2-Hour Meeting Answer #2

1) What is the best way for a fashion designer to achieve a spot in LA Fashion Week?

2) The second answer to my essential question is to intern with David Meister. 

3) Once you've had experience working in retail (my first answer), the next step is to intern, intern, and well, intern. 

• Take opportunities as they come and go out to designers. By that, I mean to invest time in the future. Get a nonpaying internship, even if they only offer a part-time position. The experience will be worth it in the long run and it will help me to get my name out there.
• As an intern there I was told by my mentor that it's worth making sacrifices to ensure success. Real world experience can teach me things that I can't pick up at design school. Sure, design school is meant to sharpen skills and create industry connections, but it is not the only factor in determining success. The best place to intern is with a smaller label, because I'll become exposed to several levels of the company. I become familiar with the customers, the inspiration behind the designs, and other background of the business. I know of this because this is what I've done so far and what I've achieved with my mentorship.
• When interning, I learn to view the trends and the industry from the perspective of high-end designers. Working as an intern, I'm always around clothes. I touch them, see them, try them on, and see others try them on. I pick things up by osmosis. If I'm fortunate enough, they'll keep me around. I start from the bottom of the chain and as time progress, I make my way to the top.

4) The source that helped me come up with this answer was The Teen Vogue Handbook: An Insider's Guide to Careers in Fashion. This was my 30th piece of research. This was a fantastic book because it gave great insight on the countless ways to becoming recognizable in the industry. Another great source was my mentorship because my mentorship is interning with a designer and I was told from both my mentor and my research that a great deal of fashion designers get their start with interning.

5) I plan to continue my study of answer two by looking more into statistics and articles about fashion designers who got their start with interning for other designers of their time.