Week 8

Starting off this week at Anthro was very sad for me because I knew it was going to be my last week working as an intern. It was also going to be Val (Visual coordinator) and Elisa's (Visual coordinator assistant) last week as well because they were both promoted to a different store, Rockefeller, which is the biggest and most famous Anthro in NYC. On Wednesday when I came in, I immediately began deconstructing an old display that lived downstairs to make room for the new display we created out of dyed and fringed jersey fabric. This process of clearing the space included me removing a lantern installation, which hung from the ceiling as well as removing all merchandise and mannequins from around the area. After clearing the space I began working on a completely new project for our display in the Irina upstairs. This display is going to consist of almost tower-like structures created from layered circles, which are made out of all different types of papers. In the art room we set up buckets of all different colored dyes we would be using on the paper; the color story of this concept will mostly consist of deep blues and purples with pops of chartreuse, rich green, and neutral beiges. My task was to evenly distribute the papers in the baths of dye and take them out at different times to get a wide spectrum of saturation throughout the paper. After they were taken out of the dye, we left the paper circles out to dry to be ready for the next day.

On Thursday when I arrived to the store at 8, Michelle was already busy bringing out new merchandise to the floor. She had a separate and specific task for Elizabeth and I to complete before the store opened. There was a ladder out on the floor that we were currently hanging clothing from that needed to be painted a different color (deep red to white) before the store opened. We decided to paint the ladder because we thought it might bring a pop of brightness to the space where a lot of our darker, fall transition clothing was currently living. After the ladder was painted, my next task was to redesign a sunglasses case which held our most expensive and prized sunglasses. The case was simply a glass box with a canvas covered cardboard backing on the other side. I decided to paint the inside of sunglass case a bright yellow while also attatching old stacks of french newspapers to the inside for the glasses to hang off of. Once the case was done it really stood out the cluttered space. After lunch, I spent the rest of my afternoon picking out outfits and changing mannequins for one of our main windows.



When Friday finally came it really did not seem like my last day at Anthro. I came in at 8 AM like usual and everyone was already deep into their projects. Friday was the day we had three concepts due, which is alot to finish all at once. Valerie was busy working on perfecting the Bespoke display with the fringe while also working on dyeing the papers when she could and making her first models of the towers. My first task of the day was to go down the street to the grocery store to buy more paper plates we were using for the display, which ended up taking me awhile. I had to go to four grocery stores before finding the small 6 inch paper plates we had been using, who knew finding plates was so hard in the city. After I got back, I immediately started working on a concept called Pantone that had been falling behind on our "to do" list. Basically the whole rest of the day I worked on the Pantone project, which consisted of painting pieces of Vellum paper a spectrum of warm and cool colors and then cutting it into little squares. Once the squares were cut we mounted them into paper 35 mm camera slides which we then glued onto long wooden sticks. After these long sticks were covered in two rows of the pantone slides the plan was to install them into a giant frame we had upstairs. We would also be putting a light behind the entire frame when we finished so the slides would glow, a mix of all different squares of color. Sadly we did not finish the project and my last frantic day at Anthro came to an end. Overall, working with this company the entire summer taught me a lot of valuable things and helped me realize I really do want to be in this business of visual merchandising and display, especially in place where creativity is so accepted and encouraged. This was a great opportunity and I'm grateful I had the chance to work with such talented and creative minds.

Week 7

This Wednesday of week 7 came and went so quick. When I came in Wednesday morning, for the first half hour Val basically caught me up on what our next display was going to be and which rooms/concepts we would be focusing on this last half of the week. This week we were going to work on Bespoke, our 50's and 60's girl who loves feminine, structured silhouettes with vintage inspired details. Val explained to me that for this room we would be making a impressionist inspired mural made completely from fringed and dyed jersey, which would be created on the main back wall of the room. We began by dyeing and cutting experiment strips of jersey because our district manager was expected that morning to come in for final approval. Between creating these experiment pieces, all the interns also helped Michelle clear our the room of the old concept clothing and begin rearranging and replacing the empty spaces with new clothes that fit our girl. When our district manager, Samar arrived she gave us a couple of suggestions and happily gave us the approval to continue with the project, which will be due Monday. As a group, we narrowed down our story and began mixing and perfecting our dye colors for the final display. We also had to go out to the fabric and buy 15 yards of cotton jersey to continue. We spent the rest of the afternoon cutting, dyeing and hanging the fabric for the next morning.

