COLLEGE AND CLASSES IN NYC

Hey, so I'm officially back home in Finland for Christmas, but that doesn't mean I'm done posting about my trip, since there's a lot to cover! So, this time I actually wanted to tell you about the college life in New York, how is it different from Scotland (where I study) and so on, so let's begin.

My major back in Scotland is Fashion Communication, which is very much like the Fashion Media major at LIM in New York. But, instead of being under a course major, us exchange students actually  got to pick courses we wanted to take at LIM. In Scotland, everyone under the same major take the same courses, but at LIM, even though for their students there's some mandatory courses they need to take, they can also choose a lot of the courses themselves, and even minor on a different subject to their major. But, like I said, we actually got to choose the courses ourselves, we just had a certain amount of credits we had to take (12), for it to make up one semester at our home university. The courses I ended up getting (you have to have a few options for these, since you won't necessarily get into the courses you want to the most) were Fashion Forecasting, Styling Essentials, Creative Direction and Styling and Display Graphics.




Fashion Forecasting was probably my favourite course. Our teacher was amazing, the course topics were interesting, and I actually learned a lot about a subject I never really knew much about: how to forecast trends. We had quite a lot of work for this course too, and well, we actually had quite a lot of work for each course I was taking, since I'm used to just working on a big project towards the end of the semester, rather than having assignments pretty much weekly as well as midterms. This kept me motivated to actually study a lot though and not forget about college work in my free time either. For example, in fashion forecasting we had to do a blog post every week about an upcoming trend we were intrigued about or that we liked, which was really fun, although it got harder and harder towards the end when you started to run out of ideas. We also had three presentations to do, which again were pretty fun, yet challenging.

Styling Essentials and Creative Direction and Fashion Styling were both styling courses, yet quite different from each other. Styling Essentials was the only course I actually had to purchase a book for, and we used it for most of the content in our classes; went through the chapters one by one and had a few quizzes on them, which I really wasn't expecting from a styling course. We also had field trips to all the big luxury fashion department stores, and finished the course with a photoshoot, which to be honest I though we'd have more in the course. In Creative Direction and Styling, we had more of photoshoots, but they were group photoshoots, which meant you had to work well within one. The photoshoots themselves weren't as creative as I would've liked, and the actual "Creative Direction" part of the course was pretty much non-existent, but I mean you can't like every course you take. Maybe it was because I was working with a stylist myself and knew what the job actually was like, which is why I wanted more from the course itself, but I'm sure for someone who isn't working with a stylist the course could teach a lot.



And last but not least, probably the course I struggled with the most, but also probably which taught me the most, was Display Graphics. First of all, I've previously struggled a bit with Illustrator and InDesign, because to me Photoshop is so much easier to use, so it was challenging to be forced to mostly just use these two applications and actually create something that looked pretty decent with them. But even though I struggled throughout the course a lot, and had moments when I felt like everyone else was better than me, I did learn a lot of skills that will definitely be useful in the future. I already have A/A- 's from all of my other courses, so just waiting on what grade I will get from this one... (UPDATE : Got a B+, guess I didn't suck as much as I thought I did!)

Anyway, in conclusion, the work load is definitely distributed differently in the US than in Scotland, which was a nice change, although with my internship and college I felt like I barely had any free time in some weeks. Also, it was quite nice to choose your own courses, but it's always a hit or miss when you do so, and some courses you'll obviously like more than the others. When you do choose your courses though, you can have huge gaps in between some classes and some really long days, because you're pretty much creating your own timetable from the courses available.



That's it for now, feel free to ask any questions!

-Linda

INTERNING WITH A STYLIST IN New York

Hi guys. Hope this topic will be interesting to all my fellow fashion lovers and people who also want to work in the industry in the future, especially in styling. Here in New York, I've been lucky enough to assist the stylist Jenny Haapala (and a few other stylists) for the past few months now, alongside being in school, and here I am letting you guys know all about it.

So, first of all you might wonder how are you able to do internships while you're in the US with a student Visa. Well, LIM has internships courses that exchange students can take, and that way also have an internship while being a student. It is a lot of paper work and a few assignments that you need to do for the course of course, but it's definitely worth it. Doing an internship and working in a city like New York has been once is a lifetime experience that has for sure changed my future career for good.



