One of the benefits of being a visual merchandiser for Debenhams is that there is plenty of opportunities open to you and I was lucky enough to get a chance to participate in the setting up of the North Regions Press Show for SS 15.
Now what our Press Show is is an opportunity to showcase all of our designers and core collections for this season and we invite store managers, bloggers and some head office staff, press etc to come along and have a look at what the stores across the UK will be offering over the coming season.
So this year the North Region Press Show was held in Glasgows Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) and it was stunning!! I had to get up super early to get from Livingston through to Glasgow but the journey is only just under an hour and Glasgow is one of those places I get a buzz from visiting because it's so rare for me to end up through there, especially on a weekday.
The photo above is the scene I walked into when I arrived at GOMA, it's one of those venues where you spend the first hour just admiring the ceiling and then you eventually crash back to reality when you have to start actually working and unloading the vans. If you ever get the chance, pay a visit to it because the space and height is pretty amazing as well as the architecture itself.
The start of the day was like any occasion where you're out with new people, really quiet and people were unsure where everyone was from. I was also 10 minutes late to the gallery after being betrayed by my Google maps compas on my phone so everyone was sat in the corner waiting on the lighting guys arriving and i was the late person but once we got started and everyone was working together I met some fantastic people from the Scottish stores and by the end of the two days I had some nice new friends!
Day one of prepping for the show was just sorting out the layout and unwrapping everything that had been delivered from stores across the region and assembling our designer rails, lots of heavy listing and whatnot really for the first few hours, at least until we had everything out of the rain and into the building.
Our team for day one was made up mostly of visual supervisors and assistants so it was great to work with others in the company who do the same daily role as myself. I've been with the visual team for 10 months now and it's great when you get to go out and spend time meeting some of the others in the country, I think with visual as well there's a real sense of comradery when we all get together.
I was lucky enough to be paired with the lovely Kayleigh who is the Dundee visual supervisor and we got to set up and dress the designer rail area and we also got to dress two accessories areas that you won't see in this post but will be in a later one when I discuss part 2 of the event.
We actually done a huge amount of work during the first day of prep and managed to get all of our mannequins into position and started to dress them for the show the following evening before going home for the day.
Below are a few photos of the day and I'll try to explain where everything is placed so you get an idea of how the layout is and the sheer size of the room.
So if you were walking into the venue the photo above is of the left hand side wall where we wee building out designer rails for people to browse and at the end is a mannequin wearing a selection of clothing from those rails. Each rail is set up for each of the designer/core brands we were showcasing.
A view of the designer walls after they were built and layout was finalised, you can see the graphics up on the wall representing each collection.
Behind that white wall is the entrance to the venue so the rails are to the right in this photo. What you can see here is the bottom of the runway for our catwalk show and that faces this substantial mannequin army here that will be dressed in occasion wear.
This is the same white wall you see in the above photo but the opposite side so this is what you see when you first enter the venue. This was later flanked by two occasion wear graphics on either side.
Dressed occasion wear mannequins (this was altered slightly the following day)
Occasion wear mannequins at the venue entrance.
Occasion wear with the two flanking graphics
Our designers rails and mannequins after dressing, these were altered slightly the following day and some more stock was added to the rails.
The view of the catwalk when you walk around the wall into the venue
Another view of the occasion wear mannequins after dressing
The goody bags that were gifted to visitors of the press show.
I should point out at this point that the stuff in the goody bags was actually amazing, I was really quite jealous of everyone who got one!!
So that was the end of the day one prep, once you see the photos you can get an idea of how the room started to come together and all the hard work that went into making the room looking really premium and easy to walk around and look at.
Later this week I'll post day 2 of the press show prep which really stepped up in the 5 or so hours we had left to spend on it and I will also be writing about being able to attend the event and what went down so stay tuned for that one!
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