Ever fancied a career in Fashion Visual Merchandising? Read how the career of one Limerick man continues to soar in the international fashion business – a graduate of both our city’s reputed fashion colleges, Paul Imbusch.
A city boy from Wolfe Tone Street, Paul Imbusch graduated from the Limerick College of Further Education (formerly Limerick Senior College) before entering the fashion department of the Limerick School of Art & Design.
First runner-up in the Jim Kemmy Awards in 2001, he worked at Brown Thomas Limerick in the menswear department and on window displays before a sojourn at Barneys in New York. After returning from the Big Apple he worked in a freelance role in Visual Display and Styling and was snapped up by Limerick designer boutique Tippe Canoe on Shannon Street where he made a real impact in the city with his imaginative window displays.
London with Harvey Nichols
After leaving Limerick in 2004, Paul Imbusch started in London’s prestigious Harvey Nichols store in Knightsbridge and worked there for almost three years as Visual Display Manager. He was mainly responsible for events and the visual merchandising and display on the two menswear floors consisting of the so-called ‘superbrands’ – housing the latest collections from Alexander McQueen, John Galliano Homme, Maison Martin Margiela, J. Lindeburg, Miu Miu, Burberry Prorsum, and Paul Smith to name just a few. On the same floor was the mens business area, mens casual department as well as mens shoes and these all fell under Paul’s responsibility. He also had a role in the womens floors, but his main port of call was the mens departments.
Harvey Nichols has three massive window schemes which also fell under the responsibility of the Visual Display Managers. One is a window run of eight huge windows on Sloane street, there is a twelve window run on the main strip of Knightsbridge and another smaller scheme (which is still quite big in comparison to most other department stores) on Seville Street. Each had to have an individual scheme but still be connected within the same story and these were changed every six weeks. In total the store manages 26 windows plus 176 instore mannequins so Paul certainly cut his teeth in Visual Display during his time at Harvey Nics from brainstorming for concepts, to helping build props, to styling the mannequins which he told me they would work on “untill the cows came home so as to find the perfect outfits, sometimes changing everything several times to get it right as each mannequin must be nothing less than perfect!” He continued “Sometimes we would have 50 mannequins in one window run and other times just ten. It makes no difference because when you’re presenting your window to the world and its mother on the most exclusive strip in the world it has got to be amazing! Each and every one of those mannequins has to be a show stopper.
“We would install the escalator scheme to coincide with the Knightsbridge set of windows which was a whole project onto itself and normally took as long to install as the windows would. The escalators stretched from top to bottom of the store and there was two on each floor – one up, one down – so in total there were ten spaces to be filled.”
Dusseldorf with Esprit
In 2007 Paul left Harvey Nics to take up the role of Mens Visual Display Merchandising Manager for international fashion label, Esprit. “I was responsible for the creation and implementation all of the visual guidelines for the Esprit Collection, and the training for the international and regional visual merchandisers who in turn train the display staff in the stores. Esprit is a totally different ball game to Harvey Nichols. Harvey Nichols have stores in a handful of cities and deals only with the very exclusive. They generally work two collections per year Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter, and sometimes they may have a cruise line on offer. But Esprit, which is the one of the largest high street retailers in the world, dishes out a new collection every month! So it means the pace was a hell of a lot faster, things needed to be done yesterday and to a very high standard. We changed the windows at Esprit every two weeks and refreshed all the new merchandise in the stores every two weeks also. Esprit have over 1000 standalone stores throughout the world and over 15,000 concessions. So to make sure that every store is following your direction is a pretty tough job, you must maintain a strong global corporate image and while the U.S. and Australia-Asian markets do things a little different to suit their customers needs, Esprit try to stay within certain boundries to make it recognisable to our customer and to push the Esprit shopping experience.”
Brussels with Levi’s
For a creative, to spend more than three years doing the one job is seen in the industry as being conditioned to that company so, Paul explained to me, to remain fresh you have to move around. Hence after three years of working and living in Germany for Esprit as Global Visual Merchandising Manager for Esprit Collection, he felt it was time to leave. “The funny thing is that I wasn’t looking to leave, I recieved a call one day from a head-hunter asking to represent me for this amazing position at Levi’s. I wasn’t going to take it initially but the opportunity for growth was too great to pass up. I’d always said from day one that my job in Esprit was my dream job, in my dream company, with my dream boss who left everything up to me. But there’s nothing like a good old fashioned challenge to shake things up a bit! This new position at Levi’s is the natural next step on the ladder, where I will have to manage an inhouse team of visuals as well as the information that gets sent out to the stores and how they interpret it into their stores. I’ve always admired Levi’s as a brand. Not just because of its strength and longevity on the market but its constant ability to remain cool! I remember the advert of the girl who landed from out of space in her 501’s to the sound of Babylon Zoo’s ‘Spaceman’, or that fantastic age old one where the cute boy goes to the laundrette and takes his clothes off and washes them there and then and waits in his boxers! Levis has made its mark and will again come out with something big that will set the standard for all other apparel brands, and I wanted to be a part of that. A part of fashion history, the brand has been around for over 150 years and is stronger today than ever before amidst all the competition, with the likes of Diesel and Replay. It’s probably the world’s best known clothing brand. It’s certainly the world’s best known piece of clothing and I’m delighted and honoured to begin the next chapter of my career with them in Brussels. A new job, a new year, a new city and a whole new adventure!”
So how is he settling into the new role I asked? “So far so good after week one, I’m just taking everything in. My team are actually showing me how everything works but already I’ve had some input which has been well received.” Finally I asked Paul if he had any advice for someone wanting to get into the business: “I would say to definitely do some sort of fashion or creative course. And we all know where the two best Colleges are, right? I happened to go to both! LSAD, where I studied fashion design. and LSC (now called LCFE) on Mulgrave Street where I studied Fashion and Textile design. LCFE now offer a specific course in Visual Merchandising at both Fetac Level 5 and 6 so that’s a really good course too. I also did a course on how to run your own business with the Paul Partnership which helped me with the managerial side of things that really stood to me, now that I’m working in more of an office environment. I also found that working in the store environment was a great insight when I worked part-time in Brown Thomas for about two years. Now I can honestly say that I have no regrets and I’m so happy to be doing what I love.”
