Work Experience at River Island

In the middle of the summer i was lucky enough to be offered a 3 week placement at River Islands Chelsea House Head Office in London.

Although initially not what i had expected i was a great learning experience which i really enjoyed and taught me a lot.

the first thing i wasn't expecting was to actually doing the same work as my mentors.

I had been expecting to be counting buttons, making tea, and general menial tasks.

Happily this was not the case at all. the Department of Garment Technology where i had asked to be placed was very short staffed due to copious maternity leave.

so on my first day i was thrown into the deep end. Shadowing the Casual Cotton garment tech, i was given a measuring guide and set to work.

the factories will send River a sample of the garment following strict measurements and instructions written up in a specification by the designer

(the designer is directed by the buying team)

the sample will then be measured by the GT's (Garment Tech's) to check it comes within tolerance of the specification.

this sample is then reviewed in a live Fit Session, with a "perfect size 12" model

(the model we were assigned admitted she wears a size 10 everywhere but river)

the buyer and designer then dictate to the garment tech the changes in measurements, shape and trims hey want.

It is then the job of the GT to communicate these changes to the factories.

And then the whole process starts again until the garment is approved for production.

By the second week i was allowed to "run" one of these fit sessions under supervision.

a big deal because another girl who had been on placement for a year there had not done this yet.

Although i was told the buyers are not often open to opinion from GT's, they were more then willing to listen to my ideas and in some cases follow them

GT's at river island act as almost a quality control and technical advice.

this i was initially disappointed with as i had been told that GT's had a lot of control over fabric, design and production.

But after talking to my Colleagues i was assured River does it differently to everyone else because the buying team was so large and so strong there was no need for GT's to take that control. in fact most areas of the office were to support the buying team.

the advice they gave me if i wanted to pursue a career in GT was to look for Firms that had a small buying team. Arcadia, also, gives GT's a lot of responsibility due to their factory base.

My work experience made me feel more confident. i feel like that i could manage with my own business slightly better, now knowing how factories work with suppliers, what they can be trusted with.

i also found that GT's need a certain amount of intuition which i was told i already possess so perhaps this is a career i do not need to specially study. this leads me towards looking more into Artistic directing in my studies.

perhaps i gained my back up plan. Garment Technology i feel is a great profession which i would happily and confidently go into, but at the same time, i feel it is flexible with age, so perhaps i can try to pursue Art Directing.

a fast, young, cut-throat job where to rise to the top you have to be the best.

and then find Garment technology in my later life.

Emma Watson

Oh dear. i must admit, and this is very hard to do so for me, but Emma Watson is turning into something to be feared and respected. 

she radiates sophistication and beauty in the new burberry campaign. 

in her July interview with Elle she expresses her concern for the lack of Pretty Organic

perhaps i will have to get over her stealing the lead role in Harry Potter (even though i never auditioned)

i also came across this advertisement for Ellen Von Unwerth.

perhaps i will join the legions and make Watson my muse.

perhaps she could help with GORE Organic?

In the same Breath

The 2009 winner of the Vogue Talent writing competition was so utterly disappointing.

i was actually looking forward to reading the winning entry.

i never envisioned winning. but i never envisioned loosing to such poor language, grammar and just simply a tug at the heart strings.

Although i love playing with the english language and adore anyone else who does. there is a certain skill and appreciation of english which must be followed.

starting a sentence with And is an amusing nod to the ever changing of our language, as it is abolished and restated as a literary device about 50 times a year.

...but starting a sentence with "anyway", not just once but numerous times in a small essay made my skin crawl. 

it is brushing off the readers intent to know more.

an article on a memory was always going to be self indulgent, my own essay perhaps more then this girl. but it lacks any story, direction or skill.

her step father, who she thinks of as father is a bad man, isn't liked by his relatives along with his new family to which she belongs.

that is not an award winning essay.

i would also like to know when a model qualifies to judge a literature competition, i would have hoped that decision to fall into the hand of a highly respected editor of vogue. 

I am sure any one of the runners up are more deserving.

The Resurrection of the Magazine

Huzzah.

Finally the english magazine has returned to what we know and love.

it was always going to be a difficult time in the recession for the magazine market, after its escalating, never-ending, boom it seemed that there was too much, too many magazines with too much to say and no one with enough money to subscribe to them all.

but i don't think any one of us expected Vogue to tumble with it...

