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Reflection:

My time at Lily Ella has been a positive and valuable experience. I think I have learned a variety of new skills and got used to working amongst a team in a professional working environment. As well as learning skills to use for my degree, I felt like I was really involved within the company and it was interesting to get to be a part of every aspect of the fashion process from design to shipping to customers. I feel like a got a real idea of the way the industry works, especially following form meetings with suppliers. I felt that being able to speak to the customers directly over the phone and reading their returns feedback, really got me to understand the customer in-depth. Working within a small team definitely made me feel more involved in tasks and seen as a valued member of the team, rather than being given mundane jobs because I was an intern.

My practical skills have also improved, including working on illustrator and the Adobe suite. I have also had more practice with design and research which is valuable when thinking about my own brand and creative direction. I definitely think I learned a lot during my time here, especially in comparison to my experience at Jenny Packham. Although I am still not 100% sure what I want to do when I graduate, I know that I enjoyed more of the business and marketing aspects of the fashion industry and definitely do not want to go into a practical role in the future. Overall, my placement year was a positive experience which has grown my self-confidence, as well as my confidence in my knowledge of the industry and skills.

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Week 16:

My final week at Lily Ella Collection, and of my placement year. This was quite a busy week preparing everything for when I leave, as well as dealing with the second mail landing of the clearance catalogue.  This meant that the phones were ringing a lot again and I had to help in the warehouse for a couple of days to process returns to be sent back out as well as picking and packing orders that were coming through.  This week I also had another meeting with my line manager and the garment technologist to go over the brief for another supplier ‘FM&AG’. We discussed ideas for which garments would be sent for them to sample and updated the final brief ready to send to them. To accompany this, I had to create more design sheets for each garment and update their section of the critical path.

My main task for this week was completing the handover to the new placement student. Our schedules overlapped for a week to allow her to get an idea of all the roles involved, without the added pressure from the tasks that I completed. I showed her all of the tasks which are left solely to the placement student, which included, how and when to upload to social media using the ‘Later’ app and Facebook, as well as uploading images to the Google business page to appear in all web searches of the brand. Updating the Facebook shop for each new collection and adding Pinterest boards for the new season edits are some of the other roles I showed her how to complete. As part of the handover, I made sure that I covered everything I did and made sure she could ask me any questions. I went through the entire computer system used by Lily Ella and how to create everything from Photoshoot layouts, to design sheets.

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Week 15:

I returned to my role this week to help my line manager and the team with handling the clearance which started on Monday. This also meant I could help with my usual daily tasks before the new placement student started and could take over. At the start of the week, I was very busy taking calls from customers wanting all the discounted clothing. On Tuesday there was an issue with the phone lines and internet connection in the building meaning that the day was hugely disrupted with customers being redirected to the customer service teams mobile and the computer system not working. Once this got back up and running after an hour or so, we were able to continue with our work and take orders.  I also had to update the Facebook shop with the updated sale prices. I had a meeting with my line manager and merchandisers about the possibility of mailing a new outlet book in spring in an effort to relieve some of the warehouse stock. I think the decision will be made to send it out to all existing customers in the hope that some of the old stock can be sold but minimising the number of mailings to keep costs relatively low.

I also had a meeting with my line manager and the garment technologist to discuss the brief for one of the AW20 suppliers ‘Dennis Day’. From the notes I took during this time, I updated the critical path with all of the new styles and codes we had agreed on, as well as creating design sheets for each new style with a flat drawing of the garment and all of the relevant information.

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Week 14:

This was my final week before the company closed for Christmas meaning that the phones were incredibly busy with calls from customers trying to get their orders in before the last Christmas posting dates. I also helped out a lot in the warehouse to ensure that as many returns as possible could be processed before Christmas and that all of the orders met their Christmas delivery dates.

I also had to ensure that the social media pages would all be covered over the Christmas period, including creating Christmas and New Year’s banners. At this point in the season, I had begun to exhaust all images of the AW19 photoshoot to use so I started reposting images of garments with a high amount of stock in the warehouse. This was an attempt to hopefully entice some customers to buy the items. During this week I had a meeting with my line manager and the garment technologist to ensure that all of our critical path information was up to date and everything would run smoothly while the business was closed.

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Week 13:

This week I was involved in a meeting with the main supplier, accompanying my line manager and one of the merchandisers. The supplier brought in all of the fabric swatches available for knits and wovens for my manger to choose from. We put forward our ideas to him for the AW20 collection to see if there were things he could produce or not. For example, a heart-shaped cable knit sweater that I had sketched up last week to create a visual of. During this meeting, we were also able to secure dates for SS20 deliveries at the start of January to ensure that the collection would be ready on time for launch.

