{"id":7760,"date":"2018-10-16T16:10:04","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T20:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2018\/10\/18\/harpers-bazaar-summer-internship\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T19:39:52","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T00:39:52","slug":"harpers-bazaar-summer-internship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/harpers-bazaar-summer-internship\/","title":{"rendered":"A (Harper’s) Bazaar summer in New York City"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Julia Piotrowski \u201919 arrived at Furman in 2016 aspiring to be a doctor, it\u2019s safe to say she didn\u2019t see herself spending the summer of 2018 in the heart of New York City working as creative direction and styling intern at Harper\u2019s Bazaar<\/a>\u2013one of the largest and most influential fashion magazines in the world.<\/p>\n

But Piotrowski is \u201cvery much a person who needs to try things out for myself to know whether I like them or dislike them,” and she tried a pre-med track.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had never considered anything outside of it,\u201d Piotrowski said. \u201cBut I came to the conclusion that I really didn\u2019t like science classes, and I didn\u2019t want to wait 10 years to get through med school and then be happy with my career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Left with little choice but to start considering something else, Piotrowski remembered medicine actually wasn\u2019t all she\u2019d ever wanted to do. But it wasn\u2019t until a conversation with a friend at the University of Southern California that Piotrowski became aware that her passion for fashion could be more than a hobby.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always the little girl wearing my mom\u2019s heels around the house and wearing her lipstick all over my face, but it was never really something I considered for a career,\u201d Piotrowski said. \u201c(My friend) was telling me all of the different things she wanted to do in fashion on the marketing side, and that\u2019s when my eyes kind of opened to opportunities that extended outside of the traditional design side of fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piotrowski worked for Harper\u2019s Bazaar Greece, and her first week on the job she was a part of three photo shoots. Included was one with Emily DiDonato<\/a> for the magazine cover.<\/p>\n

\"Julia

Julia Piotrowski ’19, right in black jacket, works on a photo shoot during her internship at Harper’s Bazaar Greece last summer.<\/p><\/div>\n

DiDonato began modeling for Victoria\u2019s Secret in 2009, the same year she was signed as the face of Maybelline New York, and is among the\u00a0most famous models in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really exciting to just immediately get my hands dirty and start understanding the process, because when looking at magazines they\u2019re so craftily put together that people don\u2019t necessarily realize all the work that goes into it,\u201d Piotrowski said. \u201cThat was interesting for me to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piotrowski worked for Sandy Armeni, the Harper\u2019s Bazaar Greece fashion director, and while tasks like delivering safety pins were decidedly not glamorous, dependability eventually earned her a voice. \u201cBuilding her trust gave me the opportunity to give a little more input on set, which is really great to have my hand in giving suggestions on jewelry or switch out a top because it wasn\u2019t working,\u201d Piotrowski said. \u201cIt was very exciting and very hands on and quite exhausting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editorial internships in the fashion industry are \u201cvery rare,\u201d Piotrowski said, and landing this one was the culmination a lot of determination once she made the decision after her freshman year to change her ship\u2019s course. The first turn of the wheel steered her to a new major, communication studies.<\/p>\n

Communication studies<\/a> combined with a concentration of digital art courses have allowed Piotrowski to build an education foundation to help reach her goal of becoming a creative director and lead stylist for a fashion magazine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very supported by a lot of my professors,\u201d Piotrowski said. \u201cThey\u2019re very open to me tweaking whatever projects and papers we\u2019re working on, kind of tailoring those to the fashion industry where it may be a bit of a stretch in any other setting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piotrowski was also able to make Furman connections in the fashion industry when she participated in the New York Arts, Media & Entertainment Paladin Career Trek<\/a> Oct. 7-9. There, she met Blair Burke \u201915, who works in customer marketing support for L\u2019Or\u00e9al, the world\u2019s largest cosmetic company, and MacKenzie Fanaro \u201814, a visual merchandiser and assistant stylist at Rent the Runway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely have been surprised by some of the connections I have been able to make through Furman,\u201d Piotrowski said.<\/p>\n

Furman also opened other doors. Piotrowski\u2019s sparkling LinkedIn page and current industry mentor are the result of work done by The Brand Girls<\/a>, a company dedicated to helping women be the most competitive job applicants possible.<\/p>\n

She began working with The Brand Girls after seeing CEO and founder Rachel Bozsik speak on campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrand Girls helped me take all these jumbled bits I knew about me and bring them together as words,\u201d Piotrowski said. \u201cBecause Furman isn\u2019t fashion focused it got to the point where I was asking questions our resources on campus couldn\u2019t really specifically answer for me. Brand Girls has a lot of experience in the fashion industry, and they were able to answer those questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, fashion as a future wasn\u2019t a done deal for Piotrowski until she tried it out for herself. Dozens of blind attempts to land her first internship finally succeed with a position at the Krupp Group in New York in the summer of 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that I was sold. I knew that\u2019s exactly what I wanted to do,\u201d Piotrowski said. An added bonus was meeting someone there who also worked at Harper\u2019s Bazaar and put her in touch with Armeni.<\/p>\n

Piotrowski came to Furman from Salt Lake City as a James B. Duke Scholar<\/a>. She applied after hearing about the university from her grandmother, who used to live in nearby Tryon, North Carolina, and though her medicine-free future is a lot less defined Piotrowski feels ready to follow the new path she chose wherever it may lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now I feel like I\u2019m still exploring. The one thing I learned from all the people I talked to this past summer is no one made it in the industry on this clear-cut path,\u201d she said. \u201cThey all jumped around and had so many diverse and different positions until they fell into the place where they were best suited. So right now, I want to be flexible and open to my opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Julia Piotrowski \u201919 arrived at Furman in 2016 aspiring to be a doctor, it\u2019s safe to say she didn\u2019t see herself spending the summer of 2018 in the heart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,45,51,58,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-administrative","category-art","category-communication-studies","category-internships","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}