Working in a Lindex store

Hi,

Last week I got the chance to get out and work in a Lindex store for one day. This is something people who work at the head office have to do twice a year, in order to get updated on how things are working in store and to get some customer perspective. And I was lucky to tag along!

We got to open the store up and start to hang out new garments from the inventory. It was a lot of packing up products from their plastic bags, hanging them on hangers and then putting security tags on them. When the store opened almost all we had to do, except from helping customers, were to hang back clothes from the fitting rooms and from the inventory, as well as cleaning up and organize the store. I was surprised of how messy customers are!

It was nice for me to see all the clothes in store that I have been working with during these months, and to see customers liking them and buy them. Also, we learned some important lessons when we got feedback from the employees in the store. We also noticed some things they have to think about for the next spring collection in order for it to be better and to fulfill more customer's demands. In other words it was an interesting, but exhausting, day!

/Daniella

Summary of my internship period

Hi,

Two month has gone by at my internship and last Friday was my final day at Panos and with mixed emotions I’m taking the time to summarize the whole period. The marketing department was quite small which implied that I had the opportunity to be a part of a large amount of various tasks. The most fun and inspiring part was when the PR and marketing manager and I discussed and argued how their ad campaign should be designed. I learned a lot of how and what you should think of and I felt that I could use much of my gained knowledge from previous courses. I have been a part of the creation of newsletter, ad campaigns, coordinate of social media platforms, contact with bloggers and journalists and finally prepare samples to different fashion shows. Over all, the time at Panos has been both rewarding and developmental for me and sometimes I wish that the time wouldn't have gone by so quickly. I’m so grateful for all the lovely people I have get to know and I am leaving Panos Emporio with a new perspective and experience.  Thank you!

/ Linnéa 

PR development

This week it started a new employee at Bruuns Bazaar. He is hired for developing the social media at the company, and I thought that he would take over that part so I would´t have anything to do with it anymore - but I was wrong. Instead we do it together, the brainstorming as well as the final newsletters and similar. It is really great! And I am so happy that I got to learn Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator at The Swedish School of Textiles because It is almost only me who know how to work with them... It is also interesting when someone new comes into the company with new ideas of how to develop the social media.

This is my last blog post, and even though I have been at my internship for 2 months now and I have learned so much, I am happy that I have another 3 months here because there is still so much to learn.

Finishing our internship at IKEA

The internship is now over and we have both enjoyed our two month here at IKEA of Sweden. Our work seemed to be appreciated and we have gained a lot of work experience within communication. Its amazing how fast these weeks went by and how much we have experienced.

We created a summary for IKEA additional to our reports to present what we have worked with durring this period.  It reviews the activities such as how we collected information within the company, observed meetings and conferences, edited content, attended media training sessions and the two biggest tasks: mapping of external partners and the involvement in the democratic design events.

We both want to thank Johanna our supervisor and all the IKEA co-workers for a memorable internship!

Thank you all!

Code of Conduct

As a part of my internship, I am drafting a Code of Conduct for the company. A Code of Conduct is a document that sets the standards for a company's subcontractors and business partners on how to act and how to treat their employees. It is often included in contracts, and a breach of the code means an immediate stop in production and the business relationship. Drafting a code has been challenging work, but I have learned a lot about different CSR values and how important it is to clearly state what you as a company accepts and not in relation to your subcontractors especially if you work on a global level.

MAD Fashion Research

Researching about Spanish luxury fashion, the best place to do so is the apparel museum, “Museo del Traje” in Madrid - airport code MAD ;-) . I have found very interesting books and articles at the Museum’s library; as well as a very nice place to write in.

The museum was created in 2004, but the collection has a longer history as an anthropologic collection of apparel. The building was originally inaugurated in 1975 as the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art and the architects, Jaime López de Asiaín and Angel Díaz Domínguez, followed the specifications of the 1968 Congress of Museum Architecture in its design. The project was awarded the National Prize for Architecture in 1969 (Museo del Traje, n.d.).

The museum conserves items from the 16th to the 21st Century, including pieces by Spanish couturiers who contributed to fashion history such as Mariano Fortuny or Cristóbal Balenciaga. In fact, one of the temporary exhibitions is a talk between Balenciaga and a contemporary designer, Assaad Awad. I consider the objectives of this exhibition are very similar to my own research. The purposes of these talks are: “firstly, from the revitalization of heritage linked to fashion, in the belief that a major creative industry must be based on knowledge of tradition, at least in the Spanish case; and secondly, bringing into play the creativity of designers to interpret that tradition and demonstrate the inventiveness of the new generation of fashion designers” (Museo del Traje, n.d.).

https://vimeo.com/assaadawad/balenciaga
 

Assaad Awad’s pieces are characterized by craftsmanship and cutting edge, in addition to the use of many types of materials and luxury goods, leather accessories and jewelry that respect the quality and workmanship of each piece. I am pretty sure you have seen the work of Assaad Awad in celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Madonna (look at Madonna's accessories at the Superbowl 2012). It is very interesting to see the contrast between the timeless designs of Balenciaga and these modern pieces.

