Other // Styling, Retail, + Beauty

Over the course of my career in the Fashion Industry, I have had the privilege of dappling in a variety of different roles. From areas of focus + positions such as: Styling, Customer Service + Sales, Retail Management, Team Leadership, Visual Merchandising, Inventory Management, Photography work, Creative Directing, Marketing, + Brand Management. Within these different roles, I’ve had the pleasure of working with both soft lines (apparel, accessories, etc) + hard lines (beauty, home, etc) products, as well as items for all genders/ages: Womens, Mens, + Kids. The earlier stages of my career is where I was able to explore a good amount of these roles + figure out which ones filled my cup up. I have enjoyed every role within the Fashion Industry that I’ve held. I love getting to be creative + flexing those muscles in new and different ways.

This page will show some of the smaller roles I held toward the beginning of my career. Unfortunately, being that far back, finding images to fully represent the true scope of the work done in these roles was difficult and not as successful as my background with Charlotte Russe + Target. But, what I was able to recover is shown below. You will see a snapshot of 3 different companies:

Styling work at Straub Collaborative
Retail Management, Visual Merchandising, + Styling for Tommy Hilfiger
Beauty Merchandising, Salon Coordination, + Inventory Management for Salon K, an Aveda Salon.

Straub Collaborative …

During my time going to college for my Fashion Merchandising degree, I was working for Charlotte Russe as a Sales Associate. In addition to that work, I needed to also have an Internship as required for my degree. This was when I started working for Straub Collaborative in Boston, in 2012. I wanted to leverage this opportunity to explore a different realm in the Fashion Industry that intrigued me, but I hadn’t yet gotten a chance to try out prior. Straub Collaborative is a creative agency + photoshoot studio that produces images for multiple different company’s websites + marketing materials. The team that I worked on was focused on Styling. I had the opportunity to be the Styling Intern for two major brands: PUMA and Life Is Good. For both companies, I was responsible for sample management, checking items in + out of the system and re-packing items to be sent back out to the brands.

The work I was able to do with PUMA, from a styling lens, was both Editorial + E-commerce Styling, focused primarily on activewear. Performance footwear + detailed sneaker shots, as well as live-model outfit styling for photoshoots both in-studio + out on location sets. This styling work entailed a lot of metal taping to ensure every hood + intentional fabric fold was precise + looked effortless.

The work I was able to do with Life Is Good, from a styling lens, was both E-commerce + Commercial Styling, focused more on leisure and everyday wear. Casual tees, graphic tops, and easy layers shot primarily on mannequins in-studio, and sometimes coordinated in lay-down vignette shots and catalogue spreads. This work dealt with a lot of garment steaming, pinning, clipping + tucking, or ensuring folds and graphic placements were precise.

When we had slower days, we (Stylist, Styling Interns, + Photographer) were also allowed to creatively concept out other photoshoots we would want to do as Portfolio-builders, and then put in the work to bring those to life. Everything from concept creation, planning out model + wardrobe needs, finding + purchasing all wardrobe pieces, collecting the perfect accessories + set design components, and figuring out timing + scheduling to project manage the whole shoot. These shoots usually fell within more of the Editorial side of Styling work. Day-of we were then responsible for all model interactions, organization of all looks + finalized model styling both in-studio and on-location, accessory and prop usage, etc.

Below you will see some examples of all 3 types of work: behind the scenes with PUMA shoots, some back of garment shots for Life Is Good product shots, and my Editorial photoshoot exploration! *Reminder: images from this time in my career are limited, so apologies for the poor quality of some images.

PUMA…

Daily Styling:

Image Results Examples:

*Note: these are not end-result images from my work at Straub specifically, as I couldn’t find images from that far back in my personal archives. These are examples from PUMA’s social media, from the same timeframe that I worked on image shoots for PUMA products. These act as examples of similar image types and shoe styling work that we did in-house at Straub for PUMA’s website. We handled more of the sports focused active shoes for both in-studio + on-set shoots.

Life Is Good …

Daily Styling:

Editorial …

Additional Styling: our own photoshoots!

Tommy Hilfiger …

After graduation, I got a full-time management position with Tommy Hilfiger, in 2013. This was a role that at first seemed very outside of my comfort zone. Reason being: I was very much a Charlotte Russe girl my whole life + never leaned into the Preppy aesthetic, even though I went to a preppy High School. Visually, overall aesthetically, + especially mannequin styling-wise it was all somewhat foreign to me. But, this was an amazing opportunity to stretch my Visual Merchandising and Styling skills and adapt to a different brand vision + brand standards. The other exciting part about this role was that I got the opportunity to work with Womens, Mens, + Kids product, whereas previously I had only really worked with full floorsets of Women’s product. Unfortunately I don’t have very many photos from my time at Tommy, so below are only Women’s examples. During my time with Tommy, I was our store’s Visual Merchandising Manager as well, so it was my responsibility to teach + train the team on visual standards, plan out all floorset and armoire moves, help with floorset scheduling, and audit every set for accuracy + learning moments for the team. I also was in charge of all window display changes, and mannequin styling throughout the store, again teaching + training the team on proper pinning + starching techniques. Outside of the day-to-day managing + merchandising work, I was also the lead for our District in Visual Education + Comp Shopping reporting. These responsibilities lead to me creating fit guides for store teams to help educate our teams on product knowledge to better help the guest, sending weekly reports about happenings in surrounding brands, and also making trend boards for each season to help our store teams be fully armed with the best ways to communicate the newest trends/must-have items to the guest, to better build the basket and build guest + brand loyalty. Below are a few images from in-store sets + mannequin work, as well as a handful of those educational trend boards.

Merchandising + Mannequins:

Trend Boards:

AVEDA …

As mentioned on a prior page, I have always worn multiple hats +/or had multiple jobs at any given time. Also in 2013, I was working at a local salon as the Salon Coordinator + Front-end Manager. Very quickly after joining Salon K, I was put in charge of all things operations + guest experience in the salon. Answering the phones, taking + booking appointments, greeting guests, cashing guests out, were the typical starting role expectations, but quickly these evolved into more responsibilities: all product + window displays, product filling, inventory management, and inventory/product re-orders, running our social media accounts + posting all the latest updates and hair trends (finished cuts, colors, styles + products), as well as all communication with our Aveda rep and booking + scheduling all Aveda workshops for the team. In addition to this, I was also the owners right-hand for everything else both business + personal life related. Because of this, there were many times I needed to coordinate donations + other care packages to be sent out to clients of good local causes to ensure we were present in the community + building a positive reputation for the brand. Again, this time in my life being so far back now, there are not a ton of images that I was able to recover, so the below only shows one table display and a handful of donation/gift baskets I pulled together.

Window + Product Displays: