Today was my first day working as an intern for designer Julia Smith. She's a younger, really sweet woman with a fun asymmetrical haircut who makes way cool stuff. Her establishment is a small store with a workshop and office in the basement off of Connaught Street, just up from Hyde Park in London. It's a beautiful part of town. As soon as I got there, we established my schedule for the rest of my time, and she then put me to work. Job number one: take the tube to Manor House, find a Polish woman named Kasha in a gated industrial park, and pick up samples from her. Sounded easy enough, though I was warned that it was a rather.. shady part of town. But I figured it couldn't be that bad, so I took her lovely hand drawn map and set off on my way. I got to read my new book, The Last Empress by Anchee Min on the way, so the tube ride was fun.
Then I got off the tube, and realized I was in Hackney. Since I've been here, Hackney is pretty much the only part of London people have said is dangerous. And it was super dodgy, but so be it. When I hit the industrial center, then I started to pray a lot. It was full of rather creepy looking men, most of them foreign, who let me in, then pointed me into a maze of hallways in one of the buildings. I found the suite, and a woman who didn't speak english let me in to their workshop. It was a bright room, with three middle aged women on industrial sewing machines. Pictures of runway shows, bolts of fabrics, and block patterns were everywhere, and she motioned for me to wait for Kasha. Then I realized they had calendars of naked men all over, and were blasting Katy Perry's California Gurls. Bizarre situation, but interesting to see nonetheless. Eventually Kasha showed up, gave me the sample and the invoice, and I headed home. This time I took the bus back to the tube station so I wouldn't get all the weird kissing noises guys kept making on my walk there. Everything else went smoothly, and I made it back to Connaught Place in one piece.
Job number two: try on the samples that I just picked up and model them for Julia, because apparently I'm the size they were supposed to fit. It was a plain black tank top, black and silver cardigan wrap sweater, and a pink see through tank with crazy ruffles down the front. Now I know how all my models feel when I fit them.
Job number 3: follow the map to the post office and mail three packages, bring back extra stamps, and buy trash bags. Hey, nobody said this job was glamourous. And honestly there are far worse things than running errands, especially because Julia draws really good maps with really good directions. I was afraid she'd ask me to do a lot of obscure tasks with no direction of how to do it. Thankfully she's the opposite of that. After I mailed everything and brought back the other stuff, I was free to go home.
And that was day one. We'll see what tomorrow holds.
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