new friends :)

I already love the girls I met today in my program! We all get along so well and I'm so excited! I was dead tired this morning and waking up at 8am was not fun to say the least. We went on our field trip to Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet to observe fashion retailing in the UK. Basically we were supposed to observe brands, promotions, merchandising positioning, consumer behaviour and the marketing mix. We're going to go into the city centre later and compare those shops with the outlets. It was kind of hard for me to compare the stores here because I'm not familiar with ALL the stores and brands in the UK yet. But the girls kept me up to speed. "Do you have this in America?" ..."Oh sorry I mean Canada" haha! We were there for farrrr too long- our bus didn't leave till 5 pm so it was 6 hours of walking around and just browsing the shops. We found that there was no visual merchandizing/interesting store displays, older consumers and families and no high fashion in terms of trends or edgy designs. Everything is very simple because it is pretty much the designer reject stuff that gets shipped to the outlets to sell but there are significantly cheaper prices here. Laura ended up getting the cutest Karen Millen purple dress with jewel embellishments on the sleeves for only £49! (originally £180) with our 10% IFM discount too. We all bought some inexpensive stationary supplies (aren't we great students? ...although of course we were all tempted with some gorgeous shoes)

Things I'm looking forward to with my new MSc fashion friends:
-pole dancing classes
-shopping for pole dancing gear (haha Lucy)
-"diva" dance classes
-sushi bar
-the 20% off Topshop event in October (they open the store up late at night and give out free champagne!)
-planning out a fashion show with Cassie
-night out on the town with everyone!!!