I've been blogging at Catwalk Queen forever, but for some reason I managed to escape the 'Meet The Team' questionnaire. Since I'm now back blogging with a vengeance after a bit of a break, I thought it was time I finally revealed all...
Name: Gemma Cartwright
Location: London
Shiny Job: Fashion Editor
Background: I grew up in Worcestershire and moved to London at 18, where I studied fashion journalism at the London College of Fashion. During that time I was blogging and running Catwalk Queen in my spare time. I joined Shiny Media not long after I graduated to launch Shoewawa, and slowly over time there were new launches, more work and the eventual relaunch of CQ as a Shiny site. Now I head up the fashion team and live, sleep and breathe fashion blogging!
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Zara Kenyon writes...
I've been reading Catwalk Queen since the age of 15, before it became part of Shiny Media, and I've followed it right up until now as a 20 year old, sitting in Shiny Towers, giving you readers some insight into what it's like as an intern behind the scenes.
Considering how long I've been a fan, coming into the office was bound to be a daunting but exciting experience. Click through to see how I got on in my first week.
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Jonathan Smith writes...
Welcome to the Shiny Towers, a warm and fuzzy office where the magic that is Shiny happens. The office is punctuated with friendly faces all working at what seems to be as much hobby as it is work, all suffering for their art in the rising temperatures. The overall theme for this week at Shiny has to be 'Hot as Hell'! With the damp muggy weather and lack of any breeze, the conditions in the office can be described as "close", though being professional as always this did not affect the strong working relationships in the office with spirits being high.
Click through on the jump to see what I and the Shiny team have been up to this week.
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Today we headed out of Shiny Towers and into the sunshine to take a look at Net-a-Porter's Cruise 2009 collections (which won't hit the virtual racks for months, sadly). Designer press days are my idea of heaven - the only time I get to manhandle 3.1 Phillip Lim, Marc Jacobs and Jonathan Saunders without shop assistants hovering over me like I'm going to steal something.
The 'hero' pieces of the collection are from Preen by Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi, who are new to Net-a-Porter and known for their structured body-con shapes and very modern sensibilities (Time for a bit of CQ trivia - Isabelle met the design duo at a party once and bonded with Justin over their shared love of charity shops). The dress to your left may be familiar, as Agyness Deyn and Amy Winehouse wore the yellow version, and Gwyneth the black. Now it can be yours in fuchsia...
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Every new season designers, retailers and brands send out 'look books' to press. They do what they say on the tin - show all the looks from a collection on numbered pages, so people can pick out the items they'd like to shoot or feature.
Some brands, especially those on a budget, have started to do this via email or download which is perfect if you work online like us (though note to some: 15mb attachments? Not so good...) but a lot still go the traditional route of printing up a chic little spiral-bound booklet, popping it in the goodie bags at press days or sending it out to all the editors...
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One of the fun things about this job is that we get the opportunity to try out new experiences so when we were offered a drink in the Absolut IceBar after the Onitsuka Tiger Press Day we jumped at the chance.
As we adjusted to our fetching thermal capes a deadpan Russian (pictured carefully balancing a bottle of vodka on his arm) expertly poured our very strong cocktails into glasses made of ice before passing them to our be-mittened hands. I love nothing more than a good whinge and I tell you it was really freezing in there, but we had fun shivering on faux fur seats and looking at all the sculptures. They shine coloured lights through the ice which really adds to the atmosphere, for pictures of the Onitsuka Tiger press day head to Brandish and Shoewawa.
[Image: Absolut IceBar London]
Like any fashionista living in a rented house with disgusting wallpaper, the walls of my bedroom are covered in postcards, posters, photographs and pages torn from magazines. One much-loved shoot features underrated actress Romola Garai doing her best Julie Christie impression in a beauty shoot for In Style. When I was searching for the snaps online to show a friend, I stumbled across an even better shoot featuring the same girl. Taken from the fourth issue of the awe-inspiring Lula magazine, it's unwittingly become my style inspiration of late, sometimes without my even knowing it...
[scans from Lula magazine via Romola-Garai.com. Click to enlarge]
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