Survivorship: Stylist Jessie Kirk on facing breast cancer

by Metropol | October 15, 2025 8:40 am


Jessie Kirk received a career-defining Fashion Quarterly content creator of the year award and a stage 2 breast cancer diagnosis within just a few weeks of each other. The fashion personality, and our cover shoot stylist, shares her story with Metropol editor Nina Tucker.

What does bravery look like? If you’re Jessie Kirk, it’s walking the vicious and unpredictable path of breast cancer, and bringing an online community of more than 200,000 people with you. Her world flipped upside down within weeks. Her biggest wins soon became completing six rounds of TCH chemotherapy, five rounds of radiation, a lumpectomy and a lymph node biopsy. Her greatest supporters were her husband Joel, mother Leanne, and a whole family of followers she’d never met. Her online community had seen her through years of growth. It was Jessie’s natural response to continue showing her honest, authentic self.

Jessie had become a full-time content creator less than 12 months before she’d earned the title for being the best one in New Zealand, according to the country’s most widely-read fashion glossy, Fashion Quarterly. Her diagnosis days later, and vulnerability in sharing a harsh reality would break that pattern of stark loneliness for anyone else who needed someone to relate to. When she needed to though, she was given the grace to step back. “Everyone around me both in real life and online just wanted me to focus on getting better. There was no expectation to keep posting, to stay strong for others, or to show up in any particular way. I felt a deep sense of permission to rest, heal and to share when I was ready. That kind of support gave me the space to be vulnerable. Sometimes I shared raw moments and sometimes I stayed quiet for a while, and both were met with love,” she says.

It became a philosophy of one foot in front of the other. The energy for doing even her favourite things had disappeared and sometimes the biggest thing she would do in a day was get out of bed. Breast cancer doesn’t come with a handbook – Jessie’s life had changed overnight – she had to face the mental and physical fatigue, treatment, hair loss – with the best mindset she could muster. “Going through something like that, you don’t really have a choice and you just deal with what’s in front of you,” she says.
The journey tested her but she never stood alone. Everything from loved ones checking in, to her close friend Hayley dropping regular meals on the doorstep was a reminder of the support network she was wrapped in. Rest was her biggest asset, and resilience meant surviving each day or accepting help instead of bearing the load. “I’ve learnt that I’m a lot stronger than I ever gave myself credit for.” In March she was deemed cancer free. Right now, she’s counting down to her final treatment session.
Freedom became perspective, and Jessie’s survivorship changed her way of living. “I don’t wait for the ‘right time’ to do things anymore. Life really is too short to keep putting things off or waiting until everything feels perfect. I’ve let go of a lot of pressure I used to put on myself and now I try to live with more intention, and more softness too.”

She’ll give energy to things that feel right, like hitting the runway for charity Breast Cancer Cure’s Fashion for a Cure show in October for The Crossing’s capsule collection, or saying yes to styling a Metropol magazine cover shoot. “Up until this point I had only really spent time styling myself, so this was a new experience,” Jessie says. “My main approach was to do something a little unexpected, which in all honesty isn’t too different from how I style myself.”

Joy is in her as-regular-as-possible trips to Japan for the culture, food, scenery, style, shopping, and in discovering and supporting small Aotearoa or Australian-based fashion brands. It’s in renovating and styling her dream 1930s Christchurch bungalow she and Joel bought this year to be closer to family, and making it a home for their two dachsunds and two fluffy ragdoll cats. The pair sold their Auckland townhouse and hunted for a character home fast – finding one that had her lucky digits, 24, in the address. It went to auction before Jessie and Joel had finance ready, but passed in, which opened the stage for negotiation. The sellers came down exactly $24,000. Serendipitous timing.

Next year, Jessie will celebrate beating cancer, turning 30, and her eight-year wedding anniversary, with a trip to Japan, naturally. Her online family will continue to grow, no doubt, with each creative vision she turns into captivating content. Life will bloom with purpose. “The future looks bright and I’m so ready for it.”

A BIT ABOUT JESSIE


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