Reflecting over this opportunity

Hello again, 

This will be my last blog post and since I finished the Internship in the beginning of summer I have had some time to reflect over the opportunity of doing the Internship and I have tried to sum it up a bit. Hopefully it can inspire someone who is about to do an Internship this year to really think about this opportunity and find an Internship that does not only look good on paper but actually prepare you for the life after the studies! 

Being able to do an Internship as a part of the degree can be a great opportunity to apply years of theoretical studies into practice, to see how business is actually carried out in the real world. Mixing a bachelor degree in media and communication with a master degree in fashion management  created an interest to understand how brands within the fashion industry is working with, and adapting to, the rapid changes within media and communication. 

During a period of two months I was able to work with the development of digital marketing and communication for a Spanish lifestyle brand, which gave me the opportunity to observe the ways in which the brand was using social media as a tool to reach their customers. More over, I was given the chance to explore my own knowledge and intuition to suggest improvements on how the brand was working with social media such as Instagram and Pinterest. This Internship gave me the chance to work with something that really interests and inspires me, it made me realize that I am capable of much more than I thought and the learning outcomes that I am taking with me from this great working experience are countless. I am definitely one step closer to figure out what I want to do next year!

Nina

I'm back at Lindex!

Hello, it’s me again! It’s been a while since I last posted anything. I left Sweden mid-May in order to start my summer job elsewhere and that’s why I haven’t finished with my blog posts because I continued my internship after the summer. I came back to Lindex for the last two weeks and it was great to see all my colleagues again and my own lovely desk as well! I got a very heart-warming welcome back and I was excited to work again as a buyer’s assistant intern at boys’ department. The best news was to hear that I didn’t screw up any orders during my first six weeks in the spring so all the orders had been placed correctly and all the Lindex stores had received a right amount of garments. This was very delightful to hear because one order can consists 10 000 pieces. Phew! It was also excited and interesting to see all the garments in the stores which I had worked with earlier in the spring. I remember the journey from the strike off for the first sample, and for the counter sample and finally for the production sample and now they were there hanging on the wall so that customers can buy them. It’s great to be back even though it will be a short time but that’s why I have to enjoy all the last minutes I have here at the lovely Lindex office!

Heli

Last Post

Hi Guys! 

This is the last post from my internship! I had the opportunity to stay at Velour over the summer and get some more insight and experience. 

It has been so much fun to be able to stay and see how a collection changes from one season to another and how the process works. From starting out with celebrity haunting to get our products out on social media to focus on pushing our CSR work through out our channels. Me and Ann have worked on increasing the information about Velours CSR work on their homepage to provide customer value, transparency and to complete the whole "creative mind" image officially. By researching within Velours CSR process we have been able to publish our findings to the homepage to give customers more information about the garments we create and how to take care of them. It also lead to a new marketing opportunity where we can push our sustainability work on to our social media channels (see picture). 

Just as fresh as yesterday i visited the Velour store and got feedback from customers saying that they saw our post on social media and that the input about sustainability really makes it more intriguing to visit the store and try out the AW16 collection. Wonderfull feedback if you ask me! That means that we're reaching out in the way that we wanted and know that its valuable to the customer. A perfect end to this internship period! Thank you Velour and Thanks class for reading. I hope I've been able to share what I've been doing and why in a fun and understandable way. If you want to read our report regarding the sustainability project that me and Ann did for Velour, feel free to email us to get it :D 

Picture from @velour_by_nostalgi Instagram Account

Take care and see you in class :D 

//D

The last days at my internship

Hope that everyone has successfully finished their internships!

I am now done with mine and we are close to launching the company´s updated website with a whole page dedicated only to sustainability. We´ve separated everything into production, materials, CSR and care.

We´ve also added a “Did you know?” category as an added value for our customers were we educate them regarding the fabrics´ properties and why they are more sustainable options than other fabrics might be.

In the end, I am very happy with the results of my internship. Although the end result may seem small, there was a lot of work behind it, including communication with suppliers and researching different materials.

Take care!

SS17 collection photoshoot

Accepting an offer to stay at MASKA over the summer,  gave me an opportunity to participate in SS17 collection lookbook photoshoot.

Before the shoot, my main job was to make sure that the photo samples would arrive to our studio in time for the styling. This required constant communication with our lovely suppliers. Sometimes even being a bit pushy, but as i have learned, that’s common communication form with them. 

The collection was shot by a lovely photographer Suzanne Emanuelsson, who for example have also photographed Monki's previous collections. 

