A Day In The Life Of A Fashion Buyer

2008-02-13T04:21:00.000-08:00

I got up at 7am. I knew I had a long day ahead of me. My first thoughts were 'what should I wear'. I knew from experience that my attire could be the making or breaking of setting up any potential new business accounts. In the end I decided on some less formal True Religion skinny jeans, a cream cotton ruffle front shirt & my favorite leather biker jacket & riding boots . Oh and not to forget, my funky new quilted leather chain bag from Kuyah.co.uk. I went against my instincts and boycotted the formal suit.

I met my colleague at around 9.30 & we made our way across to London Olympia for the 'Pure Directional Women's wear, Footwear & Accessories' Fashion Exhibition.

On entry to the exhibition we collected our badges & events guides. We entered the huge hall making our way around an area filled with a huge selection of elegant, bead encrusted & highly expensive ladies wear. Not really the type of products we were looking for.

After having a quick look at the events guide, we realized we were in the "Vision" section . The "vision" section was a collection of inspirational designer brands focused on creating unique designs. Fashion label exhibiting included, Ruth Tarvydas, Ewa iWalla, Jode London & Rachel Mackay.

We quickly made our way across to the "Impulse" section of the exhibition. This area was focused on the exhibiting of popular high street fashion trends. It was mainly casual wear. with label such as yaya, Mina, Giggle & Irem Deniz London

At 12.15pm we visited the New!Pure Spirit Catwalk which was fun and exciting with a great range of edgy directional fashion. The music was pretty cool too from Pacha collection who provided upbeat underground sounds .

At around 2pm we visited the Pure Catwalk where we watched the pure fashion show. It was certainly no London fashion week. But it did the job of showcasing the products of the registered sellers. with a range of beaded & embroidered coats, pleated mini skirts and diamantee ridding hats, the styles were a little contrived and I certainly didn't feel like running off to a particular stand to purchase any of the products I had seen.

Drapers gave an interesting and inspirational presentation on fashion forecasting, focusing on fabrics, shapes, colours and styles for autumn / winter 2008.

Then on to "Spirit" which was an area I enjoyed browsing . With a selection of young exciting , creative , forward thinking edgy fashion labels such as lipsy, Looking Glass Boutique, Applebottoms and Ben Sherman

I kept thinking 'This is the direction we want to stay in' for our own company label 'Kuyah', thats due for an official launch date of spring/summer 2009.

I noticed more and more every time I talked with sellers throughout the day, an awful lot of fashion label are afraid to sell their products to pure play e-tailer companies(Unless your companys one of the more well known internet sites). Also, a large amount of fashion companies still have not embraced the chance to have their own internet outlet for their own products. This amazed me more than anything I saw.

Anyway despite this amazing find, we did source some fantastic new suppliers for our summer & winter season collections. We also managed to source an amazing footwear supplier for our winter season range in July 2008.

So overall the Pure exhibition was great. With a comprehensive collection of great quality products.

I just wanted to source some amazing new fashion products for our fast growing online fashion boutique.

Kuyah style Blog

A Day In The Life Of A Fashion Buyer