Visual Merchandising at River Island Work Placement

 

6 Weeks into my course at the FRA, I was thrown into the deep end when sent off to do a 3 week work placement at River Island as part of the VM team. I was placed in their flagship stores (Oxford Street and Marble Arch branches) and given various tasks to do as part of the team. It was a great experience and opportunity to learn what it's like to work within a store in the VM team.

 

 Along with the general tasks of a VM, I was able to create some focal hot spots. Given a specific area and therefore trend, I had to pull various accessories from the stock room and create a well balanced display. This used skills such as product adjacencies, colour blocking and balancing textures. The two fixtures were for non clothing, and fitting the pastel trends and brights.

I also helped finish off overall looks for departments, such as the front zone in this store. I was given the task of finding accessories and shoes to balance the floor and link with all the corresponding garments.

This is an example of some of the mannequins I helped dress and style. This was my first time working with kids mannequins which I found really cool- especially the magnetic arms! I also helped style and dress some of the male mannequins and a mannequin for the window.