During the shoot, i did more the assisting work like being best friends with a steamer and making sure that the collection was prepared as required.

The more time consuming part for me started the day after, when we received first pictures. It was time to exchanged my dear steamer to photoshop, to prepare pictures for our online showroom to show the new collections to our stockists asap. After finishing with the showroom, look book needed to be done as well, which meant in addition to photoshop, dear indesign came in handy. Well during those days i could see the perks of paricipating visual communication class.

When all the sales materials were done and everything prepared for the wholesale, it was time for fashionweeks. Which the next post will be about. 

Last days

Last days ar Studio Pauline van Dongen are passing very fast so my focus is now mostly on finishing the projects I started earlier, summarizing my experience and preparing for the field study presentation. During my 6 moths here, I improved the social media communication of the conpany, created forms and layouts for overall brand communication and helped the company to reached broader audience by partnering with renowned technological and  fashion fairs and various magazines from field if technology, sport, outdoor and lifestyle. As I was as well  in charge of studio's office management, I always needed to be one step ahaed by for exanple preparing all the desired documents for our collaboration partners and weekly meetings or by arranging neccessary logistics steps in order to deliver the best performance on fairs, conferences and exhibitions.

And what this experience gave me? Well, overall I believe that my listening, speaking and networking  skills improved very much, giving me the opportunity to explore the world of wearables from different perspectives. Working closely with an international team every day also gave me a lot more understanding and empathy. Dealing with problems, team work and meeting deadlines were also few of the skills that I though I'm lacking a bit but thanks to this internship, I am also more concious about other's problems, opinions and cultural differences. To sum up, being organized, prepared and effectively manage my  time are only few of the positive values I gained. I'm very looking forward to further improve them and possibly later find a job among as great and honest team as Pauline van Dongen's was.

Progress

Since the last time I wrote I received quite a lot of response from different suppliers of the company. The company sources from both Europe and Asia. The first-tier suppliers who are in Asia of course work with second- and third-tier suppliers as well from Asia. First-tier suppliers from Europe either produce their own fabric or source fabric from European suppliers. Anything extra comes from second-tier suppliers in Asia where these extras are commonly produced (e.g. thread, buttons, zippers etc.).

This all has been useful to update product information in effort for the company to make their work more transparent.

I´m also researching different fabrics and materials that the company uses so we could update the website regarding their advantages and to educate our consumers about our products and how they should take care of them in a sustainable way.

Finished!

Dear Classmates!

I don't believe a lot of you are still reading these blogpost, but I still need to write my 4th one!

I've just finished my internship and those 4 months and a half were an amazing experience! From learning how the whole company works untill managing my own project.
For my writing assignement I believe I'm going to write about the collaboration between brands to create advantages in the industry.

Fashion companies can become bigger in the market in three different ways. Or they can buy other brands, with different market segments. Or like Zara and H&M they can develop their own brands that focus on different parts of the industry. And a last option is to diversify their stores with more productcategories.

I think it is an interesting subject to write about and this way I can start from my own experience and add a lot more with literature.

I am really happy that I've done this internship and met some super great people on the way that I will never forget!

See you all soon!

Fien

SKYN

The thing I like about being a part of studio Pauline van Dongen is that you never get bored. Research of the new advanced materials, passion for sport and progress in wearable technology is something that stand behind last project that we were continuously working on since I have started my internship in March.

To create the one-of-a-kind concept garment, SKYN® partnered with Pauline Van Dongen and pushed the limits of material explorations. The inspiration for athletic suit from technically advanced polyisoprene lays in dragonfly wing-inspired flaps located on the edge of the body, constructed from a thin layer of SKYNFEEL™ and reinforced by a geometric laser cut grid. Designed with the long jumper’s technique in mind, the flaps stay flat during the run, to open up with the jump – just as the athlete twists his arms and straightens his legs.

While creating SKYNFEEL™ APPAREL, experiments were in the studio on a daily basis. Pauline van Dongen hired an expert in material research and together with SKYN® and Sid Lee Amsterdam presented the world the unique sport garment that can help long jumpers stay in the air for a bit longer and theoretically improve their performance.

Take a look at some of my 'making of' photos and if you are interested, watch the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUEXTVFrjs8

Sustainable energy for the Wad Walkers

Hello dear classmates and all the other enthusiastic readers,

Moving to Netherlands and interning at Pauline van Dongen was an unexpected turn of events, but after 4 months living here, I couldn't be more grateful. As a part of a small company which working ethics is based on trust and mutual understanding, I had a chance to put my hands on many different tasks.

