Weekly Fashion Buy

This season its ALL about the jacket. In particular blazers(esp slouchy ones), trophy jackets and shoulders!! So it was super hard this week to choose what type of jacket to put on here!

Topshop in particular have came up trumps as always with a wide variety of on trend and wearable jackets. Check out the website for their sequin blazers (sequins are also bang on trend) and cute trophy jackets among others.

In the end I chose this grey, slouchy blazer thinking that the style and shape are very on trend at the moment and how versatile it is. Wear it in the day with leggings and skinnies or by night to add a casual quirky twist to that little party dress!! Perfecto!!

Premium slouchy blazer £65 at Topshop!

BHS Evaluation

I think this has been a really worthwhile experience to do. I t was alot of hard work but it made me realise how stressful and demanding it would be to work as a buyer.
It was definitely beneficial to see it in practise and interesting to learn about all the different tasks involved.
Befoe I did either of these two work placements (bhs and women&home), I really didn't know whether I wanted to be a buyer or a stylist, but one of the main things I realised was that I prefered styling/working at a magazine. I think it has something to do with the factthat they gave me more independance at Women and Home to ust get on with all the little jobs etc, and also partly because it's slightly more creative in a way then buying.
However if it wasn't possible for me to get a job in styling I would definitely consider going into buying still as a career. I feel it would be more satisfactory if I was in an actual position as a buyer therefore having more independance and not doing all the mundane boring jobs (which i realised i was doing at BHS)
Also if i worked as a buyer somewhere I was particularly interested int he clothes e.g. river island/asos it would be more apealing to me.

Anyway, Im extremely pleased that I had both these experiences and had the contacts to get them for me. Definitely worthwhile and mostly enjoyable!

Day 10 in the fashion World BHS

So my final day today. I have to say I'm looking forward to the lie ins.
It was quite an undemanding day today luckily.
First off was taking some pictures of more competitors samples, saving onto the computer and printing off for Santosh.

Stapling Cads to boards.
Printing Cads out for Laura and cutting out.

Finaly helping Santosh get ready for a meeting next week by pulling out loads and loads of samples and racking them up for her in the right month, age and gender with the apropriate board underneath each rack.

I got to go early today but just before I went Santosh called me over in front of all the team to say thankyou and give me a huge bag of clothes samples, and a topshop voucher to say thankyou!!!So now shopping time!!!!

Day 9 in the fashion world BHS

It was more Xcell spreadsheets this morning. Checking that for all the different styles contracts had been drawn up between BHS and the company who design the garments. Contracts are normally drawn up by the merchandisers. Normally they are meant to be kept on up to date however with alot of new members of staff recently joining the team it's fallen behind abit. So i just had to go through ckeck which ones there were contracts for and then highlight any ones which did not have them so that Denise knew these had to be done.

The main part of my day was helping Jess and Fatos with the essentials stuff.
Jess asked me to throw out all the a/w o8 samples from the cupboard(which i did) and to then move all the s/s 09 samples from one cupboard into the one i just cleared.
So i'd done all this like Jess asked me to when Fatos came up and decided that she wanted all the s/s stuff back in the original cupboard so all the a/w09 stuff could go where I'd just moved the s/s stuff to!!!AGH!
So had to move it all back to where it had originally been!!!(hope this makes sense)

By now i was preety hungry, so popped out for a bite to eat before comming back to an afternoon of moving all the a/w09 essentials into the cupboard from the racks. Sorting it into boxes of BTS girls/boys, underwear girls/boys, Hosiery girls/boys and hosiery baby.

I suppose it was worth doing as the cupboard is all nice and organised now thanks to moi!!

Last task of the afternoon=sooooo much fun!! I got to use the till!eeeek i loved it!
To make sure that the barcodes match what is written on the line details as the correct selling price, everything has to be scanned in and price on till compared to the line detail.
So downstairs I went with my box of underwear to scan everything in, note down the prices and compare ont he line detail back upstairs.
Luckily everything had been done correctly.

