With last week’s mood board and sustainability focus in mind Julinka set me the task of designing a conversational piece using a range of different alternative embellishment techniques. So I started working on an orange tree on a sweat background. This was quite a fun design to do as I decide to write it up the same way that Rachel does by drawing out the sample to scale on a large sheet of paper and then drawing everything to scale. This actually came a lot easier to me than the digital write ups did as I knew exactly what we would be getting back from the design, and it felt like it was coming to life right in front of me. We decided to go for some rafia embroidery for the oranges as a sustainable approach and using a mixture of appliqued fabric for the pot that the orange tree would sit in with some fabric florals within it. This all felt very fun and different to what I had designed before. I can’t say that conversational pieces are more forte but I definitely enjoyed giving it all a go!
Also this week we had an online zoom appointment with an American company. It ended up all going a bit haywire with timings and there was a bit of confusion with the time difference so it turned out that Julinka wouldn’t actually be in the office for the meeting itself. Instead of cancelling it though and rearranging she asked me if I would be able to run the sales meeting for her. Of course I said yes as I knew this was a very big opportunity and massive compliment that she trusted me with something like this. Julinka was there right at the start of the meeting to greet the company but then swiftly had to pass things on to me to run them through the collection. I tried to use what I had seen Julinka do when she was running her own sales meetings and maintain a conversation. Unfortunately, the company we were having the meeting with were quite blunt and to the point and not like the other fashion houses that I had engaged with before, so they weren’t in the chattiest of moods, this was a bit unfortunate as I feel it knocked my confidence a little, but nevertheless, I got through the meeting and managed to get a handful of pulls for the company despite their blunt nature.
This was a big milestone for me and I really felt how much trust was being put onto me within the company and to be honest I felt quite proud. It just would have been nice to have a more talkative and engaging client for my first time so that I could try and put my sales skills to the test. A great experience and memory non-the-less.