Wake-up to the city’s vibrant sound, walk down Joralemon street to the borough hall subway, gaze at the variety of passengers, get out at time square, struggle past the thousands of tourist, enter 525, 5th avenue, and up to the 20th floor, enter the office, wave to co-workers, sit down at my desk, type ‘Nicole Miller’ and look over press-releases from the weekend. It’s monday and the start of a new week at the Nicole Miller showroom in the iconic garment district in Manhattan, New York.
Working in the communications and PR department of an established fashion house is just as exciting as you would hope, creatively challenging, an infinity of networking opportunities and inspiration and an abundance of research for the next big break. New York is home to one of, if not, the most fast-paced fashion cultures in the world, and designers are fighting over models, influencers, gala’s and profiles in the most prestigious magazines. As an intern many of my tasks involved researching where Nicole Miller as a company would like to be seen (or heard), this entailed updating lists of media contacts for magazines (print and online), bloggs, pod-casts etc. Other times I would write up ‘media-pitches’. This meant that, for example, whenever e-commerce was about to release a new product on the website or when we had received our pictures from the NYFW, I would write a short summary where we present our product or images for various media to use as content for their publications. Every week we would have a meeting with the communications department discussing press-reportings, expectancy for the next week and advancements in longer-term goals. Additionally once a month, the department met for a longer sit-down discussing the past month, future goals etc. This meeting includes presentations of all media, and social media mentions of ‘Nicole Miller’ for the past month. Whilst interning, I was in charge of collecting these mentions, sending them to my supervisor daily and also putting them together for the presentation. This was a fun project where I really got to see how many media-pitches would make it to publication and also get to read a lot about other brands in the industry and about cultural events.
Overall I had an amazing time at Nicole Miller’s and would highly suggest to future interns to seek an internship abroad if you have the possibility. The paperwork for the states was a long process filled with hinders, and personally, the situation with the coronavirus, cut my stay in New York and my office time in half. Yet I would not have liked to be anywhere else and feel I learnt an immense amount in my first half of my internship, and was able to continue some tasks working from home. Working for Nicole Miller further ensured me that I want to seek a career in the creative industries, and I am eternally grateful to have had the opportunity to work at such a great company.