Week 3...or Week 4? Who's counting anyways...

Hi all,

This week was pretty uneventful in terms of new things happening at the show room, but in terms of epiphanies, I HAD ONE. I had a most liberating revelation this week. One of those revelations you're probably supposed to have like way before you get to college and decide you're going to business school but who cares...

Anyways so I applied to Penn thinking, well I'm not 100% sure, but I think I'd like to get into the fashion and beauty industries, maybe do some work for fashion and beauty/health magazines, anything like that. I didn't see being in the College, the Engineering school, or the Nursing school being the path to that, sooooo, I figured I'd do Wharton. I've always been interested in fashion, used to do some designing of my own. Love the cosmetology industry, I buy makeup like it's my job, so I always figured those were the avenues for me, business is good for everything so I welcomed the fact that that was where my future was headed.

As I wrote about in my last post, one of my projects at Alchimie is to do Daily Clippings, snippets of current beauty industry news. One of the primary sources for these is Womens Wear Daily, a world renowned magazine that publishes stories on the beauty,fragrance,fashion, and retail industries. I troll the website for interesting stories, and let me tell you, EVERY STORY IS INTERESTING.

But back to my revelation. I realized that I'm always telling people that I really love fashion and that I really love makeup, but it hit me this week, What do I really know about fashion and beauty? I know the big designers that everyone else knows, Marc Jacobs, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, etc , but there are hundreds of smaller designers that are just as prominent in any particular season, there are fashion houses whose staff are famous for particular styles or particularly famous lines for a particular season and much more. There is so much competition within the beauty and skincare industries, with Estee Lauder leading the charge and various other companies, both domestic and foreign, elbowing out the competition and creating room and support for themselves among consumers.

It became so clear to me this week, that to claim to have an interest in something, you have to do the research behind it. You have to put work into learning about it. I learned that despite what I claimed my interests to be, there was no way I could actually hold my ground in any type of conversation, debate, what have you on these topics.

So I've decided to spend this summer broadening my knowledge of all things beauty,retail, fashion, etc. I shall become a connoisseur of sorts, or at least try.

But that's all for now folks, til next time,

Nanette

P.S

check out the website!
http://www.wwd.com/

the subscription is a hefty price, but SO worth it.