Hey y’all, I finally got the last few pictures from Teen Vogue from the Teen Vogue Experience in New York earlier this month. I want to go in depth on all 4 parts of the event and tell you all what I learned, what I did, and the major impact everything really had on me. There was 4 things: First, the panel Q & A with some Teen Vogue magazine workers from different positions, then group two (including me) went to the studio to get our makeup touched up and then we photoshooted. After that, we had a really cool discussion with Amy Levin, the CEO & founder of collegefashionista.com! And finally, we got a tour of the Teen Vogue closet. SO incredibly cool. Again, this experience was offered to student of the Parsons x Teen Vogue online fashion class, Fashion Industry Essentials. You can REGISTER HERE and use the code “ABBY3″ for $50 off!! I learn so much from this class.

Anyway, so let’s get into it!

So we were walking into the One World Trade Center and we were pointed in the Teen Vogue direction. We waited in line and told them our names as they greeted us, so that they could hand us our lanyard name tags which had our names on it and also a group number. On the back was a gift card type thing with $8 on it for their cafe area, which we all went to for a break near the end. After getting the lanyards we were pointed to the elevators and told to go to the 34th floor.

It was so cool hearing from all of them! I learned so much. What I took away from it was that I really just need to DO things. Take the first steps, just DO whatever. If I’ve been wanting to do something for a long time I should just do it! Because all of it really does steadily pave a path towards all your hopes and dreams! All of them got to where they are by just reaching out into the world a bit. That’s why I really need to work a lot harder on my blogging and everything I do. The notes that I took here are:

“Reach out – instinct. The will to take risks! Be present to everything around you.” Wtf? None of these notes make sense. It was just random words I scribbled. But I also wrote things like “Safe is boring in art/fashion” and then I randomly wrote “I really like this pen” HA but I also wrote “Be ballsy, you’re wasting your time if you’re not reaching out to people”!

Here’s a really shaky video from the Q & A, right after this we had a cute little lunch before going to our first activity.

The Photoshoot in the Conde Nast Studio

I was super happy when I saw that Group Two was first to experience the photoshoot! I have modeling as a thing on the side for myself and obviously I model in front of my own camera for my blog photoshoots, but I never really experienced a more professional photoshoot setting. It was super cool. So we were sitting in this really big open studio with comfy seating, and we were all basically just chatting. When it was our turn, we went to sit in the makeup seat to get our makeup done/touched up. I was glowing like crazy after that haha, and honestly my lipstick was messed up and I was nervous BUT I still got these pictures from it. I didn’t know how to pose! Lol! But hey! My outfit was so awesome. Here’s the 3 pictures they took of me, plus behind the scenes lol.

Then here’s the pictures I took while sitting in this BEAUTIFUL room, waiting for everyone to finish their turn. BEAUTIFUL view!

I also totally took a video of the room when we first walked in. So much fun!

Influencer Talk with Amy Levin (founder & CEO of collegefashionista.com)

The photoshoot was super fun, but then we transitioned into this awesome discussion where we all sat in a pretty office room and talked all about…business. Business, how to create our own businesses, but also all about fashion and how we can start our own brands or our own websites or blogs (like me) and we also discussed so many topics…I took a lot of notes but none of it is really legible. LOL. This is what I have down.
“Be cool with failure. Where you live is all what you make of it.” Basically saying that it doesn’t matter where you live, there’s always opportunities. She was also talking to us about how it’s such a digital world and having coding skills is important. I’m not 100% sure on exactly what she meant, but either way I dig it. I learned a lot from this little hour.

Teen Vogue Fashion Closet Tour

So this is what I was MOST excited for, ever since I bought my ticket to this thing in like October. (It was like $1,000 I think?) It seemed like the single coolest idea in the world! However, it was a liiiitle underwhelming. It was a pretty closet, just a few times larger than my room, and apparently they change it up weekly. I was looking through the clothes and they had a lot of cool stuff from like UNIF and O-Mighty which I was very impressed with. Half of this place was just filled with converse haha. It was so cool to see all these pieces that get thrown together to create their awesome magazine shoots. The only reason why I was underwhelmed was because I was SO impressed by the Q & A panel and all that, and it’s like, I guess I didn’t have too much left to learn at this point. Lol their photographer snapped a pic and there’s me in the back looking through the clothes….Haha. by the way, the featured pic/very first pic on here was taken in the closet.

Do you see me? The middle-right. There’s me going through clothes while everyone is discussing the closet. I was just like…I wanted all of it! I loved it!

So in the end, we all went back up to the original room for some closing statements. We were leaving there with a journal of notes, entirely new experience, and new connections made to fashion peers from all around the world. I was from Seattle going to New York but there were people from…everywhere!!

So I’m extremely, extremely thankful that I got this experience. I seriously am so grateful that I got to take a peak into one of the parts of the fashion industry, and…Well, this whole trip was my 18th birthday present from my dad, and I gotta say it wasn’t in vain! This was like a right of passage to me. The world is so, so incredibly big, and I’m one tiny person in it, but I can do whatever the hell I want. Lookout fashion world, here comes Abby fucking Kraykovic.

So yeah some of these pictures are from my New York post The Big Apple, but now you know all about the Teen Vogue Experience.

And just like that other post, the song of this shoot/post/experience is River by Bishop Riggs, which is a song I fell in love with when we were sitting in the first room waiting.