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06/17/2013 12:01 AM

Wardrobe Professional's Web Series Reveals Seamless Links Between Music, Fashion

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The biggest names in music are often fashion stars as well, and a Bronx-born music television professional has a new Web series that goes behind the scenes — and the seams — to see how music style is born. NY1's Arts reporter Stephanie Simon filed the following report.

Bronx-born Tara O'Connell has found a way to fuse her love of fashion and music and her special appreciation for those who work behind the scenes. She is the wardrobe manager for the cable music channel Fuse, and has a new Web video series called "Rockin' The Seams."

"Automatically people think that a musician, they wake up and they look a certain way, but the reality is that there is a whole team behind them," O'Connell says. "So what I've done is I've identified all these different trends and I've gone straight to the people responsible for them."

For the past year-and-a-half, O'Connell has been tracking style trendsetters and interviewing them at at Red Light PR in Union Square for her YouTube series.

Wardrobe Professional's Web Series Reveals Seamless Links Between Music, Fashion
"Rockin' The Seams" features mostly New York stylists, make-up artists and hairdressers who have created world-famous looks for everyone from Madonna to Beyonce to Nicki Minaj.

"All the people that I've spoken to are all behind the scenes, but for me, having worked in styling, they're really the big stars," O'Connell says.

For those without their own glamour squad, O'Connell shares her own style insights

"It's always an evolution how your style comes about. It was only a few years ago I started wearing fascinators [hair accessories] and now I love them. I feel that they are my signature and I've developed that," O'Connell says.

Even though today O'Connell does a lot of her shooting and schmoozing in Manhattan, she is still "Tara from the Block," representing her hometown neighborhood of City Island in the Bronx.

"The great part of being from the Bronx, there's a lot of street style that you see normally, compared to the other boroughs, and even as a kid I was heavily influenced by that," she says.

O'Connell attended Preston High School — which is also the same Bronx school as trendsetter Jennifer Lopez. The success of J-Lo has inspired O'Connell to follow her dreams, which is one of the reasons why today she is "rockin' the seams."

Rockin' The Seams

Rockin' The Seams can be viewed at www.youtube.com/RockinTheSeams and individual episodes are available here, here and here.

How Music Fans Can Craft Their Own Style


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NY1 VIDEO: Tara O'Connell spoke with NY1's Arts reporter Stephanie Simon about the latest trends among music performers and how everyday people can be inspired by their favorite performers and produce a