DRESS TO IMPRESS

Working for a big designer is always exciting and there is always the hope that you will get a chance to meet designer him/herself. That is why when going to work each day I always try dressing for impressing. It is hard to strike a balance between my own personal style and representing the company style. Today I choose to wear a Michael Kors dress; along with a Michael Kors bag and JCrew flat sandals.

When interviewing for my company the HR representative informed me that the designer was in the building that day, and often was around the office. The sheer thought of being in the same building as him was exhilarating. I never dreamed that I would ever actually see him in the flesh. Today was my lucky day, I got a clear shot at the back of his head, and what a beautiful head it was. After seeing the man that’s name is pasted all over my office he seemed to loose his charm, and he became a real person. After seeing him in the flesh I realized he is just like any other person. It was a strange and conflicting realization. It made me wonder if I too would one day be idolized like he is and if I would be as successful as he.

I am beginning to realize more and more that hard work is the key to any real success. If you work hard “it” really can happen. "It" being my goals in life, which are still undetermined.

Sweet Surprise

As I prepared to conclude my first week at Donna Karan International, I was ready to perform my usual duties as a public relations intern. Earlier in the week I had been managing clothing sample trafficking, checking in returns from magazines and photo shoots, and assisting my supervisor with any tasks or errands that needed to be completed around the office. Walking into the office on Thursday, I knew I would be responsible for moving shoes from my building to the other DKNY building for a photo shoot. This seemed simple enough; pick up shoes, drop them off, come back to my building. I thought to myself that this would be another day practicing the tasks I had been performing throughout the beginning of my week.

After delivering the shoes to the stylist working on the DKNY Jeans, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was asked to stay a little longer to help pull looks from mannequins in the downstairs showroom. As if this wasn't enough of a change to switch up my daily routine and bring even more excitement to my co-op, I was then selected to spend my entire day working on the shoot for the spring '14 look book! My dream of working in the fashion industry became reality right in front of my eyes. I was put in charge of dressing my very own model for the full work day!

Although initially I was nervous about taking charge of dressing the only female model on the shoot, I gained such great confidence in myself that day. I learned that when it comes to your career, never say no. Have a little faith in yourself, you never know what can come out of it. I now have an additional skill to add onto my resume, as well as gaining a new friend in Manhattan- my model, Anja, an amazing Swedish model! I came into work that day thinking I would be working in the public relations department like my typical day and left with more knowledge from one day that I could ever learn in a classroom. I am looking forward to gaining all these skills that I will be able to apply to whatever job I may get in the future, especially now that I know I will be exposed to more sections of the fashion industry than I thought I was signing up for!

Never One Place, Always One Jacket

All summer term I could not wait to have a break from school and go on coop. My parents would laugh and say to me “who enjoys working 40 hours a week? I’d much rather still be in class.” While I got to see my friends all of the time, class got tiring and I was so ready to get out and apply what I had been learning for the past seven terms in the real world. I got the coop that I wanted and even though I was enjoying my “summer break” I was eager to start. I work for the Full Circle Group, LLC in West Chester, PA. The Full Circle Group, LLC is an agency that represents the mid-Atlantic region for The North Face. There are 13 people that work for the company and there are about four or five people in the office on a daily basis; a majority of the employees are traveling Reps, so they aren’t always in the office. Everyone works together like one big family and since we work out of a house, it is such a comfortable environment where within just the past week, I’ve learned so much. 

On my first day I was thrown right into preparing and organizing the samples from the Spring 2014 line so that we could ship them back to The North Face Headquarters in California. There are four reps that house their samples in our office in West Chester when they are not traveling to show them to the buyers. Since it is the end of the selling season for Spring 2014, it was my job to collect the samples from each rep and prepare them to be packed. I spent my entire day playing memory with countless numbers of rolling racks and getting on my tippy toes to stuff the racks until there was no more room. It gave me a chance to see every activity category that The North Face designs for. Since The North Face uses the Activity Based Model, all of the apparel and equipment varies based on activity; like performance, outdoors, or action sports, so I was able to see a wide variety of samples. Along with that each piece that they create whether it be tents, apparel, sleeping bags, accessories, or shoes has some type of special technology built into it to make it unique and to reach it’s maximum utility; which I found interesting as I sorted through all of the samples.

On my second day, the entire team, including the reps from the New York City showroom, showed up bright and early at 8am to finish sorting the samples and got them all packed up ready to go back to California. It was great to meet everyone that works for Full Circle, LLC and learn more about what each person does for the company. By the end of the day we had close to 60 large boxes filling the garage ready to be sent off, it felt great to see how hard we worked and what we could accomplish when we worked very hard as a team. Of course we took some breaks and had some fun by doing Crossfit challenges each time we packed a box; it helped break up the day for sure.

My third day, we got to the office early again to go over each Rep’s goal that they set for the Spring 14 season and how they accomplished it or what hardships they ran into with the goals they had set out to reach. Since everyone had different techniques with their selling, I found it very interesting how buyers respond differently to the various techniques and how each Rep had to tailor what they were doing to different stores. For example you can’t sell the same way to a camping specialty store as you would to Urban Outfitters or a department store. We then took a break in the middle of the day and went to the Crossfit gym in West Chester. I had so much fun doing Crossfit and really hope that we do it again even though most of us were sore after. It was a great team building exercise and it worked us to our limits. It also got us out of the office to have a break between meetings because for the remainder of the day we had a GTM meeting (Going to Market) where we talked about the new line and what we have to do to beat out our competitors for the upcoming season.

The next day I unpacked and scanned the new Fall 2014 samples we received and then organized them for each rep. I also scanned the carry over items and equipment so that we could get as much work out of the way as possible before the bulk of the Fall 14 samples came in. 

 On Friday, I ordered my clothes for the sales meeting in Lake Tahoe and designed a billboard to hang above a fixture for our products for a store in Syracuse.

Overall, the first week of coop, I definitely hit the ground running but I’ve learned so much already. I am so excited to see what else is in store and the adventures I will go on in the next six months.