Supervisor

This week started off with my head supervisor Holly Erickson, creative director of the product development team and technical design. We went over the projects I had been working on for her while she was away in LA. I presented the competitive shopping guide that I revised and organized for easy use and then presented my ideas of how the Standard Fit Guide can be changed to look more organized like White House| Black Markets.

Holly then gave me direction to start the Standard Fit Guide. I will be designing the basic body and then drawing each different type of garment by category onto the basic body. I am really excited to do this project because it is a guide that every department uses and it helps allow each team to develop product that is to the standard lengths and it will be an easy guide to know which style is being talked about.

I then helped Holly go through the sample room and pull garments that fit the Trend Concept for the Summer 2014 collection, and then organized each pull by category that fit that silhouette or print. This sample rack was then presented to the product development team so that each area of PD knew the direction in which the next season was heading and to take inspiration from.

Another project that I will be helping Holly with is creating a map of LA and other areas and highlighting which stores are competitive shopping and describe each type of area so that when the teams travel to pull samples it is clearly addressed where to shop.

Senior of Innovation

I had a touch base with Glyn who is our Senior of innovation for the foundation side of Soma. He gave me a lot of career advice and then talked about his specific department and role.

When it comes to your career it is important to get as much exposure as possible, find your niche, and be able to know each area of the business.

Glyn described how Soma began. A lady by the name of Verna Gibson saw that her target market was being ignored . At the age that she was the body issues were not being addressed by the large lingerie companies such as Victoria's Secret. At first Soma was Soma by Chico's but then that was dropped because the company felt as though only the Chico's customers were catered to. It is now Soma Intimates.

Glyn then told me about the Innovation process (information I will bring back for the Functional Design class). First there is the brainstorming, one always has a frame of where they want to go but you must go outside this process but a lot of times for a company that is too expensive to do. If one deviates too much with a new idea there are risks such as loss of a profit. Glyn explained everyone wants newness but really everything comes from a different idea that was already produced.

While no product is very unique and a company like Soma cannot stray too far from what they already know works and sells as a garment one can change the type of knit/weave, change the type of finish/dye/print, different yarns can be combined to make different fabric, the color may change, the notions can change, and at the end of that process that is how "newness" or uniqueness comes about for a product.

It is important to realize that at the end of the day everyone in this company is a retailer, we get paid if people buy, we may feel as though we are detached from the front line stores but in reality if no one buys then we do not get paid.

After brainstorming is ideation. Ideation is a frame of mind, one must keep looking at things in a new way. An example of this is the people who made the Swiffer. The men sat hours upon hours observing people using a mop, trying to figure out how not to clean using the dirty water, and at the end of trying many fabrics and observing and ideating, the Swiffer came about; they kept looking at ordinary things (the mop) and thought of a new way to modernize the mop.

When it comes to ideation it is important to be passionate, very optimistic, look at the glass half full, take failure as a learning curve and move on from it, and be very curious to the extreme.

Glyn then showed me an innovative bra mold that he has been developing, but I promised that I would not disclose the information to anyone (but the idea is very cool, and extremely modern).

Dress Embroidery

My favorite project I have been assigned thus far is designing embroidery for one of Soma's top selling dresses from last season. In order to do this I researched the competitors to see what smocking and embroidery were trending on the market. Once I pulled from the competitors I then pulled ideas from the trend and concept book that Sarah Cullen created for the Summer 2014 collection. The dress I am working on will be apart of the March & April 2014 collection.

I then took my ideas and drew the dress on Illustrator. From there I started sketching my ideas and placing each idea onto the dress cad. Once I was done I showed Jenny in PD and she liked all of my ideas. I then presented the ideas in the Concept meeting to the head of our department.

To move forward with my ideas I will be working with the vendors from start to finish to get the embroidery I choose to be manufactured for the upcoming season. This is really exciting and it will be a huge learning experience to really get an idea of how each garment is produced.

Projects

Each department has been asked to develop a project for me to do while I am here. My project this past week with Sarah Cullen (Trend & Concept) is to organize all of the Silks that have been used as inspiration by the CAD team. All of the silks are purchased to use as print designs for the upcoming season.

Meetings

The meetings I attended this week were the limited edition trend preview meeting. Sarah for trend and concept went over each specific theme for the Autumn & Winter concepts. The fabrics that Holly sourced in Europe she presented to both the foundations team and the dressy sleep. Each team selected the fabrics that they liked and then those were given to the production and sourcing teams to find out the cost of each.

I attended the 2014 March & April Development review meeting where PD presented their story boards and samples, the merchants identified any call outs that they had for the line plan, and the silhouettes that are being tested were shown.

Chico's FAS presented to Soma the Copyright issues that the company must be aware of.  This meeting was very interesting because she showed examples of certain garments that the company has been sued for in the past and what the cost of this happening is. The meeting also addressed which prints did not have a copyright and which did. There is no set standard for how much you can copy off a garment, but if a company were to sue, the jury (average people) if they think that the garments are virtually the same then that is considered a copyright infringement. The most interesting fact that I heard was that FOREVER 21 sets aside a budget each season due to the fact that majority of their prints and styles are "knock-offs" and tend to be sued each season by big designers.