This Week In London

So this past week has unfortunately been filled with endless amounts of papers and research. With my upcoming trip to Paris this weekend (I have never been so excited), I have been trying to get my work done ahead of time. With that being said, my free time to explore London has been cut mildly short this week. However, there of course have been some excitement including visiting a winery for my food culture class, riding the London Eye, and ended with today relaxing and getting a fun, at first sketchy, makeover which included mini muffins.

LDN CRU Urban Winery 

Our food culture class, although filled with papers is not too bad as we visited an urban winery during our last class for some wine tasting. Not being the biggest fan of wine, or really red wine for that matter, I was nervous about the whole experience. However,  LDN CRU was amazing. They are one of the only winery's located in London and are located in an empty warehouse. The owners travel every couple of weeks to countries all over the world to make sure they are receiving the best grapes, not a bad job I must say. While the whole experience opened me up to different red wines, I'll still stick with my white... it doesn't stain as much.

London Eye at night 

The school planned a trip for all of us students to visit one of London's top tourist attractions, the London Eye. Definitely not a thrill ride, as it  takes 30 minutes for the Ferris wheel to make a full circle, the London Eye was worth it. They pack you in there pretty tight but the view was so amazing. I am one to prefer the city at night so I snapped the above photo after roaming around the area.

Mini Muffin Heaven

MINI MUFFINS. Love them. Today me and two other girls went to get our hair and makeup done with a photo shoot to follow. Long story short, we were approached by a guy on the street who told us about a deal for a makeover/shoot. While there may have been a couple of red flags, we agreed and went to our appointment today. Luckily for us, and my parents, it was not a scam and we actually had a really fun day at Icon London. The day included mini muffins, tea, Vogue, hair, makeup and photos. London I must say, you are not half bad.

After my trip to Paris this weekend I will be sure to write about it next week. To be expected are all things touristy, macaroons, and baguettes.

Eye See you London

A must-do while in London is the London Eye, yesterday I checked that off my list! Through FIE we were given tickets for a specific date and time.  Lately, the weather in London has been so up and down.  One day i'll need to wear a sweater and pants and the next i'll be dressed in full summer attire. However, I do have to say we got extremely lucky with the weather yesterday while we were up in the Eye.  Our tickets were for 7 pm, perfect timing to be able to see the sun just before it sets and the skies were clear. 

From a far, it looks as if the London Eye stays still however, once you get closer you can see just how slowly it moves. I do have to say while I was in it I felt that it was moving a lot faster than it had looked from the outside.  I would say it took about a total of 45 minutes from start to finish. My favorite part, and I'm sure many can agree, was once you hit the top and can get a full 360 view of all of London.  Looking down and seeing Big Ben was a view I will never forget.  There was so much in the distance that I was able to see, most of it I had no idea what exactly I was looking at but the view was still incredible.  

Every day I am constantly reminded just how lucky I am to be able to live in London for 5 weeks and just how much I love this city and yesterday was definitely one of the top reasons.  

My goal is to try to explore a new part of London everyday,  a few days prior I had gone to Camden Market and I would have to say my life was changed.  The atmosphere was definitely very interesting but my favorite part was all the food.  As soon as I laid my eyes on The Mac Factory London I was sold.  It reminded me of Mac Mart back in Philly, they sure came to a close tie.  Both so rich, creamy and just all around greatest mac ever.

Of course once I have something salty it must be accompanied by something sweet so what better way to end my meal with some mini pancakes drizzled with Nutella and topped off with strawberries paired with a homemade cream flavored soda.  The soda places had just opened 2 days prior and has definitely been a big hit. While my soda was being made the owners were telling me a little bit about themselves, turned out they had lived in Boston for 16 years.  Since being in Europe I always love meeting Americans, theres always that little connection you share that is always so nice. Next time anyone is at Camden market I highly recommend these yummy treats!  

Sailing the Mediterranean

After four amazing weeks in an utterly breathtaking city, my time in Prague has come to a close. Luckily for me, I do not have to cross the pond back to America just yet. My current adventure started this past Saturday as I left for a TopDeck tour of Europe. Over the course of three weeks, I will hit 12 beautiful European countries, camping along the way.

I met up with my new group in Rome to start the tour. Even though I was one of three new people joining a group of over 30, all my new friends have been more than welcoming. I felt a bit overwhelmed that first night, not knowing anyone, but I am starting to click with the others more. The group is incredibly diverse, with people ranging from 18 to 33 from all across the globe. I am one of only two Americans on the tour. 

Our first big destination was Greece. We took an overnight ferry from Rome to Greece and then met up on a dock in Corfu to learn how to sail our own boats. We spent three nights sailing, swimming, and eating Greek food on beautiful blue waters. The sailing trip was great because I learned how to steer a boat, put up the sails, and dock the boat. It was a really cool experience that I probably would not have been able to do otherwise. I especially enjoyed the trip because bonding is not necessarily hard when you're sleeping in very close quarters on a sailing boat.

