Rachel Riley Placement: First day...

I started my first day of a 4 week placement at Rachel Riley today; a company who specialise in Infants, Girls and boys wear, but also have a women’s wear range. Rachel Riley’s design philosophy is a traditional vintage inspired style, taken from her country routes with a handcrafted finish.

 ...I arrived at just before 10.30am at 82 Marylebone Highstreet, in which is one of their two stores in London (the other is on Pont Street in fashionable Knightsbridge and they also have a flagship store in New York on Madison Avenue!) The shop is beautifully laid out with the shoe range displayed delicately in central cabinets and wooden hanging areas neatly showing the collection. What I find wonderful about this shop is that a lot of the ‘behind the scenes’ process happens in the basement below, which is where I shall be working for the next month!

I'm working alongside Rachel Riley's Design Assistant Joanne... When I arrived Jo explained the different types of projects we would be working on over the next four weeks and it sounds like I'll get a real insight into the company and have some interesting tasks which I'm very excited about! My first task today was to sort through rails of garments checking them off on a style list sheet, then using this information I input the data into a Carnet form. This is because Rachel is going to New York in 2 weeks for a Trade Show and this is part of the process for flying the range out there. It was really inspirational working my way through the rails, the clothes are so beautiful and have the most incredible detailing!Jo also told me that they have started designing there own fabric prints and she showed me some of the swatches and I saw some of these brought to life on the garments they are so adorable and really unusual!

 After lunch I was sent on a errand to John Lewis with a skirt to match each colour of wool on the embroidery and purchase a sample of each. In the artificial lighting it was quite challenging to be certain the match was close enough but when I returned Joanne seemed pleased and said she would calculate what we needed of each and I could go and bulk buy them tomorrow. So that was relieving as I still hadn't quite got over the first day nerves :)

All in all I think this work placement is going to be extremely insightful and inspirational...