Fashion Context
Written and Designed by Eden Harvey
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Charlotte Lord
During the fashion context segment of the project, I attended a guest lecture talk with a previous student called Charlotte Lord who spoke about her experience at university, her past experience, how she started up her own fashion label and ended with some valuable advice she collected throughout her career.
Charlotte Lord is a previous Fashion Communication and Promotion student who began her university life at Norwich University of the Arts in 2018. She started off unsure of what career she wanted to pursue but had visions of working in buying and marketing alongside an interest in styling. In 2019 Charlotte launched her startup business, The Lord Label. She knew that even if her business did not follow through, it would be good for a CV, be a good learning experience and a way to network with other people in Norwich. Upon the launch of her website, she developed skills in buying, forecasting, merchandising, and building a website.
During her second year of the degree, Charlotte took an internship at an interiors business called Berries and Gray, which she got through having a conversation with a woman who works with the company who offered to intern Charlotte.
After she graduated from university in 2021, Charlotte found herself working for a modelling agency called Sandra Reynolds doing social media and digital marketing. As much as she enjoyed her time working with the company, a lot of their work was with cars, pharmaceuticals, and a handful of big brands, but not fashion, which is the area Charlotte wanted to be and planned to be working in.
Now, Charlotte is an ecommerce manager. This means she works with her product development team and uploads new styles to her website and other sites since The Lord Label is a brand. This means it can be sold on other sites such as M&S, Next, Pavers and a variety of small brands. She must make sure as well as being sold on her site, they are being sold well on other sites by making sure pictures look good, pricings are correct, product descriptions are correct and as well as sizing. Charlotte also does merchandising, which is crucial as she must keep on top of trends and weather changes to ensure what she is putting out is being sought after and will be sold. Another thing Charlotte does is keep an eye on sales, keeping track of what is selling well and why certain things may not be selling as well, and marketing, which was the career Charlotte wanted to go into during her degree. She helps coordinate the shoots, as well as the marketing materials, the E shots that are released, newsletters, point of sale for stores, and various other bits and pieces.
Some valuable post-graduate advice Charlotte gave was to be adaptable. Your career doesn't have to follow the work you focused on during the degree, Charlotte focused her FMP on marketing and built up CV a with many different experiences such as styling with Sandra Reynolds and working for the interior business Berries and Gray, but later went to be an ecommerce trading manager. Charlottes biggest point was to consider big versus small businesses. The smaller the business, the more adaptable your role will be which she explained using her own small business The Lord Label. Working with a big business, you'll likely be stuck in one role, whereas working for her own small business Charlotte gets to liaise with the product development, get a hand in the marketing and oversee lots of other aspects of her business.
Charlottes guest lecture was, for me, hugely helpful. It was great to hear her journey and advice towards her goal of focusing on her company as it made me realise university to work isn't as daunting as having to find the perfect job straight away, but an experience to use the degree to find experience to build up a CV over a few years with possibly a bigger or more specific goal in mind. Her journey was full of taking chances, learning to work with the challenges she came across, taking chances and jumping towards any experience she could get while doing what she knew she would enjoy or learn from. Everything is a learning and growing experience.