Heather went from sleepless night to working with Paul McCartney
Heather O’Reilly, who runs The Life of O’Reilly (Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
A woman who feared the worst when she left her old job now runs a shop loved by people all over the world. Heather O’Reilly, 36, from Speke, runs Life of O’Reilly in Garston.
Heather’s shop specialises in unique, made to measure party wear, fancy dress costumes and now prom dresses. Despite being located on an ordinary suburban Liverpool street with a small row of shops, many of Heather’s customers are from America and Australia thanks to the online base she built up.
Heather started making and selling her own dresses on the side when she was working in the art department in Hollyoaks, designing the sets of the famous TV soap.
When it came to leaving the show however, Heather was worried. Speaking to the ECHO, she said: “I remember I was panicking when I left. I loved the job at first, but towards the end not so much.
“I went to another department and then I couldn’t go back to my job. I remember panicking and being like, oh my God, what am I gonna do? I had been selling clothes online, but just on weekends and stuff. I was thinking, how am I going to pay my bills? I couldn’t sleep.”
However, a week after going full-time with her business, someone mentioned that there was a job going at Taylor Swift’s 2018 Reputation Tour in the wardrobe department.
Heather said: “I think I started that a couple of weeks after I left Hollyoaks. It felt a bit like a lifeline. I would never have dreamed of it happening. One minute you’ve got no job, and the next week you’re working with Taylor Swift.”
Heather O’Reilly has run her own business for several years(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
Heather went on to work in the wardrobe department of Paul McCartney, Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue, Cher and The Spice Girls. She says these experiences emphasised to her the importance of organisation and taking care of clothes.
It also gave her stability as she grew her own business. Heather then decided to start selling prom dresses after looking for some with her niece in 2020.
She said: “I couldn’t believe the price of them. I remember she was looking at one that was £700. I know how expensive fabrics are and I do understand the price.
“But you’ve got to think about whether people have got that amount of money to spend on a dress that they’re wearing once. You see people saying, we’ve spent so much on our daughter’s dress and now it’s just hanging up and we can’t sell it.”
This plan had to be put on hold however. Shortly after she found a shop on Garston Old Road in Garston, the covid pandemic hit which naturally cancelled all proms.
Heather is now selling prom dresses(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
Thankfully Heather could rely on her growing base of American customers to ship dresses to. She said: “I kept going through Etsy. I got a lot of sales to America and Australia because I do fancy dresses as well and they like luxury costumes. They’re used for a lot of tribute acts now and things like that. I think Americans love that sort of stuff.
“I get more sales to America than I do from the UK and it’s crazy. Obviously I’m really proud that I’m shipping to America and Australia, but I want local customers as well. It’s weird – how am I getting all these customers from America but someone down the road doesn’t even know about this?”
Heather is now selling prom dresses at last. To buy, prices range from £150 to £450 but dresses can also be hired for between £50 and £100.
Heather already feels it’s a smart move for her. She said: “People can hire out costumes for Halloween already. I used to panic and fear they would come back wrecked, but touch wood I’ve never had to replace them.
“After I put the first prom dress in the window on a mannequin, a woman came and knocked and said, do you sell prom dresses? I said yes, literally for just this second. It was weird. It was like she was like a sign that people are going to come in.”