The last 4 days at a fantastic placement!

On Tuesday I was set a brief  for the week by the Accessories designer as she was in despair over a fairy and quote her words "I might actually murder this fairy if I have to look at her anymore!!" It was for a new print to go on Spring/Summer 10 little girl's tins. She left the look and design of the fairies in my hands and gave me a file full of all the background prints I could use. I was so excited to get started and really wanted to make a good impression...

This is the original design that she wanted me to develop on...

I started by sketching the characters on paper and then scanned them so that I could work into them on Photoshop

I worked colour into the fairies and butterflies and these are the characters ready to start creating various tin designs...

This is one of my favourite designs from the selection I created. I asked for some feedback and the Accessories designer was really pleased and had spoken with her colleague who makes the final decisions and she loved the butterflies especially. They told me they are going to do some further tweaking but that I should definitely keep an eye out in march 2010 because my work may well be on some of their tins!! It felt brilliant to have actually been apart of the design process and that it may be used in their stores on real products... a bit surreal but I will most certainly be keeping my eyes peeled!

In between this brief Sian also got me doing 

a few spec sheets for her and also asked me to sketch this jacket for the designers reference, including all the detailing.

The last few hours on Friday I was able to look through all Monsoon's Children's wear trend forecasting books such as Peclers and photocopy anything that might help me in my final year. I also photographed some of their boards as inspiration for building a theme and collating my final collection...

Working at Monsoon was a highly valuable experience and has inspired me with ideas for approaching my own work. Whilst sat at my desk I had the perfect spot to be very observant of everything that was going on around me. It's a shame really that I was only able to do a week, but Sian said that they would love to have me back which is great :)

Monsoon Accessorize: Day 1

I had my first day at Monsoon today, it was like a different world after spending three weeks working in a very small basement underneath a shop... in fact I felt quite intimidated as I approached the dominant yellow building that houses the Monsoon Accessorize headquarters...

Waiting in reception I felt like the style of the building inside reminded me of The Devil Wears Prada; sleek, sophisticated and highly contemporary. Not at all what I was expecting for a mainstream high street chain, It was simply incredible I almost wanted to just disappear and discover the entire building!!

 I was collected by Sian who is an Assistant Designer for Children's wear and we went up to the 5th floor which houses both Children's wear and Women's wear. This is where I will be working for the next 5 days.

 I was introduced to the team of designers and then set about my first task which was to sort through all the old samples from the previous season and separate them into fabric for recycling and garments for the sample sale. Once I had finished clearing my way through the mountains of clothes, fabric, shoes and accessories and neatly boxed them up there was only a short time left. So Sian asked me to go through some old magazines and pull out any unusual and interesting images to go into their inspiration folder.

I have a positive vibe about this placement, I think it's going to be an inspiring week...

Week 4: I got ill :( but with all the bad comes BUBBLE!!!

Unfortunately I fell very ill and was unable to complete my final week at Rachel Riley which was really frustrating but I wanted to get better for my next placement. I didn't get to go in and say thank you or goodbye so I sent a card and some chocolates in the post.

In response I got a really lovely email from Jo today thanking me for the card and chocolates and for all my hard work; She said that the website would be up and running on Friday, so I will definitely be checking it out. Jo also kindly offered me the opportunity to come back at any point as they would have liked for me to have been more involved in the design side!!

Something I will certainly be looking to do is help Rachel Riley at Bubble London, which is one of the largest Childrenswear Trade Shows of which has a blog that I use as my key source for inspiration, revealing everything and anything fresh, exciting and taking off in a kids world!! Jo has said that if help them to set up and work on the stand I will have full access to the show which would just be incredible because as an individual I have no way of getting in. The opportunities to network here will be phenomenal and perfect timing for primary inspiration with it happening at the very beginning of January just in time for the beginning of my final major project...

Week 3...

This week I have been predominately working on the website trying to get everything perfect which has involved a lot of tweaking but it is finally really starting to come together. Also Rachel Riley had some new shoe designs come in so I have been working on adding these to the website ready for 'back to school'.