Pauline van Dongen is a project based studio, therefore, my work as a Marketing and digital communication intern often includes writing press releases, newsletters and approaching potential photo and video graphers for photo shoots. Even though launching a new wearable technology product which comes only in small amount of actual garments can be sometimes challenging, the hard work rewarded with beautiful photos afterwards is enough for me.

The Solar Windbreaker, our newest Wearable Solar project incorporates 3 solar panels, which gather the solar energy and can charge a phone or any other USB portable device within 1 hour. It was especially designed for so called Wad Walkers, which introduce the people to the nature of Wadden Sea Islands at the north of the Netherlands and take care about its environment. As they are often going off-grid, the wind and waterproof jacket should provide them with shelter and sustainable energy. It is unisex and indeed very functional, yet still not for sale.

After two months of gathering the 'making of' material, writing official press release and interviewing Pauline herself, I was in charge of a styling for the photoshoot and behind the scenes photos. See here, little sneak peak from the photoshoot at the beautiful beach in the Hague.

Last Month at FNG International

Hej classmates!

Most of you are probably now enjoying holdays, but for who that is still interested, my 3rd blogpost!
Being now more than 3 months at the company, I really start to feel part of the brand.

The work that I'm doing is still super interesting. The CSR part got a bit less because of the new corporate project, that's a bit of a shame because I would have loved to learn more about this within the company.
The corporate project is evolving and I'm now helping with the orders of three business units, a famous shoecompany of Belgium also came in the loop. The interesting thing here is that they work with external brands like Nike, Adidas, Bestseller etc, so this is again another way of communicating. Now the external brand has the negotiating power instead of us.

So now we're reading contracts with all these supplier and renegotiate the terms we do not want anymore. This types of negotiating shows how strong and confident you sometimes need to be as a company to brands that are much bigger than you.
All very interesting to see!

Hope you are all well, and enjoying your holidays, still 3 more weeks for me and than I'm finished!

Fien

Event preparing at Agency V

The focus during the past days relied in working with activities for a swimwear brand. The brand is offering swim shorts for men, mostly focusing on fun and colourful prints. The brand will host an event during the summer and I have been searching for a suitable guest list for the event, in able to create a mixture of guests that suits the brand, and preparing invitations. Additionally I have focused on contacting suitable brand-ambassadors, meaning men that can represent the brand in different media channels. It has been interesting to prepare for event, as I now have a greater understanding about the process behind it. 

All the good things come to an end.

Hej hello!

As the title suggest, my internship has come to an end.
It was such a great journey, from moving to another country to working in a small start-up team, meeting challenges and testing my own abilities.

I would like to use this last post to reflect on the outcomes of this internship.

Working as a fashion intern in the combyne company which developed and launched the fashion app as a creative tool was not only a lot of fun but also very challenging. The tasks I had were very diverse which gave me an insight into every segment of the company and the product and I enjoyed that to the maximum. Knowing the product gave me better working skills, less mistakes and very good time usage. I enjoyed working with import of the fashion items from different brands into the app, I especially enjoyed creating Style Lists for users and educating them and giving them inspiration on how to work with fashion. I met a big challenge working in the Influencer Marketing and realizing how hard it is to work with no budget, especially when your product is not something wearable or usable (expect virtually). I found marketing of such a product very challenging and two months were not enough to get completely into it and figure it out but they were quite enough to understand that fashion is not only a wearable item or a service. I expected from internship to be challenging and motivating and that is what I got. It was a great opportunity to be a part of a fast growing company and growing and learning with the team was great, I feel like I grew my fashion sense, get an insight in many different brands and styles, learnt how to communicate with influencers and also learnt how to present and market a fashion app.

All in all, this internship has provided me so much more knowledge, working skills and responsibility. I tested my own working habits, my own knowledge, interests and happily confirmed that I fashion is my world.

I experienced how it is to work in a start-up, how it is to work with little or no budget when creativity takes its place and I learnt how to work in a small team and with a virtual product which was amazing. If there would be another internship, I would love to challenge myself in a bigger, established company for a change...

...and until then...

Have a lovely day!