I've interned for a stylist before, but working with Jenny has taught me so much more about being a stylist. It is all about being organised, and it's important that you have a specific system that you follow that ensures that you're on top of everything that has to do with the clothes and accessories you'll be handling as a stylist. Us assistants are helping with it a lot: First of all we do a lot of pick-ups and returns, so I've basically been running around New York several times to different showrooms, designer offices and clothing stores, picking up and returning clothes and accessories for Jenny. Even though you might thing it would be cool to pick up a few clothes from places like the Gucci offices, it really isn't that glamorous at all. Taking a 30 minute subway somewhere just to pick up a few heavy garment bags, and bringing them back to the office (and doing that about 10 more times that day) eventually becomes a whole workout, not gonna lie. Then on top of all that you have to check in and check out everything correctly, so everyone knows where everything belongs, and nothing gets lost. That's a huge part of being a stylist though, and something every stylist has to do, and it was a huge learning experience for me that the job really isn't all fun and games, and can get quite stressful and tiring. At the end of the day though, I still love it.

On the other hand, my favourite thing about the internship has hands down been the photoshoots I've been helping out with. I've been on set for Highsnobiety, Vogue Australia, Milk Makeup, PAPER magazine, Yoho! Magazine (with Trippie Redd, which was pretty cool) and so on, and also been involved with a lot of test photoshoots. They're definitely my favourite part since you're working with a lot of cool creatives and seeing what actually happens behind the scenes. Steaming clothes isn't that bad after all either. Photoshoot days can definitely be extremely long, and often you're just waiting around a lot, but it's cool to see what actually happens behind the scenes on set. Another fun thing as a stylist is obviously shopping (or pulling) clothes, which I've also been a part of a few times.




So, how did I actually got the internship? Well, it was pretty much just as easy as on email and that's it. I just emailed Jenny that I wanted to assists here while I was in New York, sent her my CV and portfolio and she emailed me back in about thirty minutes saying she'd love me to help her out. Getting an internship really isn't that intimidating, you just have to reach out to people yourself and be prepared that a lot of them might not answer or might say no, it definitely hasn't been this easy for me getting an internship in the past. Internships are definitely a key to learning how the industry works and learning about the jobs you might want to have in the future, so I'd definitely recommend them to everyone who want to work in the fashion industry.

Again, if you guys have any questions, just let me know. Until next time!

SETTLING IN

Hey again. I'm finally sitting down and writing my second blog posts about New York, and it's crazy to think that this is the first time in a few weeks I found some free time to do this. And that is actually one main thing I've noticed about New York, the hectic lifestyle and the everyday hustle really impacts, at least my life here, hugely. I noticed within the first few weeks that I hate being alone in my room doing nothing, which is something that I enjoyed a lot while I was living in Scotland. It just feels like you're waisting your time if you're not doing something here, and well, right now I really don't have much free time at all between school, my internship and trying to keep up with my social life.

But let's backtrack to the first month, how I felt, how long it took me to settle in and all of that. Well, first of all New York immediately felt like home. Some people say it takes time to settle in and it can be a huge culture shock when you come here, but for some reason I immediately found people that I got along really well with, I was comfortable going to places alone within the first week (even though I did get lost a few times), and I just love the energy that the city has. The city almost fuels me and keeps me motivated, and I want to be doing something here all the time. One of the things I definitely should learn is how to relax a bit, but on the other hand I really didn't come to the city to sleep or stay in my room the whole day, I came here to explore, meet new people and learn, and that's exactly what I've done for the past few months.



Even though I did settle in quite quickly, I'm not saying that it didn't take time to learn how the transport here works, and how to actually find time to have a normal day routine, like remember to go to the gym and eat healthy. And to be completely honest, I still haven't found that. Maybe it is because I'm always on the go, but it is quite hard to keep in track with your healthy habits when there's so much to do and see (and when Seamless has free delivery hahah). That was also one of those things that kinda came as a shock to me, because I used to care about my health so much and go to the gym up to 6 times a week. But then again, I'm willing to give myself a break from all of that while I'm here, and I mean you end up walking SO much every day, that you don't even realise how much you actually do "work out". I've lost quite a bit of weight while I've been here by just walking, and I've heard a lot of people say the same thing. You check your steps at the end of the day, and you've easily walked 15,000 steps without even realising it.

