Kyle De’Volle has a unique aura about him – an energetic rush of colour that he has come to call “clubland meets couture”. The flamboyant fashion stylist – most notably dressing his best friend, the singer Rita Ora, for the past seven years – cuts a rakish figure about London in head-to-toe athleisure or tightly tailored three-piece suits with standout hair that flips from platinum blond to pastel pink mullet to currently cropped black. With a love of grooming and a nice way with makeup, he has also has modelled for British menswear labels Joshua Kane Bespoke and Oliver Spencer.
De’Volle, 27, grew up in Ladbroke Grove, and as a teenager travelled in the same social circles as Ora. One day, both bedecked in matching hyper-bright American Apparel – he in trousers, she a skirt – their neon-charged paths crossed, sparky compliments flew and the rest is red carpet history. De’Volle is now Ora’s full-time, world-flung stylist, also working with the likes of Cara Delevingne, Bruno Mars and transgender model Andreja Pejić. This summer he was drafted in by Regent Street Stylists as part of their popup personal shopping service alongside stylists for British and Italian Vogue.
At college he studied fashion design – something he is heading back to. “I designed my first collection at college and did a fashion show, then I thought where do you go from here? I realised you had to have so much funding to start a label and I didn’t want to be a designer that sold clothes at Portobello market,” he told Hunger magazine. “So a friend of mine suggested I go into styling. I would always have my friends come over to my house and borrow clothes and I’d put them in outfits, I really enjoyed it. When I found out styling was a job and I could make it a career, I just thought, ‘perfect’.”
But he’s getting back on the clotheshorse. This year he designed a collection of high-end footwear – including star-spangled denim platform boots – for JF London and has twice collaborated with luxury London accessories label Charlotte Simone. The first debuted in 2013 – a “Popsicle” scarf inspired and modelled by Ora – and the second came the following year, a frothy line of sugary-shaded “BonBon” bags modelled by Daisy Lowe. “I enjoy being a stylist, I enjoy what I do, but at heart, I definitely feel like a designer.”
