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