Burberry: Day Five & Six

On my last two days with Burberry I was unable to concentrate on one area of the showroom, as it was all gradually coming together now. Day Five I began in menswear - folding clothes, tweaking rails, and arranged shirts and ties. Then in womens we had to make some big changes after Michelle had a walk through - this consisted of moving displays and changing outfits on mannequins.

I again spent some time in non-apparallel, merchandising shoes, luggage and mens accessories, I also was assigned a shoe touch point to merchandise. A couple members joined our VM team, and helped out on this section of the showroom.

I ended day five putting the finishing touches in menswear. Day Six was my final day - but it was still a busy one! I continued in the non-apparallel area - focsing on softs - both mens and womens and did more work on luggage. Though I was interupted when Angela entered the showroom - in a devil wears prada moment everyone panicked - they tidied their areas, themselves and looked busy!

Later I helped set up the kids area of the showroom, I dressed mannequins and made a baby display. After a long wait while Angela walked through the showroom - it turned out there were a lot of changes to make! Unfortunately this is where my time freelancing with Burberry ended, so I did not get to see the full completed showroom - but I imagine it looks incredible.

Burberry: Day Four

Day Four, and the plan was to get started on merchandising the shoes in the showroom, however there was not enough stock back from the photoshoots to get started on this. So instead I was doing odd jobs in the womens and mens sections. In womens I dressed mannequins, moved rails and fixturing, helped rearrange touch points and re-jig displays.

Where as in mens, I merchandised the Brit and Sportswear sections, I folded shirts in various ways and sizes! And again dressed and moved mannequins.

By the evening there was enough stock to get started on shoes! And three of us soon blitzed through the section.

Burberry: Day Three

Day three and me and the rest of the people in my team finalised the layout of the non-apparallel section of the showroom, after many many changes and move arounds!! We then moved onto luggage and mens accessories.

Chris was constantly around, he was working on the lookbook shoots and had a look at our vm work in non-apparallel. Hope he liked it!

Burberry: Day Two

Day Two, and I arrived with a pleasant surprise, a breakfast of pastries, sandwiches and danishes! Then it was straight into work with menswear and getting the products off the rails and onto fixtures. There was a delay getting the fixtures in place, so a group of us looked at past showroom set ups to get a feel for the look of the menswear area.

With the pace slowing down in this section, I went back to non-apparallel (accessories), where product was moved around and re-merchandised. This time getting to work alone - which means no compromising on displays.

This day was exciting as I saw Christopher Bailey! Firstly when I was walking around the showroom, I heard a voice looked over my shoulder and saw him! - I actually did a blatant double take and sure my jaw hit the ground! I need to learn to be more subtle! And at lunch, he was at the table right next to mine - I found myself in awe and struggled not to look at him! - Fortunately I got better over the next few days.

Burberry: Day One

From the 12th-17th November I did some freelance work with Burberry at their head office in their showroom. This was a fantastic opportunity for me, to work as a VM in a head office of such an enormous and prestigous desginer fashion brand, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. Not to mention the fact Burberry is my favourite designer fashion brand!

Day one I met everyone I would be working with for the week, which consisted of the london headoffice VM team, vm's from Milan, New York, other freelancers and a couple girls on placement. I was amazed by the size of the showroom there, it was larger than most stores! - Taking up the entire LG ground floor and half the ground floor.

To start off we worked in pairs in the non-apparallel section, which included handbag, wallets, and small accessories. We were assigned fixtures to merchandise, and could help ourselves to as many props as we liked, these being - nickel frames, wooden hands, stands and cubes. My partner and I played with several looks until we were happy with our display. We then merchandised some touch points and finally began on menswear.

As we worked below us photoshoots were taking place for the lookbook, and they were coming up with the key Autumn 11 looks. Walking past the reception was always a pleasure as 9 times out of 10 there would be at least one male Burberry model there!

.....I also got very excited when I heard Christopher Bailey was in the building!

*For obvious reasons no photos will follow these diary posts.

Tunbridge Wells Shop Watch

Walking to work every morning allows me to admire the shop windows of the lovely stores on Tunbridge Wells old highstreet - see below for some photos I have taken in the recent weeks:

The Big Reveal

Last weekend the display team and I at Hoopers prepared and finally unveiled the christmas windows we have been working so hard on. Joining once again with the English National Ballet we went with the Swan Lake story - and used the ballet productions costumes and props to create beautiful windows that tell the story of Swan Lake. From the birthday party scene at the beginning to the ball and of course the Lake scene itself. The whole day was quite an affair and attracted quite a crowd! Artifical snow fell over the snow, candyfloss and roasted chestnuts were handed out and Father Christmas even made an appearance!

The feedback so far from members of the public has been lovely, and its amazing how far people come from to see our christmas windows.








All own photos