A Shift in Style (Lori Lasko, April 16 2010)

The Tim Horton’s on 17^th avenue was busy on a Wednesday afternoon. Lori Lasko had just finished classes for the day and was sitting down for a quick bite to eat with her steeped tea.

“My dad thought I was crazy,” said Lasko, he kept asking her how she and her common-law husband were going to pull off just living on one income while she went back to school.

After she was laid off from her marketing job in the oil and gas industry in January of 2008, she wasn’t sure what to do. Lasko said she couldn’t decide if she was going to move back home to Winnipeg, or stay and find another job in Calgary. Or, she thought, she could finally do something she really loved.

                “I’ve always loved watching people putting themselves together,” Lasko said, talking about her love of fashion and people.

                Lasko is this year’s student fashion event coordinator for the Olds College fashion marketing fashion show this weekend. “I basically work with all the committees, make sure they’re staying on track, and just overlook everything.”

                She works with some of the instructors for the course that help her with the planning, and so far getting ready for the show has been a really positive experience.

                “Sometimes it takes a life change to really sit down and search your soul and figure out what really makes you tick,” said Lasko.

When she was laid off one of her biggest inspirations to finally make a break into the fashion industry was the show “Ugly Betty”. She loves the show, and loved how passionate the people on the show were about their jobs. “My biggest regret is that I didn’t do it 20 years ago,” said Lasko.

                When she started researching fashion courses she would like to take, the one at Olds College seemed like the right one. She had already been in the marketing business for seven years so this seemed right to her.

                So far she has really been enjoying the course that is only eight months long, and is really excited about what she is doing. The course is fashion oriented but with a focus on management, retail, and the business side of fashion.

                “I don’t sew, I don’t like it, and I don’t want to know how,” said Lasko with a smile. She’s more interested in marketing and maybe one day being a buyer. “I would love to be a fashion buyer, travelling all the European markets.”

                She thinks it sounds like such a glamorous job, shopping all the time, but she knows there’s more to it such as paper work. There’s working with the planner and of course budgeting, but she said she would overlook those parts and still enjoy it no matter what.

                “I’ll probably start in marketing, because I have the experience, and make my wishes known,”

said Lasko. “That’s my plan.”

                If she lands something high fashion she would like to work for a place like Holt Renfrew.  Something a little lower fashion but an all around good ethical company she would like to work for would be Mark’s Work WareHouse.

                “She would be good at a PR position and has skills already in marketing,” said Leslie Howard, “so any position as co-ordinator of events or fashion marketing where dealing with the public and media would be excellent for her.”

                Howard is an Administrative/Instructional Assistant at the Olds College Calgary Campus and has been working closely with Lasko these past few weeks in dealing with their upcoming fashion show.

                She’s hardworking, dedicated, and very pleasant and sociable said Howard.

                When Lasko did job shadowing for her fashion course she was able to work with the marketing team for Mark’s Work WearHouse for two afternoons. She really liked working with the team saying it was a very positive experience.

                With the course all students have to do four different job shadows.

Along with working with the marketing team, Lasko also shadowed an image consultant for a company called Style File. She was able to use a lot of what she learned in her image consulting class but was still taught a lot about how to dress for your body type.

                Image consulting is also one of her favourite classes, along with organizational behaviour and trend forecasting. She found trend forecasting to be really fascinating which is about how they decide what’s in style. Sitting their gushing about how much she enjoyed the class it really showed in the way she had put herself together.

                A green spring jacket accented by her purple tote bag and pulled together with a purple blouse and floral, light scarf, showed that she knew what she was talking about, as she stood out from all the other customers sitting in the coffee shop.

                The one class she really could have done without was the computer class, she stated. It was an extra course on top of the others and was just a refresher of stuff she already knew. Although she now knows Microsoft word very well she said showing a positive outlook.

                 In one of her classes she was able to experience working with paper mache to create props. “I have all these props sitting around my house that don’t match anything, but I don’t want to throw them out,” said Lasko, speaking about the clutter created by all the projects they do, such as prop making, presentation boards, and even designing display tables.

                On the off moment she’s not busy memorizing retail terms or working on presentations, she loves hanging out with her puppy Carlos, an English Russel Terrier. “I’m into any activities involving dogs, I used to have him in agility training until he hurt his back,” said Lasko.

                To top it all off Lasko has done a serious amount of travelling which she hopes to continue once she’s done school. “My heart is in Mexico, I love Mexico. When I go out there I live with the locals.”

                She has friends who live in Mexico which enable her to live with the locals when she travels there, and she loves Paraguay describing it as majestic.

One of the many breathtaking sights she observed while travelling was the Igauzu falls. “We’re hiking through the jungle, and then we came to this waterfall in the middle of nowhere,” said Lasko. She said it’s not like the little falls in the Rockies that it is more the size of the Niagara Falls.

It’s easy to tell how much she loves travelling, when Lasko talks about it her eyes light up and she gets very into it, using her hands to help her describe what she’s saying.

“I’ve sent out some resumes and I feel pretty positive about them,” said Lasko. She’s put out notices in Vancouver, sent a resume to Miama, and signed up for a Florida jobsite as well. She doesn’t care where she is as long as she’s doing what she’s passionate about.

After an hour of sitting and chatting she’s off again getting back to her daily routine. With the fashion show coming up on the weekend she’s a very busy woman.