S+S Week One

For my co-op I am working in New York City as the Fashion Stylist/Graphic Design intern at Snap+Style which is a start-up phone app that creates outfits using pieces from various brands that we partner with, and combine them with items from our customer’s personal closets. Our company just launched in September, so business is hectic as we attempt to establish ourselves. The biggest focus for Snap+Style right now is to spread the word about our services, and what better way to do so than to orchestrate events with local stores? My job for this week was to organize a shopping event with Rebecca Minkoff at their 96 Greene Street store in New York.  Due to their strict morning availability, we decided to provide pastries and mimosas and hold the event at 10am for the following Monday.  It was then left up to me to create an invitation, organize a guest list, and provide ideas for a gift bag, which was to be handed out to each attendant at the end of the event. I learned to be quick on my feet and always have creative ideas on deck for when I was asked my opinion. These tasks helped me to learn about the company and what they stood for while meeting my various bosses and co-workers.  

Weeks 3 & 4

Things are certainly picking up over here at the Bellevue! A lobby level store is opening that will act as a 3D marketing device to push clients downstairs into the Salon & Spa. The shop will carry makeup, haircare, and skincare products, as well as offer make-up touchups and an appointment making service with the full Salon & Spa. The interesting things about this shop are that it a) is only expected to be around from November to February so there are monetary and stock investment dilemmas, and b) it will be open after a whirlwind one month of idea conception.



A large part of my job now is developing the branding for this shop. It will be called the Bellevue Salon & Spa Boutique, so there are branding needs so that in February when clients are saying "The Bellevue Salon closed" it won't be confusing. Thus far I've developed the "coming soon" signage, the window treatments and header sign for the storefront, and I'm in the process of developing the business cards. It's a lot considering there are also other events going on with the regular Salon & Spa, but when you open a store in 20 business days things have to move quickly.


Last week I attended the Philadelphia Fashion Incubator fashion show at
Macy's which was really phenomenal. I've received emails from Drexel about attending in the past but never have, and having gone this year it was a fun time --- especially seeing what goes into it.

I encourage everyone to sign-up to volunteer for Bellevue Gets Engaged on Sunday the 25th! It's a really great event and I'll be there capturing everything for social media!

Week 3 = Events

Everyone in the office was very busy this past week. More than once a lot of us gathered into an Uber and quickly went to an event for one of our clients. The highlight of this past week for me was most likely the Clarisonic for Keith Haring event I was sent to on Wednesday. It was in the most beautiful apartment in the West Village, with an incredible view of the entire city. I helped to set up goodie bags with the limited edition Clarisonic devices and signed people in at the door. One of the guests was the super model Coco Rocha which was really amazing. I couldn’t help but snap as many pictures as I could at the event just because it was set up so cool. The next day was slower, doing mailings and such, I even got to work the receptionist’s position, which was hard since the phone has more than 100 buttons on it. At one point, one of the employees asked me and another intern to go to a Clinique event where Rumer Willis was handing out free cotton candy, a very random spur of the moment aspect of my day.

Not related to work, I also visited Drexel for Fall Fest and it was such a nice break to see everyone again and have a really fun weekend with friends there. Now it’s their turn to visit me in New York.

Week 3: Valentine's Day Preview

This week was a very busy one because it was the Valentine's Day Preview event at Bollare. Editors came to the office to look at samples of the new Valentine's Day collections. The Valentine's Day collection included lingerie from different brands and silk pajamas. There was coffee and pastries for everyone to enjoy. It was an amazing experience because I was able to meet all of editors and learn about what they do and where they work. I helped decorate for the event and made small bouquets of roses to give to the editors on their way out. I really enjoyed the event and definitely learned a lot about event planning. This was only a small event, but I was told that there will be a bigger and longer event for the Spring collection, which I am very excited about!

Week 3 @ Freedom Rains

This week I was greeted to the ever delightful question "Have you ever had Chick-Fil-A? It's amazing."And, to answer that question, I have had the unfortunate pleasure of eating at Chick-Fil-A. For my coworkers who have never had it though, they just opened up New York's first ever Chick-Fil-A in Herald Square, luckily for them. While the raving of the fast food chain continued, the design team had work to do - or at least what was left of our already small team. This week, two of our designers and a few members from sales took a trip around Europe to curate inspiration pieces for the upcoming Fall line. This left our office feeling very quiet, but the break in the action gave myself and our technical designer a lot of time to get work done. We started the week off with a fitting, which I was very grateful to be included in. A fit model came in to try on samples of leather jackets we are working on for a private label project. I've never worked with a fit model before, so it was interesting to hear the amount of feed back she gave us throughout the fitting. She definitely gave us the view point of the real woman who would be wearing the jackets, which is important for a designer to not lose sight of when working with ready-to-wear pieces.

This week I got to go out to some leather wholesalers to source a mint green leather for another private label project. This one place that I went to, Global Leathers, was completely closed off from the public, which made me feel a little special walking in. While they had almost every kind of leather imaginable, even crazy things like exotic amazon fish leathers, they didn't have many options in the mint green family. I basically had to take swatches of what I could find, but it was still a really cool to walk around their store and see everything. Back at the office, I have also been working on different variations of floral prints via Adobe Illustrator that will be stitched into a wool fabric. I was honored that the designers delegated this me as this was the first time I really got to use my creative skills since starting co-op. Although I'm still tweaking the print, I really hope that the fabric gets put into production!

week 3

Week 3 has been a lot of hands on work. This week has definitely been the most running back and forth from the UPS store. Since I do not have a car, it was a lot more difficult to carry packages that were received and sent out. I was practically in and out of the UPS store that I already made new friends. Other than that it was a fun type of challenge to be in charge of all the inventory. I was responsible for taking in repairs and sending them off to get repaired. Then once the repairs were repaired, I had to take in the repairs and send them back to the customer. My boss often relied on me to make sure all the jewelry was kept in inventory or sent back to the customer. This was a lot of pressure but I successfully did all the tasks she asked me to do. I definitely had a lot more tasks to do but I'm glad it kept me busy. This makes me  even more excited about the next challenges I might meet next week.

Week 3 @ Nicole Miller

My third week on co-op has been another busy one. On Monday October 6th, my boss didn't make me come into work because of the social media threats and told me to just stay safe. Those threats really freaked me, and several of my friends out, especially because the threat said it would be on a Philly campus but didn't specify where. Tuesday I had to catch up on my work and of course the computer wasn't working for half of the day. Luckily, my boss is really understanding and because she wasn't in on Tuesday she told me that I don't have to worry and it's not the end of the world if I don't finish my work until the next time I'm in. Thursday the old wholesale intern will be helping me out and she is going to come in once a week, since I barely got trained in the beginning. Everyone is really helpful where I work and I'm so appreciative that people are so understanding.
So far, I've learned how to fill out RA's, which are forms that you get approved if a client wants to return or swap an item that is damaged or not selling well. I've also learned how to use this system called AS400, which is used for almost everything (orders, open orders, RA forms, etc.) and I'm finally getting the hang of it!
There are a lot of Nicole Miller events coming up in the next few months and hopefully I will have the time to help volunteer and possibly see some of you there!