It’s really beautiful. It’s really aesthetically gorgeous, although hard to achieve.”

It wasn’t until after having her two children that Caroline found herself drawn back to style. Friends began seeking her advice on shopping and wardrobe choices. A chance conversation with Jean McArdle from Sheba, a well-known Dundalk boutique, led her to consider styling as a career. “She said to me, ‘You should be doing this.’”

Determined to refine her skills, she retrained and focused on the feel-good aspect of fashion rather than high fashion. “For me, it was always about helping women feel good about themselves, not high fashion,” she explains. 

When styling, she starts by understanding her clients’ lifestyles, budgets, and personal needs. “A lot of women have wardrobes full of clothes but nothing to wear,” she says. “A big starting point when women, or men approach me, is looking at what they have. Wardrobe decluttering [is important] and really paring down what’s there already and then building up on the gaps that are left.”

For Caroline, this means taking into account factors like body shape, colouring, and comfort, while also ensuring affordability. 

“It is all about the feel-good factor, about making women feel good about themselves, feel good about their bodies, no matter what shape or size they are, and to dress around that, to give them that extra bit of confidence,” she says. 

The conversation around self-care has evolved significantly since she started. “When I began, no one really talked about self-care in the way they do now,” she notes. “But to me, dressing well was always a form of self-care.”

Something else important in her work is mindful shopping. “What happens with some people when they shop is that they impulse buy, they buy what they see online, on television… that may be what attracts them, but it might not suit them, and they might have a lot of clothes that are repeat buys, and clothes that don’t fit them and what they need to do is to focus on what their life is like, and how we fit around that.”

As Caroline’s reputation grew, so did opportunities. She became a familiar face on Irish television, particularly with TV3, where she presented fashion segments on their weekend shows. She also took on radio work and began hosting fashion shows. “It all happened quite naturally,” she says. “I wasn’t particularly shy about talking about something I was passionate about.”

Working on live television was a learning experience. “It’s a completely different animal when it’s live television. So there was no room for error, really. But there’d be preparation beforehand. You would come up [with some ideas]. You would run it by the producer and see, were they happy with it?”

The rise of social media has transformed the industry, she admits. While Caroline has built a substantial online following, she acknowledges that it hasn’t always been easy. “Organic growth is hard, and you have to be so consistent with it.”

After taking some time away she has firmly reentered the social media sphere and has expanded her content to include skincare, beauty, and everyday life alongside fashion. “I think that people really want to see that [everyday life]. They don’t want to see perfection. They want to see people’s real lives. So that has worked quite well, but again, that has morphed and grown through the years as well. So there’s a little bit of everything in the social media.”

In addition to her styling work, Caroline has another role as a flight attendant with Aer Lingus. It’s a career move that made sense for her. “The work I was doing for fashion was freelance, so I needed to have a regular income. Lily and Ruby were getting older [and it was] time for me to do a little bit more full time with that. I did work for Virgin Atlantic, years and years ago, before I had the girls and that was something that I loved.” 

She found the transition back to cabin crew a natural one. “Once aviation is in your blood, it never leaves you” and the job also provides her with an opportunity to observe global fashion trends firsthand.

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“My favourites are the transatlantic, and I love New York. It’s one of my favourites and I like LA for the sunshine, and Chicago is wonderful as well.”

Despite the demanding schedule, she finds a way to juggle both careers. “I’m now juggling the fashion as well, but I’ve been with Aer Lingus seven years now and absolutely love it. With that job, it is very irregular hours. So you could be going to New York, have your two to three days of work and then off for three days afterwards. So that’s how you can manage the two together. So actually it works really well.”

For those looking to break into the fashion industry, Caroline offers candid advice acknowledging that there are many different paths within the industry, from design to editorial to personal styling. 

“There are so many different areas in the fashion world… some people like to do design. Some people go in and are completely creative, and it’s so interesting and wonderful. But, you know, the personal styling is a different animal as well. 

“Some people can just have an absolute flair for it and are amazing. Then you’ve chatterboxes like myself. Who can talk about it, but also talk to people who are in, you know, maybe in a difficult place and need that little lift.”

Her biggest piece of wisdom? “We all know it’s cliched, but you hardly work a day when you love what you’re doing.”