My adventure continues tonight in Albania, where we stopped for a nice dinner and to gather ourselves after sailing. The next stop is Croatia. I am so thrilled to explore Dubrovnik and see what the city has to offer!

The Problems of A Fashion Stylist

Three 2,000 word essays, one group presentation and one editorial photo shoot later, the final week of my London College of Fashion program is finally here. Never in my mind would I have ever thought of spending over $500 on clothes for a professional fashion spread. Styling has been one of my favorite courses of all, but it took a lot of obstacles to execute it. For this class we were split up into groups of twos or threes to style and photograph a theme of our choice. By analyzing the Fall 2015 runway looks from all four fashion capitals, my group ultimately decided to do a sixties theme. However, we changed our minds about five times until we finalized this.

One of my partners was really adamant about doing a shoot revolving around bright colors, but the problem with this was that "bright colors" isn't a specific theme. Therefore, we went down the sixties pop route with bold colors and color blocking. The next step was the shopping process, which was the most long and tiring task of all! We were required to style eight separate outfits that included shoes and accessories. This meant that we had to purchase a ton of clothes, maintain their pristine conditions and then return them once we were done with our project. For our very first weekend of shopping we went into literally every store that we could think of in Oxford Circus. H&M, Topshop, Primark and Zara were just a few of the stores that we browsed in. After six hours of shopping in over ten stores, we were still not able to find everything that we needed.

Once we came into our next class to present the different outfits we styled, our professor shred us apart. The main critique we received was the fact that the silhouettes we chose were too modern and didn't have that sixties aesthetic. Our professor then told us that we had to incorporate some prints into our outfits in order for this project to work. This meant that we had to entirely scratch our first idea and go buy completely new outfits within forty-eight hours. However, our second weekend of shopping surprisingly went by really fast and it took half the amount of time that it took us in the first weekend. In addition, after mixing in prints, it was also so much easier to find sixties silhouettes.

As a result, our new outfits were much stronger and our photo shoot was more successful than we could have imagined. Our professor was so proud of the improvements that we made and now I can proudly say that I have experience styling, photo shooting and editing a fashion shoot all on my own.

Graduated from London College of Fashion

I’ve officially graduated from London College of Fashion! All my papers and projects were handed in and finally it was time to celebrate everything I’ve accomplished within the last eight weeks. London College of Fashion threw all the different fashion programs an end of the summer celebration. There were pitchers of Pimm's, gin and tonics and we each got a delicious cupcake. Basia, the head of our program, gave speeches and different students presented their work from the program. We also got London College of Fashion tote bags! It was a great way to end the program. We will than start our next class, Trend Forcasting, with Basia this week, which I'm looking forward to. 

After the party we were starving because they didn’t give us real food so we went to a pizza place in South Kensington called Franco Manca. A bunch of girls in my flat have gotten take out from there and the pizza always looks and smells delicious! And it was delicious! I might even say it was one of the top pizza’s I’ve ever had. It was so fresh and flavorful and old school Italian.

The following day Gina, Ashley and I went to Camden Market and Brick Lane. I loved Camden Market! They were so many different food vendors as well as clothing, accessories and different knickknacks to buy. I got a pair of earrings and necklace that I absolutely love from this one vendor. Camden was very busy! We went on a Saturday afternoon so I expected it to be busy but there were too many people pushing and shoving, which I hate. After Camden Market we went to Brick Lane where there’s also great shopping! Lots of fun vintage shops too! We walked passed a sample sale and I ended up buying a beautiful long mustard color dress that fit like a glove for only £30! I’m so in love with the dress. I’m still figuring out where I’ll wear it but had to buy it because it fit so well and was such a great price. Since it was so hot on Saturday I had to have ice cream so I ended up going to this frozen yogurt place called, The Sloane Bros Frozen Yogurt. I tried something new and got caramel popcorn on my ice cream with caramel sauce. It was yummy!

Since we didn’t have class on Monday, we went to The Tower of London and saw the Crown Jewels, armory, dungeon and different sections within it. I didn’t realize how big The Tower of London was! We spent half a day there walking around because there was so much to see. We figured it be not as busy because it was Monday but it was still very crowded! Overall, I had a fun and adventurous weekend in London. This weekend I’m going to Barcelona and cannot wait! Hopefully it’ll be sunny and we can go get tan at the beach!

