Day 3

Friday was my third day, and I had a bit more range in tasking, thank god! It was my first time running a slew of errands. I picked up beading from Rehka beading, paid and picked up ribbon lace pleating from Stanley Pleating, and bought 12 yards of navy acetate lining from Lining Club. Each time I go out I am equipped with a canvas zip-tote with petty cash and a list of addresses to the places Emily would like me to go. When I arrived back, I was met with two sherbet colored satins: orange and blue, and ask to find those darn 3-size roses again. At least they were colorful, so I set off to 28th street where all the flower shops can be found, this time bringing my camera. In the process of searching for the orange and blue flowers, I also ended up finding black rose buds and brown medium roses, finally!! Emily was very pleased with me and said I did such a great job these past two days on my "flower mission"! I had been so worried that I couldnt find everything that she was going to be disappointed. However, she was very proud of me and I felt the same. :) My last task was finding more shipping documents from UPS and making 5 boxes for packing dresses to be shipped that day. Until next time!

-la vie en rose

Day 2

Today was my first full day (10-5) at Pesavento and holy hell did I work! The very first thing Emily assigned me was buying just an extra yard of lining for a dress that must be exactly that shade of navy. I went to Lining Club to buy it and was shown 2 navies that were too dark. So, I swatched it and returned. It was indeed too dark so she sent me to Guide Fabrics to find it. Luckily, the guy there found the perfect one and gave me that yard for free. Sadly, I was informed upon returning that the sample piece of lining was the wrong shade. The only piece of lining that was wrongly cut. I then ran back to Lining Club and lo and behold the dark navy was perfect. Glad to be done with the 1-hour ordeal, I moved on to my next assignment. It was Emily's main focus to have finished by today. I was to find black and brown (12 in each color) silk roses in 3 sizes. I ran back and forth through 5th-8th Ave, 28th-40th St, for just under 5 hours trying to find that brown flower, especially. Alas, NO ONE carried brown silk flowers. I found only 2 stores, and one did not have 12 (minimum order for more would be 100) and the other was too expensive. Funny thing was that the first store was the first I found, and the second was the last I found. Either was I was running all day trying desperately to find a brown silk flower! Finally I returned at 4pm with large black flowers from a hat store on 28th and cheap black medium flowers from YKK Trimming. My last task was to find out whether we could order from the original carrier of all the flowers.... the company had shut down. I instead went to 2 neighboring flower shops and found the prices for spray paint and rose buds. Let's see if tomorrow I get to stay inside the company!

First Day!

Friday was my first day interning at Pesavento Couture, a small high-end eveningwear company located on 29th Ave. Emily, the assistant first had me run to Spin Fabrics to pick up 2 swatches. I caught the guy just as he was locking the door, thank god! I also sent some lacey fabric and ribbon to Stanley Pleating so that they could manipulate the ribbon into a fancy design onto the fabric. I met the production team, Richie the head and Jeanie the seamstress. Both were Chinese and Emily was happy because she had been having trouble communicating! The designer, Jamie (an FIT Accessories Design Graduate) was sick so I actually took the 1 train up to 175th St. to his apartment! The apartment was right on the riverside and I could see the Queens? skyline from the edge of the river. It was a particularly windy day, and it had just snowed in the morning! Jamie's apartment was, like himself, very eclectic and tasteful. He was a geniuinely happy ole guy and reminded me of a toned down version of Austin Scarlett (Project Runway). Lastly I helped Emily pack 2 dresses to be shipped, one to Staten Island and the other to Maryland. I had to wrap the huge puffy dresses in tulle, then cover the entire thing in plastic, hang tags and purchase stickers, and fold it, front facing up, in the large rectangular cardboard boxes. Lots of tape and invoice taping later, 2 boxes were ready for UPS! I gathered my things to get to class at 1:30 P.M. and looked forward to coming in again next Thursday.