Michael Kors:
He was very well prepared and everything he said seemed genuine and honest. He gave great advice and pressed the importance of working hard and not giving up, but at the same time he was easygoing and the seminar was entertaining and interesting from beginning to end. Everything he said was just spot on; he talked about how you couldn’t understand our love for fashion if you hadn’t been ‘bitten by the bug’ and it’s just so true. He was incredibly insightful and it was like he really understood what we were feeling because he had been in our situation once.
I laughed so much during this seminar. He and Teen Vogue editor Andrew Bevan (who was doing the interview) were close friends in real life and they were just so relaxed and spontaneous and hilarious. He talked about how he desperately needed to get out of Seattle when he was a teenager and experience the world (I can just relate so much to that), how he came to NYC and started at Parsons, and about starting his own line, etc.
Amy Astley:
All the Teen Vogue editors were great, really! They made up such an incredible team and it seemed like the perfect working environment. Editor Danielle Nussbaum covered celebrity fashion and that field seems so interesting - that may very well be my dream job - wow! Amy Astley was probably one of the most down-to-earth persons I’ve ever met, and I felt like her take on fashion was a lot like mine: we don’t judge other people by it, we don’t die for it, but it’s fascinating and intriguing and the industry is about more than just clothes. I bought her book The Teen Vogue Hand Book – An Insider’s Guide to Careers in Fashion and I read a lot of it during my very long flight back home. There is some great advice in there, I really recommend it!
Peter Som was a lot funnier than I thought. He seemed natural and relaxed, and talked about things like how extremely shy he was as a child and how he hung out with all the geeks in high school. He was very honest and personal and that made the seminar interesting. And he gave a great summary of his experiences and his career (the ups and downs, and how you need to hang in there) and it was just very inspirational.
This was a seminar about Fashion in the Digital Age with the Hillary Kerr and Katherine Power (Who What Wear), Aliza Licht (DKNY), Rich Tong (Tumblr) and Susan Koger (ModCloth), but I thought that the Who What Wear ladies really stood out, or maybe it’s just because I follow their blog religiously, but I loved what they had to say. Just like the Teen Vogue panel, they seem like such an incredible team that anyone would be lucky to be a part of.
