Look Magazine: Get Down With Denim

Updated CV | January 2018

Now that everything has fallen back into place after leaving Forever Unique, I've found that my CV is outdated once again! I've redesigned it to better suit all of the experience that I now have at so many different companies. By creating a timeline, I can more easily add on each new opportunity that comes my way and remove any that aren't as relevant any more. I've adjusted my Skills category so that it stands out more and makes much more of a confident and impressive statement about myself. I've also included the line 'references available on request' because now that I have made so many new connections and (hopefully) impressed some influential people in the industry, a reference may make the difference between me getting a job or not! I'd like to develop my Interests & Achievements category a bit more as I do worry that I've made some quite cliché choices, but overall I am extremely happy with my final CV.

Look Magazine: Week Three - Feature Shoot Assisting

Monday was a very busy day spent on my own, without the other interns. I mainly spent the day liaising with PRs about a lot of urgent call-backs but this was problematic because the majority of the samples were out on a shoot with Sarah Barlow or being held for a shoot with Lucie Clifford who was away from the office and uncontactable. This required an excellent level of communication and a good memory in order to keep track of what would need to be returned urgently when the samples arrived back from the shoot the next day. I booked a number of vans using the company's outsourced courier service and felt really confident with the process. I also arranged Sarah Harrison's appointments for an upcoming shoot which is a fun task as it means reaching out to more senior members of a lot of brand's PR teams but is quite complicated as it means rearranging time slots so that Sarah can go to every showroom she needs. Today I was asked about joining the Fashion News Desk for my final week to do some different tasks including researching and writing, which is an exciting prospect as this is an area of experience which I am still lacking in but would most like to explore.

Tuesday was as equally busy as Monday, with the added pressure of writing my credits in preparation for Wednesday's shoot and packing up the samples ready to go. I had to pack the samples up in a logical way so that it was made easier on the shoot day when I would need to organise and steam them. The couriers came to collect the samples much earlier than anticipated so we had a bit of a mad rush to try and gather everything up, which made the process much more stressful that I would have preferred!

On the day of the shoot, it was my responsibility to get the samples ready, dress the model, make tea and coffee and generally be on hand for whatever I was needed for. I feel like I made such a good impression with Lucie, the stylist, and I'm happy that I've taken a lot away from today's shoot experience.

Thursday went by so quickly! The tasks in the fashion cupboard are always so repetitive and simplistic which means the days just seem to disappear. I reorganised the beauty cupboard again as it had already got so messy and chaotic since it was last organised a couple of weeks ago. A really cool press release came today from Benefit about the release of a new pioneering and revolutionary product. It was essentially a digital countdown clock, ticking down to the product's release date on 1st February at 8pm and there wasn't much more information about it other than that which only makes me more excited to see what it is. I've loved getting to handle lots of different beauty press releases in the last few months and gaining more of an insight into the process of how beauty pages in a magazine come together.

Friday was another very repetitive day, where myself and the other intern here made about 50 returns but didn't do much else!

Look Magazine: Week Two - Perks of the Job

I got started in my second week of interning at Look Magazine by completing overhauling the (lack of) organisation in the beauty cupboard! Myself and the other two interns currently here colour-coded new beauty stock by the month of its release, referring to their corresponding press releases. We then categorised these products based on their purpose and once we were done, the beauty cupboard was a much neater and more functional space! It's been really enlightening to understand the sheer volume of products that are gifted and loaned to magazine publications - so much so that the Beauty Editor actually can't really keep up with the pace herself! Really excitingly, Benefit were visiting the offices today for a press event regarding the launch of their newly released Porefessional Pearl Illuminating Primer. I got my hands on a free sample, chatted with PRs and ate free pizza for lunch!

The next day I was tasked with one of the most exciting projects of placement year so far - a small request to write a few sentences about my favourite beauty product from a few different categories like a moisturising foundation, a spot-targeting face mask and a false-lash effect mascara. I had to submit a headshot and my Instagram handle which is so cool; I love the idea of gaining some exposure from the feature once its been published, and at the very least having some recognition for my contribution! We received a large amount of samples to record in dockets and organise onto the stylist's rails on Tuesday so a lot of the day was spent completing this. I also arranged a bike courier to collect some samples from the loading bay of Miss Selfridge, where one of the stylist's had had an appointment the previous day. This isn't always the easiest task as the company that Look outsources its couriering service are a bit difficult to communicate with and seem to be very temperamental! 

Wednesday was a very busy day despite being able to split the tasks between the three of us. After receiving a lot of samples for upcoming shoots on the previous day, today was more focussed on returning the samples that the stylists had since decided they definitely didn't want to include. The day also involved chasing up PRs on behalf of the stylists for samples that had not been delivered yet to ensure that they would be delivered on time. As well as that, I assisted some more on the Beauty Team by putting together some bags of the  newest beauty releases into specific categories. This meant that upcoming features have already been prepped so that the Beauty Editors don't need to spend time laboriously picking out products as we have already chosen the full selection of whats on offer for them to pick and choose from.

Thursday was a day of yet more freebies - a definite common perk of the job! I assisted the Lifestyle Editor by organising the backlog of books from her desk space, similar to the prices of organising the Beauty cupboard earlier in the week. After sorting the books and their corresponding press releases into month order, we had first pick of any books released pre-January to take home with us for free. It's lovely to experience gestures like this in the workplace, especially when I'm not being paid for my time and efforts.