Andrea Simunic

Two weeks till holidays

Over the last few weeks things have started to settle down a little. I finished the project that I had been hired to do two weeks ago and now find myself helping out with developing Houdini's next step in sustainable action. We have started to recieve responses for Houdini's planetary boundaries and some of them are golden. Here is an example. When asked the amount of energy needed per kg to process wool fibre, the supplier responded "no, only need rain and sunshine". A very interesting point  but if I may add the sheep probably need some food as well. Needless to say we had to recontact them and had to clarify the question with them. It takes a huge amount of time to get any info related to sustainability from the suppliers and manufacturers and often their are a few misunderstandings (but we are used to that thanks to group works).
My new project has been to help Houdini develop another questionnaire that would hopefully limit the possible misunderstandings and get more valuable information. It is crazy to think that only two weeks are left. I have loved every moment of being in Stockholm and experiencing Sweden in the Summer. My tenure here will end on midsummer and I am very much looking forward to that as well.

Much love,

Andrew

Training materials

For the past three weeks, I’ve been writing training materials. I’m not sure, if that’s what I’d call them myself, but that’s what they’re known as in the company. They’re basically documents where I write about different categories of accessories – for example, hats, scarves, gloves, belts, jewellery, etc. With the help of WGSN and looking at our company’s collections, I put together texts about each accessory category for each of our brands. The final text is supposed to help the sales people in our stores sell the merchandise. Basically, the texts are similar to marketing texts, I talk about what the main trends of the season are, which colours, patterns and textures are most popular and how to wear the accessories and combine them with garments from the collections. It has been an interesting assignment, but I am truly happy I managed to finish all of the training materials by now. It was not an easy task at time – for example when talking about hats, gloves and scarves where fur is dominating the trends and is used on all of them in the collections of four brands. So I was supposed to figure out how to talk about the fur trend and sell it in 12 different ways, when all I really wanted to say about hats, scarves and gloves was that if you want to be warm during the winter, you’d better buy them. I was pretty fed up with trend talks by the end of that assignment, but at least I am very well informed on the accessory trends of A/W 16/17 now.

Johanna

Pressday at Agency V

After my third week at the internship I had the pleasure to take part in the pressday for the upcoming autumn winter 2016 collections. This means that the showroom is open during a whole day for journalists, stylists, and influencers to come here and look at the next seasons collections. In that way they will know what we have available in the showroom and what they can borrow for their upcoming editorial works. It was great for me in able to meet the collaborators that the agency works with, and also get to know more about the dynamics of running a showroom. It was a successful day in many ways, as even though that seven showrooms had pressday the same day we managed to get visits from everyone that we expected. I am very happy to have ben a part of this day and I believe that this day will be one of the greatest memories from my time at Agency V.

Finishing up ... Almost

Hej hej from Swedish Eco,

10 weeks of my internship passed by like nothing. Now, towards the last two official weeks, I am trying to finish up projects but that seems quite challenging, considering how much a start-up is depending on others to be on time.

I am finally receiving the second samples for our product extension project, but as always in such a young brand - everything can go right, everything can go wrong. So I am very excited to see the product results and hope the project can be continued in time...
As mentioned in my previous post I've been busy with Sales and Social Meda the last weeks while waiting for our new samples and in order to get the word about our underwear spread. It's great to see how bloggers and magazines start to approach us for cooperations - something I am super interested in to organize! (Here I recognize again why I studied communications before)

Also: Did you notice HOW MANY bloggers are switching towards eco-friendly, slow fashion nowadays? I see myself getting more and more into a more conscious lifestyle and almost getting bored by the usual fast-fashion bloggers as it seems they ignore the big movement of the industry. This, of course, also binds me more to our own brand as I get a great feeling for good quality underwer that was produced ethically. At this point, I cannot see myself working for a fast-fashion brand anymore to be honest. A great change as I think, as it defines further where I want to go!

My plans to stay with the brand continue - So I will work for them still after my intership, a great opportunity next to the studies of course! And fun too, as I will organize some more mini-photoshoots, get creative with the Social Media and follow what I love most - Creating visual communication content :)

Hope you all have an amazing summer!!! xx
Madeleine

Getting to know the company

On the third week of my internship I attended information days for new workers. This is something that is organized every three months to introduce the company and its facilities to new employees. The first introduction day included visiting the sewing factory and logistics centre. A tour was organized for us, showing every operation from receiving the fabrics and sending them to manufacturing to packing the garments. The sewing factory is in Tallinn and most of the items are sewn there. All knits are out-sourced, since the company doesn’t have the machinery needed for manufacturing knit items. I visited the factory during my bachelor’s for a similar tour, but at the time, I was studying pattern making, therefore the things I focused on at the time were different from the ones I focused on this time. It’s interesting to see, how my focus has changed so that I am more aware of the whole supply chain now than I was before, when I was mostly focused on only the manufacturing part.

Johanna