Thursday 30 July 2015

A week in the Life of a Freelance Fashion Designer: Thursday



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!

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