The final day of the week was quite uneventful and largely concerned processing a large amount of returns from samples which had been called-in for a large main fashion shoot but would no longer be required for the feature. I've been finding the placement quite frustrating at times as now that one intern has left, myself and the remaining intern have some quite big personality differences and don't necessarily work well together. I'm working hard to overcome this by remaining as patient as I possibly can. Interning definitely presents some challenges when it comes to sharing a workspace and it can be made all the more difficult by working alongside people that don't share the same work-ethic or level of experience as you!

Look Magazine: Week One - Back to the Fashion Cupboard

After a month off where I enjoyed Christmas festivities, applied to new placements and attended a couple of interviews since leaving Forever Unique, I've found myself starting a new one-month long placement with LOOK Magazine. After reflecting a lot throughout December about the kind of placement I want to do next and thinking about reasons why Forever Unique ultimately wasn't fulfilling enough for me, I've realised that I'm actually really drawn to roles involving direct contact with the media and I'm pretty sure this is the path that I'd like my career to take. 

On Monday I began to get to grips with the returns system at LOOK and was surprised to see how much it differed compared with Fabulous. At Fabulous the samples in the fashion cupboard were piled high on the floor, in boxes, on shelves and lined up along the corridor. I didn't see the floor for the majority of the time there and everyday was quite a challenge trying to find samples which urgently needed to be returned to their PRs. Here at Look, it's a lot different; as soon as samples have been featured on a shoot they are returned, meaning that they don't get lost in the mess of other samples over time. The samples are also recorded when being received and sent out by Look which is really helpful as it provides us with a full record of the samples' journeys and gives us proof of postage when things inevitably do go missing every now and then! I was thrilled to find out that I was going along to a shoot with Lucie Clifford the next day so it was my responsibility to ensure that samples were packed up into the suitcases, that a courier had been arranged to collect and deliver the suitcases for a return journey and that I had a good idea of the complete outfits that Lucie wanted to style up so that I could lay them out in the correct order on the morning of the shoot.

The shoot was located in Street Studios, Shoreditch which is an area I love for its youth and creativity. Throughout the day I was on hand to assist Lucie and the rest of the shoot team with absolutely anything they needed - such as shining an LED light on the models legs while the make-up artist, Aimee, brushed them with foundation or doing a bit of dog-sitting for Lucie's gorgeous sausage dog who also spent the day at the shoot! I was happy to work with Aimee again, having worked with her on a shoot at Fabulous with Tracey Lea Sayer just last year! She didn't remember me but it was satisfying to establish another good connection! I also made copious amounts of tea and coffee - and got lots of compliments on my tea-making abilities! I was chuffed with this since I don't drink tea and always worry that I'm actually not very good at it. My main priority during the shoot was to record the brands of the samples used in each look in order to write up the credits the next day. The most important element of this task was staying alert at all times - which is easier said than done when there's a million things going on at once - so that I was always aware of any last minute changes made to the looks in order to record them in my notes.

On Wednesday I tackled the credits by referring to my notes in order to get in touch with PRs (using Fashion Monitor for their contact details) to enquire about the prices of the various samples. This was a lengthy process which was drawn out over the entire day as a lot of the PRs asked to see images of the specific samples in order to provide me with the correct prices. The prices also included the stylist's full name, plus the photographer, hair and make-up artists and model's names. It was also my responsibility at the end of the shoot to confirm with the rest of the shoot team whether they would like to be credited under a pseudonym name or with a particular brand. For example, the photographer - named Shukeel - had been instructed by his agency to be credited under the name Gary Wright using Fudge Professional haircare. Writing up credits isn't a new task to me as I had a bit of experience with it at Fabulous, which I was quite thankful for!

The next day was a day of mostly mundane tasks, made challenging in some ways and advantageous in others by the fact that I was working alongside another intern with about the same level of experience as me. It was difficult at times to figure out the best way to work alongside each other while having to share one computer and one set of emails but it was great, however, to have an extra pair of hands to halve all of the tasks and someone to talk with through some of the less exciting jobs! I was also instructed by another of the stylists, Sarah Barlow, to book her a few days of showroom appointments ahead of her upcoming main fashion shoot. I'd never carried out a task like this before so was a bit unsure about the wording of my emails to the various PRs but I managed to successfully book each appointment and rearrange those that didn't fit with her schedule and availability. Liaising with PRs is such an interesting process because names start to become so much more familiar and connections start to be made that could definitely come in handy in the future.

On Friday I spent the day on my own without the company of any other interns, but I enjoyed being able to get on with all of the tasks and having personal use of the computer and access to emails. I aced the returns process by fully getting to grips with the LOOK mag process of ticking off samples on their particular docket and marking them with the day's date so that there was a clear journey of their delivery to LOOK to their departure. I was also asked by another stylist, Lydia, to bare in mind that she had an upcoming Valentine's Day shoot and to keep to one side any samples coming through the Fashion Cupboard that fit her brief for pale/pink/white/pastel items. At 4:30pm I was told that I could go home early, which was a welcome treat at the end of the working week! The company culture at LOOK mag is so refreshing having just come from a company with such a low staff morale. I can't wait to get back next week to tackle another 5 days of life in the Fashion Cupboard.