Tips for students

Following on from my recent contact with an old University lecturer, a student from the Fashion Management with Marketing course has emailed me asking for my top 5 tips for future careers, as part of her research for her project.

Here is what I said:

Top 5 tips: 

1. Be nice - appreciate people, be polite, have respect. You want to be recognised as a good person - go back to basics and treat others like you want to be treated. Even when people are rude, unappreciative, negative etc. just bite your tongue, smile, be nice and crack on. No one likes negative people who complain and moan. It's all about positive people who smile even when it's raining. 

2. Network - It's good to make as many contacts in the industry as possible. One thing i've learnt is that it really isn't just about what you know, it's also very much about who you know. You want these people to remember you if they ever hear of job opportunities, or need assistance in any way. Guest lecturers, class mates, work colleagues, any other people you meet along the way - get talking, leave them with a good, memorable impression of you, swap email addresses.

3. Read - Read books - don't waste time reading romance novels - get your head into fashion marketing/branding/management books - there are some really good reads out there, ask your tutors for recommendations. Read drapers, retail week, business week. Follow brands and companies on Twitter to keep up-to-date with whats going on in the industry.

4. Take opportunities - To continuously improve, you must allow yourself to always be a student. Trips with Uni, free courses, exhibitions, guest lecturers, fashion events - these are all opportunities for you to absorb more information relevant to helping you improve your knowledge of the industry, and also find your feet, pushing you in the right direction towards your ideal career. 

5. Be online - All of the work you do at Uni can be used to show potential employers your skills and capabilities, not just with writing, but also your use of programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator. I know that quite a lot of your work is report based which could be boring for an employer to read through, but why not create a blog/website, positing chapters/paragraphs that you feel are best i.e. your conclusion of Luxury Branding and Social Media, you could also post some of your creative outcomes. It's all very well stating your abilities on your CV but if it is there infront of an employer then they're much more likely to take you seriously. 

(One more...)

6. Keep your head - When you finish Uni, life changes drastically - Your next focus is to get a job and find your ideal career. You need to always focus on the positives - even if things don't go to plan i.e. you get rejected, ignored, you're skint, you have to move home for a while, you are bored of your job - you must maintain a positive attitude in order to be successful, admitidly it is a lot easier to be positive if you're successful but at the same time it is much easier to be successful if you're positive. If you're bored of your job and you start slacking then you're going to get a bad reference. If you have to move home to save for a while, that's fine - keep reading, keep building your online portfolio. If you don't get a single response to the 50 emails you sent - ask someone (i.e. a tutor/ work colleague) to read over it and ask for criticism and help to improve your message. Be persistant with out being a pest. People like dedicated, enthusiastic, eager beavers but if they haven't got a position for you then you'll have to accept it and try agin in future. 

Advice to students

I've been asked to go back into uni, to give some advice to third years on the Fashion Management with Marketing course just getting into their Final Major Projects. I am quite flattered to have been asked, and am excited to meet the students and hopefully give some useful advice.

In preparation I have been thinking about what I learnt, pros and cons of the project, problems that occurred, recommendations and any other information that may be relevant and help with their project.

SWOT analysis of the FMP

Strengths:

• Using an idea that is entirely your own means you can tailor it around your preferences and capitalize on your abilities. 
• Design you own brief means you can go as deep into the subject as you like.
• There are so many resources available if you make the most of them. Make the most of these within the University and elsewhere.
• Expert help - your tutors, Israr and Lisa are great and always willing to help - their advice is very effective and can go a long way.
• You can tailor this project to what you actually want to end up doing as a business venture/linked with your career.
• The FMP is suitable for people with a range of skills and abilities; you choose your own output so it can be as visual/written as you like. This enables the project to be easy to understand by a wide range of viewers.

Weaknesses:

• 12 weeks isnt that long so you must be quick in deciding your topic.
• You may not have learnt the necessary skills for your preference so you'll have to use time wisely learning these things.
• Less lectures and seminars, a lot of freedom compared to previous study, so its easy to get distracted.
• If you feel like you haven't achieved a lot since previous tutorial it is easy to feel demotivated and want to not attend the next, but you must go - even if its for a chat.
• As there is so much to learn - programs, research, new ideas etc you can feel bombarded, you need clarity.
• Other peoples ideas seem better - you can take inspiration from others but focus on your own.
• Keeping up with other projects at the same time can be hard - you must use your time wisely - keep a time schedule and stick to it.
• Living with other students can sometimes mean not having very good atmosphere at home to do work - Go to the library!