On Thursday, Michelle and I turned our focus to our front market facing section of the store. This section would now be turning into our concept Irina and the back of the room would now turn into our Pantone concept. After we briefly discussed what merchandise Anthro was up and down in, we began work on the front room transforming it into a glamorous and unexpected space. While Michelle focused her attention on the front of the store, she gave me the task of creating the Pantone section in the back. We would be using color blocking of merchandise to have one side of room be warm colors that slowly  and eventually turned into cool colors on the other side. I gathered samples of new and old merchandise that would fit this concept, cleared some walls and began placing outfits. Every so often Michelle would pop in to help me place clothing I was having trouble with and interject her ideas and constructive criticism. We also took some time to figure our what new narrative outfits we would dress on the mannequins after lunch. When we got back from lunch, we took the two mannequins off the floor and changed them into their new outfits. The Pantone room will still be a working in progress because we will soon get new pieces that are directly created for this concept.

This Friday was a day solely dedicated to working on our fabric project, considering we would be using 15+ yards of fabric in order to create this display. We spent our day dyeing fabric and hanging up to dry while also cutting sheets and fringing the fabric. We will begin creating the final display Monday.

Week 6

On Wednesday when I came, Val and Elisa got straight to talking to me about our plans for completely our new concept "Cloverleaf", which would be due this Friday. Since I don't work Mondays or Tuesdays, they took a second to bring me up to speed on what they had already done to the space and what needed to be completed. Our Cloverleaf girl is very geek chic, she borrows clothes from boys, she collects vintage hangers, and she's very unique all around. During the beginning of the week they had already installed some major pieces of the display and began to make the focal point display which would contain a huge old wooden vanity, vintage typewriters and chairs on the wall, along with simple collectible knick knacks to create more visual interest and color. We were shipped old paintings to scatter around the area for a homey feel. We also decided that our concept girl would be into collecting old typewriter fonts and texts, so the interns and I were given the task to create all different texts that we would later scale up in size and place in the displays drawers. After I helped create some letters, Val gave me a new task which I was excited about. This upcoming fall 2011 we will have a huge selection of glasses coming into the store, so we found an old 1950s post card holder which could be used to hold almost 50 glasses and fit right in with our girl. My task was create individual pencils, all different shapes, size, and colors and then rubber band them and glue to the postcard holder. The pencil would come off of the holder and sit right between the middle of the glasses, creating a "back to school" feel with a cute nerdy twist. I spent a good part of the day completing this task so it could be put on the floor the following day.

Also we finally had our fall inspiration boards complete!

On Thursday, we spent our first couple hours of the morning bringing out new merchandise for another one of our new girls called "Irina". Irinia is very glamourous, loves texture, and has a worldly style. We will be transforming our concept now in the front of the store called "Age of Aquarious" into Irina. We also took the time to utlize some of the new pieces placing them on our front table which had become a bit bland over the past week. Instead of the usual hot coral color pop throughout the room, we started trying to bring cooler teals and gray into the picture for an easy fall transition. After lunch we had 6 mannequins to do, which is a crazy task but Michelle, Elizabeth and I all split and did 2 mannequins each for various spots in the store, as well as window displays. I personally love styling the mannequins best out of everything because its fun but also somewhat of a challenge figuring out what colors, silhouettes, and customer prefrences will work best.

This Friday was an important and busy day because our concept Cloverleaf was due and needed to be finished by 4 o'clock that afternoon. The first half of the morning I spent my time finishing and perfecting the large fonts we had created and monting them on hard cardboard so they could stand in the drawers of the display. After I finished, Val let me complete our main wall by adding details and filling empty space. I had the task of creating a pile of old French papers to be attatched to the wall as well as creating a grid of buttons to glue to the wall. These finishing details really made the space pop and as I was doing it many people came up to compliment our hard work. Last but not least I added a stack of journals on top of a chair that had been installed on the wall, somewhat creating a gravity illusion.