Day 8 in the fashion world BHS

First off I had to redo the may photo as it was slightly blurry. Then Santos wanted me to photograph what we had fromt he August September goldseals anyway.

After this i was just helping Emma to chuck out even more samples, and got to take some home for a little girl I know.(apparently Pepper Pig is what you should be seen in when your 4 years old!)
Santosh needed loads of large copies of the CADS printed off to go on her boards which meant lots of runing up and down the stairs to the colour printer. I then helped her place these on the boards, and typed up some titles for her to go with them.

The only other thing left to do was to help Fatos with her underwear boards. She just needed to present the BTS (back to school) packaging for hosiery and underwear, and just needed a bit of help laying it out.

Oh and saw THE cutest grey and pink all in one pyjama today!Deff be getting that when it hits the stores next season!!

Day 7 in the fashion world BHS

Obviously there are loads and loads and loads of garments comming in for every season and so Santosh needs to know which month all the garments went into the shops, and the easiest way to do this is to photograph them with a sign.
Soooo i was given a list by emma with the style number of all the garments on for May june and July which I had to pull out the goldseals of all these pyjamas, grid them up, put the right month sign with them and then photograph them. These were then uploaded onto a computer file ready for Santosh when she needs them.
Not all the August and September goldseals have come in or been approved yet, so for the time being i just found the ones which were available and racked them up ready to be photographed.

Bhs does alot of liscensed character pyjamas so they create a grid on Xcell with the year (at the moment its 2009/10) with infomation about the character e.g. Doctor Who andf then film realease, tv release, dvds, books, characters . This info is normally found in character fact sheets that the design company sends over.
I think the main reason for this is just to know when would be the best time to release a certain character pyjama, when there's going to be the most publicity for it and therefore going to sell best.

Finaly I had to find my way down to the "secret cupboard" and find the fancy dress outfits which needed sending back to one of the companies. I'm sure when i was younger the dressing up outfits weren't as cool as this. Now you can get super cute pumpkin ones and actual donkeys with the head on them and everything!!!

Day 6 in the fashion world BHS

Now that I've got my diary back with all my notes in (i left it in the office!) I can finish writing my BHS adventure on here.
Well my main tasks all day today were xcell spreadsheets.
To keep on top of the competition Bhs keep a record on xcell of the other shops items and prices. Some one from the buying team will go round the main shops e.g. Marks and Spencer, Asda, Tesco, Adams etc with a notepad and note down the prices and products that are available in the shops. At the moment Back to school is a main part of their products so I had to fill in the products from the shops and the prices that they are selling them at.
Beacuse alot of products are in packs e.g. a 3pack plain vest set., you have to divide the pack price by the number of items in the pack to find out the final price. This is because M & S may to a 5 pack plain vest but BHS may do a 3 pack version so you need to now the individual price to compare properly.
Once this is all recorded the cheapest price on each type of product is highlighted.


My next Xcell task was for Fatos. She needed me to go through the folder fall of underwear CADS and tick them off on the line details.
This was so she knew which ones were missing and needed to be printed off.

Apart from this which took most of the day, I had a few little errands to run such as finishing off the colour charts, and running things to the postroom.

Weekly Fashion Buy

This week im loving this cute seqiun parrot jumper.It's by Markus Lupfer at Topshop and costs £85.

Perfect for those chilly winter days!

Day 5 in the fashion world BHS

Today was really interesting. I got to go to a fit meeting that Laura and Delia were having.

In this they have a model whos the size of a 13 year old(even though shes in her 20s!). She tries on the samples so that Laura can see the fit and colours of them and decide what she wants to change if anything.

There were a pair of smiley face pyjamas where the factory had made the hodded top and the trousers in slightly different shades of blue. When the two items were worn together the difference was abvious even though it was only a shade between them.

