Trends Consultant and Editor of Daily Candy
As one of the UK’s first web experts, Kinvara Balfour advises today’s culture-conscious brands on what is happening out there in the world of fashion, beauty and style, both physically (on the catwalk) and virtually (on the web).
Kinvara has worked in almost every area of the fashion industry. Having won the Lloyd's Bank Fashion Challenge out of 29,000 entries at 16, she began her career assisting the competition's judge, Vivienne Westwood, in her design studio. Several years at Tomasz Starzewski followed. After university, Kinvara worked as Fashion Assistant and Senior Features Writer at Tatler. Her appointment as Style Editor at the Saturday Telegraph Magazine followed, where Kinvara gained a reputation as one of London's most articulate, instinctive style writers. One year into her post, Kinvara was also appointed Beauty Editor and consequently has much experience of beauty/spa trends. Kinvara is currently London Editor of daily email phenomenon DailyCandy.com (with 2.4 million subscribers to date). In this role she is a leading web expert and an authority on everything from fashion and beauty to food and culture. In addition, she has contributed to British/Italian/Japanese Vogue, Sunday Times Style, ES and Quintessentially magazines. She has an intrinsic knowledge of trends both on the catwalk and the high street and can translate them into everyday fashion and design concepts clearly. Today she acts as a consumer trend consultant to corporations and hosts trend presentations to leading journalists around the world. Clients include Procter & Gamble (for whom Kinvara writes/presents a bi-annual International Catwalk Report), Coutts, UBS, Value Retail, Citigroup and Canon. She has spoken to audiences in countries as diverse as Romania, Lebanon, Istanbul, Israel and Russia. Kinvara trained as an actress at Central and has written two plays. Her first, ‘Dazed & Abused’ (in which she also acted) was staged in Edinburgh, London and New York. Her second, ‘After Invisible’ will premier in London in 2007. “Kinvara interprets trends with clarity and insight; she is an articulate and informative speaker with an impressive knowledge of what is happening in the world of style, fashion and beauty. Her sense of humour and charming character serve her well." Andrea Witty, Communications Manager Procter & Gamble Beauty and Prestige Beauty. "The moment I met Kinvara I knew she was going to become indispensable to us- she is an articulate, intelligent and very likeable individual. Her knowledge of the world of fashion and beauty is impressive." Jane Boardman, Director, Talk PR