After orientation weeks, which were quite fun actually, and where I met all of my best friends now, it definitely started feeling like I actually did live in the city when before that I had felt as if I was still a tourist. Right now I'm so settled in it'll be a huge shock for me to leave, since I already know this is the city I eventually want to live in sometime in the future.



So I guess that's it for now. Next post I'll talk more about my internship, so again, if you have any questions just let me know in the comments below!

New York, New York

Hey everyone, it's been a while! I decided some time ago that blogging really wasn't for me anymore, and I've been treating my Instagram (@lindalovesfashion) as more of a blog now for a while already. But here I am again, and many of you might be wondering why, so let me tell you something that has been happening for the past few months.

So, as some of you may know I study fashion, fashion communication to be specific, at Heriot-Watt in Scotland. For my third year I got the opportunity to choose if I wanted to do a semester exchange abroad, and of course I did, especially when one of the schools you could choose was LIM in New York. I've always loved New York and wondered how it would be like living there, so when I got the confirmation that I was chosen as one of the students to go there for a semester, I was obviously extremely happy. So for this post I decided to tell you how everything went down, what did I need to do before New York and all that. I've actually been living here for two months now, started an internship and done a lot of exciting stuff, so I'll definitely be updating about my journey a lot for the next few months.



First of all, I must say it's not the easiest process to move here, even if you're just an exchange student. There's a lot of papers to be filled out, including all of your personal information for the school and for the visa application, plus information about your insurance, bank statements, vaccinations etc. And because I'm from Finland, it made everything a bit harder for me too since I had to get all the papers translated to English. Another step after all the paper work, was the actual visa interview, which I definitely was stressing about. I was thinking it was going to be really strict and scary, but at the end of the day, it was just a lot of waiting around in rooms, nothing scary about it at all. They do need quite a few of your papers, so you need to have everything filled out correctly, but other than that, they just asked why I was going to New York, where I was gonna stay, and that's about it.

Next step was obviously packing. I'm going somewhere for four months, and I'm supposed to survive with just one big suitcase? Well I did it, but the amount of clothes I've bought here already... Let's just say it might be a struggle to fit everything in when I go back home.



The flight wasn't anything too bad. Best part about long flights is that you can watch movies, because they make the flight go so much faster. Both of the airports are quite far from Manhattan though, so it cost be about $100 to get a taxi from Newark to my dorms on Upper East Side. There's definitely cheaper ways to get to Manhattan, but I had been travelling all day and just wanted to get to dorms as soon as possible.

And I actually think this is the perfect spot to end my post. I'll tell you how it was adapting to the city in my next one. If you have any questions just write them down below, hope you guys are having a great week!

WAY TOO HOT FOR THIS JACKET BUT IT LOOKED COOL, OKAY?

My titles just keep getting better and better I know.

I was planning on doing this post earlier but because I had super long work days this weekend (12-15h), and on Sunday I was so tired from all the work and not sleeping much that my day consisted of coffee and Game Of Thrones and I really couldn't be arsed to think of anything interesting to write. But now I'm back, and really don't have anything interesting to write now either but hey ho, at least the pictures are decent. Yesterday while being a sloth I finally caught up with GOT, and now unfortunately have to wait a week for new episodes.. How sad, can't believe that back in the day we had to do this with every show... Just kidding, I'm not actually that bothered because at least now I have time to start a new show that I can obsess over, if you guys have any recommendations lemme know.

This week I'm not really planning on doing anything interesting, but that's what I've been enjoying a lot lately. Just little over a month and then I'm back in Scotland again, starting my second year of uni. I'm so happy being back in Finland but I also miss Scotland so so much, especially my friends. And because everyone will be living in flats this year (last year we were all living in the same building) I can't wait for all the house warming parties and the life of not having to share a kitchen with 9 other people. Finally I can make my chicken and sweet potato fries in peace. Or actually with my bestie (who just asked me today how to make scrambled eggs... So I guess I'll be making dinner for two from now on.. Just kidding Emma, love you). She's actually coming to Finland for a week this Sunday and I couldn't be more excited. The only problem is that my home city isn't that big (or interesting) and I really don't know that many places where I'd take her, but she said she'd be happy even though we'd just chill at my room. And to be fair, that's perfectly fine with me too. Aw, aren't we cute.









Hope you're all having a great start of the week!

X LINDA