So…stop reading and plan a visit to Madrid and its “Museo del Traje”!

Creating a catalog!

Aspira is a new and small company, which still doesn’t have a strong marketing strategy. As, we are targeting for Europe and USA market, first we have decided to attract the attention of tourists in Kyrgyzstan. I have offered to create a catalog, brochure and a flyer for the company, which will be available in public places as a cafeteria, restaurants, tourist offices, where usually the tourists pass by. The flyer and the brochure have information about company and their contacts. The catalog has more detailed information about the company, designers, and the range of products.  We believe that, through the catalog, brochure and flyer people can find out the existence of Aspira company, then visit the website to find out even more.

Therefore, in a couple of weeks, I have been creating catalog, flyers and brochures for the Aspira company.  It was fun, because I have never done such kind of thing, so I looked different catalog to get some inspiration and read different magazines to understand how a catalog should look like.

I think, this experience was very useful, because I have learnt some new computer programs to create them and get new knowledge in this graphical area.

Production department

Hi there,

A regular day for me at HOPE varies from day to day. As I am involved in the different stages of each collection, this enables me to get an overview of the whole process from design sketching to ready product, which is very interesting. I also get the chance to interact and discuss the ideas and thoughts behind each garment/outfit with the designers, which is great fun!

Latest weeks has mainly contained of different meetings regarding the different stages of each collection, quality testing of received production samples and a four-day sample sale at the head office.

As a part of the production department I also got the opportunity to attend a training day focusing on chemicals used within the textile industry and recyclable textile materials. This training day aimed to inform and educate on the chemical impact within the textile industry, and how to recycle textile materials without causing more environmental impacts. A very interesting day so to say!

Best Regards,

Åsa 

Trims Department

All collection's starts with inspiration's meetings between the head designer, creative director and head manager of trims and fabrics department (my boss-boss). After every meeting, we get a recap and then I do my research. I start by looking at our archive to see if we have something in house that we can present to the next meeting with the head designer. When that's done, I move on to the internet and try to find pictures that can translate what the designers wants, and sending them to our suppliers asking if they have something similar. And then I wait for all the samples be shipped to Stockholm. And this is how it looks like for a couple of weeks, until they have decided what theme and trims they want to have. But everything can change, and be cancelled. And they can change theme from one day to another. 

I can give an example, but I can't say what they actually are going to use or used so I will use terms like A and B and so on to explain different kinds of themes and "creative ideas". 

We are in the middle of the work of Womens Wear Main SS16 right now, and when this started, around 4 weeks ago, the designers had an idea of using A-theme. So I got tons of trims and components of A and they worked on it until last weeks meeting with the creative director, who cancelled it all. So, instead of being in the middle of the process of Main SS16, where we should place all the trims orders for  samples, we started from the beginning again. So, the end of last week and today I have been researching, running around the city and buying components for theme B. And, hopefully, this theme will be in to the end of this collection, but probably not.

What we also do is developing trims for designers, or mostly all the trims we are using are developed for the company, with logos on or specific sizes and so on. Last season Womens Wear Main AW15 we developed a specific puller for all the knitwear and some jackets. That process took around 8 weeks to finish. Here's a picture of the puller for the zipper. 

Acne Studios Ready-To-Wear Main AW15

That's all for me for now.

Ciao

Summary of my internship period at KappAhl

Hi everyone!

Time flies when you're having fun... 

Now I'm at the end of my internship period at KappAhl. Following two weeks I have some few meetings to sum up the big project I have been working with, but otherwise I had my last day this Friday. I'm so thankful and happy about my time at KappAhl, and I would never have guessed that this internship period would give me so much new knowledge as it has done. Honestly I think I have learned something new every single day, and I will definitely bring my new knowledge with me and probably be able to use it in both my last year in school and in my future work. Besides all the new knowledge I have got I have also got valuable contacts that I hopefully can benefit from in the future. As I have mentioned before I have been working at the quality department together with three other textile engineers, and from meetings and conversations with them as well as from my project I have got a lot of useful information and ideas to use in my final report that I'm currently writing, which is about quality and quality manegement within the fast fashion industry. 

Have a great week!

/Malin Fredrikson