Jil Sander: Details, Details, Details

I have heard it said that fashion exists in the details. She who spoke these words was no doubt referring to a shiny set of buttons or a fine example of meticulous tailoring, but I saw evidence of this in everything I did this past summer. It made no difference whether I was dressing a model during Market Week or learning how to enter an order into one of our many processing systems; a tiny slip up could turn out to be a bonafide catastrophe, while careful attention invariably contributed to success.

The first example I mentioned was Market Week, so let me expand upon that. If there is any time during a fashion internship that can be complained about (excluding Fashion Week, which is a whole other mess), it is Market Week. Needless to say, things get hectic with 7 picky clients coming in each day- most of their sessions overlapping as they struggle to extend their stays far beyond their alotted hours- 2 entire floors of collections to wade through, 4 demanding account executives giving orders, and 4 lanky models, 2 dressers, and 2 interns crammed into a 5 by 7 foot room, throwing clothing on and off and frantically rushing to return items to clients and their proper racks. And yet, still, the most important part in all of this was my ability to carefully tie a dress in just the right way, to walk serenely into the showroom with head held high, and with no more than three garments daintily dangling from my right hand.

No one stressed this more than our very capable Vice President, Laura Vazquez. I always loved watching her handle the madness, for not only did she never slip up, she was always on the lookout for what more she could do. Whenever a model came back from a client, she would ask, "Did they like that? Ah, just the top?" and then she would be off in a flash to grab three more tops that complimented the last. Being able to arrange the order of the looks that went out to our clients resulted in much more successful sales and also groomed Jil's reputation for meticulousness. As a luxury brand, this careful attention to detail is not just appreciated, but demanded by our clients. If they noticed that our racks were not perfectly organized, and if every hanger were not facing the same direction and evenly spaced, we would hear snide comments. These comments did not bode well for sales, so we were trained to stay alert for them always, and to immediately correct any such issues.

I learned this same lesson during the administrative portion of my internship, but for a very different reason. At the beginning of my internship, I worked, for the most part, under the womenswear account executive, Sara. She did her work confidently and efficiently, so whenever she would airily wave me over to teach me how to complete a certain task, she would preface with, "You don't really need to know how to do this because it's my job, but..." Regardless of her disclaimers though, I always tried to pay attention- and did that ever pay off. 3 short weeks later, Sara suddenly announced that she was leaving Jil, leaving us scrambling to cover her responsibilities. Nick, our menswear account executive, did his best to take over her job, but the next thing we knew, he was flying off to Milan for Men's Market Week. That left me and my fellow intern at the helm. We had to figure out everything- from the proper process for checking out samples to PR companies, to entering orders and locating credit information. We had help from a few others in the office, but there was much that even they didn't know. If I had taken Sara at her word and hadn't listened as closely during her "unnecessary" explanations, I can't even imagine what would have happened. Entering even one number incorrectly in an order, let alone larger errors such as entering them into the wrong system or labeling them with the wrong delivery date, can cause disasters for production and muddle relations with customers.

While it may sound like this demand for perfection was a strain on us all (and I won't deny that it was), I never resented it. In fact, I think that it is the sole reason why, not just Jil, but any company is able to rise up in the world. Learning to perfect our branding, understand each quirk of our customers, and perform our duties without error are imperative to success.

In fashion, a boldly colored zipper can make a boot this season's hot item, and a higher threadcount can upgrade a suit from an insurance broker's Wednesday-wear to His Majesty Prince William's wedding attire. No one appreciates a slob, so you can bet that when my boss complained that I hadn't turned up the collar of a blouse at just the right angle, I did not look at her like she had lost her mind. I sucked it up and got it right the next time.

-Lennie Zhu

Hello Everyone + Free Love

Hello, all!

Lennie speaking. I certainly have a lot to say about this past summer and my work at Jil Sander, and I must apologize for taking so long to finally get it together! On the plus side, now that my internship has ended, I’ll hopefully be able to more clearly articulate everything I’ve learned over the course of this long summer.

Last Friday was my final day at Jil, and as I bid my coworkers goodbye, I was struck by the ease with which I found myself embracing them and giving heartfelt promises to keep in contact. I still remember my tense first day; I had gotten to work early, at 8:45AM, eager to make a good first impression. Instead, my plan backfired on me. I crept into the building behind a distinguished looking gentleman who did not greet me (he turned out to be one of my higher up bosses- Mark Winrow, Jil Sander America’s Director of Sales). He no doubt felt just as nonplussed at seeing this strange, unfamiliar face in his home as I felt at entering this unfamiliar, stark white lair. When I reached the office, the account executives whom I had been recruited by had not yet arrived. The kind secretary that I introduced myself to had heard nothing about a new intern arriving that day, but she made me a cup of coffee anyway. By the time Nick and Sara, my supervisors and the Account Executives of Menswear and Womenswear respectively, reached the office and rescued me from my somewhat disorienting anonymity, I had resolved to impose myself helpfully upon every person in the office throughout my internship. By the end of it, I wanted everyone to not only know my name, but also remember me as “that really, really enthusiastic intern that did everything.” 

I do believe that I managed to make that resolution come true. In my time at Jil, I completed major projects with almost every person in our office and in every branch of the company, including accounting, public relations, operations, client services, and product development. What I would like to chalk this up to, as my official responsibilities had at first been to simply oversee administrative tasks and help with order entry, are constant curiosity, openly seeking out tasks from employees other than my direct bosses, and simply making sure that I was always in the right place at the right time.

Out of everything that I have gained from these experiences, I think this has been the most important lesson. Because the different branches in a fashion brand’s office do such vastly different things, there generally is not much interaction between them. This is often a very negative thing, as it takes away from each worker’s ability to comprehend the usefulness of what he or she is doing. So I made it my personal goal to blatantly ignore the divisions between departments and make myself available to all of them. This was the best possible thing I could have done, as I believe that it not only exposed me to the various goings on of the company, but also allowed me to raise awareness between departments about what was happening in other parts of the Jil world, if only vaguely.

I’ll go into more detail about the different projects I worked on in later posts- I know all you readers are busy bees! So until next time, I’ll bid you adieu, and work on stemming the huge floods of words that I always inevitably produce whenever I write….

Best,

Lennie