Soooo overall....

I still have 2 weeks left but so far I am really enjoying my time at French Connection and it isn't anything like how I thought it would be considering French Connection is classed as a high street shop. The work like high end designers however they are under more pressure and therefore especially towards the end of designing S/S 11 there are lots of things to do.

The designers seem to take inspiration from anything, there isn't a particular direction, which I found quite odd. They look at designer trends but different designs use different elements, however the collection looks very youthful as head designer Emma has the last say, and chooses more commercial looks rather than the design she likes the most, they also asked me a lot whether I would wear the designs.

I have learnt a lot about fabrics from listening and watching them choose particular fabrics to do particular jobs and also I have done a lot to do with prints which I have found really interesting.

In the time have been been working there a total of 8 designers have designed, chosen fabrics and artworks, fitted toiles and done spec sheets for everything and next week will e checking up on the factories in India, Hong Kong and Turkey, which just shows how fast they have worked.

When all the designers come back I will be helping to put outfits together for the show at the end of may and dressing the models. It will be so good to see everything that I have helped with!!

DAY 31 & 32

Both of these days were spent sewing the buttons on more garments, including shorts, skirts and shirts which hadn't been done at the factory. I had to neaten up the working drawings for all of the stylesin the collection as they had been scanned in from a hand drawing rather than on illustrator.

I also did a few more artwork placements for a style called georgie silk, Gemma voile and a vintage looking embroidery. All of them had to be finished by friday so Emma, the main designer, could take them and all the patterns to India when she arrives on Sunday.

Below are some of the patterns and artworks:

DAy 30

This morning was quite quiet, i finished some artwork for a leather dress which has decorative holes punched into it, then I did some emailing to factories.

In the afternoon I had to sew lots of buttons of jackets and coats which hadn't been sewn on by the factory.

DAY 29

I spent most of the day doing more artwork placements on garment patterns. One of them was an embellishment called 'Pick and Mix' and is really brightly coloured which I arranged as a motif on the front of a light pretty dress. Another one was called 'Gemma Voile' named after me! I had to arrange the floral embroidery on a thin white summery top, which I really want when it goes into the shops!

I helped one of the designers pack all of her stuff up to go to Hong Kong tonight, including all the designs and stationary she might need. I also sent out some emails to inform the factories of style changes, send more spec sheets and inform o the flights the designers are going out on.

DAY 28

Main designer Emma wasn't in on friday so I had to help Lyndsey get ready some last minute vinatge garments to be sent to the factories for embroidery and embellishment stike-offs. I had to photograph every detail of each one, name them and set up sheets to inform the factories exactly what we wanted to be done with each one. This took a while as it took ages to print out all the photos! I then put all the original garments and development sheets in the courier.

The vintage garments were really pretty and included some baby dresses which were cute and going to be used to design womenswear.

Nancy (jersey designer) is off to Turkey on monday so so I had to do a lot of scanning and photocopying for her so she had copies of everything she had sent out to the factories. I also emailed more spec sheets to factories in hope that mock ups will be made by the time the designers arrive at the end of next week.