Who’s more important in the office than the CEO... the office puppy! I took my first trip over to the Mayfair head office on Monday afternoon and got a warm welcome from Mabel the puppy, bounding up to me, followed by a slightly less slobbery meeting with the rest of the team! Mabel aside, it was great to be introduced to the whole team, from the social media assistant, to the accountant and then finally the CEO. Everyone was really welcoming and I sat in for the meeting, giving me a good insight to how ideas are bounced around the team, slowly developing into something bigger and I even got to have my say in what I thought about a developing idea! I was only there briefly on Monday, but Tuesday I headed over again in preparation for a shoot. I helped out with the normal shoot tasks, like pressing the garments and fixing loose buttons, which was a rush to get done in time ready for the start of the shoot. It was good to see that my experience of being a dresser for the Coventry fashion shows came into good use, as I was able to quickly help in dressing the models, as well as dealing with the garments after the shoot. Amazingly I was allowed to be one of the few people on set behind the scenes, getting to observe how the process worked, occasionally giving a hand with straightening hems and adjusting labels. I can’t wait to see the final shoot outcome and to see how the photos on the day have been developed to tell the story of the garments!
Wednesday I was back to the studio and back to an area where I felt more comfortable, pattern cutting. With it being the lead up to the Paris fashion week sales, a lot of last minute projects are all running, in order to have everything ready to go. One of those projects was left down to us at the studio and I was given the task to pattern cut the pieces. The pattern pieces needed to be adapted ready to be sent off to a pattern grader who was to blow up the scale, creating a giant shirt! I had to add on new notches and take off seam allowance in order for this to be possible. Although it was basic pattern cutting work, it gave me the opportunity to ease myself back into pattern cutting and I was able to remind myself of how to work with the pieces. Alongside all of that, I got to see how calculations were made for estimating fabric cost and consumption. With the fabric recently being changed it meant that some of the logistics documents were out of date, I was shown what needed changing and then I was left to make the alterations to these spreadsheets. It was a bit intimidating staring at excel formulas for the first time since school! I took my time, double checking my formulas against already existing ones, as well as checking the odd calculation on a calculator, just to make sure I had got the formula right. Although the thought of doing formulas and spreadsheets can seem boring and dull, I actually enjoyed the challenge of testing my memory from years ago! I think that having this knowledge is so important because it’s essentially the back bone of keeping the business alive. Without it you wouldn’t have a clue about how much something will cost to make, meaning you don’t know the profits and then problems will start to arise. I am hoping that throughout the six months I am here, I will learn more about the logistics side to the company and keep practising skills like these.
The following day I was all over London once again! I started my day over in Wembley, at a meeting with the pattern grader. I got to go to the meeting myself, handing me a whole load of new responsibility and giving me another push out of my comfort zone! Going somewhere new and unknown by myself is something that can sometimes make me feel nervous, especially meeting with someone at the other end but all that aside, I had a great meeting! I was pleased with how confident I was able to come across and it was great meeting someone from another area of the industry and getting a bit of an insight to what they do. Two weeks in and I can definitely see a growth in my confidence.
I finished off that week revisiting some of the embroidery artwork that I had previously been working on. Now making new adjustments and creating scaled versions in order to see how the finished piece would look. The week had flown by and by the end of the day on Friday, I didn’t know where the time had gone and I was more than ready to head into week 3.
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