Ever wondered what its like to be a freelance fashion designer? This week I am publishing a post each day recounting what I did last week on a daily basis. Here is my Thursdays editions...
I wake up as usual at 6 am and go through and get Alfred and
bring him into our room to play until 7am.
I have a meeting in London today and don’t need to leave the house until
9am so this morning, for a few hours, I do my favourite job: play Mum! I make Alfred porridge and mix it with
freshly picked cherries from our cherry tree in front of our house. I have my morning tea wile he makes a mess
getting porridge everywhere while my little Jack Russell Tilly waits underneath
his high chair waiting for scraps!
We then play for an hour before I go off and get dressed
into ‘proper clothes’. I say proper
clothes because quite often in the chaos of everyday life my morning consist of
getting dressed in the dark and pulling on whatever’s clean and closest to reach
– REAL life as a (freelance) fashion designer is no The Devil Wears Prada
Scene! In fact it more like The Sleep
Deprived, Overworked, Multi-Tasking Designer wears Primark (if it’s clean) if
not stick to the Pyjamas (if there’s no conference call today!!!) But I love my job – seriously!!!
I jump in the car after saying my goodbyes and head down to
London to go to one of the University’s I teach at for a planning meeting for
the fast approaching academic year 15/16.
I teach on a range of subjects relating to my everyday work experience
including branding, fashion management, marketing, design and so on. My schedule quite often gets very chaotic so
it’s important for me to plan my teaching days way ahead of schedule to avoid
last minute stress!
I nip to Starbucks before my meeting and grab a snack for
lunch (I know this meeting will run through lunch) and a Grande Earl Grey tea
to take away. In the meeting we discuss
the units that I will be teaching on in the coming academic year and roughly
plan what I will deliver in each session.
I teach across all three years of the degree programme so I can be
teaching ‘Introduction to InDesign’ to new first years one day followed by
advanced Fashion and Trend Forecasting to third years the following. You can see how it can all get a little
confusing if you don’t plan ahead!
I really love my teaching work and find it really helps
compliment my day to day freelance work and vice versa. Working alone at home each day can get pretty
lonely – having one or two days out each week teaching helps keep me up to date
with the next generation of fashion entrepreneurs! It also gives me a grown up and more
interactive day of work which I always really look forward to.
I try to keep all my lectures really up to date and fresh! Any real life project that I take part in my
day to day freelance work which I think may be interesting for students to hear
I present back to them in my classes. I
think it helps a lot when teaching to refer to (up to date) personal experiences
and project examples to give students a real insight into what their future
careers may be like.
My meeting finishes mid-afternoon and I make my way home in
time to feed and bath Alfred. Once he is
in bed I go back to my computer and answer e-mails I have received during the
day. I have some small urgent amends to
the baby layette ranges I created earlier in the week and get these done in an
hour. I then quickly write some notes up
from my earlier meeting before heading off to bed at ten!
No comments:
Post a Comment