Skinny Jeans

Happy “Hump Day!” so today was the big Deep Dive, really I know nothing until tomorrow when all of the visual people meet up and discuss the visit, so stay tuned. But a bit of news, as I just tweeted [follow me], I had a pretty productive afternoon. I went in to work early this morning and therefore got off early so I got to work on my homework, took the puppy to the dog park, ran four miles, and now I’d say its about dinner time. i just want to show you my puppy at this very moment

So today as I was dressing one of my Urban Island mannequins I noticed how tight the size 33x32 pants were on my guy. This made me remember that even Tasso Elba is making slim fit pants. In high school I put safety pins in my denim to alter them into slim fitting denim because it was impossible for me to find any (this was 2006). I also remember shopping for my prom get up in 2007 and trying to find black fitted trousers and every store looked at me like I was crazy I finally settled on a pair of producers from EXPRESS that I took to be altered. The only tailor in my hometown (Barstow) was located in the WalMart and hardly spoke a word of engrish. She told me that my pants were fine the way they were and that I didn’t need to waist my $8 to get them fitted. So I left. Now working with denim on a daily basis I have realized that almost every company is making an effort to slim down the male silhouette including Diesel, Levi’s, Alfani, Abercrombie, GAP, and im pretty sure kid’s brands have also forged their way into the skinny, sometimes super skinny, world. Someone told me that only gays wear tight jeans but I just want to say fuck you to that person. Yes, I may be gay but I just saw prince Charles wearing slim denim on his recent trip to Australia, so if you spit more game than the prince or if you design a fabulous line of clothes and would like to dispute that all men can wear skinny denim please shut the hell up.

On the music front, I just want to say that Britney spears is over and over making a damn fool of herself, if it weren’t for her catchy tunes, she’d be done!

LONG LIVE GAGA

Deep Dive

Sorry about that lapse in bloggage, but now I am back. Quickly, I will portray my weekend to you and then we’ll get this party started.

So tomorrow is the day that all of my hard work has been leading up to. Tomorrow is one of my store’s Deep Dives. A deep dive is when all of the big bosses come to our store to make sure that we’re not fucking everything up. They are always watching how things are selling and where the best locations are for each brand is, so when the deep dive comes up we have to have everything ship shape so that a lack of sales doesn’t mean that we’re failing. For the whole work day there are meetings on sales, floor walks to see how the store is working and then each big boss personally works on the floor to show the associates what real work looks like. As a visual trimmer it’s usually safe to say that very few failures are caused by us, actually almost never are we the reason for loss of sales. The reason that we stress out is because we love our store and we want everything to be perfect (that’s why we merchandise, help customers, and pretty much any other thing that needs to be done in the store that we’re not paid for) we’re like the store’s whores.

Now onto my personal life, which may or may not be as dry as my work life right now. Pretty much I have come to the conclusion that it is NOT a good thing when the Starbucks people start preparing a grandé upside down caramel macchiato and a double warmed blueberry scone right when they see you in the morning. I think that that shows just how dull a person is, that they don’t ever change up their drink, they wear black everyday, and come in at the same time daily. I should just switch it up on them order a Frappuccino and a donut, wear all bright colors, and come in around lunchtime. They would at this point probably already contacted the authorities alerting them that “the guy from Macy’s” is assumed to be kidnapped and murdered.

That’s all, im tired

Productivity

Do you ever finish a project that you’ve been working at for a few hours look at your work; you’ve done a great job, but then think that you just wasted those last few hours? Today I felt precisely that way after I clocked out of work for the day.

I got a lot done today I finished making my men’s active department beautiful, redressed like 10 men that were wearing nothing but clearance clothes, and I also found a bunch of missing artwork. But after reformatting six walls, hanging three plaques and eight pieces of rediscovered art I looked behind me to see that there was still more work to do. I guess as a visual trimmer you are never truly happy with your work. My sales in that department should increase tremendously based on the new location of it alone, with my visual touch its pretty much forcing shoppers to want Nike like a zombies loves warm flesh. but the thing is that there are so many more things to make it better (white shelving, redressing forms, steaming…) Working in my position there is no end in sight; tomorrow’s Friday but I know that once I finish the work I have planned for tomorrow there is going to be plenty waiting for me Monday morning.

On the bright side, while I was redressing things this morning I found a few must-haves. The first is a Diesel tee that is white with some embroidery and some lettering on it, a clean statement perfect for the beach this summer. The second is a pair of Polo Ralph Lauren swim trunks that sit mid thigh. They’re red checkered and they have Polo’s new Big Pony logo on the leg. So being that I didn’t want to spend the prices for both… I just bought one, the shirt can come closer to beach season. I got the SHORTS and I plan on wearing them at a friend’s birthday party in Newport at Westport Mansion this weekend. I really don’t give a rat’s ass if it’s freezing, I’ll still get my drink on and “rock that shit like fashion.”

Not much to say on the food side of things today, except for I think everyone should get some of Costco’s amazing spinach dip to snack on with pita chips after a long day.

Floor Move

Good afternoon to anyone who actually reads this. i'll start of today shortly after where i left of last night... which was about dinner time. so las t night i cooked a fabulous meal of rosemary, basil, garlic, onion, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, spinach, and chicken all cooked together with evoo and served over a bed of cous cous, it was pretty fantastic. (shown left) after dinner my boyfriend Pavel and i headed out to see a movie.

fast forward to this morning and it was time for work. Today was day three of what was originally planned to be a one-day floor move*. we moved out men's activewear across the floor into the shoe dept. which in turn shifted our whole underwear floor. if you are a merchandiser or a visual person for a retail store, you know that these moves aren't as simple as they appear to be. not only do 400lb fixtures need to be moved (sometimes up a few stories other times a few feet) but also the art, mannequins, merchandise, shelving, wall logos/lettering, etc. and this job should take some merchants, a few visual team members and maybe some guys with muscles from receiving. if this move was done in the fashion that the merchants liked it, it would take about and hour and end up looking a bit like a Ross store. but this is "high end" so us visual trimmers get to pretty much come in and move all of the shit around by ourselves so that it fits into Macy's Standards. so today i was very lucky in having the complete merchandising team at my expense to move things around as i said. too bad i came back to check on their progress an hour later and they had managed to fuck up my department yet again, so me the twinkish 135lb boy got to redo the whole department by myself. on top of resetting their mistakes,

i got to dress 18 dress shirt forms which are supposed to be wrinkle-less have minimal pins in them and can take upwards of half and hour each. the shirts come in all bagged up and crisply folded and we make them beautiful from there, its a fun process but now im off and looking forward to dressing a few more tomorrow along with setting up the Men's Wardrobe Event tomorrow. a bunch of underwear is going to be super cheap so you all should go out to your local store and check out the deals.

now that im home its snack time (stir-fried vegitables) and then time to head to the dog park. tonight is my friends 30th birthday party and i'll be heading out to dinner with all of the boys.

today im in love with Sake, by Jupiter. i think its a pretty chill song to play in traffic, at home or maybe even during your workout.

*floor move- Macy's, along with most other retailers, moves merchandise around the floor after studying their sales all in hopes to make more $$$$.

Opening Day

So this is the first of hopefully many posts. i am here mainly to open the door to the rarely opened door of a visual team at Macy's Department store. at times its lots of work but always fun. on the side i will share my daily finds including music, food/drink, fun places and boy advise( which you may choose to ignore). i hope that this blog evokes some interest from other Visual brethren and shoppers alike.