Phreshly Squeezed

When I came home from France for the summer, I was just in time to help out with the JUZD’s fall/winter 09-10 photoshoot. Check out the video below filmed by The Biz Media at G3EPOCH Studios. See if you can spot my (literal) fifteen seconds of fame!

For most of high school, my writing style was non-existent. I struggled to get an 80% on my English assignments; heck, a lot of the people in my class found that to be the sinker grade on our straight-A report cards. A lot of my inability to write had to do with the fact that I had very little understanding with regards to grammar and structure. However, the biggest problem was that no one had ever sat down with me to take a look at my thought process and thought to teach me how to hone in on a good idea and to build on it. Eventually, I did get that education elsewhere and in time before college applications, which allowed me to start churning out well-written essays, but that was the only medium of communication I knew. I had no grasp on how to write other types of works that were targeted to an audience other than academia.

When you think “blog,” you often visualize yourself in a throwback to the beginning of the new millennium where you would find teens writing about their personal triumphs and woes in acronyms and run-on sentences. But in more recent years, blogging has become a huge proponent in aiding in the success of a business (especially start-ups) – after all, what other form of communication seems to offer a human connection to a vast audience. So when I started at JUZD Streetwear, I was expected to not only aid in graphic design, but also in building a a rapport between us and our audience through blog entries.

My first few entries were a complete disaster. Actually, I don’t think I ever made to a second published entry. The first one was so impersonal and detached; I sounded more like a wannabe journalist than a member of any company.

Offering Clothing and Awareness

Dedicated to providing a sustainable future, clothing designers have begun producing lines that make use of organic materials such as bamboo, wood-pulp, and seaweed. Joining in on eco-friendly train is Linda Lundström, women’s wear designer.

Slightly over a quarter of Lunström’s Spring 2007 collection can be recognized as a ‘Green Note’ item, which is an item in her collection that makes use of either bamboo or eco-Yukon fleece. Lundström aspires to have at least 50% of her clothing line making use of organic materials by Spring 2008. This spring, the bamboo jersey will be introduced into Lundström’s line as well as natural un-dyed laundered linen.

In addition to using eco-friendly materials, Lundström is also keen on following an old addage, “Waste not, want not.” In other words, reduce the need to cut excess fabric, and reuse the leftovers to create new garments. Lundström’s design team has come up with two pieces, which make use of the excess fabric – the Shabby Chic Scarf and the Labarka.

Aside from designing, Lundström recently served as Honorary Event Chair at An Evening of Sustainable style, which not only raised awareness concerning the negative impact of people’s choice for fashion but also offered green choices. It is this involvement with the community that helps us understand Lundström’s dedication towards minimizing our ecological footprints.

I just tried reading it, and I stopped after the first sentence. If I wanted something stilted and to the point, I would have just read the headlines of the NYTimes.com articles (heck, I think even those have more personality than what I wrote). But I have to remind myself that I wrote that when I first started out in fashion. It’s so hard to write about something that you don’t know, but it’s even harder when you don’t know how to separate the impersonal from the personal, and to offer your style in the piece.

My colleague at the time, Melissa Shum, put a lot of things in perspective for me. Even though I stopped writing for quite some time on the JUZD blog (I started doing the press and event coverage, as well as the styling posts at the beginning of this year), these pointers (and other positive criticisms in my GMail archives) encouraged me to try blogging on here to touch up my skills and to be even more conscious of my writing. After all, there is no good writer that can write without knowing their niche or knowing the point that they want to convey. Some of these tips are part of my thought process now, or not applicable to me (I often check over my own work), or even extremely basic, but I thought I’d share them. I’ve edited a couple and eliminated some of the suggestions to make them more general.

• Always keep you audience in mind … for example, could be easier to think of an actual person say your sister or your best friend.
• Pick a topic (it is easier to write about current events, or issues in the fashion industry… something you HAVE an OPINION on)
• Think of 2-3 key points you wish to convey through your post (e.g. What do you want your reader to understand and get from reading your post)
• When you are done writing your post, the best way to ensure it makes sense and is good to go is to actually show it to the audience you had in mind, say your sister or best friend and see if they can regurgitate the key points that you had originally hoped to convey in your post. If they can’t then you have to go back and edit

For more on this fab communications gal, you can follow Melissa on the Cover FX twitter account.

I’ve been working and interning since I was fifteen, which many would consider early. Let me put it this way: most retail stores don’t hire unless you’re at least sixteen, and many of my friends didn’t get their first jobs until they were seventeen or eighteen. I also never really never had any connections; as if anyone (family friends and relatives included) I knew had any influence over anything aside from the pen on their desk. The only way that was available to me was my own.

Blogging used to be my way of keeping a journal. It was incredibly personal and real, but let’s face it: no one cares to read about every moan and groan of life. That, and the fact that I was not a good writer. But eventually, I grew out of that phase and ditched the whole web design scene. Only recently did I discover the importance of having a blog and knowing to have a focus.

Over the past two years, I’ve not only watched a streetwear clothing line, JUZD, grow, but also their see company blog change. The content used to be very sparse and covered only the designer’s trips to the US and China. But over the last year, the blog started developing more with coverage of local JUZD events and fun ideas, such as weekly styling and re-styling of outfits with use of the JUZD shirts.

Accompanied by the various fashion blogs I was following, such as The F-Word, the F-List, POSHGLAM, and The Quest for “It,” I figured out what exactly I wanted to do in school – communications. I always had the idea that I would major in psychology and specialize in adolescent mental disorders, but truth be told, I’m not a very academic person. Well, I can learn, write, and analyze with ease, but I very much enjoy being hands-on and having practical training. Communications seems to be a good fit; it’s related to everywhere I’ve worked and I really do enjoy it.

One of the essentials for this work field, though, is to demonstrate knowledge of blogging tools and know how to write. I’ve got the writing requirement down pat with some of the articles that I’ve written for JUZD, but what about showing off that I know how to use WordPress? So I set up this blog again, and recently took the search engine optimization seriously, with an interest on fashion and trendy finds. No longer did my blog seem all over the place. Now there were ideas of what my blog was about and I could easily tell the blog directories and link exchanges that.

Proof that blogging really does help is the fact that I was recently offered a position with The Ability Project. They had found me on The College Blog Network and were impressed with my social media skills, and thus, offered me a fall internship before I even stepped foot in the city.

In a way, blogging shows off some of the technical skills I have, as well as expresses my interests and personality. Whoever said that blogging was for whiners and got you nowhere had no idea about what they were saying.