So this is the desk of our lovely accessories intern, Callie. Notice any theme in her photos? She seems to be stuck on the color orange, right down to her fingernails. She believes it’s because she was sick and was thinking of vitamin C. Look out, Callie’s orange crochet might end up on some piece of Free People accessory wonder.
I thought it might be fun to give a little “sneak peek” inside the Free People home office by showing you some of the workspaces of our employees. Everyone has made their spaces so personalized, and in visiting many of the desks around the office, I definitely noticed a trend. So many people surround themselves with gifts from friends. The friends we make here at work are cherished relationships. So you’ll definitely see lots of silly presents…
So this is Maura’s desk and she is the creative assistant. She likes to surround herself with things that make her happy at work.
One of her favorite thing is one of those wobbly bugs a coworker brought back as a gift from Mexico.
And she has lots of Free People artwork gone awry. She works closely with our graphic designer, and ends up accumulating some of the mishaps. Does this look familiar from this Holiday??
It was too good not to show you…
There was a very strong scent in the halls of the home office the other day. It smelled of the lovely scent of a Free People store, but times 1000!
Ever wonder what that lovely scent is? The display team makes these little sachets out of muslin. The scent is a pot pourri of dried flowers and herbs. They are tucked away in hidden corners of the stores. It was time to replace them in some of the stores, so the girls had tons of the pot pourri and were hand tying each little bundle. So now you know…
Wanted to point out how great these illustrations are. One of our designers/ incredible illustrators drew these babes to express our Pool Party trend. We used them internally for wholesale lookbooks, and then our web team worked them into the website as well. The look so very Pool Party against the vintage floral prints. My favorite is the girl on her side with her tiny belly. Check em out on the web here.
A reader commented and pointed us to the strange similarity between Food & Wine’s latest issue and a photo we posted about the Free People lunch club. It’s really kind of bizarre. I can’t believe she made the connection! Check out her blog.
We had our anual holdiay party last night along with employees from Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie. There were so many festive activities, everyone had a great time. The photo above is of the sled filled with toys we collected for a toy drive to benefit Philadelphia children. Each department was assigned an age group to buy toys for, and then one group donated coats and mittens and such instead of toys.
The festive activities included virtual bobsledding…
Arctic arcade games…
A candy bar…
Here one of our Free People merchandisers enjoys some rope licorice…
There were two photo booths!
One in color and one black and white…
There were other cool activities I failed to get good pictures of. Maybe some other employees will send me theirs and I can post more. There was a faux ice skating rink! There was a special floor set down and sprayed with some sort of oil. Ice skates to wear were set up along the perimeter on one side, and a landscape of tinsel trees on the other. It was pretty crazy that the skates really worked on this floor. There was also a tarot card reader and pool tables…
The photo above is the crowd in the karaoke room. This was during an amazing rendition of “Bennie and the Jets” performed by one of the Urban boys.
And of course I had to post some of the festive attire. Miss Sarah of the Free People display team glammed up her heels with some serious glitter and jewels.
Okay, so this is our first go at video on the blog. Try clicking here if it’s not working well. (It’s skippy, but then other times I open it, it plays perfectly.)This little movie was for a meeting at the home office to inspire and reinforce the idea that there is this certain “Free People girl” that we are constantly thinking about when we design. And even though there is this “girl”, she really is a combination of everyone that works to make Free People a reality. A part of that girl lives within all of us…
The film was made in our office and our surrounding environment, the picturesque Navy Yard in Philly.
So if anyone has any tips on posting video, helpful comments would be much appreciated!
A group of girls that work in our two stores near Philly ( King of Prussia and Suburban Square) along with one store employee recently promoted to the home office (congrats!) all went to see the weepies this week. They heard of the singer songwriter team because the home office had sent them the CD to play in their stores! They ended up talking to Deb and Steve (from the weepies) after the show and the girls told them the story of how they all knew each other and how they discovered their music. Deb was excited because she said half of her closet is Free People! It’s funny how things get connected…
Meet Amy! She is a pioneer. Amy is the first Free People designer to take a full time position overseas. Most of our designers travel regularly to the factories to over see product development, develop relationships with our vendors, and learn about how to improve our products with the resources each factory has available. Amy is working for us in Hong Kong where she can work hand in hand with our factories on a day to day basis. Previous to her move, she was working in Philadelphia as our sweater designer.
In this photo, Amy sits where a woman that specializes in hand knitting usually sits. Amy works with her to experiment with new yarns and techniques.
Here Amy is fitting one of our hand knit sweater samples on Sally, a girl she works with at the factory.
Here is a photo of where Amy keeps all the FP yarns. It is right near the sample room, so she has easy access to choose yarns for knitdowns.
Here is one of the factory employees working on a swatch. This machine is a 12 gauge handflat knitting machine.
And here is Amy writing a spec in an office of one of the three factories she works with the most.
Hopefully Amy will continue to send us news from Hong Kong. I’m really excited to see pictures of where she lives, the culture and fashion! So stay tuned for more news from China!
First of all, I must say, Bob is becoming quite a celebrity on the FP blog. Here we have some Free People girls joining Bob at one of his famous Eagles tailgating parties. Bob hosts one each week, and whenever he can get free tickets, he invites some of the FP girls to join in the festivities. He says that tailgating is an opportunity to really bond with friends.
Here we have the lovely Amanda assisting with the grilling. Bob says he chooses foods that somehow relate to the visiting team. Like when the Eagles played Green Bay they did cheesesteaks since Green Bay are cheeseheads. See, the FP girls are an interesting bunch. Bob’s haircut compliments of our favorite Montgomery County barber shop. It’s not all about fashion and crafts…
Found these images on what you make it (see below entry) by artist Lisa Solomon. She makes these installations using hand crocheted doilies and detailed drawings. They look so intricate. Pretty amazing.
Lisa’s work reminded me of some pieces we used for our Free People store fall display. The display team hand crocheted these enormous doilies from enormous yarn balls (you can see the yarn balls on the floor in the photo). The picture above is in the lobby of the FP home office.
I have been thinking about posting some pictures of the lovely ladies that ride our FP bikes, like the one above of our Design Coordinator Assistant. We have a few of these office vintage bikes the Display Team decorated with pretty flowers. Anyone can use them to run errands around the Navy Yard (our new office in Philly) like pick up the mail or just to get some fresh air during lunchbreak.
And then I was sent this picture and decided it was defintely time to post. This is Bob, our customer service manager. Some of the girls sent me some commentary to post in appreciation of Bob…
Besides being the pretzel guy – he takes care of us here…..he’s the “go to” guy (and one of the few men in the office). He was the only one who had jumper cables (and knew how to work them) when Joey thought she might need a jump one day – it turned out she didn’t…He offered to help Elena move into her new home along with a few of his buddies from college. He even offers to bring paper over to our printer by the box loads – since we can only carry two or three packs at a time. All in all, Bob’s a great guy!
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