Jamie Riselay
- beautyandavoice
- Jun 24, 2024
- 4 min read
Jamie Riselay: Athlete, Scholar, Model
None would have suspected that an innocuous and quotidian visit to her local thrift store would provide Jamie Riselay with the opportunity to entirely alter the course of her life. Having left her native Waterdown, Ontario at the age of 17 to study in Illinois, Jamie’s young prospects seemed to be out of the ordinary only in their particular promise; succeeding with equal aplomb in intensely competitive spheres of academics and athletics, she took her undergraduate degree in Kinesiology and Psychology from Lindenwood University as an Academic All-American, while simultaneously competing in the National Ice Hockey Championships—all of which was being undertaken on a dual academic and athletic scholarship. After working for a landscaping company, and later a specialty pharmacy for chronic illnesses, Jamie realized that, despite her natural penchant for nature, and an especial gravitation towards aiding others, she could not feel truly at her utmost potential within the confines of a typical working life. As the certainty of this conviction grew silently, Jamie was confronted with the possibility of a new life. In the abruptness of a random encounter the spectacular, but deeply regimented, achievements of her youth were suddenly put into contrast with a whole world of untouched potential. Jamie ended by heeding to the allure of freedom and newness that modeling proposed, and a week later she had signed with her mother agent.
Her modeling career has shown itself to be no less impressive than her academic one: beginning in Toronto and Montreal, Jamie’s work soon landed her in Barcelona for a protracted period of successful shooting after having signed there with a prestigious agency. Her stint in the Catalan capital also brought her further along to Ibiza, where she shot a Pilzer swimwear campaign, and discovered a tremendous degree of personal and aesthetic connection to the landscape. An Yves Saint Laurent casting soon drew her to Paris and the splendors of the Louvre, after which Jamie eventually signed in London, where she worked and lived for five weeks, shooting for brands like Vivienne Westwood and Gucci. Though recently she has been working in the UK, modeling frequently brings her to unexpected destinations, such as Dubai, where she booked an editorial for Icon Magazine. Today Jamie is based in Toronto, but having newly signed with top agencies in Milan and Paris, she expects to be abroad again soon.
Though Jamie feels herself to have always been a fundamentally independent person, and to have developed a particularly strong sense of self-reliance during the period of her studies in the United States, modeling, with its ceaseless unpredictability, has pushed that independence to its limit: “I have been an independent person my entire life” she says, “but I have also learned that sometimes it can be really lonely and I wish that I had the ones I love surrounding me, sharing these amazing experiences.” In front of the camera and behind the scenes, Jamie has found confidence to be the greatest virtue in moments of challenge and solitude. A deep faith in her own ability to persevere allows her to confidently love the people and places around her, whether familiar or strange, as she continues to travel and work through the variegated world that the fashion industry can afford. Independence however was not the sole fruit of her university experience, which put her in positions of intense challenge on teams of other women as much as 25 strong. This capacity to be both independent and in harmony with a team has transferred over to modeling, which Jamie has felt to be as grueling in its discipline as athletics and academia: “Being a collegiate athlete requires intense dedication” she says, “both in the sport and academically and the same values hold true for modeling. From the moment we wake up, we have to be conscious of what we put into our body, always making sure we are in top shape and keeping our measurements. The discipline I have today stems from my collegiate years where countless hours were spent training both on and off the ice and the remainder of my time was dedicated to my studies.” Though her studies and her modeling career may seem disparate at first glance, many of the values and priorities that led Jamie to success in the former have shown themselves to hold equally true in the latter. Her vision of the fashion industry highlights its analogous aspect to the worlds of competitive team sports and of academics—the various intellectual efforts of individuals, combined to create something special: “Beautiful minds coming together to project an idea or concept and execute it to the best of our abilities is a very rewarding process and seeing the end result is amazing.”
Beyond modeling, Jamie loves the serenity and beauty of her cottage in rural Ontario, in the Muskokas. There she is able to release much of the stress of daily life, whether that be in an office or before the camera, and feel profoundly connected with the world around her: “The spiritual connection I feel to my cottage is indescribable, the way it is able to just take away all your troubles is the most magical feeling.” Her ideal of happiness contains both the freedom and vastness of the model’s life, and the simplicity of what she most admires about her time at the cottage: a life unconstricted, fully lived to its utmost potential, but in the end focussed on values of family and truth, “a simple life with a house on a piece of property, a home grown garden, and animals.” Her own words describe well the fullness she hopes for: “I also want to live my life with no regrets and be able to look back and say to my children that I did everything I wanted to and fully lived in the moment without worrying about the past or future. The only thing we can control is the now, we truly do not know what the future entails and must not take anything for granted.” This mixture of different worlds, fast and slow, constrained and expansive, individual and together, are the stuff of which Jamie’s life and work is composed. Jamie may well be the rising star this season, though it take place on the runway and not the ice.
