“Read. See. Expand“: that’s how you’ll get somewhere in fashion. And no, these aren’t my own words (I’m no fashion career expert, and certainly not the kind of girl to quote herself. Yet). They come from Emily Zak, Vogue’s Retail Editor, during her address at the WEXO-sponsored LSE Fashion Society career event last night.

So in case you’re confused, this week’s blog is a bit of a departure from the norm. Last night our offices at WEXO Towers were inundated with well-dressed hordes of LSE fashionistas eager to learn from five guest speakers. Our stylish and incredibly experienced panel included: Chloe Lonsdale, founder of MiH Jeans; Kinvara Balfour, fashion writer and London Editor of Daily Candy.com; Austique’s co-founder Katie Canvin; and Ruby Dhillon, manager of Gucci fragrances at Procter & Gamble.

Needless to say, we found ourselves in the company of some pretty driven and well-connected women.

When I wasn’t furiously flooding the WEXO twitter account with event tweets, I drew on five different routes to success that our guests highlighted:

1. Experience is everything. Put in the work at internships and placements, and you will be rewarded.
2. An artistic and culturally-aware approach will get you far. If references to ‘A Love Story’, the history of French couture houses and the difference between raglan and dolman sleeves are lost on you, you need to read more. All the fine details are magnified when it comes to a feel for and knowledge of fashion.
3. Starting a fashion company needs a business-savvy approach. Now that sounds almost redundant and obvious, but meticulous planning can hardly be stressed enough.
4. An opportunity to get your foot in the door may spring up at any point. Always be prepared, and don’t forget about the importance of nearby, untapped contacts.
5. A strong work ethic and passion to succeed in any enterprise will be invaluable in fashion. If you’re resilient, this is the industry for you.

Wow. Fashion and the military seem to have more in common than autumn’s trends of olive-green parkas and utilitarian detailing, huh? Persistence is key to making it in fashion, so we thought we’d help point you in the right direction towards building up your style knowledge. Our panel suggest checking out blogs from the Coolhunter, Jak & Jil, Garance Doré, Nowness, Fifi Lapin and of course Vogue.com. In their view, blogs are a new and exciting platform for fashion, but still can’t quite match the reach and presence of good old-fashioned print magazines.

Got more questions of your own for our panel? We’ll be collating them here in the comments section, or on the wall our Facebook fan page. Here’s your chance to unleash any burning questions of the fashion sort. We’ll also be posting video footage from the night soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

Overall if I learned anything last night it’s that hard work and a refusal to fail will be the perfect ingredients for anyone looking to break into the industry. On that note, forward march!

Tshepo Mokoena

Photos courtesy of Chu Ting Ng at TheQualified blog.

Internships are almost like relationships – getting one that will be worth it requires a lot of energy and effort, and you never really know what the journey is going to be like, where it will lead or how it may end.

From that perspective, my time at Cowshed could be seen like love at first sight – a really rewarding, unique experience and one that you’d hope would last forever if circumstances allowed.

First, forget about the copying machine or coffee making and think more along the lines of hands-on experience: social media, e-commerce, design, you name it. Add a heaped spoon of motivation that can only be created by a team of people who genuinely love their jobs and do them so well that it makes you wonder whether you’ll ever be this good, too. Finally, stir in some passion for beauty, serve it up in Soho and things can hardly go wrong!

Working as an Online Intern at Cowshed gave me the opportunity to be creative, inventive and push my own boundaries in an environment where exciting things happen right now, in real time. Most importantly though, I genuinely enjoyed myself and believe the experience helped me to get where I am now, which brings us back to where we started.

My relationship with Cowshed has come to an end, but ends happily with a job offer from Google. Unless I’m wrong, getting a job you really want is exactly what the internship business is about, isn’t it? I guess it works then. Good luck on your way, everyone.

Kristyna Mistrikova

Often the majority of graduates struggle to find suitable internships or work experience placements straight out of university: this was my task. Luckily my career path was pretty clear to me, since I was keen to pursue a career in marketing.

After graduating from University in 2008 with a psychology degree and a Masters in marketing, I started searching for marketing internship roles which would help me to develop new skills. I spent hours calling companies, sending CVs, searching on Google and joining job agencies, which became both exhausting and frustrating. After numerous attempts and disappointing results, I started to worry about my future. My dedication and desire to find an internship was starting to wear off. I later spoke to a friend who introduced me to WEXO.

He revealed that his girlfriend had used it to find work and I thought to myself “why not?”. So I paid the £10 fee and applied for several companies. Within less than a week I’d received an email from a fashion company called Chris & Tibor.

Finally I was getting somewhere! I went for an interview and was offered the job. Working for Chris & Tibor was incredible. I felt right at home with people who were genuinely nice and allowed me to express myself. Plus, the internship was a hands-on experience: I was often given different responsibilities and the chance to do diverse roles, from online marketing research to collecting relevant data for office use. Everything about the internship was marketing-related, and gave me a realistic preview of my field of interest.

Working for Chris & Tibor helped me to acquire the skills and knowledge which are important for everyday work. I got the chance to experience the different roles that are involved in marketing and feel that I am better prepared to enter the world of work after this experience. This internship is one element of my overall success and I would describe it to other students as rewarding.

Thanks to WEXO I was able to find the role: without them I would most likely still be phoning companies, sending CVs and joining job agencies with zero results. I would highly recommended WEXO because you can get firsthand experience within companies, complete with rewarding responsibilities and challenges. The experience was a thrill and also satisfying.

Jadeed Boyi

As lead developer here at WEXO, I thought it was about time I shared some of my experiences of starting out in the IT sector.

I’ll start at the beginning. In what I determined would give me valuable experience and a leg up on potential rivals, I chose to do a Year in Industry for my gap year before going on to do a Computer Science degree. This scheme is still running and allows students (primarily those interested in engineering) the chance to gain valuable experience before beginning their degree. (http://www.yini.org.uk). Months in advance of the beginning of my gap year I was placed with a small software development company and was eagerly anticipating starting. The company was a small business and I was looking forward to playing a valuable role in a team. Then, in what was with hindsight an early indication of the economic problems to follow, I received a phone call. The company had lost some important contracts and could no longer afford to take on any new staff. I had only a few weeks before I was due to start, had already deferred my university entrance and now had to find something else fast.

At the last minute a new placement was found at Goodrich Aerospace. Goodrich manufactures and maintains components for all sorts of flying machines including aircraft, missiles and the Space Shuttle. I hadn’t really wanted to work in a large multinational company but Goodrich sounded pretty interesting and I needed work, so I applied. I was accepted and was given a position for a year in the marketing department. This placement worried me at the time since I had no marketing experience and no real desire to work in marketing. Putting these concerns aside, I was glad I had finally got a confirmed placement and prepared to start work.

As it turned out all of my concerns about working for a large company were unfounded. The ‘marketing’ work I was doing was actually working with the team which managed and provided data to other parts of the company. Although that may not immediately sound terribly interesting, as it was a huge company providing a very broad range of products and services all over the world I was working with a massive amount of data including databases with hundreds of tables (some with literally millions of records). My duties included producing reports from multiple data sources and the challenge was to work out the most efficient and accurate way of producing and presenting the data.

I really enjoyed my year, met a lot of great people and gained invaluable experience. They even invited me back and I ended up spending some time working with them during summers and other breaks from uni.

I guess the moral of the story is that with an open mind (and maybe a little luck) great work experiences can be found in all sorts of places and when one door closes, hopefully, another will open!

Ben Drew