Week 5

This Wednesday morning started like any other, all the interns came in and started cleaning and watering the plants in our street display but after that we got to start on something I find very exciting; inspiration/mood boards! For fall 2011 Anthropologie has 7 brand new concepts coming into the stores which include Dome Home, Our Haus, Pantone, Dots, Bespoke, Irina, and Cloverleaf so we spent the entire morning until lunch at 12 creating inspiration boards for the break room for employees to view. While creating the boards we were free to use whatever supplies were in the art room such as wallpaper, markers, buttons, wood, textured papers, etc. I was assigned to the concept called Dome Home which is a concept for our lounge wear section. Since all windows were due last week on Friday, our supervisors decided that the last half of the day on Wednesday would be an "inspiration day" where all the interns and visual managers would travel around the city to view the three other stores windows and displays. Because we only had three hours left after lunch we decided to go to two: Soho Anthro and the giant Rockefeller Anthro. While viewing these two stores Michelle asked us to consider several questions; Who are the core customers? What is the overall feeling of the space? What particular architectural qualities help support the stores visuals? How does the merchandising reflect the customer? How did this store execute each concept?

Visuals and Merchandising from Rockefeller store:

Visuals and Merchandising from Soho store:

Overall, I had a really fun time looking at what the other stores achieved and seeing how they envisioned the concepts we were given to work with.

On Thursday, in the early part of the morning we brought out and placed new merchandise, while somewhat trying to make small transitions of concepts for fall, even though its still July. Most old concepts somewhat overlap ideas with the new upcoming ones so its fairly easy to slowly put new pieces in the them. Each morning before Anthro opens, we have a morning meeting around 9:40 or so and this morning we did a special activity which I loved. The opening manager that day put everyone's name who was working in a hat them had another hat with a scenario in it. We each took a turn pulling out a name and a scenario from each hat then had to find an outfit in the store (accessories included) that fit the person's personal style and upcoming event. I ended up picking a fellow intern, Cara, who was going to a morning meeting hypothetically. I picked her out a beautiful yellow owl print blouse, with navy chino pants, a bright coral suede belt, cognac pumps and simple gold pumps. After lunch all 3 interns working that day hopped in back stock to help get the back area into perfect condition.

On Friday (my usual visual display day) I helped with merchandise again because both visual coordinators had the day off. Alot more fall sweaters and dresses had come in from shipment that morning so we began to place them in a room with the concept "Botanica" which had a very preppy, structured, yet colorful vibe.  While Michelle and I worked on clothing, Elizabeth helped create a new display for our in-case expensive sunglasses to attract more sunglass sales. We continued to rearrange the store until lunch time. After lunch, Elizabeth and I spent our time adding magazine and digital pictures to the hung inspiration boards from Wednesday. We pulled photos from the internet, Bullet magazine and even Vogue. This week was very focused on finding personal inspiration :).



Week 4

On Wednesday of this week (half way through already!) the visual group is two days away from window installation so everyone seemed a little stressed. In the morning, one intern went upstairs to prep the main window by measuring out where the balls were going to be placed while suspended in the window while the other 2 and I were downstairs in the art room stringing the gray balls on two different colored strings (yellow and white). There were 8 different combinations of lengths that the strings would be so when hanging in the window the wouldn't all line up but still create an intense color block together. Since there were so many balls and strings the process we started was bunching the finished strings in groups of ten and placing that measurement in a separate cardboard boxes. We did 150 strings per each box, therefore 15 groups of 10. This long process took up pretty much all day but it will be well worth it when the display is up for everyone to see.
On Thursday, we had a new intern come in for visual merch. who actually goes to SCAD as well, her name is Elizabeth. Michelle, Elizabeth and I all started the morning by going into the downstairs office and looking at the online chart of sales which categorized clothing into dresses, blouses, outerwear, etc. We got see what clothing items we were selling well in and which ones we needed to improve upon compared to how the company was doing as a whole. Once we figured which pieces we needed to push today it helped us rearrange sections of the store that had become a little dull and un-shopped. Next Michelle gave Elizabeth and I the task of refreshing and rearranging the loungewear section of the store, which is currently a concept called "Bunk house". There was about ten new items of shipment for loungewear that we had to find a place for as well as rearranging old merch. so it was more appealing. This took us about 30 mins and then we had the visual manager of the entire store (Anne) give her constructive criticism. She did have corrections which were smart and together we fixed the area until it was perfect. After lunch, while Elizabeth worked on placing accessories, Michelle and I placed more new merch. and styled a couple of mannequins. At the very end of the day, we stepped outside to look at the mannequins in the window and dicussed how/if they would still connect with the changing displays that would happen Friday.

