Barneys Girl's Internship II

And here are a few more interesting tidbits that I've gathered about the fashion designing industry this month:

• It is NEVER just yellow. No. There are about a million shades of yellow, so much in fact that they don't even have a name, but a number instead! I'm really well acquainted with this, having spent hours trying to find a yellow that matches this piece of cloth and sorting through fabric trying to MAKE a colorbook!
• Designers have weird habits (like eating only banana and chocolate for snacks) and are extremely moody and temperamental people and are feared by the rest of the staff.
• Everyone in the industry are perfectionists, down to the type (wooden), direction (curved inwards) and way (facing inwards) the hanger is hung.
• Even though designers know thier stuff and can match seemingly mismatched clothes wonderfully, they do not neccessarily represent the height of fashion and style themselves. In fact, nor do the staff of the design develpoment team.
• Fashion stops in August when all the fashion houses and even fabric companies go on holiday for a month.
• Everyone working in the fashion industry (who counts) has made a dress from scratch at some point in their lives.
• French is a very useful language to know in this industry. I was so impressed when my department head and the Parisian designer started gibbering in french!!

All in all, as much as I love fashion, I don't think the fashion designing business of it is my forte afterall. And on a side note, I would like to express my new found respect for the working gals!Juggling work, fashion, family, friends, guys and beauty all at once is NOT easy. You go girls!

Barneys Girl's Internship I

Phew~ I'm back from a weekend of fun fun fun!! And now I can finally look back at my internship with fondness and fun. So I worked at the design development department of a local fashion brand, which also have stores across Asia and in Europe. In fact, I do believe they plan to be opening a counter at Harrods near Whistle's soo. So a really exciting place indeed!

And I've learnt SO much about the fashion designing industry too! Who'd have thought that making clothes is such a looooong and tiresome process??? The start of a season takes place a year ahead. Right now, fashion houses would be working on the fall/winter 06 collections, just when we're stepping into the FW 05 collections. And to keep ahead of time, there would be fashion "add ons" closer to the season to incorporate latest trends. So first, designers and their team go to fabric shows in Italy and France, like MODA IN and Premier Vision in September, to collect samples to be considered for their future collections. They then decide what fabrics they want to use and draw designs using them. These designs are then carefully considered and the selected few would go on to be made into "prototypes" (or the first version of the product), a few yards of that fabric would be ordered for this purpose. Once the prototypes are made, models then present it to the designers and future buyers. In these presentations, buyers would select items they would buy and how much they would buy. The clothes selected are then further developed by the designers through many, many rounds of fitting and adjusting (the prototypes are far from being perfect). And usually 3 more versions of the prototype would be needed before the final product is ready for mass production. And every little detail needs to be perfect, down to the size of the button!!

So yes. This really makes one appreciate the effort and vision (I would never be able to imagine the clothes a piece of fabric can be without seeing the clothes first) it takes to actually make all the clothes we see in the stores!