A Kerry student who was picked out of a restaurant crowd and asked to model at Paris Fashion Week has said the experience was “sort of like a Cinderella story”.

Tralee native Jasmine Ryle is studying architecture and design and is currently on a two-year internship in the French capital.

She was out with friends last Thursday when she got talking to a group of people sitting at a table beside them in a restaurant.

Before long it turned out that one of her new acquaintances was none other than the famous Peruvian designer Sergio Davila.

Davila told the young Kerry woman that he loved her look and wanted her to feature in his show.

Two days later Jasmine found herself front and centre at the event at Paris’s famous Pont Bir Hakeim bridge.

'Cinderella story'

She told Newstalk Breakfast that the whole experience felt like a bit of a fairytale.

“It was quite a spontaneous story,” she said.

“I had gone to a dinner with one of my friends and we were beside this group of people speaking Spanish.

“We got talking because I feel like, in Paris, a lot of people like to mingle.

“I hadn’t known but it was the designer actually who had come up to me and apparently, he had really liked my look – I think because I had my curly hair down as well.

“He asked me if I was with an agency and well, I'd never really thought about modelling before.

“I'm a student and I work as well, I'm doing an internship. So since I'm in architecture and design, I kind of have a hectic schedule, so I never really had time to even think about it.”

'Take your opportunities'

Jasmine said she didn’t have to think twice when she got the offer.

“You have to take all the opportunities, right?” she said. “It was just kind of all a shock to me really."

“The show went really well, we got a lot of photos taken and I made so many lovely contacts – even the models there, they were all so nice and they kind of told me about the industry.

“They asked me if I wanted to get started, what agencies were good and the designer said that he would help me kind of start up with a book with the photos that he had taken and just kind of launch myself into the industry because I'm a novice, I don't really know anything about it.

“It's sort of like a Cinderella story.”

Jasmine said she had never considered a modelling career before but after a Paris Fashion Week to remember, she has plenty of options in front of her.