Unfortunatly a whole roll of the top fabric had been made so that couldn't be changed because of the cost factor, and this happened to be the material that Laura had wanted to change. In the end she had to decide to change the colour of the bottoms as only a sample of this fabric had been made, therefore easier to change!!



On a snooopy shorts and tshirt set, it was decided that a thicker waistband would look better(thicker waistbands look more modern now), the zig zag stitching down the side of the shorts and top were made longer so that it would stand out more, and a little bit of material was put into the mid hips on the shorts so that they were looser.



When the model had the garments on both laura and delia would ask her how they felt to wear, were they comfortable, did the underwiring stick in in the case of the bra?



With the bra they had both plastic and metal wires. I think the plastic were cheaper so it had been propsed that this is what was used in the bra, and infact the model agreed that the plastic was actualy comfier and would be better to use.



With the knickers both Laura and delia liked the fit of them but thought maybe to just bring them up a tiny bit at the back.



I think one if the main issues was a vest top pyjama set. It was white and had a huge smiley face print on the front of it. It also had a faux placket down the front as well, but was thoght that because it was a fake it made the garment look cheap. However it would be hard to put an actual placket in as a shelf was going into the top and you would have to get into the shelf to achieve this. This would then defeat the point of the shelf.



This is when Delia is really helpful as she knows the technical side to the garments as well and can therefore say whether something would be possible.

I got to have my say in this as well and we all said that having the placket breaks the print up therefore giving the design an edge and making it look older. However the placket didn't look that amazing.

In the end Laura decided she needed to see the top both with and without the placket.

The top with the placket was going to have the shelf made seperately, so that both parts could be put on.



A few garments needed the seams moving forward on the shoulders and an extra bit of fabric was going to be added on the turn up of a sleeve so that when stitched back it didnt stick out.





It was great getting to see all this, how they come to the design descisions and the factors involved in it.



This took up the morning. I also had to throw out loads of samples that weren't needed anymore ready for the sample sales.



Produce colour charts for Fatosh



Take photos of other competitions packaging, it was marks and spencer today.

Bigging up Barbie

Check out these super cute pauls Boutique loves Barbie bags. They're part of the celebrations for Barbie's 50th anniversary. My fave is probably the zebra print one.

Available at asos.com, this is only a selection of the bags available. They are abit out of my poor student price range at £80 each so i may just have to lust after them for now!(until my loan comes through!)

Style bubble

Ive just discovered this fashion blog through elle magazine and its amazing.
Created by susanaa lau aka susie bubble she basically just blogs about all up and comming fashion things, great for keeping updated on what's going on out there.
http://stylebubble.typepad.com/style_bubble/

Weekly Fashion Buy

I am sooo in love with anna lou of london at the mo! She's an accessories designer doing loads of super cute and sparkly plasctic jewllery like slogan necklaces with billionaire or lady on them and lots of lil cartoon pendants.

This plastic fantastic hair clip is my fave this week. Super cute and only £15!!

Fashion Disaster

I would like to take the time to remind everyone that tights and sandals is stupid, tights and between the toe flip flops is even worse!!Especially the german girl on the tube today wearing silver/grey tights with her flip flops!!
I dont care if you've just bought said flip flops in accessorize, you look like a wierdo!!

The Capsac

Hmm not too sure about this new fashion item!A bumbag in a hat?Kinda like it, looks kinda cute but I dont really see how its going to be any more useful then a normal hat and tbh I think it'l just make you look big headed!

Some things are way to fashion 4 even me!!

Day 4 in the fashion world BHS

Remember yesterday i said i felt bad about not being to help emma out?well today i found out what she needed help with and wish i hadn't felt bad! Emma has loads of samples that she needs to sort out but everything is all ove rthe place and there's no room in the cupboards.

First off was chucking out all the 07 and s/s08 nightwear to make some room in the cupboard for the goldseal samples.

