Speaking to my mentor Abbie Cook in person was such a good experience. She is so knowledgable and I feel she will bring a lot to my third year at UCC. We discussed a lot of information today in our meeting. I first went through my project with her and she gave me a lot of feedback and advice for it. Her advice was that I could push my prints a little more by adding flock and foil, and possibly get them printed again in a few different fabrics to see how they would come out. She thought my colour pallet was successful, and that I was on track, but to keep producing lots of toilet and experiments for each design. I need to keep using my sketchbook to constantly push and develop my ideas, and make sure I reflect and analyse continuously. As for my CV we also roughly discussed it but Abbie will send me her notes on it at a later date to look at and use to improve my current CV. Overall her first visit was very successful, and I feel we will get on well and she will be able to help me a lot this year.

I got invited by UCC attend the Quality Assurance Agency meeting. this invoked speaking to a panel about our course, and the university rules, regulations and support. I gained a lot of experience by attending this as I got to discuss the course and how I felt it was doing within a respectful and professional environment. I also felt a lot more involved in helping the University, which I feel proud to be a part of. I hope to be able to give my feedback more in the future as I feel it will help the University improve as well as enable me to gain more experience like this.

Having Merlyn come in to speak to us was very insightful as she has a lot of experience in the industry. She started her career at age 13 with a small business making circle skirts, when she got older she did a Foundation in Weave. She decided this wasn’t for her so pursued a degree at Brighton doing Textiles for Fashion. Whislt she was studying she interned for 3 months with M&S in Scotland, Informoda as a trend forecaster and in New York on a Weave placement. Once she graduated she worked for Terrence Conran Design group with trend and colour, and worked with companies such as BHS and Mothercare. The company then got sold to BHS where she stayed. She had a lot of power and got to attend Fashion Weeks first class, she merchandised new collections and worked with buyers to put the shops together. Once she left she opened her own dress agency in SpitalFields. The information she gave us was so insightful as she has had such vast experience and she gave us a lot of advice on CV and internships. I also spoke to her a little about my project and her son creates cardboard art, which was a good source of inspiration for the muscle textures in my work.

Before Uni

-Buyer in sports retail for roughly 10 years which progressed to Assistant Head of retail for 3 years.

Role- In charge of everything that related to the merchandise such as buying, managing suppliers, online orders, wholesale and marketing of products.

During Uni

-Bridal consultant 

-Vintage Company (Bestdays)

Role- Making/altering/customising clothes and some shop work

After Uni

-Paul Dennicci for 1 year- assistant garment technologist

Role-Accounts such as Harrods, Jojo Maman Bebe and George

Current

-Starting own sustainable clothing business

I recently got allocated my mentor and I am very pleased with mine. I knew a little bit about Abbie as she had been in third year when I was in first year, but I do not know much else apart from what I have seen of her work at university. I emailed Abbie and she got back to me very quickly.

I contacted Lavenham jackets in regard to getting some fabric from them for my collection. They were very helpful and enabled me to drive over and collection 4 roles of old quilted fabric they no longer needed. This exchange between myself and the company was very insightful as it helped me practise how to approach a company and arrange appointments with them.

Visiting Woolcrest, a large fabric warehouse in London that sells cheap fabrics was brilliant to start of the selection of fabrics in my collection. It gave me some great inspiration for my garment designs and I found some very alternative fabrics that I could use. It also enabled me to negotiate with the seller, and buy the relevant fabrics I needed.

We also visited Claudette Joseph who let us look around her studio in Colchester and spoke about the work she did. She is a Pattern Cutter for Womenswear and teacher of TR pattern cutting. She runs workshops at University’s and out of her studio. it was rally insightful seeing her studio and how she works and runs a small indepenedant business.

As part of my third year project I have decided to use old unused sails to create my collection with. I had to source some sails to start with so I contacted a few companies to see if they had any available. Wivenhoe Sailing Club got back to me and said they had some sails I could have. I visited them and a lovely gentleman gave me 4 huge sails. I offered to pay for them but he donated them to me free of charge. I feel I dealt with the situation very professionally as I would if I were contacting and meeting with a client in industry. Overall this experience was really helpful developing my confidence liaising with people and helpful to source a few sales ready for second semester.