{"id":16506,"date":"2025-04-13T12:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T12:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/16506\/"},"modified":"2025-04-13T12:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T12:35:10","slug":"i-was-panicking-and-couldnt-sleep-now-people-worldwide-love-what-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/16506\/","title":{"rendered":"I was panicking and couldn’t sleep, now people worldwide love what I do"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heather went from sleepless night to working with Paul McCartney\"HeatherHeather O’Reilly, who runs The Life of O’Reilly (Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)<\/p>\n

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\u2019Reilly, 36, from Speke<\/a>, runs Life of O\u2019Reilly in Garston.<\/a><\/p>\n

Heather\u2019s shop specialises in unique, made to measure party wear, fancy dress costumes and now prom dresses.<\/a> Despite being located on an ordinary suburban Liverpool street with a small row of shops, many of Heather\u2019s customers are from America and Australia thanks to the online base she built up.<\/p>\n

Heather started making and selling her own dresses on the side when she was working in the art department in Hollyoaks<\/a>, designing the sets of the famous TV soap.<\/p>\n

When it came to leaving the show however, Heather was worried. Speaking to the ECHO<\/a>, she said: \u201cI remember I was panicking when I left. I loved the job at first, but towards the end not so much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, a week after going full-time with her business, someone mentioned that there was a job going at Taylor Swift\u2019s 2018 Reputation Tour in the wardrobe department.<\/p>\n

Heather said: \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HeatherHeather O’Reilly has run her own business for several years(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)<\/p>\n

Heather went on to work in the wardrobe department of Paul McCartney<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe the price of them. I remember she was looking at one that was \u00a3700. I know how expensive fabrics are and I do understand the price.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

This plan had to be put on hold however. Shortly after she found a shop on Garston<\/a> Old Road in Garston, the covid pandemic hit which naturally cancelled all proms.<\/p>\n

\"HeatherHeather is now selling prom dresses(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)<\/p>\n

Thankfully Heather could rely on her growing base of American customers to ship dresses to. She said: \u201cI 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\u2019re used for a lot of tribute acts now and things like that. I think Americans love that sort of stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get more sales to America than I do from the UK and it’s crazy. Obviously I’m really proud that I\u2019m 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?\u201d<\/p>\n

Heather is now selling prom dresses at last. To buy, prices range from \u00a3150 to \u00a3450 but dresses can also be hired for between \u00a350 and \u00a3100.<\/p>\n

Heather already feels it’s a smart move for her. She said: \u201cPeople can hire out costumes for Halloween already. I used to panic and fear they would come back wrecked, but touch wood I\u2019ve never had to replace them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heather went from sleepless night to working with Paul McCartneyHeather O’Reilly, who runs The Life of O’Reilly (Image:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,2584,2643,4884,179,11159,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-16506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-fashion","11":"tag-garston","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-liverpool","14":"tag-speke","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114330686285946732","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}