Opportunities:

• Quite a lot of people in industry willing to help - send emails, talk to people - great to get feedback from industry professionals.
• You can be as creative as you like if you work hard - the resources available mean you can learn new programs to make your work better than average.
• You can use this project to bring to job interviews to show off your skills and your creative thought process and professional output.
• This project will encourage you to think commercially all the time, thinking as a consumer - what is missing in the market, is there something your friends/family talk about that they wish they had or could have etc - maybe a brand that exists that you don't think is headed in the right direction, and you have an idea you believe to be sustainable - research into it if you can pove it then perfect.
• Helpful if you know someone who works in the company, or you work there yourself, try communicating with the head office before you start your project - it will make your project so much easier if you have access to business information and can develop a good relationship where they want to help you do well.
• Try to arrange a week of work experience/store visits/visit to head office.
• Social media and digital branding now makes information and customer feedback so accessible and instant, great for research - can even communicate via facebook directly to customers - why not send emails to some of the fans on the Facebook page of your chosen company.

Threats:

• You must take note of all activity revolving around this project. Not keeping a journal will lead to you struggling with evaluation.
• Not keeping reference throughout - Harvard reference will help add on marks - it is still necessary even if you aren't producing a report.
• Just picking an idea that pops into your head with no justification, working backwards and then finding out there's no market for your idea.
• Using a range of mediums may lead to mistakes - grammatical, or not having enough ability on the program you chose to use.
• Time management - dont let it slip. Make sure you do something ever day even if its reading a few relevant articles, or speaking to customers of the brand.
• Being demotivated when you get criticism to your idea, or negative feedback - must focus on the positives and keep trying to improve. Criticism is necessary as long as it is constructive, don't let it get you down.

Henry David Thoreau

 

“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.” 

“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.”

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.” 

“Not till we are completely lost or turned around... do we begin to find ourselves.” 

“One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.” 

“This world is but a canvas for our imagination.”

Post Poly Depression

"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.…

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherders jacket… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that…

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.…

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

Ok not literally comparing Polygon 2009-2011 to San Francisco in the middle sixties. But the way Hunter S. Thompson explains that time has a similarity to the fond recollection I have of my Polygon days.

David Nicholls One Day

“What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.”

Muriel's Wedding

"You're terrible Muriel"

London Riots

Government officials who place reason behind the riots are doing their job, fair enough, imagine a world where our leaders don't know the answers? Chaos. But their accounts, like most, are dishonest and biased. We need to consider the bigger picture and come to our own informed conclusions. 

“disaffection with the existing power pattern”

It needs to be understood that the riots were not purely a political protest, neither a cause of mere hooliganism. Things got out of control... Ignorance + lack of compassion → poor communication → oppression → impatience + immaturity → ignorance + lawlessness → lack of respect + peer pressure + mob mentality + greed → violence → disaster. 

The human race brings chaos and destruction again and again. 

IBIZA

San Antonio represents the stereotype I've always had of Ibiza holidays - overload of young Brits, tanned bodies, shit tattoos, British bars, shit music, rowdy lads and lasses, pervy locals, pissed off locals, dirty streets and little to no real culture... This is where the majority of the Ibiza reps stay for the season, or where the groups of 18 year olds stay while they're on their annual boozers. It's alright if you're with the right people, after all it isn't where you are, it's who you're with. the right people can make any situation enjoyable in one way or another. Next time I go to Ibiza I will stay in Playa d'en Bossa - this place was better; here felt like the Ibiza people had told me about, better beaches, more focus on the music. Bora Bora, Space, Ushiaia and DC10 not far away. Much better than the West End of San Antonio (which reminded me of Malia/Zante all of those places don't appeal to me in the slightest). I definitely see the appeal of Ibiza, and I would go again, next time I think I will plan a long weekend of the best parties. Circo Loco at DC10 was my favourite, gutted to have missed Seth Troxler the week before!

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

"Too weird to live and too rare to die"

Hunter S. Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta

"One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."

Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo

The Great Magnet

"This is how the world works, all energy flows from the whims of the great magnet"

A mystical entity known to control all energy.

John Lennon

"I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong."

R.I.P Raoul Duke

Since reading Hunter S. Thompson's books I've grown more and more intrigued by the author himself. In a bid to get my head around what sort of man he was, I've been reading into his history. He had a very interesting thought process, twisted thinking - smart yet crazy, he said it himself "one of God's very own prototypes, too weird to live and to rare to die". I would have loved to meet him. 

After shooting himself in the head in 2005, for his funeral he was cremated and then blasted into space through a rocket, funded by Johnny Depp - a good friend of Hunter's.

“The clenched red fist, made symmetrical by a second thumb, towered 153-feet above the mourners below. The fist clasped a multi-colored flashing button which battled the full moon to light up the Colorado landscape. As a troupe of Japanese drummers finished their choreographed performance, the guests passed flutes of champagne and gazed skyward. At 8:46, the first wave of fireworks rocketed from a cannon hidden within the fist. To the blasting strains of Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, bursts of red, white, and blue broke the night. A delicate snow of gray ash drifted to the ground and the earthly remains of Hunter S. Thompson floated to their final resting place.”

“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun – for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax – This won’t hurt.”

Artist and friend Ralph Steadman wrote:

"...He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Nixon went to — and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too — and Peacocks..."

“Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of ‘the rat race’ is not yet final."

Hunter S. Thompson - 1937 - 2005

smile

One thing I've noticed while living here in London - People don't smile enough. 

