Time in the Industry
The fashion industry is not a single thing. It is a system of parts and each part operates completely differently depending on where you are standing inside it.
The supply chain that makes a garment possible looks nothing like the studio that tries to recover it at the end of its life. The research that underpins an investor pitch looks nothing like a shop floor during Christmas. And yet they are all doing the same work, in different rooms: making a necessity feel like a want. And figuring out how to do it sustainably.
Marks & Spencer - Customer Assistant
Nov 2024 - Feb 2025
Marks & Spencer is not just another retailer. It is a British institution, a brand so embedded in everyday life that it has become a reference point for quality, trust, and reliability across generations. That kind of brand equity doesn’t maintain itself. It is rebuilt, every day, on the shop floor.
I worked at the Pantheon store on Oxford Street, which is one of the busiest retail locations in the city. I started in the backend, handling deliveries and sorting 4000-5000 pieces per intake, section by section and delivering them to the right floor. That turned out to be the right place to start. Knowing what was in stock, where it lived and how it moved through the store gave me the grounding I needed before stepping onto the floor. I work best when I’ve done the preparation and in retail, preparation is the product knowledge.
From the backend I moved onto the menswear and kidswear floor. The work was straightforward in theory, but demanding in practice. Some customers knew exactly what they wanted. Others were just exploring and open to being guided. Reading which was which, and adjusting accordingly, turned out to be an intuitive process. One I genuinely enjoyed, even though I hadn’t expected to.
Oxford Street at Christmas also means the world comes to you: tourists from everywhere, fiddling with unfamiliar coins, checking their change. As someone who wasn’t native to Britain either, there was something quietly enjoyable about figuring it out together.
The department recorded 17% y-o-y sales growth over that period. It is where I understood, hands on, the role retail plays in the industry. Not as the last step, but as the moment everything upstream is tested.
FibreLab - R&D Assistant
Apr 2025 - Jun 2025
It is not every day you get to learn from a studio that challenges how we think about textile waste. For the Industry Experience Project, I visited independent studios across London, walked in, introduced myself, and asked if they would consider taking on an intern. FibreLab was the first door I knocked on. I brought my Sustainable Supply Chain Management project on ZEGNA, showed Kaela Katz, the founder, what I had been working on, and she offered me a role on the spot.
FibreLab is a circular textile recycling studio in Hackney Wick that asks a question the industry hasn’t properly answered: what actually happens to a garment after the consumer is done with it?
My primary brief was to assess FibreLab’s social and cultural impact. I designed the survey instrument, the interview guide, ran the data collection across key partners and community members, and shaped four strategic recommendations informed by the findings. I also researched additional end-use pathways for shredded textiles, compiled a target list of potential partners, and initiated outreach to prospective collaborators.
Being part of a small team means you show up for everything. I removed trimmings and prepared garments for shredding. I worked on a paper mache project and had fun figuring out how to get textile-based pulp to adhere properly to moulds. I attended a panel talk at Istituto Marangoni and community events, sitting in on conversations about where the industry is heading and where FibreLab fits inside it.
Going through FibreLab’s annual impact reporting, I noticed the carbon savings indices they were using didn’t reflect their actual operations. I felt there was a more accurate and efficient way to do this. So I learnt carbon accounting, mapped FibreLab’s exact operational flows, and built two tools from scratch: the FibreLab Impact Index and the FibreLab LCA Calculator, a VBA-powered tool that automates client impact reporting with a single click.
Circularity is not a concept you read about and then apply. It is a daily negotiation between what materials can do, what systems allow, and what communities actually need. FibreLab taught me that in practice.
As part of the IEP module, I produced a full business report including situational analysis, primary research, and four strategic recommendations for FibreLab. An overview of the work is on my projects page.
Circular Earth - Research Intern
Mar 2025 - Present
Circular Earth is a sustainability consultancy where circular economy thinking meets real-world implementation. Rachel Kan, the co-founder, came into the Sustainable Supply Chain Management module as a guest speaker with an opportunity to intern at Circular Earth. I was one of two students selected, based on the work we had submitted for the module.
My first project was researching the global material market and building the case for an alternative bio fibre to support an investor pitch. The client and the material are under NDA. What I can say is that the research required me to move across commercial viability, supply chain feasibility, and material performance.
I came back to Circular Earth after my time at FibreLab. The second project was a maternity clothing brief, where I researched magnetic closure systems, understanding what the design constraints actually were, and presenting technical and commercial recommendations.
The internship has since grown into something less formal. Rachel reaches out when there is a project that suits my background. She is particular about what she brings me in for: the work tends to require analytical depth and attention to detail.
What stands out to me from this role is less the individual briefs and more the way Circular Earth operates across material science, business strategy, and the kind of ecosystem thinking that most companies are still figuring out how to hold together. The conversations with Rachel on systems thinking helped me see the whole picture differently, understanding regenerative systems not from the top down, but from the ground up.