Personally the demise of all the magazines came with the capitalization of VICE.

An avid reader of Vice; when it was in black and white and looked more like a leaflet then a magazine, i was  bitterly disapointed when it turned into a glossy.

Vice remains an outstanding magazine, original and appealing. but when they acquired the money to make the underground above ground (something they worked so, so hard for)

They lost the weird integrity. Their seminal style, their intuitive and; more interesting then the news, articles from real, inspiring, raw, gritty people.

And with them, they took everyone.

POP- dead, Dazed and Confused and i-D the same drizzle, 

Wonderland-lost, Amelia's- dead,Vogue-uninspired.

the arts, fashion, music and literature world lost its voice. due to the magazines trying to scoop each other.

all except vogue started to look identical. not only in trends but in stylization of the entire publication. layouts, photography, subject matter became a conglomerate. 

for up to £10 an issue this was unacceptable.

Vogue instead, seemed to stop trying. Gone were the brand new, exciting designers, the witty, thought provoking articles. 

Vogue is a bible on all things in this aesthetic world. it drives the creative minds. it inspires all who read it. it is empowering. but with every issue i bought for the last couple of months, since December in fact, all i could think was:

"where is the new Christopher Kane they have found?"

or

"where is another literary analysis and anti-Misogynist angle on the word C**T?"

where was the passion? 

And "More cash then Dash" their latest monthly Budget angle was and still remains dire. 

Nobody has ever bought vogue as a shopping catalogue. Every woman worth her salt buys Vogue to aspire to. Her drive to get that promotion at work, is her drive to buy the new Chanel quilted.

Perhaps lost in the shouting about our industry being doomed to fail.

Perhaps everyone just lost their way a little bit and needed a break from being brilliant.

perhaps they just needed to really loose their integrity to regain it.

but they are back,

back with a vendetta on self.

i squealed with joy when i saw POP. 

i had been in true morning to loose the father all the alternative editorials. 

And vogue returning with its post-college idealism that it had been lacking for so long. 

they seemed re-affirmed. a renewed awe. refreshed.

let's hope it stays that way...

Extreme NeoClassicism

Our first art direction and styling project at AIB was a daunting one.

I evoked the style of wonderland magazine, looking into their target market, marketing and styling.

I focused a lot on the neoclassic photo realism, but I soon threw myself into researching a new trend of editorials featuring Men in Women's clothes. 

Finding it a nod to the glass ceilings we all face.

I wanted to get the aesthetics true to the magazine and my favourite photographer Jeff Bark, who doesn't use post production. Obviously, being a major amateur I had to enhance the colour and finishes in post production but I'm so pleased with the results.

My favourite is the first double page spread.

I got an amazing grade for this and enjoyed it so much more then I would have ever thought I could.

 I'm now looking to art direction for a future career. 

First Post

I am Stephanie Beaven and I am over-coming my abhorrence of blogs.

I have always been of the opinion that blogs, unless formal, are self indulgent, irrelevant and often quite boring. I assume that my blog will be all of the above but i hope to communicate a little of myself over the world wide web, reason my arguments and opinions with an educated stance.

For me fashion and its related industries fascinate me due to its subtle influence and remark. what impassioned me is the hidden meanings, the socio-political stabs a designer can advance in the guise of a pretty dress.

But never can fashion be confined to the definition of pretty dresses. it is raw, emotional. an art from that is the most accessible expression for the severe masses. 

Ignorant are the people who think it does not affect them, the declining laggards, the primark shoppers among us, who quite happily thrive off the aesthetics of a garment. but i find it almost a sin to wear things you don't understand. these amazing trends have an amazing thought process behind them...i familiarise the declining laggards with people that read the sun.

I have recently become quite obsessed with organic cotton. the organic cotton that you cannot, for the love of heavens, find any where. when found it is either a plain, dull tee shirt, or a hideous brown/green  A-line dress. The dream is to make an organic clothing company focusing on the afore mentioned pretty dresses. the problems are arising of sourcing, hypocrisy of dying the fabric and creating fresh designs successfully for a large target market.

 To be continued...

I hope to soon make an online portfolio, within the next couple of weeks. 

I find its so hard to express myself instantly i hope this helps to explain me.