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Kirsty Hunt: A career by design
Game of Thrones, Outlander and the up- coming Emerald City... three massive shows, one world of opportunity for Heriot-Watt graduate Kirsty Hunt.
Since leaving the Galashiels campus in 2011 with a BSc (Hons) in Fashion Technology, Kirsty has worked on all three as a seamstress and costume maker.
Drawn by the facilities at the School of Textiles and Design, she started her degree in 2008 and thrived on the opportunities on offer, saying: “The Fashion Technology course covered everything, and really pushed us to work outside our comfort zones and be self-critical, which is really important.”
Fresh out of fashion school, Kirsty joined the costume department for season three of Game of Thrones as a trainee seamstress. With the show a global sensation and now in its seventh season, Kirsty’s career as a costume maker has taken off and mirrored the smash-hit fantasy epic’s success, providing her with some real career highlights. “Travelling to Croatia to assist a principal costume maker for Daenerys’s costumes on season five was amazing. To be involved in producing some truly
beautiful gowns and being able to see them on the actress in the landscape around Split was a stand-out moment.”
Back in 2013, sharing her advice to new graduates on the Heriot-Watt blog, Kirsty encouraged them to “see some of the world” and she has followed her own recommendation fully, crossing the globe for various projects. Her favourite spot? “Budapest. I was working on a new show for NBC called Emerald City. The job was tough with long hours but I really enjoyed living and working in the city. It was lovely and wintry when we were there, so we loved sightseeing – and the outdoor thermal baths!”
Back at Game of Thrones for the show’s penultimate run, Kirsty hopes to continue accumulating knowledge and skills, as well as air miles, and already has her eye on another dream job once she’s left the dragons and
drama of Westeros and Essos behind... “I would love to work on the BBC show Peaky Blinders. I love the time period and I’m really interested in the tailoring techniques used then in menswear. The period of the early 1910s is rarely touched but I think it was such a stylish time for men’s fashion.”
But even with her mind firmly on her next adventure, Kirsty will be packing fond memories of her time in Galashiels alongside her sewing kit... “I have so many highlights, from graduation to fashion shows, but my most talked about memories come from our Halloween celebrations. ‘Gallaween,’ as we called it, was a big tradition on the Borders campus. We would craft these amazing costumes every year. People always came as such creative characters and put a ton of effort into it. It was definitely a perk of studying fashion.”
Kirsty Hunt
I HAVE SO MANY HIGHLIGHTS, FROM GRADUATION TO FASHION SHOWS, BUT MY MOST TALKED ABOUT MEMORIES COME FROM OUR HALLOWEEN CELEBRATIONS.
Heriot-Watt University
www.alumni.hw.ac.uk
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