My internship is officially at a close. It's been a whirlwind adventure that I wouldn't trade for the world. I've made fantastic friends, undeniable connections and relished the great experiences.
The last two days of the internship were definitely the most stressful out of the entire 4 months of the program. Monday we had a photo shoot at Space that I had to drop things off for in the morning before arriving in the office. The day carried on like normal- sleeving look books, filing invoices, doing returns, etc. At the end of the day I was given the task of returning one of the looks from the photo shoot to Paris via fedex. I was in a time crunch seeing as the last pick up was scheduled for 9PM and it was already 7:45PM. I rushed to the set packaging box, scissors and tape in hand. Upon arriving the model was still wearing the exact look I needed. Time was of the essence, I eventually was able to get the look and they were eventually able to get a good shot of the design. I packaged the clothing and accessories up, had another intern hail a cab and headed off to fedex. Unfortunately, upon arriving this fedex told me they had a pickup time of 8PM tonight which I had clearly already missed. Luckily, there was another store down the street so I ran 4 blocks, box in tow, to meet my boss and pass the package along. I arrived just in the nick of time and the package was delivered and the day was saved.
On the next day, Tuesday- my very last day, I wasn't even in the MC offices at all. When I arrived my friend Liz brought me along set with one of the higher up editors to film a segment for RR. Liz and I arrived at RR's studio and had to do model fittings with 3 adult, but child sized, triplets. The segment involved creating looks that were a splurge, spend and save- 3 varied price ranges. The accessories (purses and jewelry) were not styled yet so for the entire day I had to literally run around the streets of New York with the company credit card searching for these items, which I essentially was chosen to style. I brought along an intern friend of mine, Hayley, to assist me in the process.
Now personal shopping for someone else using someone's money other than your own sounds like a fun and easy task, but it was seriously one of the most difficult and stressful things I've done in the workplace to date. It was so difficult to find things that look identical in the 3 different price points and with the time allotted. Plus a majority of New York designer stores close at 6 and then department stores close by 8:30. It was strange how at the high end stores where I am spending endless amounts of money no one asked for an ID to match my AMEX, but at stores like H&M the process was much more difficult and they were hesitant to sell me the items with out a proper ID. I can now say with confidence that I have been to the ins and outs of EVERY department store, designer store, low end store (H&M, Forever21, Zara, etc.) in the entirety of NYC's limits. At one point we got in a taxi, gave the address only to arrive at the other end of the department store we had just been inside. Also, it's really difficult to find extremely high priced items and not sound like a snob. Salesperson: "Here you go mam, this purse is 970 dollars." Me: "It's not enough! I need something more expensive". = SNOB. It's also tricky to play it cool with the sales people and not give your ulterior motives away, since a majority of the time people are working on commission and these items will be returned at some point.
Between hailing taxi's and not knowing a strategic order of where to go things where pure chaos. At the end of the day (11PM) we pulled off the task and were able to provide everything desired with the exception of one item. Now I just cannot wait to see it on the show!
Phew!
