Passion for Fashion

Louie Smith

AW18
I’ve started my internship on September 4, with the company Workshop108 specialized in menswear development in the fashion industry, working for the biggest fashion houses of the LVMH group, but also for small brands such as Mr Smith Paris & Tellin.
Immersion into the fashion industry:
Starting with the autumn winter 18 collections, the company I’m now working for is immersing me into the fashion industry by taking me to the biggest fashion fair in the world: Premiere Vision. The fair that is on three days showcasing all department of this dense and complex industry from engineering, textiles, finishing details, leathers, communication, packaging and press. For this first mission I had to meet up with some of the press for the brand Mr Smith, introducing the brand or updating with the media that already know it. My second mission was to develop the packaging for the brands that workshop 108 is working for: Mr Smith and Tellin. Researching the right factories to produce the stickers hangtags boxes and all the packaging elements for the brands.
Wholesale communication:
In December 2017 we decided to use a new platform called Le New Black which is a wholesale platform to communicate with retailers and buyers across the world. It was completely new to promote the brand via wholesale. It was a good way for me to have a new way of communication, focusing only on wholesale, only showcasing the technical points of the cloth and all the imagfor this part I was shooting all the online pictures for the website and the new black and creating the profile of Mr Smith Paris. After this this season using it to promote autumn winter 18 we realize that it was a key element of communicating a brand.
For the autumn winter 18 collection I was in charge of all the visual communication of the brand.contacting retailers sending them invitation to come and discovered the AW 18 connection at the show room,

Communication:
At the office I’m in charge of the visual communication for the brand Mr Smith Paris, in the first part we were working with the communication agency Village based in London producing the social content for the brand Instagram & Facebook, but due to budget cutting and miscommunication between the two parts we ended the partnership with the communication agency in February 2018. So on from March 2018 I toke the responsibility to create all the content in house and the storytelling of the social networks platform for Mr Smith Paris.
In September, we relaunched the website for Mr Smith Paris, I was in charge of all the design interface: presenting the existing collections, the story of the brand and the designer behind, pushing traffic towards the pre-orders of the Spring Summer 18 collection. Also with the creation of the website I was in charge of the logistic part of the website by managing the stocks of the current Spring Summer 18 collection. In February we decided to re-launch a newer version of the website, I’ve work arround an other platform and produced a new website with a cleaner design and a much clearer interface for users:
www.mrsmithparis.com
Communication strategy:
From February 2018 I’ve been in charge of the Instagram and Facebook content promoting the brand and drive the story of the collection online to customers and retailers.
I’ve previously learnt how to build storytelling and social content with the documents that were given by the communication agency before. As I am in the same office as Mr Smith with the people that design it in conceive it I have the opportunity to transmit a deeper vision of what is the product and the philosophy of the brand on contrary to the agency. It also gives me the opportunity to react quickly to what people who like or dislike on the Instagram feed and Facebook feed.
The observation that I made with this experience of social media is that most fashion houses and all brands should have the social department built in to their offices and not through an agencies. I’ve also noticed branded content is not what people are looking for any more on social media, by looking in our stats on social platforms, the contents that we posted for the past two months were more centred on the philosophy, inspirations of the brand and people are more engaging with the content. People are looking for more than just a product, most of them are trying to understand the identity of and the background. The content I’ve produced is focusing on the behind the scene of the brands, taking pictures of the meetings without showing what is being done, showing what is happening in the Atelier, make people feel more implicated into vision of the brand.
As the brand Mr Smith is sold only in Japan, Germany and in one store in France: biarritz, it is difficult to show to the people living in Paris or travelling to Paris so we decided to open the atelier two people by taking an appointment on the website. So far this promotional action of the brand has worked several people have booked appointment came to the atelier discovered the brand and browse through the archives and the available collection, which increase the sales.
Observation:
After 7 months working in this industry, meeting people that are part of it and asking them the same question: What is missing today in the fashion industry? Most of the answers are the same: To many brands selling images to consumers, some brands sell themselves with some corrupted background pretending to have craftmenship. And the one of the biggest problem noticed by those people is the lake of the new generation to know all the technical part, leaving all the craftmenship to the old generation. what I realize from my side is that all of those fashion schools train more and more stylist and less people with “Savoir-faire”, the result of this is that so many fashion companies are desperate for them.
Website: www.mrsmithparis.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/mrsmithparis