It's been 2 months since my internship at Marie Claire finished and I'm only just now getting round to writing about my whole experience there. Shame on me. Anyway, better late than never right? As summer's here I reckon there are a few of you out there with an internship or some work experience lined up for the summer and I thought I'd give you a few tips and tell you a bit about how I found my time as a beauty intern at Marie Claire.
Being an intern doesn't necessarily mean you go on coffee runs and do your boss' errands all day long. In fact I was only asked to run out a couple of times during the 3 weeks I was there. In all fairness I came to Marie Claire just as they were starting to plan a major beauty shoot in the Maldives where they were going to shoot 7 stories. That meant me and Caitlin (the other beauty intern) had more than enough clothes, shoes, makeup and accessories to call in from all sorts of brands. I don't know how much we ended up getting in the end but it must have been several thousand items. We were literally drowning in designer clothes and shoes. Sounds like any girls dream but it gets a bit exhausting remembering who everything is by and where we borrowed it from. One tip I can give if you're asked to call in large amounts of clothes etc. - keep a detailed list of everything you've got and keep collections/designers together for a better overview.
Although we were both beauty interns; due to this big shoot we ended up working more with clothes than beauty products. The first 2 weeks went to lots of emailing, calling and hanging up clothes on rails. There was also a ridiculously stressful day of packing everything the stylist wanted for the shoot into 7 suitcases. It was absolute madness but despite feeling deat at the end of the day it was probably one of the most fun days just because you really get a feeling of how hectic it can be.
Now I got to do more than just the above, some of it was making moodboards for the fashion features editor, help select beauty products to be featured in the magazine, deliver and collect products that were going to be shot/had been shot for the magazine down at a nearby photo studio, and that sort of thing. The most exciting and the biggest thing I got to do was to write a piece for the Marie Claire website. A very exciting task for me - being a blogger and all, but I have to admit it is very different and challenging to write when it's not in 'your own voice'. You can click here if you want to read it.
Being an intern at a magazine such as Marie Claire, in a city like London is not just exciting, it is extremely challenging and a lot of hard work and patience. You have to expect a lot of the work you do to be quite repetitive, but if you show that you are reliable and effective you'll see that soon enough you might get bigger responsibilities. I got my internship partly through contacts and partly through my blog. The beauty features editor wanted me to do more writing and beauty related things but unfortunately there wasn't enough time due to the big shoot trip we were working on. I am so happy I got to do a little bit of it though as it is invaluable experience that you can only really get from an internship like this. And let's not forget about the amazing goodie bag I got to make myself before I left. Just like a kind in a candy shop - with money to spend. Check out some of my treats below.
I know this was a lengthy post but it is hard to put 3
intense weeks into few words. I do hope you liked it and that it was interestin
or helpful to any of you who are considering doing an internship yourselves! I
could not recommend doing it enough - it is just such an incredible
opportunity. A second part to this post featuring my top tips will be up in a
week or so, so keep an eye out for that.
Thank you
so much to those of you who keep stopping by my blog even though I have been
very bad on the update front the past months, I really do appreciate it! An
outfit post is on its way and should be up within the next few days.
Love,
