Work Experience

Hey guys so I talk a bunch on this about how important it is to get experience and always look out for chances to get some industry insight and over the years I've tried my best to get little placements here and there but my work just threw me a massive bone!

I've mentioned before that I work in the food service sector of Debenhams and have done so since I was 16 (god it feels like forever) but I recently approached my store manager can have been offered a placement for the rest of the year!!

I dunno if I will start up a separate segment on this blog for posts on my placement, perhaps leave a comment if you think that'd be an idea but I will put into this post about my first day on the job which was with the Visual Merchandising department.

So my day with visual merchandising was pretty awesome, it's great as well because I'm working with people I've essentially worked with for several years so it's much less intimidating.
The day started off with me undressing a couple of menswear mannequins which are SO HEAVY! And actually took me so long to do but I soon found out that there is a lot of heavy lifting and stuff in the job of a visual merchandiser.

In Debenhams we have designers at Debenhams such as Julien McDonald and Jasper Conran so I got to look at their CVs (which are layouts of how the stock should be put onto the shelves and mannequins) and got to have a stab at doing the main mannequin display for Jasper Conran and the concession stand Red Herring.

It's pretty fascinating stuff because with the designers you aren't allowed to do any kind of styling on the mannequin, the clothes must be unaccompanied by jewellery whereas with the Red Herring brand, because it's young fashion you can rouche up the clothes and add accessories to help it better convey the theme. On this day the Red Herring theme was a punky sort of look so I got to use a lot of metallic jewellery and there was this lovely pair of leggings I got to pick. As a visual merchandiser you can kind of be a stylist as well!

There's a lot of painting and ironing and stuff involves as you are in charge of keeping up the appearance of every display in the store. I had to iron the Jasper Conran jacket I was going to use so as to make it look as presentable as possible to the customer.

Another cool thing I learnt is that where a mannequin is put on display the clothes used for the outfit must be placed in the immediate vicinity. This is so that a customer can come in, see the mannequin, love the garment and then be able to find those specific items almost immediately. If a customer has to go on a mad hunt for the clothes they may just leave buying anything altogether.

When you think about it visual merchandising actually involves a lot of psychology. You have to think about where your customer is going, how they will perceive things and how best to lay out your store to accommodate these.

Let me ask you, why do you think the fragrance halls of these department stores is placed right at the entrance?

Disaster!!

Just a quick blog post to tell you all that my second laptop has broken :( so I am currently laptopless (is that even a word!?!?!) for the foreseeable future. Luckily though I have blogger on my phone so it's either going to be posts with massive instagram photos attached or posts with absolutely no photos, take your pick!

Obviously this is causing a tonne of problems with university as well which is why I think the problem will be fixed asap, I really can't be without a laptop when I'm meant to be writing my 4th year dissertation...

I'm currently in the library about to do another post for you all on some exciting stuff that's happened recently but just thought I'd update you all on my absence recently.

Very tough times indeed!

Initial Research has started!!

Hey guys so I mentioned in my last post that I would put up some photos of my very early research into my origami inspired collection and here they are!

 

I love doing design and research work (I think its definitely one of my stronger points) and my sketchbook tends to be full of photos and annotation.

 

This is only a few pages of my research so far but it covers the expected things you'd look into when coming up with ideas for your design work.

 

A basic look at origami products, a bit of research into my chosen retailer as well as a few designers who are inspiring me at the moment, Peter Pilotto being a major influence of mine right now.

 

So yeah! I'm hoping that I'll be able to start really initial ideas next week so I'll post a few photos of that as well, I'll continue my research sketchbook as I go of course.



Week 3 and 4

Things are well and truely underway with collection, my mentor has put me and some friends into support groups to ensure that we all help support each other over the year and I have to say it is such a nice thing to be a part of.

My workload has started to increase 10 fold. I've just this second bought two books on amazon to help with strategic management and am sat here doing my collection research sketchbook! It's very exciting to finally be moving forward with everything.

I'll be putting up a few pictures of my sketchbook on Friday to show you how I approach research for my collection, so far it's been much more in depth than what I've done in previous years and it's a long day having to do it all for hours and hours. Luckily I have series 2 of Game of Thrones to keep me going.

My other classes are getting fairly gritty as well! There's a lot of talk in strategic management of Hermes and Mark Jacobs, Mulberry and M&S as we look at their strategies of expansion into new market etc. In international trade issues we look at the Chinese are their rapid growth over the last few decades which is a fascinating subject. I've managed to pick up a few books on those subjects too so hopefully all the reading will pay off when exam time comes!!

I've got a few more beauty posts I'd like to do next week , I'm sorry I've not posted as much since September began but the workload really is starting to mount!!