Cloudia Vardon

• Delivered brand strategy of range plans, and critical paths with business mentor Byron Cole.
• Established trademark, designed collection,sampling and testing with factories in Asia and UK.
• Presented brand to business and test market groups, and buyers from Jaeger & House of Fraser.
• Designed swing tickets, packaging, marketing, flyers and fashion shoot for product and look book.
• Analysed and extracted data from Euromonitor, McKinsey, WGSN and EFF on customer trends,
proving the brands niche market, engaging with Survey Monkey to identify specific demographic.
• Beta testing diffusion line and developing Men’s organic T-shirt line for Spitalfields S/S 2015.

• Brand expertise, excellent planning, communication and presentation skills to drive sales.
• Cross-functional working with VM, stock, management, selling teams to market-leading presentation.
• Womens brands: Ralph Lauren, Day Birger, MaxMara, Hugo Boss, Armani, Whistles, Reiss and Hoss Intropia, Kin, Alice Temperley, L.K. Bennett, Wishbone, Avoca, and Selected Femme.
• Overall 15% increase in sales since brand adjacency and floor moves, Mint Velvet, Ted Baker, Farhi, and Whistles.
• Developed role from Womenswear to Menswear brands, diversify my role, and creative concepts.
• Mens Brands: Woolrich, Bellerose, Rains, Belstaff, John Smedley, Barbour, Pendleton, Scotch + Soda, Diesel.
• Formal looks: Ted Baker, Gant, Kin, John Lewis & Co, Reiss, and Ralph Lauren and Hancock.
• The Men’s Fashion department has previously gone for obvious trend brands with a core denim offer. The move to go into offbeat niche brands, targets the breed of modern man the ‘Lumbersexual’, who shops in independent clothes stores, for him I focus on creating layered looks, detailing and textures, for this urban intelligentia.

• Developed product, for the Lombok of Ghana, an artisanal emporium of textiles, jewellery, Home ware and Art.
• Worked with house artisans and suppliers to tailor to their high end, private and corporate clients.
• Exported product to Boutiques in Europe and West Africa, for jewellery shows in Holland and Germany.

• In a team of seven, we implemented layouts for Forever 21 store opening, on four floors, had a 10,000 footfall, sell through on display lines opening weekend.
• Dressed the store at night with LA styling team, for P.R. to maintain brand integrity influence ATV and footfall, in which Bip Ling and Gok Wan bothe came to do store and trend reports.
• Created concept walkway of brand concepts around five celebrity types, to define four floors of trend spaces.
• Trained VM assistants to consistently fill fixtures, Pos and cross product display update them with relevant product.

The Postgraduate was cross-disciplined, across Fashion, Interactive Digital Media, Environment Design and Interactive Product Futures. The focus of studies split into three modules: Business and Innovation, Design Concept and Prototyping, Fashion business and marketing strategy, with individual as well as group and collaborative projects, using mediums of 3D Printing, online blogging of design development, dissertation and a culminating in showing at New Designers at business Design Centre in London.

Paris Fashion Market: Analytical layout and brand adjacencies of department stores; Le Printemps, Le Bon Marche, and Galleries Lafayette, and concept stores, Colette, fashion ‘Quartiers’ such as St Germain Des Pres, and Couture & Luxury Houses on Faubourg St Honore, along with culture, history and trend analysis.
Market studies: Fashion Trends From Catwalk to High Street, Couture, Prêt – a –Porter, and boutique collections, The world of luxury brands, their global positioning determining brand references and competitors, the structure of collections and price points.

Projects on Couture House Lanvin’ and Paris ‘touch labels’ such as Manoush Comptoir des Cotonniers, Sandro et Maje. Designing with relevance to the global market, trends and commercialisation. Paris International Fashion week: Trade fair visits and analysis of Tranoi, The Box, Atmosphere, and Rendezvous. Brand DNA, brand value, trend life cycles, durations and come back, and International forecasting.

My specialisation was in Luxury fashion, with quantitive and qualitative research on Fashion business and ethical consumer trends. Fashion Prototyping in 3D Printing, laser cutting, fusing, draping, pattern cutting, sketching, creating toile’s and prototype samples, digital and screenprint design and execution.

In a team of four split across brands and fashion and clothing departments.
•Delivered VM strategy for five fashion departments, across 800 stores, with range plans, and Planograms.
•Created option frameworks, and presented Model Store presentations for brand directors, buyers and marketing.
•Extracted data and analysis from JDA, and AC Nielsen Spaceship, against WGSN and TNS data for trends.
•Developed seasonal guidelines, POS and store visual documents of fixtures, product and look book feel.
•Opened new stores and converted existing Woolworth stores Ladybird stores, learned to manage travel with work.
• Trained store staff on the Ladybird brand retail standards, concepts and in line with existing international stores.
•Taught staff about VM standards, layouts, and wayfaring flows, brand adjacencies and seasonal moves.

• Assisted with a directional range of menswear and women’s wear signature print and detailing.
• Implement a fabric library and swatch book based on visits to Clothe Show and Premiere Vision.
• Production liaison with print and garment manufacturers to critical path deadlines.
• Sold designs at Fashion week to Duffer of St George, Liberties, Browns Focus, and Laurent in Paris.

• Garment Technician for Viyella and Jaeger, garment fittings, spec sheets administration and factory liaison.
• Product development for Karen Millen, doing garment fittings, fabric library maintenance and trim approval.
• Fabric Technology Assistant for Whistles, and Jigsaw, maintaining fabric library, raising orders from Italian Mills.
• P.A role for Top Shop Commercial Director set up Personal Styling, interviewing candidates for first wave.
• Product development for brands with suppliers Baystream Ltd and Phase Clothing, doing critical path management.
• Garment fitting, embroidery, print, fabric trim lab dips approval against client brand briefs, trends and range plans.
• Clients: Dorothy Perkins, ASOS, BHS, Select, New Look and MK One, New Look, Sainsbury’s.
• Developed brand designs with Chinese factories and learned to communicate effectively across language barriers.

• Created fabric swatch books and range planning look books for agents and factories on Mens and Womenswear.
• Garment and model fitting and measuring against spec sheets, on both Mens and Womenswear departments.
• Collaborated with fabric technician on approval of swatches after fabric testing, confirm fabric order to factories.
• Maintaining fabric and garment sample library, updating fabric supplier spread sheets, learned mix of production.

• Commercial shoots: Virgin Active, British Telecoms, Hussein Chalayan, Business Design Centre, River Advertising
• Fashion editorial shoots featured in Elle magazine, focus on interpreting client brief into clothing and accessories.
• Learned to source variety of brands, Adrienne Vitadinni, Komodo, Van Den Berg, Luis Feraud, Adidas, and GStar.

• Managed department and staff on designers, Ralph Lauren, French Connection, Armani, DNKY, and Great Plains.
• Visual Merchandising training from French Connection and Ralph Lauren, which I implemented weekly schedules.
• Organised daily schedules and duties, liased with buying and merchandising to ensure all retail and brand standards were met.
• I implemented the first Fashion show, being responsible for such a large Fashion department gave me a lot of confidence.

• Assisted in Design of range plans of menswear and women’s wear developing signature print and detailing.
• Implement a fabric library and fabric swatch book based on visits to The Cloth Show and Premiere Vision.
• Production liaison with print and garment manufacturers to co coordinating ranges to critical path deadlines,
• Successfully sold designs to Duffer of St George, and at London Fashion Week Liberties, Browns, and Laurent.