Hanbury Post 4 - Anthropologie (Nicola)

• • Within my work currently I feel I am stuck between creating images for editorial or publishing, and going down the route of really immersing myself in print making and process and creating textiles and patterns for product, packaging and clothing. This talk was helpful and helped me with confidence and decide how best to move forward. 
  • Kings Road Gallery. 
  • Within the design studio's the work it split up. Design teams work in collaboration from concept boards and test and make ideas and products that could work. They practically test ideas before creating for mass. 
  • Weather working for big companies or with independent artist the team at Anthropologie works the same. They sole aim to meet their core aims of maintaining on trend with the key consumer and maintaining a sustainable approach. 
  • Sustainability is a key part of Anthropologie's ethos and is integral to how they produce products and promote the company. 
  • A whale was a feature that happened across most of the stores last year. The whale was made up of recycled materials that where fixed to wire and embroided onto. Once the whale was finished with in the London store it was taken down to the National history museum and held there on exhibition. 
  • Recycled products are also used within store as well as display cabinets and tables.
  • Anthropologie do have internships which is something that I could be really interested in , especially in the practical design team. But also it would be good as a long term ambition to design products in collaboration with the independently. 
  • It was really good to have a collective which I helped run and one to one chat with Nicola. She originally has a degree in politics but now works as a senior part of marketing team. In the collective chat it was good to talk in more detail about the companies ethics, how the different teams worked and the growth of Anthropologie. 
  But the one to one conversation was the most valuable. I showed Nicola my individual outcomes of the collaboration with the British refugee council. But through out showing her I kept saying that I was new to printed textile , but she said that , that was absolutely fine. And she gave me some wisdom about how to get started in the industry. Don't compare yourself to others. I'll admit I do this, and I get worried a lot about not being good enough and I have been pigeon holing myself in resent months and worrying constantly about how I am going to fit in, but being creative is a skill in it's self and having the ability to problem solving through making can be applies to a number of disciplines. In the last few months here a new aim is to explore process as much as possible. In the end I know that my portfolio dose need to be narrowed down but print and process is at the core of it and this is the thing I am going to expole in more depth.