Week 1: Day 1

Today was better than I would have ever expected. Despite the fact the editor and the rest of the editorial team were half an hour or so late, the morning flew by and I was pretty much plunged in at the deep end.

After the girls arrived to open up the shop and set it up ready for the day and the afternoon’s feature presentation, I was set to work researching a new website (concept more like) called NOWNESS – a bizar website set up in conjunction with LVMH (Louis Vuittons & Moet Henessey) centered aroud luxury living and brands. To me, the site seems a bit of a flop. It doesn’t seem to be very coherent in what it is trying to achieve and with what it offers its readers. Most websites fall under a certain category, whether that be a website/ blog/ social media platform/ social networking site/ ecommerce etc, but NOWNESS doesn’t seem to want to adhere to any of the familiar characteristics of any of these. It’s almost as if it is trying to confuse its readers, keep them guessing or it’s just being really pretentious and stating that it doesn’t want to belong to any kind of website label. Anyway, Wafa (editor) wanted me to research the website a little more and come up with 10-15 questions in order for her to interview one of the site’s creators for Arabic fashion and culture magazine, DIA.

The presentation held at the shop today was one of their “Getting started” talks where people from the industry (stylists, designers, bloggers) come in to talk about how they started their business/ concept and to give advice to any aspiring whatevers. Today designers Ara Jo (Central Saint Martins’ graduate 2009) and Viking Wong (London College of Fashion 2009) were in and I was given the task of interviewing them for what I thought would be Sketchbook’s blog. I had approximately 10 minutes to research both the designers and come up with about 10-15 questions for them before I took them into a small room one after the other to have a chat. I used a dictaphone and the interviews felt very natural and relaxed – it really was more like a chat but I still managed to get all the information I needed for their profiles.

I then sat through their presentations before going back upstairs to transcribe them into a question/ answer format on word. I later discovered that these would actually be featuring in the December issue of the magazine – WITH MY BY LINE!!! Absolutely thrilled.

It was a really busy day and I really enjoyed all the work I did. Despite the fact that I worked for nine hours straight (only popping out to get new batteries for the dictaphone and some lunch) I really enjoyed the hard work and responsibilities given to me. Tomorrow I am being set some more work to do for DIA’s blog and I am supposed to be attending an EXPOSURE press day on Little Portland Street held by Glam London. It’s a PR event for lots of brands including Basso & Brooke, Ben Sherman, Bolongaro Trevor, Edun, Dr. Martins, Farah, Hannah Marshall, Terry De Havilland, Levi’s, Nike and ToyWatch – to name a few. They will be revealling early glimpses of their a/w 2010 collections and I’ve been asked to go along with Wafa to review them and take photos for the magazine/ blog (whichever).

I’m loving working in London, it’s not daunting at all and I’m comfortable in my surroundings. All the girls at Sketchbook are so lovely and friendly and they’re treating me like one of the team which is so great. I feel like I’ve been working there for months. So all in all, a great first day – and I didn’t even get to make someone a cup of tea!