The Learning Agreement

Elizabeth P Jacques

Learning Agreement

For the Industrial Experience unit, I shall be interning for 12 weeks at the luxury eyewear company; Linda Farrow (LF), based in Central London. During this period I will be working amongst the design team with my supervisor; Lucy Rowland, Head of Design. The company has given me an idea of the tasks that I shall be doing during my stay:

·  Assisting the design team with CAD drawings

·  Organization of samples

·  Research

·  Preparing packages

·  General admin

In order for this to be done successfully, LF have arranged for a training programme that will enhance my skills and make myself more useful within the office team. I would like to understand the roles in which all the employers take within the business, in order to understand where I would like to head with my own career. I would like to challenge my perceptions of the roles I have previously undoubtedly wanted to undertake such as designing and product development.

Alongside the work placement, I would like to achieve a better understanding of the fashion eyewear industry. There is a huge industry that is parallel to this sector being spectacles based purely on functional design, however I like to focus on the more fashionable side, where collections are made and collaborated with high fashion labels. I feel this is more relevant to my previous work, where inspiration is made and collated into a sculptural form. I shall visit more eyewear stores around the British capital, understanding current trends and where the market is heading.

I would like to see how eyewear can be handmade, what is involved and what distinguishes it between the machine-made products. I would like to see if there are any produced within the UK and visit the factories, to create a better understanding of the processes. I would like to visit the different ends of the spectrum; Luxottica; the huge machine produced eyewear for the mega-brands, and then to look at more handmade products that show extravagance and true indulgence; Linda Farrow, then to see brands which tailor-make the eyewear to the customer; Barrow& Flux.

By the end of this placement, I would like to know if this is an industry where I feel I can contribute to and would be happy working within.

VAVA

Vava is a very futuristic eyewear company based between Berlin and Portugal. They have a very recognisable and alien look. 

"The future is simplicity, cleanness and purity. The future is darkness, decay and underground. "
This statement is repeated throughout the brand and is their inspiration point behind every collection.

The eyewear is eco-friendly and 100% recyclable by using a cellulose based acetate, using cotton and wood pulp fibres. The frames are all handmade within a small family owned italian manufacturers, where the company escapes mass production and is able to control quality.
The company only uses entirely flat lenses, these are also 'Crystal Lenses' which only use the purest of glass to provide precise vision. This is an element that many eyewear companies do not provide; glass lenses and have recently resorted to acrylic.
The shapes of the frames are geometric and have a small range of colours; white, grey and black. Their range of eyewear is relatively small and prove that the company is still very young. 

 Find and discover more about this brand here.

17Days Into The Placement

The last 3 and a bit weeks have been a test. A real test to want to continue this placement. I feel very alone and disappointed that the industry is like this; v v dull, uncreative and full of uninspired people that truly live up to the 'fashionista' stereotype. my mother joked that from what she heard from me about it, it sound very similar to the film 'Devil wears Prada', thinking about it... yes it is.
i wish i could join their meetings. i wish they saw me as more than the intern that shall leave soon. I wish the work was more strenuous. i wish i could be learning more. i love the London life, that's whats not making me want to go back to Bournemouth. I love the simplicity, i love my cousins flat. i love the potential of what i could be learning and achieving instead of drawing and colouring in.

I found it difficult to find positive things to write on this blog, hence the lack of content.

It has been 17 days.
Only 45 left.

However nothing happens without a bit of hard work.

Linda Farrow X Yazbukey

One of Linda Farrows most exciting collaborative brands is a Paris based company called Yazbukey. They have some very colourful and extraordinary accessories and Linda farrow have a great time designing and producing their eyewear. A recently very popular piece: the 'C'est ahh...'  Glasses (quite simply a pair of lips in either red or pink, as shown below) in their S/S 15 collection has been worn in many shoots and by many celebrities.

Discover their Linda Farrow collection here and explore their unique style here.

Exciting Work

For the first time this week i was able to do something creative, this was only while head of design was away and when she returned at lunch time i was back on the boring limitless line sheets. Anyway, the idea was to start recreating the shape of the clear acetate for next Marcus Lupfer collection. I had a few ideas shall have to see if they will make a consideration. However, this was quite exciting to start being creative again and hopefully i can be entrusted with this sort of work again.

(in no way should anyone take these mere illustrator scribblings of any future forecast)

Other than this i feel like i've had my first really good day. I met more people within the company, someone made me coffee and by the time i got home i was happy. 

Linda Farrow; The History.

This is the opening paragraph from a previous essay based on Linda Farrow, This was written before i started the placement;

'Originally established in 1970 in the UK by the fashion designer Linda Farrow, A luxury eyewear company was set up and put into storage. Farrow was the first designer to treat sunglasses as fashion; she felt the public was not yet ready to see her collections and decided to concentrate on family. In 2003, her son Simon Jablon relaunched the business along with Tracy Sedino, after discovering a huge selection of sunglasses in the family warehouse. Luckily the collection was found at a time when vintage appeal started to become a huge trend, let alone the stamp of classic individuality that now everyone holds within their wardrobe. Linda Farrow as a brand in the 2000’s had found its niche; large overpublicized luxury brands such as Dior & Prada were creating vulgar eyewear as just a way of holding more limelight. Linda Farrow was a breath of fresh air and brought in a unique approach to eyewear. 

By creating designs that were based on form and aesthetic appeal, rather than over branding. The era of ‘the Mega Brand’ was becoming exhausted, the luxury industry needed to bring back some basic elegance, good design and reduce its crassness. Linda Farrow was this statement without a label, of true luxury and grace.