People are too busy, stressed, preoccupied, uninterested, half asleep, struggling, bored, brain washed, disconnected. It's actually quite disturbing. There is so little spontaneous human interaction without concern. For such a desirable and potentially awesome place, there's a lot of sadness. I don't want to be sucked into it but I reckon while you're getting paid minimum wage or a little over, life is a struggle here - rent is too high, you can't afford to do everything you would like, you're surrounded by emotionless or stressed people a lot of the time. .

I have been avoiding the tube - getting the bus is better, it may take longer but you can see the sights, not just a concrete hot tunnel.

Maybe i won't stay here long... 

Hey Mr Tambourine man

Play a song for me...

Hunter S. Thomson - The Rum Diary

 

"Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one band and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going."

Monkey in Wimbledon

My special friend Kate is about to finish her fine art degree at London College of Arts. She asked me if I'd let her paint my body for part of her final major project, along with my best friend Becca and a friend-to-be Olivia, I obliged of course. Turned out to be not just a good day, but a cracking day.

Kate's in the process of building a website which I can't wait for. She's a very creative, talented little beam of sunshine.

Fooling around

My cousin Amy and I have been on more adventures amongst the Hampshire countryside. This time through Horndean, past Lovedean, into the depths of the Hampshire countryside, then had a little fiddle on Photoshop after....

Ghostly me X2

Sceptered Isle

A film can leave a much greater impact that a still images, though it can be positive/negative. I like this Sceptered Isle film, I think it is romantic and it builds on the heritage of the Dr. Martens brand.

"My country tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died! Land of the Pilgrim's pride! From every mountain side, Let freedom ring! My native country, thee, Land of the noble free, Thy name I love. I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills; My heart with rapture fills Like that above. Let music swell the breeze, And ring from all the trees Sweet freedom's song. Let mortal tongues awake; Let all that breathe partake; Let rocks their silence break, The sound prolong. Our father's God to, Thee, Author of liberty, To Thee we sing. Long may our land be bright With freedom's holy light; Protect us by Thy might, Great God, our King!"

Is ignorance really bliss?

The World's Most Dangerous Place for Women

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rvbsj

"In eastern Congo, rape and sexual violence are routinely employed as weapons to subjugate villages and terrorise entire communities. From old women to young children, the soldiers do not discriminate; the stories of their brutality and torture are so horrific that they rarely reach western ears. Inside the country, however, the locals have accepted mass rape as the status quo; even women who have been attacked will tell you: "This is just Congolese life.""

"The extent and extremity of the sexual violence that goes on, on a daily basis, was more shocking than I could have imagined: many women are gang raped, some are mutilated with sticks and knives, others doused in petrol and burned. Some of the attacks are performed by child soldiers, while their commanders urge them on, and some performed on children, even those as young as three. Aside from the horrific internal injuries sustained – as well as pregnancies, and the spread of HIV – there is a social cost; husbands regularly throw raped wives out of their homes, like soiled goods. There are no reliable statistics on rape in Congo. In one village we visited, the local hospital admits hundreds of cases in a year, but reported cases are the tip of the iceberg – many women keep rape hidden; some can't walk to the hospital."

BBC 1am this morning. Not nice TV viewing before bed. Really opened my eyes up to a darker side of the world... It's easy to forget about the struggles of non western countries when we're so distracted by our first world issues. We talk about heaven and hell, hell is a place on earth. Hell is life for many people living in this terror around the world right now. What a mess, how can it be stopped? Being brought up subjected to that violence is bound to warp the minds of otherwise innocent children, there needs to be a way to avoid this evil future. I feel awful knowing that this is still happening in parts of the world as I type, I feel guilty that my life is so peaceful in comparison. Is ignorance bliss or should we be doing more to save this hell on earth? Usually governments need a monetary motive to intervene in these social structures around the world, they simply would not interfere for humanity's sake only. We must use our own charity or support reputable charities. It's easy to feel useless and ignorant to these issues but our aid doesn't have to be all or nothing - you don't need to dedicate your entire life trying to solving the worlds problems, live your life and keep in mind the struggles of men and women in other walks of life, help where you can. Creating awareness, donating, taking part in fundraising activities, spreading peace and love. The internet is now such an accessible platform of communication, use it to spread important news, support, knowledge.

Act Da Fool

Luxury cool brand Proeza Schouler collaborating with US cult film maker Harmony Korine (Kids, Gummo).

Harmony Korine on Act Da Fool:“It’s about girls who sleep in abandoned cars and set things on fire. It’s about the great things in life. The stars in the sky and lots of malt liquor.”

Black Swan

Natalie Portman is such a boss. Ever since Leon we've all been smitten with her, and she doesn't disappoint in this dark and beautiful tale of craft and obsession. Oh, and Mila Kunis, little Jackie Burkhart - another celebrated female who deserves her acclaim. I imagine even those who have no interest in cinema would have paid to watch this duo in the notable sex scene.

Yes Boss

Sexy sounds (from the female vocalist, the guy is a little creepy)