Textile Design Junior Olivia Pagnotta shared with us details on her great internship with Urban Outfitters. Please see the interview and images below.
*Please tell us about your summer internship. Where did you work and what were your responsibilities?
I worked at URBN for shared services (Free People, Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters) as the knitting room intern. As the knitting room intern, I shadowed the knitting room manager and his assistant. I would sit in on meetings about new projects and the plans to execute them, and then I would help by picking out the color combinations and by knitting swatches or yardage.
*How did you land this great internship?
I landed this internship thanks to a former PhilaU alumna. She works with the sweater/knit teams at URBN. When they were looking for help in the knitting room she contacted the university, who then suggested me as a possible fit for the job. I went to the Navy Yard (where URBN is based) and interviewed with Alan, the knitting room manager. I found out a few weeks later that I was accepted into the summer internship program.
The typical day started with my manager and I going over the projects we needed to complete that day. We would brainstorm about the colors, textures and stitches that should be used. Once it was all figured out, he would show me how to complete the desired stitch and then I would knit the sample. After the sample was done, it would get washed, thrown in the dryer, ironed and then presented to the designers. They would decide if they wanted anything tweaked, such as weight or texture, or they would ask for yardage of the sample. After the yardage was knit, washed, dried and ironed, that project was completed and I'd move on to the next. It was so much fun getting to work on a variety of projects this summer and I loved the pace of the environment I was in. Every day, each person had new and different swatches they were working on and I never found myself bored.
*How did being a textile design student prepare you for the internship?
Being a textile design student helped prepare me for the internship by teaching me how to use and blend yarns together to create beautiful color combinations, as well as teaching me the basics of knitting and designing on knitting machines through classes such as Knit Tech I and Knit Design Studio I.
*Anything else you want to share?
It was a wonderful experience with incredible people and I'm so grateful that my decision to pursue textile design at Jefferson led me to this opportunity!
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