Simon and Tracy decided to sell on this collection under the name of ‘Linda Farrow Vintage’. However after a few thousand pairs sold later, the vintage collection was running out. The company name is now “Linda Farrow’ showing the label continues to relate the collections to vintage for its inspiration, yet maintains to push forward into the future. '

Now that i have been working inside the company for the past 2 weeks, i have a slightly different view of the vision of the company to when i wrote the essay. I believe the Linda Farrow brand has a huge impact on the eyewear industry, collaborating with many RTW and luxury designers, producing their sunglasses and opticals. They do produce many very classic shapes for their own label, but i feel the brand is incredibly future forward and rapidly expanding from one collection to the next. 

Tuesday 17th March.

Today was quite a reality check, the people I am working with have invested so much time and effort in order to have the dream career within the fashion industry. They believe they have made it; ‘the job doesn’t pay well, but it makes you happy’. Im finding it very hard to see where they find their happiness, but perhaps that is just my own perceptions of happiness and a mix of the London worklife. They don’t seem to have much time for themselves; working from 8 til 8, though free weekends, they claim to have no time for relationships or too tired for a social life. One might think that at the end of this, the employee shall get paid well; nope!  This is a job that keeps a lot of designers happy, but i'm not sure that this is one that will make me happy. I think I should see other sides of the job in order to get a clear picture.

Perhaps I would be less biased if I felt part of the team. Recently there have been quite a few meetings and i've asked to join, but i've been told they’ll be too boring for me. I love learning new stuff and from listening into the meetings, they were choosing new colour ranges and going through the designs for the coming season. Instead i've been left to do their work for them.

I just hope I learn something by the end of this placement and that my view on the design industry doesn’t stay so biased. I dont feel part of a team, i feel like the intern who will leave shortly and will therefore be pointless to talk to. 

Wednesday 11th

The Best Day So Far

Today i got to do more variety in my job, and i had a fantastic time! Before today i was literally drawing and colouring in eyewear on Illustrator from technical drawings to be sent back to the Japanese factories. A very dull job, but something that they all do and must be done (and hopefully as quick as possible before you're head explodes from tediousness)  

Anyway! Lets get to the excitement....

Today I was introduced to POS (point of sale). Apparently some opticians (not all) aren't so creative when setting out the products and need a display box with indented sections for every individual eyewear product. Before this is made, one must design this display box, today this job was for me. This was for a collaborative brand Phillip Lim, and i needed to design a poster to go alongside, following their specifications. 

This is the poster for the coming season, the image is from previous seasons, but this will be able to interchange, so the opticians don't have to keep replacing the entire POS, just the image.

In the afternoon, I was told to start designing some sunglasses for a well-known collaborative brand. Similar to some previously made items, these have the theme of Apollo but need a similar style.

These are the two favoured very initial designs.

These are the Jeremy Scott collaboration that these designs are based on.

Ray Ban

Covent Garden; The home of the bizarre and intrigued.

The RayBan store really did intrigue me, especially as to how one can try on a pair of shades in a dark room. The idea is more irritating than the fact it should surely hinder the brand. RayBan have decided that the image and first impressions when entering the store is more important than their products. As a product designer I find imagery and idealism should be second to the proof of a well designed product; and in turn the brand shall earn it's customer loyalty with a quality product.

When looking in the mirror in the store i could just make out the reflection of my face, however when trying on a pair of their sunglasses it was impossible to see what on earth they looked like on my face. Without trying on the frames, the products were overall very ugly and i don't believe the brand deserves the hype that is cast. 

Bailey Nelson

Wheile ambling around Covent Garden this sunny Saturday, I stumbled upon this wonderful eyewear store; Bailey Nelson. The open windows look into the small store showing the unique freshness and clarity which personifies the brand. Within the store is a very contemporary arrangement with eyewear balancing against plinths of wood, seats and flowers swinging from the ceiling.

The store has been in UK residence for the last year and a half with an extremely positive response. Bailey Nelson is a company from Sydney, Austrailia that has been running for the past 3 years, they believe they're glasses provide a fair price for high quality frames and lenses.

From talking to their friendly and welcoming staff the other boutiques around London are all very individual. I feel this element alongside its crisp, clean feel gives so much energy and drive behind the brand. I even felt very tempted to purchase a pair (doesn't happen often) however i had to talk myself out of it. 

The disappointing part is that they do not have their own design team, they merely buy in from suppliers. I find this crazy that a collection can be build from these circumstances and jammed together. Yet it works.

The potential for this company is tangible, even before one steps in the store. Best of luck to them.

The First Day

Taking the Tube from my Cousins' flat in Maida Vale to Kings Cross Station on the first day was incredibly exciting. Meeting the staff inside the busy building was quite overwhelming with so many names and faces to remember, but they all seemed very charming and welcoming.

My supervisor and Head of Design, Lucy Rowland held a meeting to update me and the rest of the design team on the S/S 16 collection and its progress. Lucy, only just arrived back from MIDO, a large eyewear trade fair held in Milan. The eyewear calendar starts much earlier than fashion as the production of luxury materials such as silver and titanium takes a while to sample and manufacture.
Therefore the office have completed the designs for S/S 16  and shall be finalising their colours and materials this week. Everything within the office is done at a fast pace and efficiency, holding regular meetings to keep everyone up to speed.

The first day, I came to understand the entirety of the next collection with the collaborative products and I was shown briefly how the Linda Farrow team works together. I was also assigned a side project, which is extremely exciting. without giving too much away, the brief is to create a new look for a very well established modern band and to pitch the idea.