Owens & Kim Placement

I was very apprehensive abour my placement. With not being the most street - wise of person and not familiar with London, you could say I was a little terrifed. I was lucky enough to stay with a good friend of mine while on placement who knew London very well and was my travel guru! I arrived into Streatham, (where Jemilla lives), Sunday night - to allow me to get settled and prepare for my first day on Placement. I set up all my routes on an incredible app I was recommended called CityMapper- basically a god send for non-londoners like myself. 

Where I was based was a business courtyard, scattered with different design houses and studios. I was a little overcome however, when I read some of the names on the building lists. Obviously Owens & Kim was the first name I saw but on the floor below is one of my absolute favorite designers, Mary Katrantzou. This made me feel very excited and a little intimidated about the talent and companies which I was surrounded by.

Below is a photo of the studio I was based in. It was a fairly large space. The studio had lots of windows to allow natural light into the room. This natural source of light was important as designers needed to see what a the colours they were working with, looked like in both natural and florescent lighting. Filled with an office, a desk section (where all designing and drawing took place), computers tablets and drawing space, and the production area. The production area was where I worked and acted as a technician. I was shown how to use the all the equipment such as; the Mimaki digital printers, the steamer and the washing machine, although I knew what to do with the last one!

My daily jobs included assisting the designers with the washing and preparation of their prints (making them ready to show and sell), creating trend boards from the recent high end collections, selecting current colour stories, dropping off prints too clients, meeting Kim for collection of fabrics and of course making tea and coffee. The technical process of digital printing is something I am going to benefit from as a keen digital designer myself. 

They have two digital printers which print the designs straight onto fabric. Both printers contain the same fabric, single and double Georgette. One is filled with a lighter version of the fabric, used for printing more photographic prints, designed more for spring summer collections. The other is a thicker version, suitable for all print types and a slightly more durable than the other. 

In the rather dark image below is the work based where I cut and prepared prints for shows and customers. You can see the streamer in the far left of the photo which is crucial to the quality and finish of all the designs.

Below is a photo of me working on the sewing machine. Here I am finishing and heeming the edges of the design, ready to but put a header or to be worked on further. 

When I was in-between waiting for stages of the finishing, I was given studio organising tasks where I sorted through the haberdashery draws and generally cleared up the studio. The workspace got pretty messy and chaotic when there had just been a deadline. Some of these tasks were a little tiresome and mundane and fairly time consuming however, these things had to be done and kept me busy whilst in between tasks.