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?