Fashion, Espresso, and Cigarettes

     During my trip to Italy, I was able to do some pretty incredible things. However, I did not expect my co-op employer to help set up one of my favorite adventures. During the 2014-2015 fall and winter terms, I was lucky enough to work for Nation Design, a company in New York that handles all stages of design and production for their clients' clothing and accessories collections. One of the clients I was lucky enough to help with during my time at Nation Design was HSN. Before I left for Rome, I emailed the CEO of Nation Design to let her know that I was leaving and to ask her if she would like any pictures of street style of storefronts while I was in Italy. After arriving in Italy, she emailed me back telling me she was going to set up a meeting for me with HSE24, the Italian HSN branch. I couldn't believe that she would take the time to set this up for me, and I couldn't wait to learn all about HSE24. 

     The HSE24 office was absolutely beautiful- the company just moved there around 2 years ago, so it's a brand new building. Nunzia, the buyer I was set up with, was extremely kind. She picked me up at the train station and everything! She gave me the full tour of the office starting with the sample room. It was the one part of the office that was outside in a warehouse-type room, and they called it the oven because it got so hot for the people running it. She showed me some of the lines I had worked with in NYC, as they were just starting to introduce new American HSN lines to their repertoire. 

     Just as a side note, as you probably know, Italians are very into coffee and cigarettes, especially during work. Nunzia offered me both, and I didn't want to be even more awkward than I already was, so I fell into the peer pressure and drank a shot of espresso followed by a cigarette break. I don't drink coffee and I don't smoke cigarettes, so needless to say, I was feeling pretty hyped for my tour after all of that. I'm glad I decided to partake because we had a nice chat over the cigarette, and now I can say I took a traditional Italian coffee and smoke break during work!

     She then took me over to the studios where the head of production gave me a tour of two of the actual TV studios. I was able to see the fashion studio (which was not being used that hour), where they made me walk down the "runway" from backstage as if I were modeling the clothes on TV. Then, I was able to see the home goods/kitchen studios. At the time, there was a live show happening at the home goods studio, so I was able to watch the live show from behind the cameras. I couldn't understand anything they were saying, but it seemed like they were pretty excited about a comforter. This part of the tour was a big deal for me because I have never been to a TV studio! While working at Nation Design, I learned a lot about how clothes need to be designed a certain way to appeal to people on TV. It was interesting to see the design process I helped with come to life on TV, even if it was with home goods. He also showed me the makeup rooms, the rooms where they prep the clothing before going on air, and the editing rooms where they live edit the content that goes on air. 

     Nunzia then took me upstairs to meet with some of her direct colleagues in the fashion department. I was able to meet her boss as well as the head buyer. Everyone spoke very good English, so it was easy for me to learn about their positions as well as the company. It was fascinating hearing about all of the different roles necessary at HSE24, since they need people to help with the TV studios, customer service for questions and help, fashion, home goods, the online store, and almost every other category imaginable!

     I am really lucky to have worked for such a supportive company for my co-op. They were so generous to set up this tour for me. It was an experience I will never forget, and it just goes to show that you never know when people from your past will be able to support you in the future. 

The home goods studio during a live show.

The kitchen studio during the set-up process.

The fashion and accessories studio waiting for a live show.

Posing with Nunzia after a tour of the fashion and accessories studio!

When in Dublin....

This past weekend was spent in Dublin.  Although it was a short trip, it was well worth it.  Dublin was not top on my list of places to travel to while abroad but I must say I was so happy I decided to go.  Originally we had planned to go to Amsterdam but since it was so last minute it wasn't possible. That being said, Amsterdam will be saved for another weekend!

After 2 trains, 1 ferry and 10 hours later we finally arrived in Dublin.  We pulled up to our bed and breakfast and could not get over how perfect the location was and how welcoming the people were. We were a quick taxi drive into the city center and right across the street from a little beach.

The Liffy River

When in Dublin.... you must tour the Guinness Factory so of course that was our first stop.  Seeing how much work goes into making one pint of beer was crazy. My favorite part of the experience was at the end when you learn how to pour your own beer and then head up the the Gravity Bar that looks over the whole city of Dublin.  

That night we explored the Temple Bar area! There was so much to do and see there.  Everyone just gathers in the narrow streets. There are horse and buggys all throughout the streets which kind of made me feel as if I was back in Philly.

The next day we took a tour of the Dublin Castle.  The castle was unlike any of the others we had seen before.  The outside had a very unique look, that of which I enjoyed a lot more than the actual inside of the castle.  

As the day came to an end we quickly had to get back to our b&b, pack up and head to the ferry. Although I was definitely not looking forward to the 10 hours trip back to London, you can't complain when you're heading back to one of the greatest cities ever.  I was sad to leave Dublin, the weekend went by way too fast but I guess that means I'll have to make my return.  Next time in Ireland I really would love to see the cliffs since we did not have enough time to do it on this trip.

Until next time!