Design and Buying Internship as Debenhams

I have had the busiest month of my life, but it has all been worth it and I've had the most amazing news along the way. As most of you will know I am taking a year out from University to gain some work experience in the Fashion Industry and prepare me for the future career I have forever dreamed about. I am amazed and extremely grateful with the job offers I have received and although some have meant more to me than others I strongly believe in reliability. I have just completed my first placement as a Buying and Design intern at Debenhams for Red Herring. It was incredible and I feel that I have learnt and done so much  in such a short amount of time. Everyone I worked with was extremely lovely and I managed to bump into famous faces in the hallway such as John Rocha! On top of all of this the team I worked in were incredible and have said that I am welcome to come back anytime in the future! 

While working there I learnt that every brand in Debenhams, before starting the collection will look at all the key A/W trends, colours, fabrics and items taken straight from the Catwalk, they will then not only take ideas from this but compare against what other high street brands are doing and how they can compete. The buyers also have a big role in this as they need to know what type of samples to look at, some buyers will look at the high street, while others will go abroad to fashion capitals to see what's on the high street there, the main favourite being New York. The samples are then sorted through by the buyers to see what is either missing from the high street or what is a key trend to follow, this information is then sent to the designers to adapt and take inspiration from. The designers then create mood boards, do further research into trends for that season, and will design the collection keeping in mind their brand and target customer. However once this is complete the buyers have the final say in whether they want to change the colour, fabric, fit and anything they see is missing or wrong about the garment before it is sent to a supplier where it will be made. Once sent back the buyer will hold a fitting where a model will try the garment on, and the team will assess what needs to be changed, the garment will then  be sent back repeatedly until it is perfect. 

Once the collection has been sent out to stores, the buyers will check up on what is selling well and what isn't and review this on a regular basis to see what to improve on next time and what items could possibly be brought back again. The individual brands will also compare price points to other high street brands with simular styles to see whether they are too low or high, impacting on whether the customer shops there or not. All of this fascinated me as I never knew how much work went on into a collection. I could talk about what I have done and learned for hours but hope this post has interested you as much as it has with me and over the next few days be expecting more blogs on the key trends I've found!