Retail Therapy

Our 3rd day had yet another joyful early start with a half 9 lecture with Louise McBride. This lecture followed on from the previous days lecture on Spanish Retail Brands and informed us of the different ways that a retailer can enter an international market. 

Followed straight after this was a brief about our final project for the summer school. The project involves us being split up into groups and having to choose one of the many Spanish retail brands we've learned about since arriving in Madrid and creating a full new store concept for them. It also includes inventing a Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter merchandising plan along with two promotional events for the brand. - We will keep you all updated with the process of this. 

After all our hard work from the morning/mid afternoon, we felt we deserved some retail therapy and headed off in the direction of Plaza Mayor - by metro, which we are all now experts at navigating! However, we may have not got as far as Plaza Mayor after reaching Puerta del Sol and being faced with many exciting looking Spanish fashion stores. 

                               

Before we knew it, we had floated off in a daze from store to store - Stradivarius being one of our all time favorites, and 4 hours had quickly passed, more than a few euros had been spent and our bodies were sore from battling the passionate Spaniards for all the best bargains. It was worth it though... 

Nikki's choices -all from Stradivarius and jewellery from Six. 

 Kumba's Outfit - skort again from Stradivarius.

 Gillian's purchases - outfit on the left from Stadivarius and shorts on the right from Zara. 

 Danielle's selection - mesh skirt and top from Stadivarius, printed skirt from Berska, cardigan from Zara, sunglasses from Six. 

  

After shopping, we slowly wandered back to the main square in Puerta del Sol where we were greeted with a live traditional Spanish music group, we couldn't help but stay for a while and take in the culture and do some people watching. 

                   

We rounded off our day with a family fajita night - which was surprisingly a success considering the vintage cooking equipment we have in our new flat... 

                         

Excuse our extremely tired faces... 

Hasta Luego

Gillian, Nikki, Danielle and Kumba

xx

La Llegada

Hola!

So we are 4 Fashion Retail students from Glasgow Caledonian University and we have just begun our adventure at an intensive Fashion Retail Summer School at Villanueva University in Madrid!

Part of our course asks that we document our time here, so we thought a blog would do this best - and it also allows to keep friends and family updated whilst having something to look back on after we leave. 
So this will be just be an almost guide of what we have been studying and a bit of what we get up to in our free time - like an online diary of our time in Madrid. 

On our first morning at Villanueva we had a coffee meet and greet, where we were introduced to the course and everyone else studying there - which turned out to be Caley on tour with handful of Spanish students mixed in!


We then had a lecture from Julie McColl on Vintage Fashion and Upcycling. Then we went onto research how different countries and cultures adopt vintage fashion, which was to be presented the following day.

On our lunch break we explored Retiro Park which is right beside the university and our new Spanish home.




In the afternoon, we visited the Flagship Store for El Ganso on Serrano Street.This is one of the main high end shopping ares in Madrid. El Ganso is a traditional college, preppy brand with a Spanish twist. We learnt a lot about the history of the brand along with the aspects that go along with creating the brand image

El Ganso is right across the road from the beautiful flagship strore for Zara... which obviously as fashion students we couldn't resist making a purchase or two.

We'll be back soon with more updates on our exciting adventures.

Hasta Luego

Nikki, Danielle, Kumba & Gillian
xx