I spent most of my time this week creating design sheets for every garment in the AW20 range. Some of the styles will be changed or removed before going ahead but the team wanted a stock of all the styles as they stand. Each design sheet has a flat drawing as well as information including style numbers which I had to assign and supplier information. I also had to ensure that I created a page on the critical path for all of the AW20 style numbers to ensure that they correlate and can be easily located in the future.

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Week 12:

At the start of the week, I finished off my Illustrator flats for all of the previous seasons’ styles and updated all of the social media pages which I was falling a little behind on. I then created some more flat drawings of specific styles, including a shirt we had purchased from Joules whilst on the comp shop in London. These were in preparation for a meeting next week with the main Lily Ella supplier, Varma, as my line manager wanted me to show how the embroidery looked. I also drew up a few other sketches of new ideas which my line manager wanted to present to the supplier to see if the styles were even able to be made.

I also completed another comparative shop in Leeds City Centre with my line manager and one of the merchandisers. This was probably the most successful yet and we managed to gather even more information from competitor’s stores. Upon returning to the office, I created design sheets for sample blouses and trousers we had purchased and sent swatches off to one of the suppliers to see if they might be able to recreate the style.

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Week 11:

This week the new mid-season sale catalogue launched which meant that I spent the majority of my time between answering calls and working in the warehouse to ensure that parcels got out on time. I also organised deliveries that had just come in from suppliers and Quality Checked the garments to make sure they were suitable for sale. Some of the measurements were coming up large on a specific dress style, however, the garment technologist ensured me that they would be able to be sold, however, this would be flagged with the supplier. I also started to draw flats on Illustrator for the AW20 design sheets, drawing up some of the previous styles to have a record of. This really helped me to improve on Illustrator as it was not my strongest skill before my placement year. I was also tasked with a copy check on the new Winter19 clearance catalogue to check that all the copy text correctly matched the imagery. There were a few issues which I managed to correct and made sure that the sizes shown as available, we still had in stock.

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Week 10:

For three days this week, I spent my time in London with my line manager to have meetings with suppliers and complete a comparative shop at stores around the Soho area. This helped us gain more of an insight into the older women’s fashion trends at the moment as we got to visit stores that are not in Newcastle. The supplier meetings were all very different, but each of them showing example fabrics and garments of the types of styles that could be worked for Lily Ella’s AW20 collection. The suppliers discussed my mood boards and gathered their ideas for what to show us. In meeting with Dennis Day, they really went into depth with their trend research and which styles had been best sellers for other companies, suggesting subtle changes such as a different fabric or sleeve cut in order to make it suitable for the Lily Ella brand. Our meetings with Adajio and Apparel and Co were pretty similar with both teams showing us a range of fabric swatches and a couple of their most popular styles. They were both enthusiastic about their tweed and herringbone ranges which are always good sellers in the cold seasons. Our final meeting was with David Barry, an outerwear supplier who showed us what seemed like hundreds of coat styles in different colours to determine which might go into our collection. I enjoyed being a part of these meetings as I got to voice my opinion about what could be part of the AW20 collection. It also showed me another part of the industry that I had not previously experienced. For the rest of the week, I compiled all of the photos from the comp shop and took pictures of the bought samples and put them on design sheets I created boards for each supplier with the images I had taken to create a visual document from what each had to offer. As well as this, I continued my daily routine of answering the phones and updating the socials.

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Week 9:

This week was the Christmas catalogue mailing which meant that the phones were busy again with lots of new orders of the new product. This also meant that I was busy helping the warehouse team to send out the orders on time and make sure they didn’t fall behind with returns. I had to update the Facebook shop again with the new items and input all the information. I also had to unpack the whole collection from the photoshoot trunk and hang everything in the office again to be used for daily tasks and references. I also had to create a spreadsheet of all the accessories used in the shoot to determine which ones need ordering for the catalogue and which need to be returned to suppliers. I had a meeting with my line manager and merchandiser about Lily Ella’s AW19 best sellers and new garment styles to introduce in AW20. This helped me to understand which styles are the best sellers and are repeated across seasons. From the photoshoot images, I had to begin selecting which shots would be used on the website. Ensuring that the garment is fully visible on each angle (front, back, and side view). I then had to send my selections to Schawk, the media production agency that will repro the images so that the colour is representative of the garments. During this week I also had to finalise all of my mood, colour, trend and print boards and emailed them out to suppliers ahead of meetings we will have within the next couple of weeks. This gives them an idea of what kind of styles and fabrics will be in the AW20 collection.

