While interning at Bite The Bullet, Angelo Ayala sharpened his technical design and professional communication skills by creating production-ready garment mockups and managing brand representation at vendor events.
How did you get your internship?
I obtained my internship by networking with a connection I had that I knew through my cousin. His friend owned a clothing brand, and I met the owner once a few months prior to considering my internship options. My cousin had been putting in a good word for me, and I decided to send them a pitch about a potential intern position through a direct message (dm) on Instagram right before winter break. In the dm, I introduced myself again and sent my resume and portfolio. It landed, and we scheduled an interview and the owner accepted me as his intern.
What kind of work did you do throughout your internship experience?
I completed garment mock ups, assisted with pop up shops at vendor events, and helped with brand presentation and social media presence. The garment mock ups I completed would be sent to the publisher to be sampled for upcoming collections. The times that I would help with the vendor events, I would go up to Phoenix and help sell garments and help expand our brand to new eyes. A smaller part of my responsibilities was helping with some stuff on social media, like making a graphic to promote an upcoming event, or posting a picture of garments to get new accounts to interact with our content.
What is unique about your situation that influenced your internship selection or experience?
For me, being a first generation student, I did not have access to a vast network system that some other students might have. I did not have access to people that would be able to carve out a position for me. This influenced my internship as I was looking at any avenue to acquire my internship. This motivated me to do a lot of cold calls trying to pitch my position instead of competing with everyone applying to established intern positions at bigger brands. By pitching my internship experience, I got to have a more hands-on experience in multiple aspects of fashion brand management during my internship, which is something I am grateful for.
How did your Applied Humanities major coursework help prepare you or give you unique insight for the internship experience?
The way that my Applied Humanities major coursework helped me prepare for my internship is that it gave me a perspective of how to understand people. I can credit this a lot to the course PAH 372: Intercultural Competence. This course helped me gain a lot of perspective on how to understand people and specific concepts like cultural appropriation, which was important in my position as a vendor at events because I interacted with diverse people from all over the world. I would credit my course work with my ability to connect with people beyond the aesthetic of the clothing; it helped me understand how individuals want to feel and how they work.
What was your favorite or most satisfying part of your internship?
My most favorite part of my internship was the vendor events. It helped me understand how business works within the fashion industry and helped my event promotion skills. I also got to meet a lot of new connections and heard very unique stories that will stick with me for the rest of my life. For example, I met someone who worked with a lot of famous celebrities and made me realize maybe this was something I would not want to do if I was in a position to. But I think the most satisfying part of my internship was when one of my garments finally started to get into production. I was ecstatic when my supervisor told me that my design would be getting produced. It was very surreal and I cannot wait until I get one in my hands.
What did you find challenging about your internship?
For me the most challenging was first landing the internship because I was searching for one for months. I felt stuck for a little while and got discouraged as I had applied to a lot of positions, getting a few interviews here and there, but was never able to land an offer.
When I started my internship, the most challenging part was learning that I needed to create work for myself. I thought that I would continuously be assigned work to do every day but this was not the case because the work in fashion can fluctuate. I decided when I had down time and did not get assigned projects from my supervisor that I would then work on my technical skills to further improve the quality of my work. This helped me in the long run as my mock ups had become a lot better towards the end of my internship than the first couple ones I did.
What advice do you have for other students as they search for their internship?
My advice to you is to not get discouraged. Everyone has their own path that they will go down. If the internship that you get is not your ideal position, that's okay. This experience is about getting your foot in the door and experiencing work in a professional environment. I think the biggest misconception that people have is that you need an internship in your exact field of study. People get stuck on one title and try to only go after that but the title of your internship is not everything. I think the last thing I will leave you with is to keep your head up and everything always works out.