Day 3 in the fashion world BHS

I've been looking forward to today since this time last week when i found out my aunt was going to be in the office today. (She works for a company that designs for BHS and was in for a meeting) But i haven't seen her for about 4 yrs since i was 15!!!!So it was great to get to see her again even though it was only brief.
Then todays task was carrying on witht he CAD picture task from yesterday. I had to get out literally millions of these pictures in their colour coded groups. Well that took all morning, i was ment to be sharing it with mia but she had loads of urgent work to do so I had to do it on my own.
Anyway in the afternoon i had to lay them out on boards in paper squares depending on whether they were going to be in all stores, top stores or only selected stores. E.g. the more mainstream designs are in all stores because they're more comercial and are therefore going to sell well everywhere.
But all the squares i needed weren't printed out when i needed them so i had to wait for those, then we had been told to do all boys and girls on one board but it was really squashed so that was all moed and if that wasnt bad enough prints hadn't been printed off and then had seemed to of been coded wrong or mixed up.!!!!AGH!!!
Oh and of course it all had to be urgently done for a 10.00 meeting tomorrow and it was about 5.00 at this point.!

Plus Emma really needed me to help her but i couldnt beacuse i was needed to do these boards, so i felt realy bad about that!

Day 2 in the fashion world BHS

All morning was spent filing these samples that i started yesterday-took forever!
After this i was quite glad to go onto a less complicated task, doing colour sheets for one of the departments. They needed all the girls and boys s/s10 colours on a colour grid, which basically ment that I was cutting lil bits of the right colour fabrics out and sticking them to a grid.

For the underwear I also ahd to sort large Cad sheets, using an excell document with all their details on i had to search for the design style code, write that on the sheet, match it with any fabric samples that were there, and then file those away.

Quite an easy day today, my last task was just photocopying loads of CAD pics of the garments ready for cutting out and sticking on boards tomorrow.

Day in the fashion world 1 BHS

so today was my first day in the head office at BHS with the kidsnightwear and essential wear buyers!!
After a quick inductionfrom hr i was handed over to Santosh whos head of buying in this department. She quickly went through what they do as buyers, the brands which are at BHS: Tammy, Duck and Dodge, Sweet millie, bambini and introduced me to the team and the merchandising team.
I've already realised that this placement is going to be more hectic then my Women and Home one as i was given 4 completely different tasks in the first day with lots of multitasking-eek!!

Task 1: this was easy actualy.It was just labeling up the nightwear samples for different sections-fastest sellers,new reactions and slowest.

Task 2 :was going into the cupboard to find more samples matching up the style code on the sheet and the swing tag. These were needed for a meeting at 1.30, and even though they were ment to all be there, they seemed to be in different sections and over the department.
Anyways, once emma and i had found them they had to be hung up on the racks in season.

Task 3: sooooooooo boring!!! Basically loads of samples come in with the fabric, prints, colour samples etc and these are all filed into season, gender and supplier e.g. Aykroyds, fielding.
But of course loads had been taken out of the a/w folders and not put back in and s/s10 hadnt been even started.
So the rest of the day was preety much spent firstly filing the a/w back into the folders, then printing off labels for all the new samples, sticking them on folders and then putting the samples in.(you have to look at the style code to know where they go)
Sounds like im being a drama queen but it took forever because we ran out of folders so i had to swap other samples over and there were LOADS!Oh and i have to finish it tomorrow!The joys of being a work experience girl.

Task 3/4:i multitasked 3 with this one. The buying and merchandising team were having their weekly meeting on last weeks weaknesses and strengths so I got to sit in on this. Quite alot of it went over my head i have to admit but it was interesting to see how tghey worked together, what sort of styles were popular, and how they thought about what to spend the'r money on.
BTW i dont think mr men for older boys was a very good idea!

oh and finaly i had to help santosh sort dressing gowns into month gender and age ready for a meeting tomorrow.
Think i left the office at 5.30 and got home at 7!!!!im soooo exhausted!!think il just be a student for life!!!