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Week 8:

At the start of this week, I created some social media banner posts in preparation for the Christmas catalogue launch next week. I also had to make sure that the photoshoot layout sheets were finalised and all the information on them was accurate to ensure a smooth running at the shoot, then print them out to be handed to each person. I then participated in a 4-day photoshoot in York for the SS20 collection.  My role, in general, was to just help everyone out in particular, the stylist. I felt that I got a real insight into the way a stylist operates and it was a completely different experience to anything I had done before so overall I really enjoyed my time on the shoot and thrived. I would be helping with simple tasks like steaming the garments and passing different accessories to be used on the looks but still essential to the shoot working overall. On the second day of the shoot, we had a location day in the centre of York. Tensions within the team were quite high as the location house was quite a tight space for all of the team and our street permit to photograph the streets did not cover surrounding areas of the York Minster where we were originally working. This resulted in the location day being cut short after lunch and returning to the studio to continue the shoot and get the rest of the images done to meet the deadline. The photoshoot so far has been my favourite task as it was something I’ve never done before and it was a positive team of people to work with.

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Week 7:

At the beginning of the week, we had a delivery of photo samples for the SS20 collection which meant that I could update the imagery on the shoot layouts to make them clearer and easy to follow. I continued to create posts for social media and helped out in the warehouse with processing and repackaging returns as these had built up quite a considerable amount over the past week.

I also had to continue working on my boards for AW20 and added some trend boards as another visual guidance for my ideas. In preparation for the Christmas launch, I had to draw some more images for the ‘About Us’ page of the website and took close up photos of some of the garment detail to accompany it on the page.

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Week 6:

During this week, the customer calls seemed to be more difficult than usual. There has been a number of complaints due to missing dresses from the main supplier and overall more difficult calls than I had previously experienced which really helped me to understand different parts of the system which I had not previously used. I helped the garment technologist with comments for fit samples which had arrived for the SS20 collection and tensions were quite high that photo samples would not be ready in time for our SS20 photoshoot in a couple of weeks’ time. I also starting creating boards for fabric and print direction with images from trends online as well as samples sent from suppliers.

However, my main task was to complete all of the photoshoot layout sheets in preparation for the styling day to ensure that the stylist and art director had a clear view of each look and how it would appear in the catalogue. I thoroughly enjoyed the styling day, I gave my opinion to the stylist about shoes and accessories as well as my input about which looks worked together in unison. I felt very involved with the curation of the SS20 catalogue and how it was put together. After this, I updated all of the photoshoot layouts with the new information and made it clear to be printed and used as a guide on the shoot.

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Week 5:

This week, I started curating mood boards and colour boards from my research for AW20 to be sent to suppliers. I added imagery from online to boards to get a visual idea of print, shape, and style, compiling them into individual boards depending on the garment. For example, Dresses, Blouses and Skirts. My line manager gave me some guidance on the colours she wanted in some of the colour boards and asked me to use my own trend research to begin to create boards with different colours. I enjoy this aspect of the job as I liked to see all my research come into one place and create a visual of the ideas I had in my own head for the collection.

I began to input information onto the photoshoot layout sheets I started last week including imagery of the garments organised by page in the catalogue which my line manager had assigned. I organised the imagery on each page for the garments in each look and added copy to the bottom indicating the style names and numbers for reference. As usual, I continued to answer the phones and work on social media posting in between my other tasks this week and counted out swing tags which had to be sent out to suppliers to be attached to the SS20 clothing collection.

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Week 4:

I have kept up with the social media posts and tried to create an aesthetic Instagram feed for the brand to keep it on-trend. The winter catalogue was mailed out this week which meant that I created announcement posts online. The phones were also incredibly busy as the customers rushed to buy the new releases. I updated the Facebook shop with relevant information about products in the season including price and descriptions and continued with my research for the AW20 collection. I also helped the garment technologist to QC a delivery of dresses by measuring them to the spec and testing the seams and fastenings to ensure that they were up to the Lily Ella quality standard. I referenced Pantone colours with delivered fabrics and send approval to the suppliers for photo samples to be proceeded with in preparation for the SS20 photoshoot. I also began to create layout sheets for the photoshoot and plan out each page of the catalogue on InDesign.

My line manager and I completed a comparative shop in Newcastle City Centre looking at competitors' clothing and purchasing samples to be sketched up at the office. We took notes and photos of what inspired us and what seemed to be doing well for other brands, including colours and textures. Upon returning to the head office, I began to curate all of our competitors information together to add to my AW20 research and find images online from some of our favourite pieces.