Anna Ro, day one

Today was the first day of my internship at Anna Ro. Fall semester 2008, we happened to do a pretty intense study of tailoring in studio with Carlos Chavez, a local tailor who makes custom suits (running about $4,000 a piece). Anna Ro is the Australian Korean Carlos Chavez. First day of work and she's already got me pad stitching (a very time intensive stitch that makes hand made suits look impeccable). She was very impressed with my skills and has me now working on fixing a suit with some serious problems (the lining and shell of the wool shrank up when it was steamed, but the horse hair remained the same size, so there is some intense pulling. The lining was also stitched too tightly, so I have to pull most of it out and loosen it, after fixing the front/front facing). It's pretty intense and I really didn't think I would be tailoring at all, but it is great to be learning under her.

The shop is located in a neighborhood with a lot of Italians who immigrated from Italy. Most of the people coming into her shop speak to her in Italian (she speaks Korean, Japanese, Italian, English, and French), and I finally found a use for my Italian skills! This one very interesting character came in and said that the entire Italian community comes to her for tailoring because she's the only tailor who speaks Italian. A high-profile man with the FBI also came in and Anna instructed me to measure him under her direction. That was uncomfortable, but I survived.

There's a guitar shop a few stores down, and the owner is apparently teaching Anna how to play guitar. He comes into the shop every day at three and forces her to play. His name is Phil and he is a very nice man. He was joking today that I came to Australia to work with Koreans and listen to them play American music. Australia is great! There's another girl who works in the shop as well named Sylvia (Korean) who semi-has a job offer with Calvin Klein back in Korea. They'll give her the job if she learns how to speak English and she was given a year. She moves back to Korea in two months to take her job.

I think I'm going to enjoy my time at Anna Ro, but at the same time, I'm happy that I'm only there one day a week. It's an interesting shop dynamic and I think I'll enjoy Adam Worling PR a bit more. We'll see though. Pad Stitching is quite fun!!

On another note, I was elected to Student Representative Council! I will be working with representatives from other CAPA groups (our group is 18, but there are roughly 85 total CAPA students here this summer) to plan events around Sydney. Congratulations to me!