An American Working In Paris
You would think if I was going to Paris to work with a fashion house, I would have some background in the industry. But I stepped into the city with minimal experience in the professional realm of the fashion industry.
I explained in How Did I End Up In Paris how I received the internship in Paris, but now I want to talk about what I did as a fashion intern.
When I arrived in Paris, I only had half a degree in marketing and PR but I was ready for real-world experiences. As a sophomore with no internships on her resume, I knew I would experience unexplainable tasks. I was prepared to work hard, but I was not prepared for how the industry operated.
The fashion industry is almost like a different breed of people, and you would imagine it's wild in Paris. Everywhere you look, a company is trying to make it in the industry. I have never been surrounded by so many iconic clothes, designers and sellers in my life. But as an American intern, my tasks were a bit different.
Because I didn't know half the luxury brands, I studied every brand Leclaireur, the concept store I worked for, sold during my first week. That week I discovered how to get around every arrondissement in Paris, not get lost on the metro and greet and hold a simple conversation in French. By week two, I was working on a project on how to advertise the Leclaireur concept store to Americans. I pitched multiple PowerPoints to my boss as well as to the CEO of the company. I also had some busy work to do. For instance, I would greet customers, merchandising, online sales and drink expresso every hour. I also had to deliver clothes around town to customers and designers. There was one time I had to take this $10,000 leather jacket to a man in this luxury hotel. My manager just sent me out into the streets and said good luck. Keep in mind if I had gotten lost or, worse, lost the package, I would have been DEAD. I finally made it to one of the most famous hotels in Paris, The Rosewood, and went through security to give this package to the front desk.
For weeks these were my tasks, pitching ideas, delivering packages around Paris and taking broken luxury pieces back to the designer. I loved this part. I discovered Paris by dropping off items to celebrities at famous hotels and seeing world-renowned designer shops. It was insane. But by week three, they let me join the market team. This is when it felt surreal.
My next workplace location was le Marais, where the digital marketing office was. Like many offices in Paris, it was through a massive door off the street, followed by a beautiful courtyard and situated in the basement of a buzzed-in building. It was simple and quaint but it was where the real projects happened. My tasks included working with online merchandising on Shopify, translating the website and newsletter and creating content for social along with photographing and editing new clothing collections.
Leclaireur would receive daily boxes from designers like Oscar de la Renta, Fendi, Rick Owens, Balenciaga, Maison Margiela and hundreds more. My job was photographing the collections through a 360 camera and editing them in Photoshop. It was insane seeing these new collections before society had the chance to even know they were being made. It felt unreal touching some of these clothes made by some of the best designers in the world. I absolutely loved my job. I adored the people I worked with and I loved the atmosphere we created in that workplace.
There were some ups and downs from the internship but that's for another time (:
For now,
Bisous Bisous <3
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