Fashion U. Insider

From London with Love

Over 3,400 miles, an 8 hour flight and a movie or three later and I found myself in the place that I had always dreamed of visiting, living and working…and now I’m doing all three. How lucky am I?!

My name is Michelle and I am an International Marketing Masters student from London who has managed to score an Event Marketing internship at TEEN VOGUE. Now you can imagine how excited I was when I heard the news:  1) I’m going to New York, 2) I’m interning at TEEN VOGUE and 3) I’m interning at TEEN VOGUE!!! Even in London, I would read the magazine and visit the website to get the latest news on fashion, trends and the celebrities of the moment, so this is such a great opportunity to see what goes on behind the scenes.

Where did it all begin? I have always surrounded myself with fashion one way or another from reading magazines and blogs, designing my own clothes and having them made to attending the many fashion events that London is so popular for. My first taste of actually working in fashion was when I volunteered at a magazine during my first year of college and reported on the Clothes Show Live. This is a major annual fashion event held in the UK where there are six days of fashion shows, music performances and presentations by beauty brands and emerging designers. I absolutely loved working in such an artistic environment and knew that the creative industry was where I wanted to be.

Since then, I have worked in marketing roles in a variety of areas such as television, radio and even the public sector! I know what you’re thinking, how does working with government clients help when working at TEEN VOGUE? I even asked myself that question and the answer is two words: transferable skills. Marketing involves being creative, coming up with new and fresh ideas, keeping the brand consistent and interacting with consumers. Having knowledge and skills in these areas means that you can be useful whatever the sector you’re in and I am happy that I have been able to transfer them to the field of fashion, something that I am passionate about. So my advice to you is that if you’ve started down a particular career path but you really want to work in fashion, it’s not too late; it’s NEVER too late. Think about the skills that you possess and how they could work in another field. Maybe it’s even activities and interests you pursue in your spare time. A key message at this year’s Fashion University program was that there is never just one route to a fashion career, everybody’s journey is different. Also, fashion is not only about designers and models; Fashion U. illustrated the variety of possible careers available, you just have to do a little investigating to see where you fit in.

 

That’s it for now, but I promise to keep you all updated with my time in New York and especially at TEEN VOGUE. If you have any questions, please post them on the TEEN VOGUE Fashion U. Facebook fan page and we’ll be sure to answer them!

3:11 PM | November 19, 2010 | permalink | Comments (0) |

What were your favorite Fashion U. moments?!

So, ok, yes, sometimes being a TEEN VOGUE intern means dashing out with a Starbucks order, but when the person you are ordering for is Zac Posen, you tend not to care.

Other times, being a TEEN VOGUE intern means having the privilege of working Fashion University, which, as the 500 fabulously dressed attendees will attest to, was a weekend of wonder.

At the exclusive shopping events at Juicy Couture and H&M, the TEEN VOGUE staffers and I joked about how much fun it was to simply watch what the students were picking up and purchasing—for whose taste better to follow than the designers, stylists and fashion editors of the future? If you ask me, as the onlooker, the students were just as inspirational as the speakers. I envied not just their fashion sense, but their confidence in Q&A with the likes of Anna Wintour and Vera Wang.

When the editors of the magazine offered to give up their lunch hour to do a signing and meet-and-greet with the students, the amount of dedicated attendees willing to skip lunch in order to converse with Amy Astley and Co. was overwhelming! A line filed around the room and, as much as we tried to encourage the “one question only” policy so everyone could get a chance to meet them, the depth of conversation between TEEN VOGUE editors and Fashion U. students was remarkable to watch.

I was amazed by the self-understanding of the Fashion U. fashionistas as they opened up to designers about what they hoped to do and design, shared their own body insecurities with supermodels Stacey McKenzie and Ali Michael, and proved their dedication to the magazine and the designers with their knowledgeable questions.

My personal highlights of the weekend? Packing up and personally handing birthday cake to Zac Posen is up there, along with handling the mannequins wearing the actual costumes from Wicked!, a musical I have a bit of an obsession with. What were your favorite moments? What made Fashion U. fantastic for you?

8:11 AM | November 1, 2010 | permalink | Comments (4) |

Fashion’s Night Out

What’s not to love about September, fashionably speaking?

Fashion Week arrives with a flurry of wonders from superstar artists like Richard Chai, Prabal Gurung, Zac Posen, and Charlotte Ronson (all also presenting at Fashion U, of course!) And afterwards, we fashion lovers look online and read the reviews and browse the pictures and swoon over the looks we covet. The looks we put on our wish list and start saving up for, understanding that they won’t be available for many months to come.

But this year, Fashion Week featured a special presentation of the most amazing looks on the racks RIGHT NOW. Anna Wintour’s brainchild, Fashion’s Night Out, kicked off with a fabulous show of 250 models wearing the best of the current collections. The seemingly never-ending parade of models filed around Lincoln Center in the largest catwalk New York has ever seen.

A grand entrance at its very finest, a double decker bus of supermodels pulled up Columbus Avenue, and the famous faces piled off glamorizing the Fashion’s Night Out specially designed t-shirts. Check out the video below to see for yourself how magical this moment was in fashion history.

Fashion’s Night Out, the annual event just in its second year, took place September 10 and was executed in over 50 US cities and 16 countries. For this one night only, more than 1000 stores stayed open late to feature celebrity appearances and special events and performances. The fun and the famous made the night a phenomenon in the industry: a karaoke contest with the Olsen twins, a Shake Shack BBQ with Tory Burch, and a poker tournament won by Kate Walsh at Valentino, to mention just a few of the spectacles of that September night.

It’s an event like no other, inspired by Nuit Blanche, the White Night of Paris—an annual all night art festival when museums and galleries open themselves to the public free of charge, with performances and special installations in a celebration of the city’s culture. And so New York City tackled our own celebration of art, the art we wear, designed by the artists we can’t wait to meet—and that opportunity, of course, is what Fashion U allows us!

Fashion’s Night Out is an exciting endeavor to spark city shopping, turning it into a nightlife outing of its own. And let’s be honest, when the night includes such sensations as Nicole Richie singing Spice Girls in Bergdorfs and a rocker chic flash mob in the Juicy store, who wouldn’t want to be a part of it?

8:09 AM | September 27, 2010 | permalink | Comments (0) |

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