Summer 2012

This has been THE BUSIEST and MOST EXCITING summer of my life! (I normally hate summer). I’m still loving my internship, but it seems that they can't keep up with the rate at which I complete tasks. It's hard to keep me busy 8 hours out of the day because I just put my head down and work furiously until I've finished the work.What I have lacked though is the ability to really get in and get to know the people who work here, which is sad. (It doesn't help that some of them have been working here longer than I've been alive). After this week it'll be about one week until the end of this internship experience. I wouldn’t trade this for the world. I’m learning a lot about working for a large corporation as well as learning a lot about what I do like about the apparel industry and what I don’t like (trust me, the latter is almost more important).

A few weeks ago, I got to experience a trip outside of the physical walls of my internship to experience how the company inspires innovation. This company does this a lot and to see it happening at every level of the business is important. I think it’s great they are promoting getting to know people you don’t always work with. Cross pollination if you will; ideas to bloom.I was tasked, with my group, to explore the differences between how The Disney Store and Hot Topic react to big movie releases. I won’t go into too much detail about them, but I’ll leave the photos below so you can see for yourself how the retailers differ; note: Disney obviously owns the licenses to its movies whereas Hot Topic does not.

Aside from the work I’m doing at the internship (which is 8 hours and over 2 hours of travel a day) I’m working on my senior thesis; working title: Gaps in the menswear market. I am not too far into the research which if fine since a bulk of the research doesn't need to be done until closer to September.In the meantime, I’m trying to practice my illustration skills. I’ve taken time to draw a least once a day so that I can start developing my own style as well as work on perfecting and fine tuning poses, proportions, body parts.

I’m also in the works of designing a new duffel bag to carry my books in. I found two fabrics I liked for the bag so I decided to make two of the same pattern.The reason I want two is because one is going to be white, and as we all know, white fabric gets dirty quickly. At the moment I have a Polo bag that I’m in love with, but it’s not meant to be a transport for books and I need something a little bigger. I love the shape of the bag but I need something with a bit more space in the bottom. I have already purchased the fabric, the straps and the buckles. I need to shop for some more trims for the bag because I want the bag to look like a million bucks (although I won't be spending a million bucks.