Lounge wear section

This Friday was the day I had been waiting for what seemed like forever because it was finally time to install all of our hard work. Almost right when I came into work I was instructed to quickly put my things down and go upstairs to the 9th Ave. window display to start construction. After learning the order of string measurements we would be putting up, I began handing my supervisor, Elisa strings as she tied the end, put a tac through, and hammered it into the ceiling on wood panels we had installed earlier in the week. This whole had two sets of panels in the front on the left and right and one middle panel in the back, which the two mannequins would stay in the middle front. After attatching the strings to the ceiling, we then began the same process attatching them to the ground. Although we had every intern as well as our district manager and regional manager working on the window all day from 8-4, we did not finish in time. We (the interns) had to leave at 4 but my supervisor and the regional manager, Cameron stayed behind to finish. I look forward to seeing the displays finished on Wednesday when I come in next.

Elisa working on the installation process

Week 3

This week at Anthro on Wednesday right when I came in at 8, I started my usual task of watering and grooming the plants that are scattered around the store. A couple of plants had died to the point of no return so we took them downstairs to clip the dead parts and see if it would rebloom. Then after the plants were finished all 4 of the interns working began to paint the gray balls once again (we started off with 5000 pieces). One person painted, while another dried with the blowdryer, while another person cleaned and the last person drilled holes. We got a pretty good system going and every hour or so we'd all switch so we didn't get bored doing the same thing. We worked on the plastic balls all day long because window assembly starts very soon!
On Thursday, I helped Michelle (visual merchandiser - clothing) and Anne (head visual merchandiser/display) rearrange several sections of the store. We had a very large shipment of clothing come in so when we were finished the store would look drastically different. I did a variety of small tasks including size runs, hanging and folding clothing, fiding "hiding spots" (which basically means finding spots to put old clothing so its not the focal point but still displayed somewhere) and putting together rolling racks. Also I steamed two outfits and dressed two mannequins which showed off the new merchandise we got. The last part of my day I spent helping Javier and George do a crazy amount of back stock.
On Friday, once again all interns were instructed to keep working on the ball process (with less than 200 to go!) which consisted of us in an assembly line working hard to get the display done.We finished them all by the end of the day and it felt awesome. Monday I assume we will begin stringing them.

Week 2

Starting off my second week at Anthro already seemed like a normal routine for me. On Wednesday I began the morning by watering plants the display team has scattered throughout the store; once the flowers no longer are fresh or up to standards we buy new ones. After the plants were watered, Valerie asked me to source for materials we would be using in our next window display that were inexpensive enough to make our monthly budget. I spent some time on the computer browsing websites as well as looking for local NYC companies that could help us. Sourcing is very important for Anthropologie, not only to find the cheapest supplies at high quality but also to find unique products that are not all around the city. After I made a list of possible supplies, Valerie had me and another intern, Cara rearrange a bedding displays finding an interesting solution to hang comforters from racks screwed into the wall. When this was finished, all the interns as well as my two supervisors went upstairs to critique a window we had created. As we stood outside and looked in, we stated the strengths and the weaknesses about the display which ultimately resulted in taking apart a piece of it to improve the outside view. The next big window display we will be constructed consists of thousands of plastic balls painted gray hanging from two different color strings, so for the rest of the day we began painting and drying the plastic balls while experimenting with different string colors and lengths.

Window display critiqued

 Gray ball process

On Thursday, I took a break from the display and did merchandising. Michelle and I began the morning by going to the stock room to view and size the new merchandise that had come in for the day. Once we had one of each new piece of clothing hung on a rolling rack, we separated them depending on which concept they would fit best in, which most of the new pieces would be going in our front room. We spent a good amount of time rearranging the whole front room called "Age of Aquarius" which has a very 1970's bohemian feel to it but eventually we found places for all the new apparel. Because so much new clothing came into one room we decided it was time to change the old mannequin. There are 22 mannequins in the Chelsea Anthro and Michelle tries to change at least 2 every day to keep the merchandise fresh and the customer's interest in the clothing high. For the next hour, I was back in the fitting rooms, steaming the new outfit we picked out for the mannequin and running upstairs to find jewelry and accessories to go with. Once that was finished, we took a break for lunch and returned in an hour. While we were at lunch a customer decided to buy an entire outfit in the window so that meant we had to find a new outfit that still corresponded with the display that was up. Michelle and I dressed two more mannequins then spent the rest of the afternoon, organizing clothing that needed to be back-stocked.

On Friday, we spent the majority of the time working on painting, cleaning and drilling more of the gray balls because our window needs to be nearly complete by next week.