An unexpected meet.

I went in to town this morning to go and get myself some new art materials from Fred Aldous and then I went over to Selfridges to go and buy the iphone case I have been wanting and looking at online for the past few weeks. I got chatting the lovely girl at the till as per usual and told her what I was studying at University and that I wanted to eventually end up in visual Merchandising. Just as we finished our conversation, she told me that the guy who had been stood behind her moments before, was in fact the head of VM at that store. 

She waltzed me over to speak to him but I could only manage to hold his attention for five minutes because he said he had been working since half past 6 in the morning, that, and the fact his phone was constantly ringing in his pocket.

I just asked him how he got in to the visual merchandising role, and he told me that he had worked in retail/fashion stores whilst studying and that slowly worked his way up once he could work solid hours after he had graduated. Most of the other people he worked with had also worked in fashion stores too.

He also said that most of the VMs he knew had either art or arts/design degrees. In fact it sounded as though it was more popular for them to have a degree in design rather than any studies in fashion at all.

So at least I learnt a little something today:

1.Visual Merchandising offers some long and unsociable hours (I do this now in a job I'm not all that passionate about so I am sure I could deal with that if I can VM)

2. My degree in Illustration will definitely help

3. It helps to perhaps find a job lower down in the chain at a fashion retail store..